Friday, March 29, 2024
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 Conferen…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 11:27AMThursday, March 21, 2024
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 Pr…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 01:45PMSunday, March 17, 2024
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…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 12:01PMThursday, March 14, 2024
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 …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 01:22PMBy 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 …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 05:29AMMonday, March 11, 2024
By ROY BERKO Northwestern grad, Selina Fillinger, was the first Judith Barlow Prize winner, an annual student award given to work inspired by a historic female playwright. “In 2019, her …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 06:56PMSunday, March 10, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) The producers from the Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans had already planned for a major opening night on March …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 01:21PMThursday, March 7, 2024
By LOU HARRY There are Broadway shows that seem destined for long lives after the New York production folds. I’m willing to bet, for instance, that we will be seeing productions as wide ra…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 07:51PMSunday, March 3, 2024
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Producers of Broadway shows that performed reasonably well on the Great White Way have largely been upping their game in the yea…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 04:04PMFriday, March 1, 2024
By ALAN SMASON Biting satire must be carefully presented. If it doesn’t go far enough, it can come across as insincere and tepid, but if it goes too far, it can be considered as inappropri…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 02:42PMWednesday, December 27, 2023
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Patrick Page chooses his words very carefully or, perhaps, it should be said he chooses Shakespeare’s words carefully. In All …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 12:02PMMonday, December 25, 2023
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic Following his 2019 Tony Award win for Tootsie, writer Robert Horn was offered several projects of his choosing, but none seemed more appropriate than r…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 04:35PMSunday, December 17, 2023
By ROY BERKO Langston Hughes, the author of Black Nativity, now on stage at the Allen Theatre, in a joint production between Karamu, the country’s oldest black producing theater and the Cl…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 10:44PMWednesday, December 13, 2023
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Since its release in 1982, New Orleans native Bob Clark’s “A Christmas Story” has been part of the holiday landscape, help…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 05:12AMWednesday, December 6, 2023
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) After celebrating its 20th anniversary this past October, the juggernaut that is Stephen Schwartz’s Wicked on Broadway seems …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 11:07PMMonday, December 4, 2023
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) “Harmony: A New Musical,” the Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman work is hardly a “new” musical, having simmered off the Br…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 09:10AMSunday, November 26, 2023
By ANNE SIEGEL MILWAUKEE, WI. – Don’t be late for this class: the School of Rock is astonishing audiences at Milwaukee’s Skylight Music Theatre. Based on the successful 2003 film of th…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 03:58PMMonday, November 20, 2023
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) The history of Here Lies Love dates back almost two decades ago when David Byrne and Fatboy Slim came up with an improbable conc…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 05:51PMSunday, November 12, 2023
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) There was a time when Tallulah Bankhead was as well known a celebrity as any who dominate the social media channels of our own t…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 04:56AMThursday, November 9, 2023
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) The history of Onepiece, billed as “A Splashy Musical Play” goes back many years to a time when Randy Bibb felt especially c…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 11:59AMMonday, November 6, 2023
By ROY BERKO David Greene, the Senior Vice President of Programming at Playhouse Square, informs theater-goers in his program notes for Girl from the North Country that “it is a non-trad…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 10:10AMSunday, November 5, 2023
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) When award-winning playwright Lynn Nottage accepted the task as book writer for MJ, the Michael Jackson musical, she probably kn…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 05:43AMBy ANNE SIEGEL The American musical theater has been graced with another revival of Company, Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s 1970 musical about our basic human need for togetherness. I…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 03:41AMThursday, November 2, 2023
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) Following the record setting production of The Producers, Mel Brooks set his sight on bringing another of his film classics from…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 10:18AMTuesday, October 31, 2023
By ROY BERKO Former South Euclid resident and Brush High School graduate, Dr. Alan Wieder, is on a quest “to stem the time of forgetfulness.” An oral historian, Wieder has been on the fa…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 05:21AMFriday, October 27, 2023
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) When most people consider the macabre work of Stephen Sondheim and his delicious sense of dark humor, they typically point to Sw…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 09:44PMWednesday, October 25, 2023
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) One of the most eagerly awaited new musicals in the country bowed recently in Milwaukee, not a typical launching place for such …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 01:36PMWednesday, October 18, 2023
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) Following his success with both Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at Le Petit Theatre …
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 05:37AMWednesday, October 11, 2023
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) (NEW ORLEANS) – A Wonderful World, sub-titled “A New Musical About the life and Loves of Louis Armstrong,” made its bow in…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 06:29PMBy ROY BERKO The reconfigured The Wiz, as one of its major song’s states, is easing down the road on its way to Broadway. Previews for that show begin on March 29, 2024, with the Big Appl…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 06:28PMSunday, October 8, 2023
By ANNE SIEGEL (Editor’s note: This review appeared briefly on the website of Milwaukee’s Shepherd Express, the city’s alternative newspaper. However, due to pressure from Milwaukee Re…
SOURCE: Theatre Criticsm at 11:23AM 
