News Ticker
- December 12, 2025 in Musicals // The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions
- December 12, 2025 in Cabaret // Mary Foster Conklin — Mirrors Revisited (50th Anniversary)
- December 11, 2025 in Cabaret // Kathy Kaefer — Kiss Me Once: Stories from the Homefront
- December 11, 2025 in Off-Broadway // The American Soldier
- December 9, 2025 in Off-Broadway // This World of Tomorrow
- December 9, 2025 in Cabaret // A Noel Coward Celebration — Steve Ross & Friends
- December 7, 2025 in Off-Broadway // Diversion
- December 5, 2025 in Off-Broadway // Meet the Cartozians
- December 5, 2025 in Features // Tom Stoppard: An Appreciation
- December 4, 2025 in Off-Broadway // Practice
- December 4, 2025 in Cabaret // Eddie Bruce — The Magic & Music of Tony Bennett
- December 3, 2025 in Interviews // Interview with Ty Jones, Classical Theater of Harlem
- December 2, 2025 in Features // Gingold Theatrical Group’s 20th Anniversary Gala at The Players
- December 2, 2025 in Interviews // The American Soldier – An Interview with Douglas Taurel
- December 2, 2025 in Off-Broadway // A Bodega Princess Remembers La Fiesta de los Reyes Magos, 1998
Archive
And what does it all mean? The new musical takes on pop fandom, celebrity, the Internet, MTV, pop culture, influencers, Gen Z and everything in between. "The Last Bimbo of the Apocalypse" is not only cutting edge but it may presage the dawning of the next kind of musical – which may not be to all tastes. It may also take you by surprise as to how much it pulls you into to its story and investigation of a period a little less than two decades old.
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Unfortunately, The Fire Weeds’ production directed by Jaclyn Bethany (who appears in both plays) is very uneven. An attempt at expressionism handled differently in each does not work for these Tennessee Williams’ plays. While “The Pretty Trap” eschews props for pantomiming, in “Interior: Panic” lighting designer Zoe Griffith has taken the stage direction “the light is normal” and literally bathed the stage in pink-red light periodically to suggest Blanche’s hallucinations. However, this is both distracting and intrusive. Of course, theatergoers are likely to know the longer more famous versions which are more fleshed out and have pertinent information not in the one act versions.
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A scene from the Epic Players’ production of Flaherty and Ahrens’ musical “Seussical” at
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The show at The Players Theatre is not exactly the same show that played in London's West End with book by Shaun McKenna and Steven Dexter which like the original novel was set in San Francisco. Now the show has been reset in New York’s East Village. Unfortunately, this also means Finney’s tribute to silent film stars is entirely missing which is one of the original novel’s strong suits. Additionally, the authors do not make use of the new setting except for a scene under the Queensboro Bridge.
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I don’t like the way the new Broadway production of “The Last Five Years” was directed. But that unique Jason Robert Brown musical—long a favorite of mine--still offers rewards aplenty…. And what a wonderful surprise the Sinatra School’s production of “Tartuffe” was—with a show-stealing turn by one Harrison Gan. I’m currently holding auditions for projects. If any newcomer that talented turns up, I’ll be more than satisfied.
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The show and production is perfect for the chosen venue, a newly opened theater. Director Lori Kee makes excellent use of the intimate space, full of bookshelves that wrap around the room to give a lived-in look that enhances the setting dramatically. Production manager Akash Inti Katakam and prop coordinator Josie Underwood arrange the set so the audience really feels as if they’re casually inside Ruth’s home. The cramped living room, old desk, and well-worn big chair all create the feeling that someone has lived there for decades. Even the books themselves seem carefully chosen to elucidate Ruth’s life and character, from a copy of "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" to tomes on psychology and classical music.
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Scenes progress, and it becomes clear that nothing which happens in Dick and Jane’s house makes a whole lot of sense, and that’s absolutely the point of Leverett’s witty, clever, and smart play. Giving a firm nod to the absurdist playwriting genre first popularized in the mid-1950s, "We Do the Same Thing Every Week" imparts the mindless, repetitive, and boring existence of humankind, which no amount of parlor games, huge vacuums (household or existential), duets, tap-dancing Things, or anthropomorphized cats and fish can overturn.
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"The United States vs Ulysses" by Colin Murphy is a multi-layered play about a seminal case concerning censorship in publishing. The story is set in 1933 in the studios of the CBS radio show "The March of Time." The radio show reenacted recent news stories, including one about the trial of James Joyce’s then controversial novel "Ulysses," but the tapes of it no longer exist. Murphy imagined what that show may have been like, and it forms the framework of the play.
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Groff is simply sensational in both his roles, charming as himself and astonishing in his revelatory Darin. He confesses to being “a wet man.” He proves it with his near aerobically paced performance, which included much singing and dancing and even a touch of beefcake. (Well, if you got it—and Groff got it—flaunt it!)
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Not only is the show authentically written with Spanish sprinkled throughout, (much of it perfectly obvious as to its meaning,) but Sergio Trujillo’s superb production which he has both directed and choreographed, has been cast with an almost entirely Hispanic cast who are utterly engaging. Best is Justina Machado, a Broadway veteran of "In the Heights" and "A Free Man of Color," as the indomitable Carmen who can only imagine one path – though she herself left everything behind in Mexico to come to the United States. Following a close second are Broadway debuting Tatianna Córboda as the feisty Ana who has learned how to run rings around her elders and also debuting Florencia Cuenca as her weary sister Estela who has the weight of everyone’s aspirations on her shoulders.
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Not seen on Broadway since 1982 but racking up 26 productions up to that time since its New York premiere in 1879, the Roundabout Theatre Company’s new version of the Gilbert and Sullivan classic operetta, "The Pirates of Penzance," has been given a delightful facelift: retitled "Pirates! The Penzance Musical" is has now been Americanized and reset in a jazzy 1880 New Orleans by the team of director Scott Ellis, adapter Rupert Holmes, choreographer Warren Carlyle and music director and co-orchestrator Joseph Joubert. The energetic cast is led by Ramin Karimloo as the Pirate King, Jinkx Monsoon as Ruth and two-time Tony Award-winner David Hyde Pierce as Major-General Stanley, backed by a lusty crew of singers and dancers.
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Timing, as they say, is everything in comedy—and in revolution. In "Fat Cat Killers," playwright Adam Szymkowicz delivers more than just a sharp-edged satire of corporate greed—he peels back the glossy veneer of big business to expose the raw, unsettling truths beneath. The play skewers the systemic exploitation of workers, the yawning chasm between executive privilege and employee precarity, and the emotional toll of soulless labor with biting wit and unflinching clarity. But while it aims its critique squarely at the power structures of late capitalism, it doesn’t let its would-be revolutionaries off the hook.
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The play is a nicely developing mystery fantasy story about the paranormal, but when the teenage boy is revealed as the Spirit Child, the show goes off track. The idea presented is that the Spirit Child is the child who would have been born except for the miscarriage. This idea is a stretch in believability for the dramatic structure of the show. It introduces the idea that a consciousness once attached to a developing embryo continues to be attached to the woman who was carrying that embryo even after the tissue has been expelled through a miscarriage. It turns on its head the whole idea of developmental psychology. How is it possible for the miscarried tissue that was not even old enough to definitively determine sex to become a spirit that ages as if it had been born?
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Fast-forward to 2025, and City Center has once again turned to this dependable crowd-pleaser, reportedly as a last-minute substitute for Michael John LaChiusa’s "The Wild Party." The choice makes logistical sense: "Wonderful Town" offers hummable tunes and a quirky, heartfelt book by Joseph Fields and Jerome Chodorov. But under the direction of Zhailon Levingston—whose past work includes "Table 17" and the vogue-infused "Cats: The Jellicle Ball"—this new iteration stumbles. Lacking Marshall’s instinct for the show’s fine balance between earnestness and irony, Levingston’s staging never quite finds its rhythm, veering too far into knowing kitsch and losing the tender charm that once made Wonderful Town feel, well, wonderful.
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"Stranger Things: The First Shadow" concludes with a Netflix joke that, besides being pretty funny, also represents a bit of chest-thumping for the play's outsized number of developers who manage to successfully blur the line between theater and television. Whether that's a good thing is a matter of taste, or a lack of it, but there's no denying that "Stranger Things: The First Shadow," which has journeyed from the West End to Broadway, is exactly the type of experience it wants to be: immersive; scary; and, even if you've never seen an episode of the streaming series from whence it comes, familiar. That's because, imaginatively befitting its source material, the play is a storytelling stew of cultural callbacks that owes a debt--presumably unpaid-- to Stephen King, Wes Craven, and other unsettling shapers of Gen-X childhoods.
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At this vantage point 55 years after its premiere, like the Wilson plays which intentionally cover the previous 100 years, "Ceremonies in Dark Old Men" feels like an historical play wedded to its own time period. Its story and characters are a combination of a Black version of "Death of a Salesman" and a Harlem version of "A Raisin the Sun." Like the story of Willy Loman and his hapless family, the tale of Russell Parker and his two wastrel sons could only have a tragic ending, as their values are so hollow. And like "A Raisin the Sun," the Parker family is so desperate to succeed as Black people in Pre-Civil Rights Era America that they put their hopes in a man that even a child would not have trusted.
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Unfortunately, while the carnival atmosphere in the field above the cave increases, the musical is mostly a waiting game: if and when Floyd Collins will be brought up from the deteriorating cave. The emotions that you would expect as time begins to run out as passageways become either waterlogged or impassible are not in evidence except for Floyd’s father who is more concerned with finances that his son’s life. Floyd himself is often depicted as delirious or depressed so that we don’t get much of an arc of his emotions.
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Wesley Wray (center at microphone) and the company of the Broadway musical “Buena Vista Social
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That balance—between emotional vulnerability and razor-sharp humor—is what elevates "Hold Me in the Water" beyond the sea of solo shows that mine personal experience for applause. Haddad’s artistry lies in his fierce honesty and unsparing introspection. He examines his own longing, joy, and heartache with something approaching clinical precision, yet never loses the pulse of the deeply human. He never asks for pity, and when disappointment inevitably arrives, he extends surprising compassion—even to the one who’s let him down.
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At times the show directed by Stroman seems to be a satire or a parody, while the choreography by Bergasse mostly looks like ersatz Bob Fosse which seems inappropriate for the Marilyn Monroe story. As star Ivy Lynn playing Marilyn, Hurder seems to be doing a Megan Hilty impersonation from the TV series, rather than bringing anything new to the role. (Of course, Hilty is appearing around the corner in Death Becomes Her.) Bowman’s Karen is fine as far as she is allowed to go but the role seems underwritten. Nielsen ass The Actors Studio coach, (compared to Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West) is so unpleasant that you wonder why her character isn’t fired long before it happens in the story line.
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Clarke's direction is uneven, giving the show a rehearsal or community theater vibe. The narrative line is unclear as to whether the main characters are real or a hallucination of one of them. The songs, what few there are, are extraneous to the action, adding nothing of importance to understanding the point of the story. The main characters are Cyrene (Shannon Wong) who is the wife of Caleb (Zachery Michael Shook), a construction manager. According to the play notes they are involved in pushing "the boundaries of love, desire, and intimacy." The major problem with this dramatic idea is Cyrene is a memory of Caleb's dead wife, who is directing him to find new and provocative sexual relationships with other women. The character is a constant presence with Caleb but is not seen by any other person. This dramatic element is hinted at but unclear until halfway through this short play.
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The performers inhabit a shared space that hums with latent connectivity, even in the absence of direct dialogue. Their presence to and for one another—unspoken yet palpable—forms the quiet backbone of the piece. What unfolds is a relentless swirl of Marxist theory and grand philosophical overtures, repeated like mantras against a backdrop of absurdist physicality. Narrative cohesion is eschewed in favor of thematic resonance: a professor marks chalk outlines around a silent woman while students volley fervent monologues; later, those same students offer murmured asides as the professor ascends to a pulpit-like presence. Though no linear thread binds them, their trajectories intersect often and with theatrical charge, forming a constellation of meaning just out of reach.
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Time passes slowly during "Grief Camp" as a bunch of adolescent characters and the audience watching them struggle collectively to figure out the point of being there. Playwright Eliya Smith fails to provide that enlightenment, though director Les Waters does his best to pretend it might be forthcoming, stretching the emptiness of Smith's script until it simply has to be acknowledged. Set in the actual town of Hurt, Virginia, the play's narrative development is mostly in its title and that correspondingly unsubtle location choice, where Smith hazily depicts a sleepaway camp for young people coping with death at an age when life is painful enough.
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The cumulative effect of the four plays is greater than the sum of its parts. The quartet of plays seems to demonstrate Caryl Churchill in a new mode. While the plots are slight, the themes are of major importance and suggest new ways of thinking about them. James Macdonald’s production and the acting of his cast are quite assured even though the plays are mainly non-realistic and require their own kind of suspension of disbelief.
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"minor•ity" is a wonder of a play written by francisca da silveira and skillfully directed by Shariffa Ali telling a tale of clashing artistic egos encompassing issues of Black identity, cultural influences, and financial support. The cast of three leaves no question in the viewers’ minds that what is being witnessed are real people telling a story through their actions, not actors playing roles. There is a message in the name of the show presented in the script but not in the show.
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While Belflower’s play is clever and insightful, it is also contrived and manipulative attempting to shoehorn almost every feminist hot button topic into one story overlaying "The Crucible": date rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment on the job, toxic masculinity, patriarch dominance. It makes all of the male characters look like idiots and all of the women victims which is not exactly a reflection of real life. It also overloads the deck while at the same time copping out in the end. While New York teens are probably much more liberated than those in rural Georgia, the language of the play is incredibly devoid of swear or curse words which usually pepper the speech of adolescents. Finally, it borrows from Ivo van Hove’s 2016 staging of "The Crucible" in which a modern classroom also turns into a telling of Miller’s play.
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However, it is not just the remarkable video design which uses sometimes up to six screens to convey the action of the story plus live action, but we get inside of the head of protagonist Dorian Gray in ways not possible before. Also seeing or hearing Snook as all the characters in different voices is quite a remarkable feat. Andrew Scott only plays eight in his Vanya one-man show, but here Snook also changes costumes repeatedly before our eyes and emerges as someone else. Beginning as the narrator, she slowly becomes Dorian Gray who eventually takes over completely. We also see her as Lord Henry Wotton, painter Basil Hallward, actress Sibyl Vane and later her brother James, the Duchess of Harley, and former friend and Oxford classmate Alan Campbell.
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But, top-notch as all of that is, the musical's unmitigated highlight is the Broadway newcomer Rogers as Betty Boop. While the character's trademark look and mannerisms certainly contour Rogers's performance, they do not obscure a wealth of touching flesh-and-blood emotions that all come out in an underwhelming eleven o'clock number, "Something to Shout About," that, because of Rogers, manages to overwhelm. It seems that "Boop! The Musical" has a new star rather than an old one.
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Bringley, making his theatrical debut as himself, delivers a performance marked by restraint and quiet intensity. His words, drawn largely from the memoir, reveal a man of thoughtfulness and delicacy—someone who seeks refuge not in action, but in observation, retreating to the hushed galleries of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he once worked as a guard. “You lose someone,” he tells us, simply, “and it puts a hole in your life—and for a time you huddle down in that hole.” It’s in that stillness, that huddling, that the piece finds its quiet power.
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Before he was a Nobel laureate, before his name was canonized in the firmament of world literature, Wole Soyinka was a young playwright—barely in his mid-twenties—when he penned "The Swamp Dwellers" in 1958. And yet, this early work bears the unmistakable gravitas of myth: a compact, hour-long domestic drama that pulses with elemental force. In director Awoye Timpo’s hauntingly grounded revival, the piece reverberates with contemporary resonance. It is at once a family portrait and a parable, steeped in the muddy waters of postcolonial Nigeria and rippling outward into modern-day concerns—climate change, disillusionment with institutions, and the aching silence left by absent gods.
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The Steppenwolf Theatre Company production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ "Purpose" follows on the heels of their magnificently staged "August: Osage County," but unlike that dysfunctional family drama, this play has a great deal to say as well as major themes. Like the title of the author’s "Appropriate," "Purpose" has many meaning all used here at the same time. And never forget how much fun it is to have a private look in at the private lives of a rich and famous (but fictional) family when they are on their worst behavior. Do not be surprised if this play wins this year’s Tony Award followed by next year’s Pulitzer Prize. You can say you heard it here first. While the play is quite long, it is tremendously rewarding as great plays should be.
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Although there are humorous moments, the production doesn't work for various reasons, including characterizations and technical issues with sound reproduction. None of the eight songs are memorable, and the characters do not engage the audience, which is a question of direction and acting. While the performers work hard at portraying their characters, the effect is uneven. Some characters appear two-dimensional, and performances feel like a college or community theater production. The vocals are problematic, with some performances being overpowered while others pitchy. Overall, the show doesn't engage the audience in caring about the characters or their stories.
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Except for a couple of main characters, the people in his life seem to come and go making it a little bit difficult to follow. While the opening of each act is in the form of a Technicolor musical, the limited budget and the staged reading format does not allow for this. Actor Michael Halling is tall enough to represent the 6’4” Hughes but he does not portray his undoubted charisma to have taken the world by storm. There are also many anachronisms as well as at least one scene which is out of order and facts that are inaccurate.
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Copyright Jack Quinn, 2001-2023
