A Survivin' Thing: Out of the Boil, A Climate Change Musical @ The New Marigny Theatre
Review by Todd Perley

​The setting: a New Orleans dive bar. The players: neighborhood working folk—a nurse, a teacher, a tech guy, some service industry, etc. The conversation: climate change, education, local infrastructure, and why doesn’t the Algiers ferry run twenty-four hours anymore? Sound familiar?

It should. I think we’ve all been to this bar with these people and discussed these things with similar passion. Except in Rel Farrar’s new play, these aren’t people; they’re crawfish. Socially aware crawfish, dressed in red, complete with little red claws. And they sing. They sing their P.O.V.s to the tunes of E.L.O. songs. Okay, so maybe we haven’t been to this bar.

The conflict: Chef Bezos (played by local treasure Ratty Scurvics) is offering a sizable grant to the crawfish that pitches the best socially-conscious scheme. I’m sure that will work out well. Clearly, the chef has the crawfish’s best interests in mind.

The characters are intellectual, hilarious, and self-aware, reminiscent of classic Woody Allen films. The arguments are tight and multi-faceted, never preaching to the choir. Tech Guy waxes rhapsodic on the philosophy of Ayn Rand to his girlfriend. When rebuffed, he sings his angry response to her via the song 'Evil Woman'.

While the arguments are mature, there’s a childlike joy throughout. All the props are over-sized. Picture a crawfish holding human-sized cups, beer bottles, cigarettes, or scissors, an effective offset to the serious themes when the lines are delivered by someone drinking from a shot glass the size of a paint bucket. The table is a board set upon a bottle of Mod Podge (those crafty crawfish!)

Danielle Small directs this serious piece with campy lightheartedness. The mood matches the tongue-in-cheek vibe of her 'Waterworld', which has played, hilariously, in local swimming pools for years (I look forward to these annually). Neal Todten as musical director pounds out E.L.O. hits on the piano beautifully.

But it’s the cast that brings the Zatarain’s to this crawfish berl. They’re all just having so much fun, and the actors’ joy is infectious. Whenever things get dark, someone starts playing darts…with dart props made of four foot pool noodles.

The goofiness never detracts from the message. As Rel tells us in her author’s note, “This show is about believing you can make things better…maybe pigs can fly (metaphorically speaking).”

You can suck da heads of these concerned mudbugs at the New Marigny Theater, October 3–6.
​

Tumble deeds: Cirque du Soleil's Songblazers @ The Saenger Theatre
Review by Dorian Hatchett

Is there anything French clowns and acrobats can’t do?  If you said “pay homage to the uniquely American art and culture that is country music without seeming condescending or silly” I would posit that you are wrong.  The proof is in Songblazers, a Cirque Du Soleil Theatrical production currently on tour across the US.  

With a forty-year history of wowing audiences around the world, Cirque is currently operating nineteen different productions, either touring or resident, in ten countries. Their shows are the gold standard for production level, and this one was no different. The sets are designed to be more than backdrops, and the costumes tell stories all their own. Cirque owns its own music production company, just to make the show that much more seamless, and you won’t find a better produced stage outside of Broadway.  

Songblazers tells the story of an aspiring country music songwriter, set in Nashville Tennessee. There’s a slow wind-up, as the environmental entertainment while awaiting the curtain smoothly transitions into the show proper, and we’re greeted by a massive, complicated set featuring balcony stages for a live band, and a giant moving steam engine that is occasionally a stage and occasionally the moon and is always the center of the action.  

I am always excited to see how a traveling show will use the stage. The flexibility, the professional knowledge, that must be used to shift the blocking and lighting and props for every single location on a tour is a source of wonder for me. The performers made it look like they grew up on that stage, using every single inch, never looking crowded or sparse. Dancers and acrobats confidently chewed up scenery and there wasn’t a bad seat in the house.  

There was real genuine laughter and joy from the audience. What country music backed show doesn’t have a full-cast bar fight? It hits a little different when the actors are acrobats. A juggler performs feats of midair organization, with a whole stack of red solo cups, set to the song Red Solo Cup. Toby Keith would be proud. There’s no way someone doesn’t love that bar.

There was a carnival strongman advertising nails by driving them into a board with his hands, and I cannot stress how very difficult it would be to do aerial silks in a cowboy hat, but they pulled it off with aplomb. They might have friends in low places, but they are at the height of their craft. 

More information about Songblazers and Cirque du Soleil
​

​Domestic Abyss: A Doll's House at the Marquette Theatre
Review by David S. Lewis

It is more than passingly uncomfortable that a play written about gender dynamics in 1879 feels perfectly relevant today. 

Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, credited with many of the most important dramatic works such as Peer Gynt and Enemy of the People, was accused of feminist propagandism for A Doll’s House, in which Nora, a married woman realizes that her value to all of the men in her life is based exclusively on her conformity to reductive societal ideals - especially her relationship with her paternalistic husband, Torvault. 

While the original is in three acts, Amy Herzog’s Tony-winning revival (a rarity for a translation) condenses the work to around 90 minutes, which somewhat impedes the repetitive rhythm of the original,  in which deliberate redundancy serves to reinforce the boundaries of the Nora’s world. Herzog also updates the language, transforming quaint idiom like “wretched” into something more contemporarily acidic. 

Herzog’s version forces us to deal with the familiarity of the characters’ interactions; most of us have seen these play out in the relationships of people we know intimately, and the effect is shocking.

In Crescent City Stage’s presentation, director Jana Mestecky, with two decades in the New York theater scene, shows us the play from the eyes of the couple’s children, encouraging us to see ancient dynamics from a symbolically innocent perspective.

In casting Elizabeth Newcomer and Michael A. Newcomer as Nora and Torvald, a couple married in real life portray the dysfunction of the married characters vividly: the chemistry is real and familiar, which permits the pain and outrage felt by the characters to come through incisively.  

The play here feels loaded and modern, and what vestiges of the work’s Old World origins remain imbue the minimalist production with a surreality the serves to heighten the tension. Secondary characters in this are also wonderfully cast: Douglas Scott Streater’s Dr. Rank, a family friend with several important secrets, is genial and warm, and so his revelations land like a blade. 

Sue Jin Song’s Kristine, whose attempts to rebuild her own life upend Nora’s, gives an earnest that makes her character feel complete. And Doug Spearman provides his Krogstad, a brooding and embittered former loan shark trying to turn a new page, with a dignity and affection well-reserved for this false antagonist, seemingly a threat to Nora’s bourgeoise idyll but ultimately the key to unlocking her life’s prison.

Hurricane Francine affected this play's schedule, so please consider supporting them on September 22 @ 2:30p.m. Click here for information and ticketing.  
You can follow David S. Lewis: @allaboardnola
​

Dreads or tales...
PENNY DREADFULS: THE REMARKABLE ROOMING-HOUSE OF MADAME LE MONDE 
Review by Dorian Hatchett

Tennesee Williams never stopped writing.  His most popular pieces stunned Broadway audiences from the 1940s through the 1960s, but his body of work spans his entire life, as wildly diverse as it is prodigious. The three plays performed in Penny Dreadfuls: The Remarkable Rooming-House of Madame Le Monde are among his most esoteric, and for good reason.  

Williams’ work is entertainingly clever and complex, the characters deeply flawed in all the most (and least) relatable ways. There’s never just a story happening on the stage, though. Williams was a gay man who lived in some of the worst times to be gay in America.  He was a sickly child in a dysfunctional family. He had a schizophrenic sister and puritanical family. He saw first hand how humans treat the people who they consider “other” and it informs every word.  

His most popular work was a delicate balance of artful plot and social commentary. The escapism of theater was maintained, and one could enjoy the production and then dissect the deeper narrative at their leisure (or choose not to, and remain entertained by the characterizations alone). Later in his life, though, the critical acclaim was more sparse, and Williams sank his entire might into the power of the stage to deliver that societal critique.  

Instead of subtle, unspoken undercurrents, his stories became morality plays screaming from the rooftops of the pain and mistreatment of society's most maligned, most oppressed, most overlooked. These shows are meant to make the audience uncomfortable; to pour misery directly into your hands and make you sit with it, squirming in the reflection of stage lights and the smell of plywood.

The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company (about to start their 10th season) has a sterling reputation for their candor and sensitivity when interpreting this work. In their hands, these pieces are treated with respect bordering on veneration, the audience becoming their beneficiary.  

Truly appreciating this writing demands the correct application of dark humor, and the Penny Dreadfuls are apex gallows comedy. The audience writhes internally, and nervous laughter is the near constant over quiet contemplation or rapt attention, the small cast of actors radiating unhinged savagery from their pores. 

The laughter is genuine at first. The show’s master of ceremonies is none other than Jigsaw from the Saw horror movie franchise. The action on stage descends with furious speed, to the limits of what an audience can silently accept, and their discomfort is the most high praise a show like this can receive. 

Monica R. Harris (Madame Le Monde, Mrs. Yorke) commands the stage with her facial expressions, and the other actors' apparent distrust of her is so palpable it may be genuine. Adrienne Simmons (Lily, Jigsaw) is physical theater personified. Her shoulders offer entire soliloquies. Cody Keech (The man with the size 11D, the Boy) seduces more than Miss Simple with his promises of a life fully lived, with all its messy imperfections. 

Accolades must be given to the set design, and its brilliant geometry. Backdrops that fold into themselves is a masterful use of a tiny space, transforming in the blink of an eye. The interaction between stage and audience is effortless, as if the fourth wall simply does not exist. We are acutely aware that they, and their suffering, are part of the show as much as Mint’s mobility hooks, propping up the dialogue with reflected energy.  

I was not immune to the uncomfortable silence, the awkward shuffle of my feet, the nervous laughter, the awareness that I didn't know what to do with my hands. Like many audience members, I made uncouth jokes as I filed out of the auditorium. 

With a declaration that the characters in the rooming–house were none other than Clive Barker’s cenobites, if they were portrayed by tubercular victorian children, I unintentionally reasserted that horror as a genre is rooted in a human need to explore hell as a place we have manufactured, through our own faults. Sartre was right, and it is indeed other people.

PENNY DREADFULS: THE REMARKABLE ROOMING-HOUSE OF MADAME LE MONDE runs at The Lower Depths Theatre @ Loyola University through Sept 28th. Click here for more information and ticketing
​

Cirque du Soleil will set up their temporary home in the Sanger Theatre in a couple of weeks to present Songblazers, a new, innovative, country-themed show. This dynamic theatrical production pays tribute to the legendary and modern trailblazers of country music. Charting the journey of two main characters as they forge their own path to country recognition, Songblazers premiered in  July 2024 in Nashville and arrives in the Crescent City this September for two nights only.

Original songs are partly a collaboration with Sam Williams, a contemporary country artist, and grandson of country pioneer Hank Williams. Carnival Heart, for example, is a gut-wrenching number inspired by a personal yearning for self-discovery, friendship, and hope. 

​“The title idea came to me pretty easily after becoming acquainted with Cirque du Soleil,” says Williams. “Where I come from, most people don’t get to go to the circus. We go to county fairs and carnivals, and the carnival in a small town is filled with joy, excitement, mystery, euphoria, you name it. That feeling is one you always remember, and I think the roller coaster of emotions lines up with what you want to feel seeing such an incredibly beautiful production such as Cirque’s.”

Drawing inspiration from a rich legacy of country music, Songblazers pays homage to the legendary names of the past while embracing the talents of contemporary artists. There's also, of course, the breathtaking acrobatics, awe-inspiring aerial acts, and displays of strength and dexterity form the Cirque performers. 

Click here for more information and ticketing

​Sometimes it's hard to be a Roman: Julius Caesar @ The Lupin Theater
Review by Paul Oswell

I doubt that unseasonably violent storms or spontaneously combusting men were witnessed on the night that the New Orleans Shakespeare Festival chose to stage this particular play, but you could be forgiven for believing it to be a portentous decision. Just a week before opening night, the Supreme Court declared the possibility of king-like immunity for future Presidents, a development that is strikingly on the nose given the Trumpian themes of the opening act.

We meet Caesar (played by Silas Cooper) in his pomp, on the cusp of regal authority thanks to a rising tide of plebian devotion. Two close associates, Cassius (Erin Cessna) and Brutus (Wendy Miklovic), are beginning to see Caesar as weak due to his seizures and ailments, and they fear that ascension to the crown will spell the end of the Republic. High ranking members of a political organization looking to replace a physically flawed but well-liked figurehead? Seems like Joe Biden should also brush up on his classics.

Wild weather, fiery omens and his wife’s nightmares alert Caesar to possible tragedy, while a lethal conspiracy gains traction among the political class in the dead of night. Even though the morning brings the Ides of March, JC does very much not beware them. At first, he tells the Senate that he will not attend that day, refusing to give a reason, with the Nixonian rhetoric of, “The cause is in my will.” When the president does it, that means it is not illegal. 

His hubris eventually has him change his mind and attend court, and there he is gleefully celebrated with cake and fine wine. I’m just kidding. As we all know, he is instead brutally murdered, stabbed repeatedly by almost everyone he trusted. His one true ally, Mark Antony (James Bartelle), witnesses the bloody aftermath, superficially sanctioning the assassination but as the mob departs, he vows revenge. 

If the first act is a patchwork of personal machinations and skullduggery, the second plays out the consequences on a larger scale. Caesar’s son, Octavius (Zarah Hokule’a Spalding), arrives in Rome and forms a coalition with Antony and Lepidus (Enne Samuel). Armies are raised to fight the exiled Brutus and Cassius. They are ultimately successful, Brutus committing suicide still haunted by Caesar’s ghost. 

Director Salvatore Mannino skillfully creates an evocatively dark, tempestuous world that seems fraught and ominous. Hope Bennett’s impressively coherent costume design is reminiscent of the utilitarian garb of guerilla fighters, with hints of the latest Dune movies. The lighting and video projections (a moveable video wall conjures up changing scenes and moods) work deftly with the sound design, used most pleasingly to recreate booming arena speeches - excellent work by Alexander la Vallant Freer, James Lanius III and Steven Gilliland respectively. 

Cooper’s Caesar flits convincingly between potency and paranoia, while Miklovic and Cessna are powerfully engaging, mixing stirring rhetoric and aggressive ambition. Bartelle’s Mark Antony runs on high emotion throughout, the withering subtext of his ‘honorable men’ speech at Caesar's funeral one of the most memorable scenes. Seller’s Casca is everything a conniving, consigliere-type should be, while Hokule’a Spalding makes sure that Octavius’ arrival is explosively dramatic. 

It’s a large cast, but Monica R Harris, Ryan Hayes, Justice Hues, John Jabaley, Aria Jackson, Mary Langley, Matthew Raetz, Stephen Rose Pendleton, Enne Samuel, Joe Signorelli and Kristin Witt all render beautifully well-drawn characters. The staging is at close quarters, giving it a visceral immediacy. Disorienting torches flash across the audience and death scenes are starkly intimate.

As noted, it’s a spookily topical production, the lions that stalk the capitol almost too relevant an allegory for today’s real-life political landscape. Or perhaps violent swings of power are so historically common that Julius Caesar is simply an evergreen fable. Either way, lend your ears and eyes to this fantastically entertaining production - it's no less effective a filter through which to view today's politics than the nightly news. 

Julius Caesar plays at the Lupin Theatre through July 21st. For show information and tickets, click here. 
​

The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans (TWTC) will present its much-anticipated staging of Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning drama A Streetcar Named Desire this summer at the historic Marigny Opera House. The play will be the centerpiece for the company’s 2024 season, collectively themed “Desire”. An all-local team has been assembled to bring the iconic play to life.

The play, which elevated New Orleans’ profile as a literary destination and setting for future works of drama and fiction, follows Blanche DuBois over the course of a long summer in which she arrives in the Big Easy amid the hardest of circumstances. She seeks shelter in the home of her sister Stella, which is shared with Stella’s husband Stanley. Blanche and Stanley could not be more different—or so it seems—and the tiny two-room apartment becomes unbearably hostile to the genteel and fraught Blanche.

She seeks solace in a kind stranger named Mitch, whom she hopes will carry her off into a new chapter of her life, but other forces at play create pressure on all sides of the archetypal Southern heroine. Vice and desire press in on her from all sides, and audiences will be able to peer in on the most private moments in Blanche’s tribulations.

The production is helmed by director Augustin J Correro, TWTC Production Manager Maddie Taliancich & Production Stage Manager Ryan Darby. “We are excited to bring this fresh production of Streetcar to the stage,” says Correro, “In it, we’ll be bringing many of Blanche’s interior struggles into the setting around her, which we hope will be a visual feast for our audience, but we also want to carefully honor the material and the history it has in and about the city of New Orleans. This take on the show will have familiar notes but a number of surprises.”

WHO: The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans | www.twtheatrenola.com
WHERE: The Marigny Opera House. 725 St. Ferdinand St. New Orleans, LA 70117
WHEN:  July 18 - August 2024  (7/18 Preview Performance. 7/19 Opening Night)
TICKETS: $40 - $55 / twtheatrenola.com / 504-264-2580

Clue @ The Saenger Theatre
Review by Dorian Hatchett

Based on a boardgame from 1943, and then a hit movie from 1985, the plot of the chaotic scramble that is Clue: A New Comedy was no surprise to most of the audience tonight at the premiere of the New Orleans leg of the national tour.

There is very little truly new under the sun in the world of the theatre. We attend the theatre to be transported, for a few minutes, to somewhere outside of ourselves. To exist in a place where the story and the movement are magic, even if we already know them by heart. In that goal, I am absolutely delighted to report that this show is a complete success.  

The ensemble cast with their code names were all consummate character actors. In this production, there is no such thing as over the top, and from accented affectation to acrobat-level physical comedy, the the bodies on stage (both alive and deceased) roused the audience to spontaneous laughter and applause in a seemingly endless series of crescendos. From the very first moment of dialogue between Wadsworth and Yvette, the tone is set with a cartoonish approach to comedy and a flawless delivery of witty banter with perfect timing.  

The set was a real star in this show. A series of shifting walls and doors turned the relatively small stage of the Saenger Theater into an entire victorian mansion with a seamless suspension of disbelief.  The raging thunderstorm beyond the windows of the foyer was a constant companion to the drama within.  

The actors know this set, and interact with it with a comfort and familiarity that rarely shines in traveling productions, and I found myself impressed again and again with the movement of the action as it flowed through walls and around corners with grace and sophistication. All the while, I was laughing at the Benny Hill-esque chase scenes and madcap buffoonery that really highlighted the expertise of the actors and their mastery of the material.

Sometimes the simplest of physical gags can be the hardest to pull off, but this ensemble made it look easy and fun. Instead of attempting to redo the performances of previous actors in these roles, each actor made their character completely their own, in a new approach to a classic story.  

Be delighted, be impressed, be amused, and be part of the audience of a show that is at its root, just fun for fun’s sake.  

Clue: A New Comedy at the Saenger Theater July 18-23 
​

​
​First night review: The Importance of Being Earnest @ Le Petit Theatre 
review by Aura Bishop

The Importance of Being Earnest is many young English Literature students’ introduction to the work of Oscar Wilde. As a theater student at Grace King High School in 1997, it was also my introduction to Le Petit Théâtre. Prior to this, all of the plays I’d seen were in other schools, colleges, or the occasional church. It was exciting - I was finally going to see a play from a local theater company, in the French Quarter, in a cool, old (possibly haunted?!) theater. 

It's hard to believe that was almost exactly 27 years ago. Everything old is new again.

Earnest is probably one of Wilde’s most accessible works - a farce of mistaken identities about the expectations of 'proper society' and how we are all different people in different social situations. Its sharp, witty lines are still quoted to this day. The humor is equally of its time and ahead of its time, with some surprises and plot twists, which is why this play is still fun to read and watch even though it was written almost 130 years ago. 

I wasn't sure what I would remember or what I would forget from the plot of the show. Thankfully, I remembered just enough to anticipate some favorite bits and I forgot just enough to enjoy it as if it were fresh. In many ways, this production brought me back to my first visit to this theater and everything that thrilled me about it. The lush period costumes (designed by Kaci Thomassie) and the elaborate set (scenic designer Joan Long) were a great escape to another place and time - both my own youth and to Oscar Wilde’s 19th Century England.

Rohan Padmakumar has perfected the sly smile and confident mischief of rakish playboy and musician Algernon Moncrieff. Noah Hazzard is delightful as hopeless romantic and slightly more responsible friend Jack. Yvette Bourgeois is hilarious as the book-tossing, manic pixie dream ward Cecily. Bethany Lee is the picture of the perfect ingenue/mistaken love rival Gwendolyn. 

Tracey E. Collins is the endlessly quotable society aunt Lady Bracknell, who knows how to slice everyone, much like the cucumber sandwiches she always seems to be in search of: “Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness in the old.” This may be one of the best performances of the role I've seen. 

David W. Hoover raises eyebrows and maybe some hair as the overly jolly Rev. Canon Chasuble. Queen Shereen Macklin has her performance of absent-minded intellectual governess Miss Prism in the bag, and Kyle Daigrepont is punchy and hits his punchlines in the dual roles of Lane and Merriman. 

All of this is adeptly directed by A.J. Allegra. It's his first time directing a show at LPT since he took on the role of Artistic Director of the theater company last year, delivering a show that's well-paced, with note-perfect comic timing. 

The Importance of Being Earnest is at Le Petit Théâtre through June 23rd. Click here for show and ticketing information.