348 stories by "Alan Smason"
By: SCOTTY BENNETT A Letter to Lyndon B. Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First is a gem of a play written, directed, and performed by Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland. This two-hander makes …
By SCOTTY BENNETT One of the most famous opening lines of a novel is "Call me Ishmael." It is from Herman Melville's Moby Dick, a book many people are aware of but have never read. It is not…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") Chicago "the longest running show now on Broadway and the second longest running show in history " made its way to the Saenger Theater…
˘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 th…
EDWARD RUBIN, an iconoclastic theatre critic, arts critic and curator, who wrote for decades about theatre and the visual arts, died after a protracted battle with bladder cancer at Calvary …
The 2025 Tony Award winners were announced in ceremonies at Radio City Music Hall on Sunday, June 8, hosted by Tony Award winner Cynthia Errivo. Maybe Happy Ending, a musical set in the futu…
By LOU HARRY I caught the first performance of The Prom, produced by Summer Stock Stage, a unique company that fuses the talents of established performers with early career actors. It's now …
By LOU HARRY I caught the opening night of Terry Guest's play Oak at the Phoenix Theatre Cultural Center, the second of its three rolling world premiere productions. Some thoughts: " Oak con…
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 ba…
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 Or…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") Karey and Wayne Kirkpatrick, the two brothers who conceived Something Rotten! and more recently wrote the music and lyrics for the mus…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") John Patrick Shanley's Doubt: A Parable is a brilliant indictment of organized religion and the negativity attached to innuendo and go…
The 2025 Tony Award nominations were announced on Thursday, May 1 by Tony Award winners Sarah Paulson and Wendell Pierce. The nominations for competitive Tony Awards are: Best Play English,Ã…
By ROY BERKO Hispanic theatre is noted for its' fictional-based literature that normally has six elements: character, plot, point of view, setting, style and theme. These are often encased i…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") It's been a full decade since Lin-Manuel Miranda's idea of a "mixtape" about the Founding Fathers was playing at the Public Theater to…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") When the season announcement was made last year that Jefferson Performing Arts (JPA) would be producing Billy Elliot: The Musical for …
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") Throughout his life, Tennessee Williams knew tragedy. Whether through his sister Rose's struggle with mental health or the loss of his…
By SCOTTY BENNETT There are times in a person's life when the only rational response to the pressures of daily living is to escape into a different reality. Drugs and alcohol are often the d…
By SCOTTY BENNETT In the moments between daylight and evening, there is a time when it is neither day nor night. It is a time of transition, a liminal state between now and then, a twilight …
By ROY BERKO A juke box musical consists of pre-existing songs which are melded into a script to tell a story.  The songs, in contrast to lyrics and music, which are specifically integ…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") The Hans Christian Andersedn fairy tale "The Princess and the Pea" is the basis for Once Upon a Mattress, the 1959 musical that launch…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carré has removed any doubt about whether it could creatively pull off the first local production of Je…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") It's hard to believe, but until three years ago there had never been a revival of Funny Girl on Broadway. The starring vehicle in 1964…
By SCOTTY BENNETT One of the fascinating things about humans is how easily they mask intense feelings in a cloak of smiles and good humor. Pain, both physical and emotional, can be disguised…
By ELIZABETH SCHABINGER The Bedwetter, based on Sarah Silverman's memoir of the same name, is an intimate look at Silverman's year as a 10-year-old. In The Bedwetter,  Sarah is a fifth gr…
