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Ryan Gamblin

Good Time Charlie

October 19, 2026

Ryan J. Haddad’s deliciously comic but ultimately poignant "Good Time Charlie" having its world premiere at The Public Theater is his first non-monologue play. This time he uses seven actors including himself to play nine relatives in this theatrical autobiography. Ostensibly, a tribute to his gay Uncle Charlie (in actuality his father’s first cousin), it is also Haddad’s own autobiography of his early years (which eventually brought him into theater) and his immediate family. Covering the years 1976 to the present, it is a hilarious catty review of musicals and musical films as well as the more serious social mores of two generations’ attitudes towards homosexuality, that of Charlie’s generation and that of Ryan’s. The theatrical in-jokes will tickle regular theatergoers and some will get the meta theater references to "Fun Home" (whose original cast included the play’s Beth Malone and TV’s "Smash" which also include the participation of Michael Cristofer. [more]

73 Seconds

May 11, 2026

The title refers to the catastrophic 73 seconds between the Challenger’s launch and explosion, and Mezzocchi turns those seconds into the play’s governing existential paradox. Had Rosemary not become pregnant, might she have boarded that shuttle instead? The playwright comes to see himself simultaneously as the force that prevented his mother’s cosmic aspirations and the accidental reason she survived. Few memoir plays confront the absurd intimacy between guilt and gratitude with such honesty. The production recognizes how families construct themselves around contingencies so enormous they become nearly impossible to contemplate directly. Mezzocchi’s very existence becomes entangled with one of the most traumatic public tragedies of the 20th century. [more]

Spare Parts

March 14, 2026

What begins as a satirical clash between corporate swagger and academic idealism gradually deepens into a more unsettling inquiry. The play’s true subject, it turns out, is not merely the arrogance of billionaires but the universal temptation to trespass upon the limits of the body. Humanity, after all, has always been drawn toward transgression—whether through cosmetic surgery, pharmaceutical enhancement, or the relentless drive to improve the species one experiment at a time. [more]

Copyright Jack Quinn, 2001-2026