2025 Critics’ Choice Gay Appreciation Award winner
On behalf of Tony Leggio and myself, I am delighted to announce that the winner of this year’s Critics’ Choice Gay Appreciation Award (GAA) is Summer Lyric Theatre’s production of Anything Goes, Cole Porter’s bubbly 1934 musical that Director Ken Goode made as fresh as a daisy aided by Jauné Buisson’s goose-bump inducing choreography and a topnotch cast headed by Leslie Claverie, Patrick Cragin, Stephanie Abry, Emily Bagwill, Keith Claverie, Melissa Marshall, Lynx Murphy,and Sean Patterson. The award was presented as part of the 35th Gay Appreciation Awards at Oz New Orleans on Saturday, August 16.
The cast of Anything Goes
In accepting the award, Leonard Raybon said, “As Artistic Director of Summer Lyric Theatre at Tulane University, I’m so grateful that Ambush found value in our production that features the music of stellar gay composer, Cole Porter, almost 100 years after it was written! I’m also grateful that the show’s director, Ken Goode, and its choreographer, Jauné Buisson, are here to accept the award among so many members of the close-knit and supportive New Orleans gay community!”
Goode added “Anything Goes is a story about loving who you love fearlessly and society be damned if it doesn’t approve. It wraps this message up in a slapstick farce with a cast of quirky characters singing some of the best music that Broadway has ever produced. It is truly thanks to the incredible cast and creatives, phenomenal “leap off the stage” choreography by Jaune Buisson Hebert, and the sterling orchestra conducted by the incomparable Leonard Raybon that this show was the incredible production for our audiences. I’m just so lucky to have been a part of it. Being adjacent to and an ally with the gay community for so long I’ve gotten to see how y’all support the arts like no other group. The arts wouldn’t exist without you.”
Brian Sands. Ken Goode, Jaune Buisson Hebert, and Leonard Raybon at the Marigny Opera House for the GAAs
The Gay Appreciation Awards thank 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.
Carousel at Tulane’s Dixon Hall
This year, when attending the 3 musicals–A Chorus Line, Company, Carousel–that comprised Summer Lyric Theatre’s season, I was able to hum along, or even sing along (tho I did so very, very quietly), with most if not all of the songs in each of them. I Hope I Get It, Another Hundred People, If I Loved You, Nothing, You Could Drive a Person Crazy, You’ll Never Walk Alone, and many others are all embedded in my DNA.
While I’m quite familiar, however, with the stories A Chorus Line and Company tell and how they tell them (chorus dancers reveal life stories to director during audition, and concept musical revolving around 30something guy and his friends who think he should get married, respectively), I only had a dim idea of Carousel’s as I had never seen it on stage and saw the movie version a zillion years ago.
So I was delighted to finally enjoy this canonical Rodgers & Hammerstein award-winning musical, a resetting of Ferenc Molnár’s 1909 play Liliom to New England, about the ill-fated romance between a carousel barker and a local millworker. What was especially thrilling was seeing something I kinda knew but didn’t so, throughout, I kept wondering “What’s next?” and “How’s this gonna turn out?”
Director/choreographer Diane Lala took a traditional approach in her staging and, if I sometimes wish for new interpretations of the classics, as Carousel’s stage version was entirely new to me (it hasn’t been done in NOLA in over 25 years), I didn’t mind it at all. In fact, for a musical that takes us up to Heaven, includes such characters as “Starkeeper” and “Heavenly Friend”, and in the second act, evokes a twilight zone-ish feel, I kept marveling at how almost experimental such a traditional musical was.
As the ne’er-do-well Billy Bigelow and the simple, trusting townswoman Julie Jordan who falls completely in love with him, Patrick Cragin and Melissa Campbell made an entrancing duo. If the whole idea of a gal staying with a guy who hits her is cringey these days, Campbell’s deep commitment to her character made it as tolerable as possible. Both sang gloriously with Cragin imbuing Billy’s Soliloquy, in which he muses on how he’ll raise his soon-to-be born child, with operatic grandeur and psychological complexity.
Patrick Cragin and Melissa Campbell in Carousel
Melissa Marshall, as Nettie, brought sunny joy and sustained compassion to June Is Bustin’ Out All Over and You’ll Never Walk Alone, respectively. Knox Van Horn, as the fisherman Enoch Snow, was properly all upright rectitude as his business and family grew and grew. Lara Grice, Keith Claverie and Bob Edes, Jr., in smaller but vital non-singing roles, all made invaluable contributions. Only Grace McLean, while singing beautifully as Carrie Pipperidge, Julie’s best friend and Enoch’s wife, acted in a superficial manner, using exaggerated faces rather than organic emotions, to show how Carrie felt about things. C. Leonard Raybon conducted the large orchestra magnificently as always.
At the start of Act Two, the entire cast sings “This Was a Real Nice Clambake.” About Carousel, I’d sing “This Was a Real Wonderful Production.”
New in Chicago
If you’re going to be in Chicago before October 5, do not miss “Gustave Caillebotte: Painting His World” at The Art Institute of Chicago. This groundbreaking exhibition focuses on Caillebotte (1848–1894), a superb Impressionist artist but one not as well-known as his friends and colleagues Monet, Renoir and Degas, partly because he was independently wealthy and did not need to exhibit or create as much product as them, and partly because he died relatively young.
“Boating Party” (c. 1877-78) by Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894)
In any case, this show puts Caillebotte’s amazing talents front and center using more than 120 works–paintings, works on paper, photographs, and ephemera from throughout his career–with an emphasis on his portrayals of men. In fact, when it debuted at the Musée d’Orsay and, later, was seen at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the title was “Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men”; apparently, in the current political climate, the Art Institute didn’t want to give any ammunition to its federal funders that it was presenting a “gay” show. Sad, but, perhaps, not surprising. [Correction: I’ve been informed that The Art Institute of Chicago does not receive federal funding, and that “it’s not uncommon for exhibitions at different venues to have different titles and our exhibition title was developed long before the exhibition opened at any venue.”]
Don’t worry about that, however, and enjoy the opportunity to see this collection of astounding artworks as, unlike Monet & Degas, not only do Caillebotte shows come around less often than Haley’s Comet, but many of the works in this exhibit have been loaned from private collections so you’re unlikely to ever see them again.
And you’ll want to see these works. Caillebotte’s sense of composition is exceptional; he pulls the eye in to the canvas and does not let it go. His use of paint is superlative as are the lighting effects he achieves. And the exhibit fascinates as it details Caillebotte’s life, privileged but one of dedicated work and interests in many fields. I also appreciated a map of Paris that showed the exact locations of some of the paintings.
“Floor Scrapers” (1875) by Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894)
Aside from all that, the works themselves will cause you to linger or, perhaps, go through the exhibit again as soon as you’re done as you’ll not want to leave these new friends of yours.
Divided into such sections as “Sportsmen”, “Working Men”, and “Men at Home”, breathtaking images of handsome men rowing boats, workers refinishing a wood floor, and men toweling off after a bath beguile you with images so immediate that you feel transported back to the 1870s.
The question arises, of course, as to whether Caillebotte was gay. Because in “Boating Party” he positions the viewer so you’re staring at the rower’s crotch. Because in “Floor Scrapers”, he has you observe lean, muscled workers, stripped to the waist. Because, while images of women at their toilette were no big deal, his “Man Drying His Leg” was positively scandalous.
“Man Drying His Leg” (c. 1884) by Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894)
It’s an understandable and provocative question, but one we’re not ever likely to have a definitive answer for as Caillebotte lived with a woman and never identified as gay. I’ve been a fan of Caillebotte for many years since first encountering his masterpiece “Paris Street; Rainy Day” (1877) in the permanent collection of the Art Institute (it’s included in “Painting His World”), and always appreciate seeing any of his paintings in museums or auction previews, such as at Sotheby’s or Christie’s. I suspect the last time one of his paintings appeared in New Orleans was 2007 as part of the marvelous post-Katrina “Femme, femme, femme” exhibition at NOMA. So, for me, “Gustave Caillebotte: Painting His World” was an unparalleled treat. I would like to think everyone–especially if you like to look at men–would feel the same. (https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/10068/gustave-caillebotte-painting-his-world
