The Year in Review
I’ve been postponing writing this column and now, it seems, I’ve postponed it all the way into 2025. I’m actually quite good at procrastinating and, with all the holiday festivities that have been going on recently, it’s been quite easy to dilly-dally when there are cards to mail, presents to wrap, and parties to go to.
But there’s been another reason for the postponing and procrastinating and dilly-dallying. This is always one of my favorite columns to write as I look back over a year’s worth of theatergoing and try to highlight the highlights. This year, however, there are not as many memorable moments to write about.
In the past year, I went to about a third less performances than I had in 2023 and about half as many as I’d go to pre-pandemic. Part of this is due to a family matter that took me out of town for stretches throughout the year. Part of this is due to there being a limit as to how many productions of such shows as Clue–a stage version of a movie version of a board game–one can sit through. That also goes for more worthy shows that have been done repeatedly in the area, especially if they would necessitate an hour long drive to the Northshore. And then there were those shows that were painful to sit through once when seeing them in New York; why torture myself a second time?
Aside from all that, however, there simply was less theatrical activity here than in previous years. Alas, this is not even surprising; it’s a situation that is occurring nationwide as costs go up and people stay home to watch things on streaming devices and producers desperately try to figure out how to woo audiences back into theaters again. Some theater makers are tired, and rightly so, of working for peanuts; many have left the field and are now pursuing other types of careers.
And so, for these and other reasons, we missed seeing productions in 2024 from such companies as No Dream Deferred, Radical Buffoons, and the Anthony Bean Community Theater. Others, like Fat Squirrel, cut back (tho Squirrel did have a successful return (see below)).
Interestingly, as my colleague Will Coviello, writing in Gambit, spotlighted arts and entertainment from 2024, he did not mention a single theater event. Not one. So it’s not just me.
Maybe it was an omen when, at the start of 2024, two productions, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at Le Petit and Jefferson Performing Arts (JPA)’s The Mountaintop had to be cancelled for various reasons; JPA’s The Leopard, a one-man show about Ernest Hemingway met a similar fate. I don’t recall so many cancellations ever occurring in one season.
Things were not all doom and gloom, however, in 2024.
We welcomed two new theater companies to the boards of New Orleans.
The Fire Weeds, an “immersive female driven theatre company” led by Jaclyn Bethany, debuted in March with Outraged Hearts: The Pretty Trap & Interior Panic, two early Tennessee Williams one-acts. They were supposed to return in December with Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but that was postponed till January.
The Streetcar Collective for the Arts, a performing arts collective, kicked off with Ariel Farrar’s musical Out Of The Boil, and followed up with Mariana Santiago’s Human Troubles, a one-act about our mental health system and its dysfunction.
While a lack of theater venues continues to be a challenge, some positive signs emerged this year. Big Couch in the Bywater and, especially, The New Marigny Theatre in the Seventh Ward have increasingly hosted a variety of productions.
In addition, The NOLA Project found a home in Treme at the New Orleans African American Museum for both George C. Wolfe’s trenchant satire The Colored Museum for which Torey Hayward & Tenaj Wallace directed a fine large cast (Jordan Bordenave, Rahim Glaspy, Aria Jackson, April Louise, DC PauL, Pamela D. Roberts, Riga Ruby, Matthew Thompson, Lawrence J. Weber Jr.), and Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s compelling Pass Over which featured excellent performances by Martin “Bats” Bradford, DC PauL, & Keith Claverie, and direction, again, by Wallace.
(top) April Louise and Riga Ruby in The Colored Museum; (bottom) Keith Claverie, DC PauL, and Martin “Bats” Bradford in Pass Over (photo by Megan Whittle)
It had been a while since the Hermann-Grima House had seen any theatrical activity (the last was an evening of Tennessee Williams one-acts, staged throughout the building), but Jenny Mercein’s monodrama Two Elizas, an engrossing tale of history, both personal and of American jurisprudence, took up residence in its parlor for too brief a time; let’s hope it returns along with other productions.
Jenny Mercein and Amanda Duffin (playing cello) in Two Elizas
And the comfortably air-conditioned Music Box Village Schoolhouse was the site for Intramural Theater’s wacky office-based comedy, The Bermuda Can Company; adroitly acted by the entire cast, Mary Langley and Lauren Wells especially shone amidst the zaniness.
Musical theater fabulousness could be found all over our area in 2024.
Summer Lyric Theater at Tulane (SLT)’s Anything Goes was as joyful an evening as theater gets. Ken Goode directed a buoyant production with goose-bump inducing choreography from Jauné Buisson, snazzy wigs (by Laurin Hart), gorgeous outfits (Kaci Thomassie), and a cast (Stephanie Abry, Emily Bagwill, Keith Claverie, Patrick Cragin, Melissa Marshall, Lynx Murphy, Sean Patterson, and, especially, Leslie Claverie as Reno Sweeney) that was the tops.
Leslie Claverie and the cast of Anything Goes
Buisson also scored with a first-rate production of Beautiful, The Carole King Musical at Le Petit which she directed as well as choreographed. As King, Melissa Campbell radiated a perfect down-to-earthiness salted with NYC neuroticism while Stephanie Toups Abry made for a sassy Cynthia Weil.
Melissa Campbell in Beautiful, The Carole King Musical
At Slidell Little Theatre, Jennifer Gesvantner’s stripped down Next to Normal provided an abnormally worthy evening of entertainment. Katie Harrison navigated superbly the lead role of Diana, a housewife dealing with mental illness, with a clear, pitch perfect voice, and avoided sentimentality, never making Diana self-pitying. Also notable were Skylar Broussard as Diana’s quirky daughter and Nicholas Anthony Smith as her tremendously empathetic husband.
Trey Ming’s musical The Night Fiona Flawless Went Mad, a tale of a gorgeous drag queen who has turned herself in for a double homicide,triumphantly returned to The AllWays Lounge where it premiered five years ago. The cast of four–Laveau Contraire, Prince Octavian, Bette Tittler, Malakani Severson–sang Ming’s original score beautifully, and Contraire, one of NOLA’s top tier drag performers, proved she can do more, much more, than lip sync, dance, and reveal layer after layer of wigs & outfits; she’s an extremely talented actress and comedienne as well.
The cast of The Night Fiona Flawless Went Mad (l.-r., Bette Tittler, Malakani Severson, Laveau Contraire, Prince Octavian)
Leslie Castay did a great job directing Andrew Lloyd Webber’s fizzy School of Rock for Jefferson Performing Arts bringing out the script’s warmth which led to lump-in-your-throat moments by the finale. Triple-threat actor/musician/singer Nathan Parrish was endearing in the wannabe substitute teacher role originated on screen by Jack Black; Rachel Looney nicely shed her rigid exterior as his principal/romantic interest (and deployed her coloratura to outstanding use in passages from The Magic Flute’s Queen of the Night aria); and all 18 kids in the show were terrific, but Olivia Yi and Parker Portera-Dufrene got A++’s.
Nathan Parrish and the kids in School of Rock
In Chalmette, Destinie Southerland’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins for The Company: A St. Bernard Community Theatre not only found humor in the grizzly subject of presidential assailants, but the “community theater-ness” of the cast enabled them to instill their characters with an authenticity of quotidianness that clung to the assassins until they pulled the trigger and tumbled into history; the result was thrilling and unforgettable.
Comedies and dramas also held forth, sometimes from the same company.
The New Orleans Shakespeare Festival at Tulane had one of their strongest seasons with the tremendously fun Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)[Revised][Again]. Graham Burk directed with a sure hand, keeping the insanity going non-stop. Keith Claverie (again), Ian Hoch, and Lauren Malara made a fine trio of Shakespearean send-uppers, providing madness aplenty, individually and collectively.
Keith Claverie, Ian Hoch, and Lauren Malara in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)[Revised][Again]
Salvatore Mannino’s interpretation of Julius Caesar followed, and if it made me feel like I wanted to shower immediately to get the rotten stench of humanity’s pig-headed rulers off my skin, power to him for well-reflecting today’s headlines. His wisely streamlined version posited that it doesn’t really matter who’s in charge–they’re all out for themselves and there’s always someone in the wings waiting to take over the reins of power.
Erin Cessna excellently conveyed Cassius’ gravitas and got every ounce of meaning out of her lines. James Bartelle was a sly and authoritative Mark Anthony, keeping us guessing as to his allegiances. Alexander le Vaillant Freer bathed the stage in dark, forbidding lighting. Steve Gilliland’s sound was rumbly, menacing. And James Lanius III’s abstract projections evoked both cells & blood and the cosmos, well-conveying an appropriate timelessness.
The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans (TWTC) also had an impressive year. They started by bringing back Kingdom of Earth, a tale of the Mississippi Delta filled with love, lust, & familial rivalries, the first Williams script they produced back in 2015, in a much more satisfying production. Director Augustin J Correro, aided by Diane K. Bass’ lighting and Nick Shackleford’s soundscape, imbued it with the simmering boil of a horror movie and the disorienting hyperreality of a fever dream.
Benjamin Dougherty, Rebecca Elizabeth Hollingsworth, and Edward Carter Simon in Kingdom of Earth (photo by James Kelley)
Rebecca Elizabeth Hollingsworth’s coarse, sweet, tough Myrtle; Benjamin Dougherty’s effete, piss-elegant Lot; and Edward Carter Simon’s brutish but dignified Chicken, Lot’s half-brother–all memorable performances.
Memorable too was The Felt Menagerie, an original script by Correro which reimagined the Williams oeuvre as though someone tossed his greatest hits into a blender, liberally added a combination of Carol Burnett sauce and Christopher Durang spices, hit the “Puree” button, then poured it out and served it up as done by a mostly Muppet cast. The result? A 70-minute romp of naughty fun.
With her flutey, fluttery voice, Hope Kodman VonStarnes played “Blanche Dubious” with innocent but knowing glee. Tracey E. Collins as Big Paw Paw, a riff on Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’s Big Daddy, was almost unrecognizable in guy drag; think of Burl Ives, only shorter. Both were supremely hilarious. And an especial kudo to TWTC for performing Menagerie in three separate venues–Zeitgeist Theatre & Lounge in Arabi, UNO’s Lab Theatre by the Lakefront, and the aforementioned New Marigny Theatre–allowing a wider than usual range of audiences to enjoy it. It’s a great idea which I hope other companies will follow.
Elizabeth McCoy and Charlie Carr in A Streetcar Named Desire (photo by Brittney Werner)
As for their Streetcar Named Desire, Correro delivered a first-rate production, intelligently explicating the text and, aided by Shackleford’s audioscape of ominous music & train rumblings, creating a great sense of tension, even if there was nothing new in his rendering of the script. Charlie Carr gave one of the finest interpretations of Blanche DuBois I’ve ever seen, with a meticulous elucidation of Williams’ language–every phrase, every line got just the right amount of weight, as she lingered over certain words. Carr was well-matched by Elizabeth McCoy as her younger sister Stella and Robinson J. Cyprian as Blanche’s would-be beau, Mitch.
Also noteworthy were–
Crescent City Stage’s regional premier of Amy Herzog’s version of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Director Jana Mestecky and her cast of six (particularly Elizabeth Newcomer, Michael A. Newcomer, and Doug Spearman) leaned into the material and gave their characters a complexity and depth that made for a gripping two hours.
Elizabeth Newcomer and Doug Spearman in A Doll’s House (photo by Brittney Werner)
Tulane University presented Sarah B. Mantell’s fascinating Everything That Never Happened, which uses Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice as a jumping-off point for an exploration of Shylock’s relationship with his daughter Jessica. In Jessica Podewell’s involving production, Noa Berger and Michael Stone excelled in those roles.
Inspired by the story of Ukrainian-born New Orleanian Katya Chizhayeva, Goat in the Road Productions’ Top 5 Survival Moves offered audiences a Kafkaesque glimpse of life during wartime as we observed how Chizhayeva, an acupuncturist, returned to Kyiv to work with Ukrainian soldiers coming back from the front lines. Chris Kaminstein directed this knotty piece with bounteous imagination aided by the cast (Nicholas Javon, Leslie Boles Kraus, Maggie Tonra, Richon May Wallace as well as Chizhayeva), Mandi Wood’s lighting, Ellen Bull’s set, and Steve Gilliland’s sound design.
Eschewing typical Holiday fare, Fat Squirrel came back in December after a long hiatus with Euripides’ unsparing portrait of victims of war, The Trojan Women, one of the most despairing plays in the canon. Director Andrea Watson condensed the narrative to one 90-minute act with unfussy staging that kept the focus on the protagonists and the action taut.
Mallory Osigian Favaloro and Elizabeth McCoy in The Trojan Women
Mallory Osigian Favaloro made an impressive New Orleans debut as Hecuba and held our attention with her charisma, seething rage, and anguished sense of loss. Kaylon Willoughby (Cassandra), Lizzy Bruce (Andromache), and Elizabeth McCoy (Helen of Troy) each revealed different aspects of nobility and made us empathize with their sad fates. It wasn’t an evening of happy theater, but it was an immensely worthwhile one.
And perhaps the most magical outing of the year was The NOLA Project‘s Shakespeare’s Tempest Reimagined at the Lafitte Greenway Station where writer/director James Bartelle and a marvelous cast of 11 transformed an anodyne metal and concrete shed into a wondrous island where just about anything could happen.
Bartelle adapted The Tempest, trimmed it to a fleet 90 minutes, “50% Shakespeare’s words and 50% new”, while keeping the dramedy’s main plot-strands. Under Joan Long’s simple but evocative lighting, Bartelle directed with gobs of imagination to bring out the script’s high drama and low comedy. Monica Ordoñez’s effective choreography, Alexis Marceaux & Stephen MacDonald’s subtle but pleasing score, and Megan Harms’ basic, earth-toned costumes, all enhanced the proceedings.
Ashley Ricord Santos, Keith Claverie and Kristin Witt in Shakespeare’s Tempest Reimagined (photo by John Barrois)
Monica R. Harris brought dignity and righteous indignation to Prospero. Keith Claverie (yet again!) was pitiful and defiant as Caliban. With touching earnestness and ethereal voice, Leslie Claverie made an ideal Ariel. Ashley Ricord Santos and Kristin Witt provided divine comic relief. And Alexandria Miles and Zarah Hokule’a Spalding were the dewy young lovers, Miranda and Ferdinand. Twas a Tempest as such stuff dreams are made on, worthy of NYC’s Shakespeare in the Park or London’s Globe Theater.
Turning to cabaret, Broadway@NOCCA came back after four dark years with Claybourne Elder, The Gilded Age’s John Adams, who entertained with tales of Utah (he comes from a Mormon family) and Broadway, and a variety of show tunes, emphasis on Sondheim. Let’s hope there’ll be more such B@Ns next year and that host Seth Rudetsky will return as well.
Bianca Del Rio brought her Dead Inside Comedy Tour to the Mahalia Jackson Theater, skewering herself, other RuPaul’s Drag Race alums, Beyonce, Ron DeSantis, former Oz hostess Persana Shoulders and many more, with raging indignant attitude and quick-witted brilliance. During a pre-show phone interview, Roy Haylock, Bianca’s alter ego, said to me “I do think there’s an expiration date on all this shit.” Perhaps, but hopefully not for a long, long time.
Bianca Del Rio at the Mahalia Jackson Theater
Brazenly capitalizing on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, Varla Jean Merman’s Errors Tour touched down at Café Istanbul. It was a case of deceptive advertising as it contained not a single error, boo-boo or oopsy, just 90 minutes of glistening humor, joyous entertainment, and, new for Varla, truly touching self-revelation. Employing so-called “errors” to look back over her career gave Varla wide latitude to touch on not only her many highlights, but challenging moments as well from which she spun comic gold.
Varla Jean Merman with Baby Jasper
And under “Magnificently Miscellaneous” goes Evil Dead 2: Drowned by Dawn by Aqua Mob, New Orleans’ first and only community-based water ballet ensemble. Relocated nearly last-minute to Tulane Avenue’s The Midtown Hotel, which offered more space and a larger pool, writer/director William Hudson’s adaptation of the Sam Raimi film included a trapeze aerial ballet, a talking deer head, and a dance for lampshade, microwave oven, & bearskin rug to David Bowie’s Let’s Dance, all perfectly matching Aqua Mob’s cheeky aesthetic. Filled with fabulous water ballet numbers, it was one of the wildest evenings of theater I’ve ever experienced in NOLA, leaving me with a wicked grin on my face.
Cast members of Evil Dead 2: Drowned by Dawn with the band Bomb Pulse behind them
I also smiled when attending some high school productions as their caliber was so high that it reassured me that the future of musical theater is in good hands. Ironically, two of the shows I saw this year I had seen last year at different schools, but I didn’t mind sitting through them again at all.
At NOCCA, Amy Boyce Holtcamp’s Chicago was filled with razzmatazz and topnotch performances by Isabel Gisclair (Roxie), Siddalie Orgeron (Velma), Eli Strain (Billy Flynn), Cecelia McLellan (“Mama” Morton), and Tadhg Long (Amos Hart).
Director Kristi Jacobs-Stanley continues to do incredible work at Mt. Carmel Academy; in the spring she presented a bewitching Into the Woods, in the fall a SIX: teen edition fit for a queen. Stand-outs included Woods’ Luke Suggs (Wolf/Cinderella’s Prince), SIX’s Lauren Loris (Anne Boleyn), and Helen Morlier (Cinderella/Catherine of Aragon) and Caitlin Picone (Little Red Riding Hood/Katherine Howard) in both shows.
I look forward to seeing all these young people again, perhaps on Broadway. Far-fetched, you say? Well, in February 2019, Renell Taylor, then a NOCCA student, brought down the house in Guys and Dolls there with Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat. Last year, he was onstage at the Saenger Theatre with the pre-Broadway tour of A Wonderful World, a musical about the life and loves of Louis Armstrong; since October, he’s been performing in the show eight times a week on Broadway. So not so far-fetched at all.
Speaking of the Saenger, I caught a number of shows from its “Broadway in New Orleans” line-up. Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations had great singing, dancing, and songs (My Girl, Get Ready, I Can’t Get Next to You, etc.), but a not so great book. The musical Mrs. Doubtfire was entertaining, nothing more, while the real mystery of the goofy Clue was “Why aren’t there more better plays to be done???”
Justin Collette and the cast of Beetlejuice (photo by Matthew Murphy)
At least Beetlejuice treated us to oodles of fun. And if The Cher Show did little to mask the trappings of a standard bio-jukebox musical, who could resist a show that shared six decades of the pop diva’s songs and Bob Mackie’s stupendous, Tony Award-winning costumes?
Sadly, some members of the New Orleans theater arts community took their final bows this year.
Robert Lyall (1947-Jan. 5, 2024) oversaw the New Orleans Opera as General and Artistic Director for many years. In 2018, when he was on the podium for Rameau’s Pygmalion, I summed him up with “Lyall led the orchestra with his usual brilliance, drawing out a crisp performance from the players. What can’t this man conduct with the highest level of artistry? From the standard repertoire to contemporary works (As One), tango operas (Maria de Buenos Aires) and, now, a Baroque piece, this Maestro and the musicians he leads are never less than magnificent.”
Glenn Meche (July 17, 19xx-May 18, 2024), a lovely, talented bear of a man, always had a smile on his face. A 2010 Ambie Award nominee for Best Director of a Play for Frozen, in 2013, I wrote about his production of Tennessee Williams’ Battle of Angels: “Meche’s direction was finely attuned to Williams’ rhythms and brought out the script’s natural comedy without overdoing it. A consummate ‘actors’ director, Meche enabled his cast to bring their characters to detailed, moving life.”
Pat Bourgeois (Feb. 21, 1947-May 23, 2024) was an astute playwright with whom I first became acquainted in 2006 when I saw her wisely comic The Barbie Complex at that year’s DramaRama. She would go on to write the long-running comedy soap opera Debauchery! for Southern Rep. We served together for many years on the Big Easy Theater Committee and she was known for her acerbic wit.
Kiane D. Davis (Aug. 28, 1973-Aug. 1, 2024) was a phenomenal actress (as the fiery Dragon in JPA’s 2022 production of Shrek the Musical, she “lit up the stage with her breathtaking rendition of Forever”) who had gone on to directing ([You] “could hardly ask for a better production” of Sweet Potato Queens, the Musical) and had recently become a triple hyphenate threat (about 2023’s Sistas the Musical, also a JPA presentation, I wrote of “Kiane D. Davis’ sure-handed, sweet production. Davis, who also choreographed with verve and plays the academic sister Simone, has done an amazing job of keeping her cast’s bodies in motion as they tidy the attic without it ever seeming fussy or arbitrary, no mean feat.”)
They shall all be missed. Apologies to anyone who may have been inadvertently omitted.
On a happier note, in addition to those already mentioned above, other praiseworthy folks who trod the boards in 2024 include: Elizabeth Argus, Austin Anderson, Luke Boucvalt (Sweeney Todd, SLT); Jauné Buisson, Chase Kamata (Pippin, SLT); Lorene Chesley, Mike Harkins (The Cake, Crescent City Stage); Rebeckah Gordon-Kirk (Trees, Intramural Theater); Ian Hoch, Dylan Hunter (Born With Teeth, Le Petit); Cherelle Palmer (Gem of the Ocean, Dillard University).
And last but not least, one of the most unexpectedly uproarious evenings of 2024 was the 40th Birthday Roast of Alex Pomes at Big Couch in November, a benefit for the Louisiana Abortion Fund. I went not knowing most of the people involved; I’m still not sure who most of them are (Bob Murrell, Jon Lester, and Host A.J. Allegra were the exceptions). Having been to comedy shows that generated just a few chuckles throughout the night, my expectations were low. I hadn’t realized, however, how much material the roasters had to work with.
I’ve known Pomes for many years–he won an Ambie Award in 2008 for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for The NOLA Project’s Assassins–and I always thought he was a heckuva nice guy. I hadn’t known, however, about his many failed business ventures and multiple, occasionally simultaneous, girlfriends among other inspirations for the roasters. Each and every one of them was hysterical, as though they had had a staff of comedy writers to come up with their scathingly funny jokes. I can only hope that this might become a regular event, one that “honors” folks for a worthy cause.
So maybe 2024 wasn’t too bad after all. As the curtain rises on a new year, I salute all the writers, producers, directors, designers, choreographers, music directors, musicians, hair & make-up artists, fight choreographers, dancers and thespians who made theatrical magic in 2024, and look forward to all you have to offer in 2025.
