Curtain Up
Now that Mardi Gras is just a happy memory, it’s time for theater to move back indoors again. Through the beginning of Jazzfest, lots of shows will be debuting on local stages from Metairie to the Northshore to the West Bank. Hope you’ll be able to check out some–or all–of the following.
Coming to bat at the Westwego Performing Arts Theatre is the Jefferson Performing Arts’ (JPA) production of Joe & Marilyn: A Love Story (March 13-23) by Willard Manus. Directed by Janet Shea and starring Jonathan Mares as Joe DiMaggio and Sarah Colbert as Marilyn Monroe, this two-person play offers an intimate look into Marilyn’s relationship with baseball star DiMaggio in a series of vignettes spanning their relationship, from first meeting to brief marriage. (https://www.jpas.org/performance/joe-and-marilyn/)
JPA will follow this on the East Bank at the Jefferson Performing Arts Center with Billy Elliot: The Musical (Mar. 28-Apr. 6), one of the best musicals of the 21st century. With music by Elton John and a book & lyrics by Lee Hall, this Tony Award-winning show tells the story of a young boy from a coal mining village in northeast England who transcends class and circumstance to become a ballet star.
Kenneth Beck directs a cast that includes Leslie Castay as Billy’s world weary ballet teacher and Parker Portera-Dufrene, who was a stand-out in last year’s School of Rock, as his best friend (and budding homosexual). (https://www.jpas.org/performance/billy-elliot/)
Speaking of ballet, Marigny Opera Ballet presents the world premiere of DUSK (March 14-22), a contemporary ballet by choreographer Cassi Abranches which will be accompanied by an original score written and performed live by New Orleans’ indie rock group, People Museum. DUSK celebrates endings and the promise of new beginnings. Also on the program at the Marigny Opera House will be a new work by Diogo de Lima, the Marigny Opera Ballet’s Artistic Director. (https://www.marignyoperaballet.org/)
For those who love opera as much as ballet, New Orleans Opera (NOO) continues its season with Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love on April 4 and 6 at the Mahalia Jackson Theater. Reset in a bustling western town, Nemorino, a hopelessly-in-love farmer, sets out to win the heart of the beautiful and wealthy Adina. Desperate for the hand of his true love, Nemorino turns to a mysterious elixir that takes him on a journey that’s both funny and touching.
Award-winning soprano and New Orleans Center for Creative Arts graduate Lindsey Reynolds returns home to make her NOO debut and role debut as Adina, while tenor Matthew Swensen returns to NOO after his professional U.S. debut with the company in 2022 to make his role debut as Nemorino. (https://neworleansopera.org/elixir-of-love/)
The landowner Adina is one of the few women in opera who has a successful career of her own. Rosie!, a new original show at the WWII Museum’s Stage Door Canteen (March 21-23) celebrates two other such women, Rosie the Riveter and Wendy the Welder, two of the most popular and enduring symbols of the WWII era and women workers’ contributions on the Home Front. Through 1940s-inspired song, dance, and storytelling, Rosie! brings to life the courage, resilience, and ingenuity of the millions of American women who joined the wartime workforce and, in so doing, reshaped American society and paved the way for future generations of women. (https://www.nationalww2museum.org/programs/rosie)
Resilience of another sort can be seen when The NOLA Project presents Duncan Macmillan’s Every Brilliant Thing, in which the narrator, as a young child, begins creating a list of “every brilliant thing” in the world as a coping mechanism after his mother attempts suicide, using this list as a way to remind himself and others of the beauty and joy in life.
Featuring Alex Martinez Wallace and directed by Natalie Boyd, Every Brilliant Thing will play at Big Couch in the Bywater from March 27 through April 6. (https://www.nolaproject.com/ebt)
Also starting performances on March 27 is the Tennessee Williams Theatre Company’s production of Orpheus Descending. A tale about a drifter with a secret who comes to a small Mississippi town and unintentionally causes trouble, Orpheus deals with many of the themes that Williams is known for and, as one beautiful scene follows another, it slowly builds to a conclusion that may be over-the-top by anyone else’s standards except Williams’.
Running at the Marquette Theatre on Loyola’s campus through April 13, Augustin J Correro directs a cast that is headlined by Benjamin Dougherty, Charlie Carr and Leslie Claverie. (https://www.twtheatrenola.com/)
Orpheus Descending will be featured as part of the annual Tennessee Williams Festival (March 26-30; https://tennesseewilliams.net/). Other theatrical offerings will be presented under its “The Last Bohemia” banner at The AllWays Lounge. These include–
—Seeking Asylum by Mari Kornhauser, an immersive one-act play about climate change exploration, set in a speculative world of 2040 and based on the original 29 questions immigrants filled out on ships’ manifests in the early 20th century. Directed by Reese Johanson, Seeking Asylum stars Sallay Shameka Gray and Kathy Randels. (https://tennesseewilliams.net/product/seeking-asylum/)
–Trey Ming’s musical The Night Fiona Flawless Went Mad about a gorgeous drag queen, Fiona, who has turned herself in for a double homicide. As I wrote when it returned last fall, Fiona “provides just as much gender-bending theatrical pleasure now as it did originally” when it premiered in 2019. A marvelous Laveau Contraire reprises her role as Fiona and is joined by Prince Octavian, Sebastien E’toile, and Bette Tittler. (https://tennesseewilliams.net/product/fiona-flawless/)
The fall 2024 cast of The Night Fiona Flawless Went Mad
—Harold & St. Claude reimagines the classic film Harold and Maude. In Thugsy DaClown’s retelling, Harold, a 20-year-old struggling with how to come out to his family and friends, finds an unexpected mentor in St. Claude, a seasoned 60something drag queen who embraces life unapologetically, even in the face of a recent medical diagnosis. While honoring the original movie, the story integrates real-life experiences, including the playwright’s own journey of coming out, self-acceptance, and embracing life with HIV. (https://tennesseewilliams.net/product/harold-and-st-claude/)
Following WilliamsFest, No Dream Deferred’s WE WILL DREAM: New Works Festival features Wonder Wander City Park, an immersive audio experience and unique outdoor production that explores the history of City Park—once a vital portage for Indigenous peoples, later home to plantations, a segregated park, and now a space of celebration and community gathering. Hundreds of years of stories inhabit this land, and Wonder Wander City Park brings them to life through a fusion of live performance and immersive audio, inviting audiences to “connect to the land on which we stand.”
Conceived by Lisa Shattuck and co-directed by Lauren Turner Hines, Wonder Wander City Park features April Louise, Owen Ever, Juniper Cassaway, Lorrin Dabon, Caldrick Williams, & Matt Story, and runs April 4-13. (https://wonderwandercitypark.mystrikingly.com/)
More traditional shows can be found at the Saenger Theatre. First, comes the recent Broadway revival of Funny Girl (March 11-16), which tells the story of the indomitable Fanny Brice, a girl from the Lower East Side who went on to become one of the most beloved performers in history. An updated book from Harvey Fierstein showcases Jule Styne and Bob Merrill’s score which includes such classics as Don’t Rain On My Parade and People. (https://www.saengernola.com/events/funny-girl/)
Up next is Lin-Manuel Miranda’s blockbuster musical Hamilton (April 8-20) about you-know-who whose ambition drove him from Caribbean outsider and bastard child to American war hero and George Washington’s right-hand man. (https://www.saengernola.com/events/hamilton/)
On the Northshore, Slidell Little Theatre presents All’s Well in Roswell (Isn’t It?) by Michael Druce through March 9. Directed by Jonah Boudreaux, the play takes place on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, where an unidentified flying object has crashed and the ranch owner has his hands full trying to deal with the press, government authorities, his own family, and Jake, a mysterious ranch hand who has been living on the ranch for the past 10 years who is not what he seems to be. (https://www.slidelllittletheatre.org/home)
At Mandeville’s 30 by Ninety Theatre, Tom Bubrig directs The Play That Goes Wrong (March 15-30), the zany farce in which things go from bad to utterly disastrous during the opening night of the Cornley University Drama Society’s newest production, The Murder at Haversham Manor, a 1920s whodunit in which accident-prone thespians battle against all odds to make it through to their final curtain call. (https://30byninety.com/shows/the-play-that-goes-wrong)
Also playing March 15-30, Playmakers Theater in Covington has They Promised Her The Moon which tells the story of Jerrie Cobb, the first American woman to test for space flight. This based-on-a-true-story drama recounts how Cobb learned to fly a plane as a child in Oklahoma as well as her testimony in Congressional hearings about the under-the-radar, all-female Mercury 13 space program. It’s written by Laurel Ollstein and will be directed by Van Turner. (https://playmakers-theater-05.webself.net/they-promised-her-the-moon)
Back on the Southshore, will be the premiere local production of Jersey Boys: The Story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons at Le Petit (Mar. 13-Apr. 6). In 2016, after seeing the touring production at the Saenger, I wrote the following:
“With a book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice that’s more history lesson than dramatic narrative, despite the involvement of The Four Seasons with mob bosses and assorted personal tragedies, I felt like there’d be a quiz afterwards on which Season quit first or who was the nerdy one.
“Admittedly, half-way through the second act, when we get to the uneasy recording and release of Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You, things become genuinely involving on stage, but they soon move on to the next soap opera-y moment.
“I could go on about the cheesiness of bringing a recently deceased character back to momentary life to tug the heartstrings during a song, but there’s really nothing I could say that the original lukewarm New York Times review didn’t say already and which didn’t prevent an 11-year run.
“Certainly the score’s fantastic songs written by Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe are some of the greatest pop tunes ever penned and are immensely enjoyable to listen to. But theater should offer more than just that.”
I suspect the Le Petit production, directed by A.J. Allegra and Jauné Buisson, both immensely talented theater artists, will be a big hit. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though. (https://www.lepetittheatre.com/events/jersey-boys-the-story-of-frankie-valli-the-four-seasons)
