The Wild Party

The Wild Party (New York City Center Encores!)

March 23, 2026

Jasmine Amy Rogers, Jelani Alladin, Lesli Margharita, Evan Tyrone Martin, Adrienne Warren, Jordan Donica and Betsy Morgan…

In the hands of Michael John LaChiusa (music, lyrics and book) and George C. Wolfe (book), the feral, syncopated verse of Joseph Moncure March’s Prohibition-era poem is not so much adapted as reforged—heated, hammered, and hurled forward as a kind of theatrical locomotive. Their "Wild Party" arrives like a runaway train of jazz, gin, and envy, its momentum at once intoxicating and annihilating. It careens down the rails with a velocity that promises, even as it seduces, an inevitable and exquisitely catastrophic derailment. [more]

ON THE TOWN WITH CHIP DEFFAA… WITH MATTHEW BRODERICK, HARVEY MILK, AND HARRY HOUDINI….

June 28, 2023

As a lover of the performing arts, I’ll remember this month as when I witnesseed Matthew Broderick give one of the finest, subtlest performances of his career. I’ll remember, too, the uplifting idealism of Andrew Lippa’s I Am Harvey Milk. But I’ll also remember this as the month that some major cultural institutions were forced to make significant cutbacks because audiences have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. And that is worrisome. [more]

Los Otros

September 5, 2022

A fresh antidote to the usual brassy, loud rock musicals of today, "Los Otros" slows down the tempo and the sound level with a story of the experiences of two people who learn to love, cope and risk over the course of many decades. Luba Mason and Caesar Samayoa are quite endearing as the two California residents whose lives overlap. They give remarkable performances mainly appearing alone on stage telling and singing their stories. Cudos to librettist Ellen Fitzhugh and composer Michael John LaChiusa for bucking the trend and giving us a deep but small-scale musical revealing two lives through variously well-chosen experiences which add up to lives well lived. Long after you see it, it you will recall incidents that Lillian and Carlos recount. This may be the result of the fact that Los Otros is based on real people and true life experiences. [more]

The Wild Party

July 18, 2015

Sutton Foster is electrifying as Queenie the sexually insatiable nightclub performer who incites men to violence in this revival of the 2000 Off-Broadway musical The Wild Party. Lean and fierce and slinking around in a taut white sequined flapper dress and wearing a curly blonde wig, Ms. Foster’s star quality and performing talents are on dazzling display in this problematic Jazz Age ode to decadence. She continues to grow in her versatile stage career that has included such light shows as "Thoroughly Modern Millie," "The Drowsy Chaperone," "Shrek," "Young Frankenstein," and the more recent serious "Violet." [more]