Critics’ Choice Gay Appreciation Award
On behalf of Tony Leggio and myself, I am pleased to announce the nominees for the Critics’ Choice Award that will be presented as part of the 34th Gay Appreciation Awards (GAA). They are:
Carrie: Blood in the Water produced by Aqua Mob
(top) April Louise and Riga Ruby in The Colored Museum; (bottom) The cast of Carrie: Blood in the Water
The Colored Museum produced by The NOLA Project
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)[revised][again] produced by The New Orleans Shakespeare Festival at Tulane
Dracula produced by The NOLA Project
The Felt Menagerie produced by The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans
Spring Storm produced by The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans
(left) Keith Claverie, Ian Hoch, and Lauren Malara in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)[revised][again]; (right) Nicole Miller and Matthew Boese (in background) in Spring Storm
Works that were produced from August 2023 until now were eligible. The GAA will be presented at Oz New Orleans (800 Bourbon St.) on Saturday, August 24. The show starts at 7pm–SHARP–but come early, from 6-7:00pm, and walk the Red Carpet with Felicia Phillips and Tiffany Alexander. All are invited to attend. Tickets will be sold at the door for $10.
The Gay Appreciation Awards thanks those individuals and businesses in the LGBTQ community who are often not recognized for the outstanding services they provide and contributions they make. Over 25 categories are voted on by Ambush Magazine readers. The Critics’ Choice Award, however, is selected by Ambush’s two culture vultures who see the vast majority of theater and performing arts events in the Greater New Orleans area. Congratulations to all involved in each of our nominees!
Critic’s Notebook
There’s been a veritable Stephen Sondheim mini-fest in New Orleans this year which, in the wake of the legendary composer/lyricist’s passing in 2021, should come as no surprise. Similar such fests have occurred on Broadway and, I suspect, in cities around the country.
In March, Kristi Jacobs-Stanley helmed an outstanding Into the Woods at Mt. Carmel Academy (amazing how kids today do such challenging fare with ease) and The Company: A St Bernard Community Theatre presented a heartfelt Gypsy shortly after Mardi Gras.
More recently, Summer Lyric Theatre at Tulane (SLT) opened their season with Sweeney Todd while The Company continued theirs with Assassins. Seeing these two award-winning musicals a few days apart was a valuable learning experience for me. For, at the risk of sounding like a musical theater heathen, I think I now know why I like, but don’t love Sweeney…and why Assassins just might be my favorite Sondheim work.
I first saw Sweeney during its original Broadway run when I was in high school. I suspect I saw it over spring break as it was a Wednesday matinee. I was underwhelmed, in part, because Angela Lansbury did not live up to expectations.
Flash forward a few years to when I’m reviewing shows in Boston for my college newspaper. Sweeney is on tour and there’s a special performance for college press that will offer a Q&A with Lansbury and George Hearn (who played Sweeney on the road) after the performance. Lansbury could not have been more gracious and down-to-earth, answering questions thoughtfully and engagingly. More importantly, her performance was fabulous; I heard through the grapevine that, on Broadway, she sometimes held back on matinee performances.
Yet I still did not love the show. As I wrote in my review, “Sweeney Todd shocks like an amusement park’s house of horrors, slitting the emotions and jangling open nerves, but the chill melts quickly…[and it] never deeply touches us.” I went on to praise Sondheim’s lyrics yet tore apart most of his music in a way I’m embarrassed to reprint now. Ah, youth.
Flash forward to 2005 and I’m in NYC during my Katrina exile. Because a college friend worked for the owners of the Eugene O’Neill Theatre where the Patti LuPone/Michael Cerveris Sweeney was playing, I was able to go to its opening night and take my mother along as a birthday present.
This was the John Doyle revival in which all the cast members played instruments, LuPone memorably tooting a tuba. And I loved it. (By then, after countless listening to the original cast album, I had fully embraced the score itself.)
I wondered, though, “why the change of heart?” Finally it hit me–unlike the original Hal Prince production with its realistic representation of Victorian London, Doyle’s production was mysterious and abstract and suitably nightmarish for this penny dreadful tale. Not all the symbolism made sense, but it was engaging precisely because it didn’t spell everything out for you.
Flash forward again to SLT’s recent Sweeney. Director John “Ray” Proctor took the traditional Victorian era route. Though breaking no new ground, it was a solid production. Luke Boucvalt’s boyish yet impassioned, beautifully sung Anthony Hope was as superb a portrayal of the lovesick sailor as I’ve ever seen. Austin Anderson made an excellent Tobias, the urchin who comes to work for Mrs. Lovett. Ironically, he and Boucvalt look quite a bit alike (one person thought, at first, that these two roles were doubled by the same actor); please cast them in The Boys from Syracuse!
And Elizabeth Argus, known for playing such wholesome characters as Nellie Forbush in South Pacific, triumphed as Mrs. Lovett. Trilling her r’s in affected hauteur, she was everything Lansbury was and added one extra ingredient, a touch of sexiness/sensuality that gave her Lovett a loin-based passion.
(As for Austin Adomitis’s Sweeney, while it was the most gorgeously sung demon barber I’ve ever heard, he didn’t act at all. It wasn’t even bad acting, just a mere delivery of words. I truly felt sorry for Argus during their Little Priest duet as she had nothing to play against.)
Now if, any criticisms aside, this was a valid evening of theater with one of the most acclaimed musicals of the last 50 years, why did I merely like it? And, finally, it came to me–because I don’t care about the characters (maybe parts of my long-forgotten college review were correct after all).
Sure, you empathize with Sweeney but there’s no real development of character as he goes about his monomaniacal journey of revenge. Mrs. Lovett entertains, but you don’t feel any great loss when she’s (spoiler alert) pushed into the fire. The rest of the characters you may root for or boo, but that’s not the same as caring about. And, given their penny dreadful origins, that should come as no great surprise.
Of course, one of the charges often leveled at Sondheim was that he was all brains and no heart. I always thought that was a bit glib but, the more I thought about it, I came to appreciate the truth in it.
Let’s look at his career.
We’ll skip the early works (West Side Story, Gypsy, Do I Hear a Waltz?) where he contributed just (brilliant) lyrics and even his first full score (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) which aspires to be and succeeds at being a hoot of pure fun and silliness.
I’ve only seen Anyone Can Whistle once (at NOCCA) so will withhold judgement, but this quirky show may well deserve a major revival.
Company, however, I’ve seen a few times and always wish its finale (Being Alive) was the end of Act One and in the second act we’d see how Bobby goes about being alive. (The recent gender reversed revival was the most effective version I’ve ever seen; with Bobbi’s biological clock ticking, her panic over turning 35 made a whole lot more sense.)
I’ve seen Follies a few times and, like Company, the score’s fantastic. Do I care about the characters? Not a whole lot. A Little Night Music I’ve only seen twice but ditto for that one too.
Each of Sondheim’s next three, Pacific Overtures, Merrily We Roll Along and Sunday in the Park with George (of course, Sweeney comes in between Overtures and Merrily) I’ve seen only once so will refrain from commenting, but none of them have I had a huge hankering to see again (alas, I never won the ticket lottery for the recent Merrily revival on Broadway as I heard it was sublime).
It can be said (and has been) that the libretti for Sondheim shows haven’t always lived up to the scores. Which may be why Side by Side by Sondheim, a revue of his early greatest hits, is the delight that it is, and why Old Friends, a new revue that originated in the West End with Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga is coming to Broadway this season. No book? No worries.
Into the Woods comes next and from the time I first saw it, the day after it opened, I’ve loved it. Why? Because James Lapine’s book allows you to care about its fairy tale characters and what happens to them after “happily ever after”. And Sondheim gave them numbers that revealed their human hearts.
That brings us to Assassins whose original Off Broadway production in 1990 flopped; Joe Mantello’s award-winning 2004 Broadway revival reclaimed it from obscurity.
I saw that production and then The NOLA Project’s phenomenal 2008 version of it about which I wrote “As it explores the psyches and motivations of actual and would-be killers of American presidents, this ground-breaking musical demonstrates a hideous corruption of America’s can-do spirit, the flip side of Oklahoma’s optimism…I’ll admit that I liked, but didn’t love, Assassins when I first saw Roundabout’s version a few days after it won 5 Tony Awards; it was not always easy to figure out who was killing whom and why, and it was a bit of a challenge to follow Sondheim’s deliciously intricate lyrics. Four years and countless listenings to the original cast recording later, I’m a fan.”
And after seeing The Company’s recent production of Assassins in Chalmette and a little brain-churning, it hit me why this late career (he would do only three more original shows Passion, Road Show, and the posthumous Here We Are) musical may be his best.
For despite Assassins’ dramatis personae non gratae, John Weidman’s book combines with Sondheim’s score to give us human beings, as batshit crazy as they are, with whom we empathize, perhaps even more so now in our TikTok/social media-saturated age. From the opening Everybody’s Got the Right, we see people who got the short end of the stick, who, rightly or wrongly, feel put upon and left out of the American Dream. Forget about murderous barbers, these folks are the real deal. Attention must be paid indeed.
Similar to Director AJ Allegra’s NOLA Project production, which did without the bells and whistles of Mantello’s Broadway interpretation, in St. Bernard, Director Destinie Southerland’s less busy approach allowed for clarity while still finding humor in this grizzly subject. Assassins also seems to benefit from the in-your-face intimacy of a black box theater like The Company’s Azienda home.
In 2008, I had written that The NOLA Project’s production was “unlikely to be surpassed here in our lifetime.” In a funny strange way, however, The Company’s Assassins may have been a bit better, though.
Keep in mind that The Company bills itself as “A St Bernard Community Theatre”. At the risk but not the intention of being snarky, that very “community-ness” may have made this Assassins superior in an interesting way. (Full disclosure: I had the pleasure of performing with The Company two years ago as a last minute replacement for their production of The Odd Couple. It was an absolutely delightful experience.).
For watching this cast portray these assassins, their lack of polish, while still giving accomplished performances, made their characters realer than when portrayed by professional actors, especially of the caliber of Neil Patrick Harris or Michael Cerveris who were in the Broadway version, or even of the NOLA Project’s outstanding cast. In other words, their “community theater-ness” enabled them to imbue their characters with a verisimilitude, an authenticity of quotidianness that clung to the assassins until they pulled that trigger and tumbled into history, and which is virtually impossible to replicate by even the finest thespians. I’ve never experienced something like this in a theater before, and I hope I’ve conveyed it appropriately, but the result was thrilling, unforgettable and made me want to give each of the assassins a big hug while, at the same time, run quickly in the opposite direction.
If assassins and demon barbers are not your thing, then get thee to SLT’s production of Anything Goes (thru July 14) which is as joyful an evening as theater gets. Ken Goode has directed a buoyant production with goose-bump inducing choreography from Jauné Buisson, and a cast that’s the top.
Leslie Claverie acts, daces and sings up a storm as Reno Sweeney, her voice as clarion as Ethel Merman’s but with less brass and more cream. In Laurin Hart’s snazzy wigs and Kaci Thomassie’s gorgeous outfits, one only wonders why she pines for a kinda cad like Billy Crocker when she could probably have any guy in Manhattan. After last year’s winsome Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors, I’m convinced Claverie can do anything.
Leslie Claverie and the cast of Anything Goes
Fortunately, Patrick Cragin makes Billy as appealing as possible with a lovely voice that’s made for such Cole Porter standards as Easy to Love and It’s De-Lovely. And he’s pretty easy on the eyes as well.
Keith Claverie, Leslie’s real life husband, gets every laugh out of Lord Evelyn Oakleigh while never making him a complete buffoon. It’s yet another brilliant portrayal in a career that’s still going strong after 20+ years.
I also got a kick out of Stephanie Abry, Emily Bagwill, Melissa Marshall, Lynx Murphy,and Sean Patterson as assorted lunatics and lovers, public enemies and Wall Street barons, all perfection.
At 2 hours and 45 minutes, the show could be at least 20 minutes shorter but that’s the fault of bookwriters Timothy Crouse & John Weidman, not the krewe at Tulane. If you’re in the mood for some champagne-styled, carefree fun, do go to Anything Goes!
[For tickets and more info about Anything Goes and Pippin (Aug. 1-4), go to https://liberalarts.tulane.edu/summer-lyric-theatre]
Curtain Up
Summertime and the living is easy…and hot and humid. For that and other reasons, there tends not to be too many shows going on in July and August. For those of us, however, who still have a hankering for live performances, here are some shows that will be entertaining us in the next seven weeks or so. Go and enjoy!
The New Orleans Shakespeare Festival at Tulane presents Julius Caesar (July 12-21), history’s most cutthroat power struggle in which Rome descends into chaos as ambition clashes with honor in Shakespeare’s tale of treachery and betrayal.
Salvatore Mannino directs a cast which includes James Bartelle, Silas Cooper, Monica R. Harris, Ryan Hayes, Aria Jackson, Mary Langley, Wendy Miklovic, Matthew Raetz, Joe Signorelli, and Kristin Witt. For tickets and further information, go to https://neworleansshakespeare.org/products/julius-caesar
The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans tackles Williams’ grandest work, A Streetcar Named Desire (July 18-Aug. 4) at The Marigny Opera House, returning for its sixth production in the historic space. Audiences will once again be able to see Blanche, Stanley, Stella, and Mitch play out their operatic destinies in this Pulitzer Prize-winning drama.
Starring Charlie Carr, Elizabeth McCoy, Sean Richmond, and Robinson J. Cyprian, the production will be helmed by TWTC’s Co-Artistic Director Augustin J Correro. More information and tickets are available at https://www.twtheatrenola.com/
For something a little bit lighter, at the Anthony Bean Community Theater Performing Arts Summer Camp, over 70 youth from the New Orleans area will perform Grandma, Grandpa & Sunday Morning, a gospel musical play set in an urban environment where city rodents come to life. Written and directed by Anthony Bean, the production journeys back to the golden era of Motown, showcasing the passion and talent of these young performers as they share the timeless music and spirit of that era with audiences.
The production runs July 12-14 at the Millie Charles Auditorium on the SUNO campus. For tickets and further details, go to https://anthonybeantheater.com/News.php#mouse
On the Northshore, Playmakers Theater of Covington presents The Pirates of Penzance (July 13-28), Gilbert and Sullivan’s buoyant operetta in which apprentice pirate Frederic falls hopelessly in love with Mabel, the Major-General’s daughter. Frederic is set to be released from his apprenticeship on his 21 st birthday, but there’s a snag…and a Pirate King ! Featuring such classic G&S numbers as Poor wand’ring one, A rollicking band of pirates we, With cat-like tread, upon our prey we steal, and, of course, I am the very model of a modern Major-General. Tickets at https://bontempstix.com/events/the-pirates-of-penzance-7-13-2024
In Mandeville, 30 by Ninety Theatre kicks off its new season with The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Aug. 10-25), William Finn’s delightful Tony-winning musical, a hilariously charming tale of overachievers’ angst that chronicles the experience of six adolescent outsiders competing in a spelling bee, the one place where they can stand out and fit in at the same time. Can you spell F-U-N? More info at https://30byninety.com/shows/the-25th-annual-putnam-country-spelling-bee/
Speaking of a place where “outsiders can stand out and fit in at the same time”, RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars LIVE comes to the Mahalia Jackson Theater on August 25. Get ready for lotsa high kicks and low splits from such 9th Season All Stars as Angeria, Jorgeous, Plastique Tiara, Roxxxy Andrews, Shannel and Vanessa Vanjie in this show-within-a-show highlighting the charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent it takes for a Queen to be an All Star. Tickets are available at https://www.mahaliajacksontheater.com/events/ru-pauls-drag-race-allstars/ as well as the Saenger Theatre box office located at 1111 Canal Street.
And for charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent during Southern Decadence, don’t miss the 7th iteration of Bette Bathhouse & Beyond (Southern Decadence edition) on Sunday, September 1, beginning at 9:00pm at Café Istanbul.
NYC impresario (and erstwhile part-time New Orleanian) Daniel Nardicio brings Bette Bathhouse & Beyond back to New Orleans where singer/comedienne Amber Martin will recreate one of Bette Midler’s iconic shows done at NYC’s notorious gay bathhouse, the Continental Baths. Renowned DJ Johnny Dynell will be playing “Bathhouse Disco” from the era between Amber’s sets, while Drew Brody performs as “Barry M.” on piano to accompany Amber/Bette’s three 20-minute all-Bette song sets. Having seen Ms. Martin recently in NYC, she just keeps getting Bette-r and Bette-r with each BB&B.
The audience will be required to wear only towels, bathrobes, or underwear (bring your own towel, or rent one from the Bette staff for $3) to recreate the raunchfest vibe of the famed bathhouse and clothing is optional, so all Bette’s are off! Tickets and more info at https://www.redeyetickets.com/bette-bathhouse-beyond-southern-decadence/
