By AARON KRAUSE A social media influencer learns from a DNA test that she is among the 40 percent of individuals who can smell asparagus in their urine. An otherworldly being tells two zoo-goers that ants, not humans, are among Earth’s dominant species. A woman aboard a spacecraft sometime in the future is murdered because […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) When Arthur Miller debuted The Crucible in 1953, the nation was emerging from the dark and sinister times of accusations and recriminations known as McCarthyism. The historical drama based on the Salem Witch Trials, but also fictionalized, was intended to bring comparisons from the past to the […]
By AARON KRAUSE A small, dark statue of a woman rests among the items in Jacob Brown’s realistic set design for Main Street Players’ (MSP) shining professional production of Lauren Gunderson’s funny and moving play, The Revolutionists. Yet it is easy to overlook the black, inconspicuous statue—or notice that parts of its body are missing. Similarly, […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) It is perhaps most appropriate that for the third jewel in Summer Lyric Theatre at Tulane’s studded crown is Carousel, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical celebrating its 80th anniversary this year. The old chestnut is always welcomed when it allows for all stops to be pulled out […]
By ALAN SMASON This season’s New Orleans Shakespeare Festival has been quite unusual. To begin with, the first of its two major productions wasn’t even Shakespeare: it was Moliére and his final opus The Imaginary Invalid. That production was quite special with a new translation and adaptation by Ryder Thornton and superb direction by Anne-Liese […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) It’s taken ten years for the Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans (TWTC) to unveil its first production of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Along with A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie, it is considered the third jewel in the crown […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) When Company by Stephen Sondheim (and a book by Mark Furth) opened on Broadway in 1970 it was such a breath of fresh air and so unlike anything else he or anyone else had done previously that it took a notably short period of time for it […]
˘By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) Fats Waller, the very talented American singer and songwriter, lived an unfortunately short but prolific life, dying in 1943 at the age of 39. Born when ragtime was still the rage, Thomas Waller was a noted jazz innovator and his music still has a way of making […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) A decade ago the NOLA Project mounted an unusual production of Adam Szymkowicz’s Clown Bar at The Little Gem Saloon. Set in a seedy bar run by a crime syndicate of clowns, Szymkowicz spun a dark tale of menacing clowns that would give chills to any coulrophobic […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) Over the course of the last several years, Crescent City Stage has established itself as the premiere equity theatre company in New Orleans, partially filling the void left in the wake of the dissolution of Southern Rep. While Southern Rep was largely a community theatre company with […]