By ALAN SMASON For the past several weeks, I’ve been promoting this weekend as a way for the local theatre community to give back to Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carré, the historic theater founded in 1916 and nestled in the heart of the French Quarter. Friday night, September 6, was Le Petit’s annual fundraiser, […]
By AARON KRAUSE While summer camp is over for kids, a different kind of camp is in session for adults at Island City Stage (ICS). There, the side-splitting camp comic classic Die, Mommie, Die!, which is not for children, is keeping the laughometer as high as current temperatures in hot and humid South Florida. In its intimate black […]
By AARON KRAUSE The term “collision” usually carries a negative connotation. After all, serious injuries or worse can result when people or vehicles collide. But a potentially healing collision occurs in the moving, humorous, and invigorating new musical, A Shonda. It’s a clash that can hopefully, in the long run, begin to heal long festering ills […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) It has taken nine years for the Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans (TWTC) to tackle one of the biggest and most intricately constructed of their namesake playwright’s works, A Streetcar Named Desire, the first to garner him the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Drama. This latest […]
By AARON KRAUSE “Bigger isn’t better.” So go the lyrics to a Cy Coleman and Michael Stewart song from the musical “Barnum.” At least, bigger isn’t always better. A fine example is New City Players’ (NCP) small scale, yet heartfelt, haunting, heartbreaking, and sizzling current professional production of Tennessee Williams’ classic, sultry, poetic, Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 tragedy, A […]
By LOU HARRY Prior to a performance, most theaters share a short list of expected behaviors. Turn off those cell phones. Unwrap those candies. Note the exits. However, for Hamlet, staged at Santa Fe’s Center for Contemporary Arts, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the list is significantly different. The first rule for Exodus Ensemble’s immersive, […]
By AARON KRAUSE If you look closely at the program for Palm Beach Dramaworks’ (PBD) polished and poignant production of the touching historical drama, Trying, you’ll notice a tilted “g.” This occurs not only on the program’s front cover, but inside. Possibly, the slanting letter symbolically suggests that we, as a society, are also slightly off […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) James Bartelle, a founding member of The NOLA Project, has written a number of original works for the troupe of young, innovative performers through the years. These include their highly imaginative The Spider Queen performed in the outdoor splendor of the New Orleans Museum of Art’s Sidney […]
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 […]