By ROY BERKO Parade, which is now on stage at the Palace Theatre as part of the Key Bank Broadway series, is a musical with a book by Alfred Uhry and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown. …
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") As hard to believe as it may be, Mamma Mia!, the ABBA hit jukebox musical is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. It continues …
By LOU HARRY, Special to Theatrecriticism.com Yes, "Henry IV" is the complete title. Sans the "part 1" and "part 2" that traditionally complete the title of William Shakespeare's his…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") Sam Shepard's powerful play about the toxic relationship between two brothers " True West " is back at the Jefferson Performing Arts' …
By LOU HARRY, Special to Theatrecriticism.com It's made clear from the first moments of "The Antiquities" that the human race is history. Jordan Harrison's play, a co-production of Playwrigh…
By LOU HARRY I've only seen Liza Minnelli once live. That was at a concert with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, where her batteries seemed fully charged and she treated the audience lik…
By ANNE SIEGEL, Exclusive to Theatrecriticism.com MILWAUKEE " Okay, we're not Iowa. But when the Broadway national tour of Shucked opened this week in Madison, WI " the Wisconsin state capit…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") Capturing the wit and destructive lifestyle of humorist Oscar Levant is a daunting task for any actor attempting to portray the tortur…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") The biggest problem Broadway has with so-called "jukebox musicals" is they always seem to get mired down by the exposition of the stor…
By ALAN SMASON There are a lot of people capable of taking a beloved film soundtrack and adapting it faithfully into a theatre piece for presentation on the stage. There are also a lot of pe…
By ALAN SMASON Of all the holiday-themed shows that make their way onto stages in December, Elf: The Broadway Musical may be the one most resistant to the Grinch, Scrooge and other humbugs. …
By SCOTTY BENNETT Consider, if you will, a blizzardlike night, a cozy inn on the brink of closing forever, suddenly brought back to life by the arrival of two very different groups of travel…
By SCOTTY BENNETT Woman on a Ledge is an adaptation by Hershey Felder of harpist Rita Costanzi's writings about her life. Ms. Costanzi is a world-renowned harpist whose life experiences have…
By SCOTTY BENNETT Okuni: The Woman Who Created Kabuki by Ako Dachs is a limited, fictionalized account of the woman who is thought to have created kabuki. It is generally accepted that the d…
By ELIZABETH SCHABINGER Divorced. Beheaded. Died. Divorced. Beheaded. Survived! The six wives of British King Henry VIII are back in Washington, D.C. at the National Theatre, fresh from thei…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") Thirty-seven years after the scandal-ridden story of televangelists Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker and their popular PTL Club made headline…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") The dark days of the COVID shutdown brought the theatre community to its knees. Unable to perform in front of live audiences or to con…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") Jamie Lloyd has made a reputation for himself as a visionary minimalist director, winning a remarkable collection of Olivier Awards on…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") There are a few Off-Broadway shows that rise above the fray even though they are silly in concept or lack the kind of production value…
By ROY BERKO Bye Bye Birdie, Hair, Grease, Carrie, 13 (The Musical), Dear Evan Hansen and Mean Girls. What do all these Broadway musicals have in common? They placed the spotlight on teen…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") Talk about hitting it out of the ballpark. With the Fall Classic being played out in arenas in Los Angeles and in New York, it's easy …
By ALAN SMASON, WYES Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") Playwright Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu has said the concept of Pass Over is similar to that of Beckett's Waiting for Godot and that it was…
By LOU HARRY Craig Lucas' play Prelude to a Kiss reached Broadway in 1988, the same year that "Big," "Vice Versa," and "18 Again" were hitting movie theaters. Yes, all were body-switching st…
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic ("Steppin' Out") When Girl from the North Country premiered on Broadway, there were a number of ebullient reviews trumpeting the musical for its invent…
By ROY BERKO "Neither Ruby Dee or Ossie Davis ever appeared in a Karamu House stage production but both had significant presence and impact in the organization and in the lives of Karamu art…