DRURY LANE THEATRE - Chicago
Three 2015 Joseph Jefferson Award Nominations
The genuinely revisionist new production at the Drury Lane Theatre... a Camelot that takes the far bigger risks and leaps of modernity and that departs the most thoroughly from the usual approach....it's certainly a fascinating and accessible reading of one of the great American musicals, at once period-appropriate and very fresh.
Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune
The new Drury Lane Theatre Oakbrook revival of the show — directed by Alan Souza - might very well put it back in the spotlight.....What Souza and his team have done is akin to what filmmaker Franco Zeffirelli did decades ago for Romeo and Juliet.
He has stripped the show of its aura of uptight sophistication and made it fresh and accessible, with a “truthiness” and sexiness that will seem just right for the Millennial generation......Unspooling at a rapid clip, with the years shifting as quickly as the seasons, and the storytelling exceptionally clear, this Camelot is very much of the moment in both its political and social tuning. And its full embrace of an ending that suggests idealism is largely a fleeting dream seems just right.
Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times
The overall power of this “one, brief shining moment” is reason enough to pay a visit to this Camelot. It is simply an exceptional, re-imagined, breathtaking production that fans of this musical should not miss.
Colin Douglas, Chicago Theatre Review
SEVEN DIALS PLAYHOUSE - London
Four Offie Award Nominations
Remembrance Monday is the best new gay play in years. A razor-sharp thriller - pitched midway between noir and horror. Souza’s direction is taut and imaginative, ensuring that the story retains its nerve-racking pace. The final image where sound, lights, story and performance feverishly come together is unforgettable.
Richard Maguire, The Reviews Hub
With Souza’s fast-paced but sensitive direction, Seven Dials Playhouse has a wonderful hit on its hands. The performances Souza has drawn out of the play’s two actors are extraordinary.
Daryl Bennett, UK Theatre Web
Superb direction by Alan Souza.
Oviya Thirumalai, Adventures in Theatreland
Remembrance Monday shines with directorial brilliance.
Darren Lee Murphy, Theatre Audience Podcast
Alan Souza’s direction is increasingly insular and tense; the rising intensity helps the audience to follow the detachment from reality that is central to the play’s climax.
Sam Waite, All That Dazzles
OLNEY THEATRE
Two 2018 Helen Hayes Award Nominations
Recorded for the National Theatre Archive: Ground-breaking & Socially Relevant
A roaring new version of a classic!
Barbara Mackay, Theatremania
As re-imagined by director Alan Souza, the timeline has been moved to a few years ahead, from the turn of the century to the beginning of the 1920’s – all the more to make this tale of man-versus-woman into a take on woman-versus-society. Souza turns a more intimate love story into a richer yarn of society itself changing.
Jill Kyle-Keith, DC Theatre Scene
Seriously, I understood and enjoyed My Fair Lady in a new and expanded way...a fresh, hot, and deliciously satisfying re-envisioning of Lerner and Loewe’s classic.
Mark Beachy, MD Theatre Guide
DRURY LANE THEATRE - Chicago
Four 2019 Joseph Jefferson Award Nominations, including Best Director
Director Alan Souza has packed the new Drury Lane production with a feast of sumptuous dazzle.
There are real emotional stakes on the Oakbrook Terrace stage.
Souza’s cast knows how to bring down the house and deliver on the smaller moments, too.
Catey Sullivan, Chicago Sun-Times
Director Alan Souza and his creative team deliver a refreshingly original vision, giving the talented cast space to breathe new life into familiar characters. The result is a beautifully designed, thoughtfully staged, and strongly acted fairy tale that should delight.
As Souza observes in his director’s note: Beauty and the Beast is about the power of learning to see past surface differences and find true community in our common humanity. It’s a beautiful message to embrace, now as much as ever, and this production makes the journey thoroughly entertaining, moving, and ultimately uplifting.
Emily McClanahan, Broadway World
ABINGDON THEATRE/STRELSIN - NYC
The play was exceptionally well acted and very moving thanks to subtle performances by all, under Alan Souza’s sensitive direction.
Myra Chanin, Theater Pizzazz
Mourning the Living is a brave and fierce look about a caregiver. Director Alan Souza has great feeling for this play. He allows the humanity to rise with a tender touch.
Suzanna Bowling, Times Square Chronicles
JOHN W ENGEMAN THEATER
A good scare is the point of most thrillers, and the production of Wait Until Dark now being staged at the John W. Engeman
Theater at Northport delivers a spellbinding final scene that fulfills the promise of the play’s reputation as a classic.
Aileen Jacobson, The New York Times
The Alan Souza directed production of Frederick Knott's suspense-filled Wait Until Dark will have you at the edge of your seat in anticipation and apprehension for the entire show.
Melissa Giordano, Broadway World
NEW JERSEY REPERTORY
Voted one of 10 best NJ Theatre Productions for 2017 – NJ Star Ledger
NJ Rep just premiered a terrific new play — see it while you can. The production finds its strength in the development of these characters; rather than just repositories of jealousy or anxiety, each of the four figures reveals unique depth.
Under the steady hand of director Alan Souza, each actor locates the fears driving his or her character.
Throughout, director Souza's guidance seems important and insightful, as he and each cast member must find the correct pace of each character's developing struggle.
Patrick Maley, NJ.com/Star Ledger
This intriguing, affecting play has superb direction by Alan Souza.
Marina Kennedy, Broadway World
HUMAN RACE THEATRE COMPANY
A different approach to a well-known classic musical can sometimes bring forth new appreciation for the material and provide theatrical flair. This production of is a major, glorious rethinking and scaling down of the material.
Scott Cain, Talkin' Broadway
Souza’s fresh, communal approach doesn’t produce a dull moment and is consistently arresting. It’s extremely exciting and rare to see a director reinterpret a tried and true product with intimate boldness.
Russell Florence, Jr.,
Dayton Most Metro.com
Director Alan Souza takes us in an entirely new direction. The performance simply holds you in its grasp from beginning to end. The action doesn’t stop. This is a production that is not to be missed.
Brian P. Sharp, Dayton City Paper
DRURY LANE THEATRE - Chicago
It’s not often that the words “spoiler alert” need to be written in the very opening sentence of a review. But the wildly imaginative conceit that drives Drury Lane Theatre’s production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” creates such an alternative universe to the original version that such a warning is essential.
You will instantly sense just how ingenious and hilarious the concept brought to the musical by director Alan Souza really is. And while you might very well re-title the production “Joseph: The Remix,” you will leave the theater smiling.
No, this is not your parents’ or grandparents’ “Joseph.” But I will say both “bravo” and “amen” to that.
Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times
JOHN W. ENGEMAN THEATER
Even more powerful than before; a reminder of how awful it was and, for millions worldwide, it still is. The athletic, vibrant, strong-voiced young cast at the Engeman Theater, stylishly directed by Alan Souza, works hard to evoke the era and largely succeeds.
Anita Gates, The New York Times
‘Rent’ the rock opera with live-for-the-moment urgency, is now the young Engeman Theatre’s finest moment. Alan Souza pulls this sprawling interpersonal soap together with clarity and dignity.
Steve Parks, New York Newsday
MALTZ JUPITER THEATRE
Six 2008 Carbonell Award Nominations, including Best Director
The Full Monty is hardly the best musical to play on the Maltz stage. But it just may be the best production. It is not an easy show to pull off, but you would never know from the inventive, assured staging by Alan Souza…. with its terrific rendering, the Maltz Jupiter has grown up too.
Hap Erstein, Palm Beach Post
The Full Monty simply is not a good musical. It’s lame, erratic, and superficial. So it is amazing to report that the Maltz Jupiter Theatre has mounted such an unreservedly entertaining production. Director Alan Souza stages matters deftly while preserving the good-natured raunch and he gets unusually believable performances out of the entire ensemble.
Bill Hirchman, Sun-Sentinel
NEW JERSEY REPERTORY
Recipient of the Edgerton Foundation New Play Award
If you’re a fan of the witty wordsmith Dorothy Parker – or just love an intelligent new musical – get to see “The Little Hours”…the New Jersey Repertory has produced an enticing – and superbly-performed production…a strong vehicle for each of the actresses, all of whom give richly textured performances…director Alan Souza provides crisp, fluid staging to match.
Amy Krivohlavek, Show Business Magazine
The formidably adventurous New Jersey Repertory has given David Bucknam’s “The Little Hours” an exemplary production. Director Alan Souza has done an outstanding job.
Bob Rendell, Talkin’ Broadway
3-D THEATRICALS - Los Angeles
Everything that matters, this show gets right.
First and foremost, what it gets right is the human drama, which may sound odd in this context.
Yet even a giddy fantasy needs reality behind it, and here’s where Souza’s casting and direction come up roses.
The respective Robert Hoyt and Cameron Bond are a perfect matched pair; sincere men wracked by longing – torn between dreams of baseball stardom and the embraces of the ‘old girl’ they are (or rather, he is) missing.
And in Cynthia Ferrer he has a love object emphatically worth the missing. It’s rare for Meg to impress as a key ingredient of this book but Ferrer pulls it off: warm, vulnerable, and believable from first to last.
For the first Damn Yankees within my memory, I actually looked forward to the ballad-driven scenes in the Boyd home.
And Alexis Carra as supernatural temptress Lola keeps a firm handle on wistful regret. Whatever Lola wants, it turns out, is human connection; Carra makes us feel it.
Bob Verini, ArtsinLA.com
NEW AMSTERDAM THEATRE – NYC
A one-night only star-studded gala performance, benefitting The Actors’ Fund of America.
HUMAN RACE THEATRE COMPANY
John Lennon’s anti-war sentiments in the early 1970s figure prominently in Mark St Germain’s humorous, thought provoking two-person play Ears on a Beatle, terrifically staged by Alan Souza for the Human Race Theatre Company. It’s the most pleasant surprise of the fall season thus far and a prime example of the type of insightful theater audiences have come to expect from the Race; this production reiterates the sheer importance of free speech as it appeals to anyone who loves the music of John Lennon and appreciates his indelible legacy.
Russell Florence, Jr., Dayton City Paper
LAGUNA PLAYHOUSE
The Laguna Playhouse has a surefire proposal in "I Do! I Do!"
Director Alan Souza provides fleeting flash but ample breathing room, making this an efficiently enjoyable date show!
David C. Nichols, L.A. Times
LYRIC THEATRE OF OKLAHOMA
There are many people who hear about a new production of “Fiddler on the Roof” and dismiss it outright because they’ve seen this popular musical one time too many. But I would caution any who might make that assumption about Lyric Theatre’s current production.
While there’s nothing worse than a perfunctory staging of “Fiddler, “ Lyric’s current staging proves that this musical can still be heartfelt and humorous when treated with the care that director Alan Souza has imparted to his talented cast.
I found myself laughing more than I ever thought possible in a show that is not exactly lighthearted. But Souza clearly encouraged his cast to trust the material. Give audiences a well directed show, and they’ll reward the cast with giggles and belly laughs that catch them off guard.
Clearly, not all “Fiddlers” are created equal. But Lyric Theatre’s production proves that Souza and his capable cast are a match that even Yente would approve of.
Rick Rogers, The Oklahoman
NEW JERSEY REPERTORY
Recipient of the Edgerton Foundation New Play Award
What director Alan Souza and company have done with Kim Merrill’s looking-glass peek into Victorian England is to fashion a fascinating shadow-box that’s decorated with wonderful words, interesting figures and curious objects. Like an amazing artifact stumbled across in someone’s attic– we want to know more about the people who left it there.
Tom Chesek, Asbury Park Press
