The American Theatre Wing and the Broadway League, sponsors of the Tony Awards for excellence on the Broadway stage, were announced on Tuesday, April 30. The awards will be presented on Sunday night, June 16, and broadcast over the CBS network and livestreamed over Paramount+. BEST PLAY Jaja’s African Hair Braiding Jocelyn Bioh, playwright Mary […]
By LOU HARRY While many companies have responded to the challenges facing post-lockdown theater by offering minimally cast shows and/or feel-good entertainments, the storied Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis has taken a very different approach. Through May 25, it’s offering not one but three – well, technically four but with two combined – of Shakespeare’s interconnected […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Playwright Michael Frayn claims he got the inspiration to write Noises Off in 1970 while watching a comedy he had written unfold backstage. It occurred to him in several ways that much more of the action off stage was the stuff of a better comedy as actors […]
By ANNE SIEGEL War is hell, they say. But the months leading up to war can also be a kind of hell, as demonstrated by the characters in From Here to Eternity, a new musical that opened recently at Skylight Music Theatre in Milwaukee. The mundane reality of military life in the Hawaiian Islands before […]
By ALAN SMASON While the Academy Awards buzz was mostly about “Oppenheimer” and “Poor Things,” a smaller film starring Anthony Hopkins – “One Life” – was distributed a few weeks ago and is still playing if you can find it in area theaters. Starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as the aged Nicholas Winton, the now 86-year-old […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) While the Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival has ended this year’s presentations and its famed Scholars Conference, serious study of the playwright’s early work abounds in Outraged Hearts, the production being helmed by The Fire Weeds, a new, female-centric production company in New Orleans. The two […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) New Orleans audiences have long been enamored of local comedy genius Ricky Graham, but thanks to the regional premiere of The Prom, they are now becoming acquainted with the fictional character of Barry Glickman, a narcissistic Broadway leading man who Graham plays to his heart’s delight. But […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) The latest production of Jesus Christ Superstar bowed this weekend, presented by the Jefferson Performing Arts Society (JPAS) at the Jefferson Performing Arts Center on Airline Drive in Metairie and there is a lot to like about it including a brilliant final scene intended to suggest the […]
By ALEX MILLER In the Algonquin Room of the Placid Pines Senior Care Center, a small group of New Yorkers gather to chat, drink coffee or juice and tell the same old stories. On one side of the room is an aquarium, the inhabitants of which mirror those on the other side of the glass: […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) With a subtitle – The Carole King Musical – it’s easy to conceive that Beautiful is a musical that only concerns the life of legendary songwriter Carole King and ancillary figures in her life. In fact, the story is largely about two competing songwriting couples: composer Carole […]