Off-B'way Review: Degenerates; The Hairy Ape

Zachary Desmond and Christopher Dylan White
in Degenerates.
Credit: Jackie Abbott

Though they were written a century apart, Else Went’s Degerenates (at Playwrights Horizons) and Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape (now in revival at Irish Repertory Theater) both address the alienation of young men and their resultant violence and self-destruction. Whether it’s Went’s outraged online community of incels (involuntary celebrates) or O’Neill brutish coal stoker Yank, the anger engendered by their feeling of being left behind by the larger culture leads to the same frustration and desire to strike back. Both playwrights document their blind rage and aching need with compassion and depth in productions staged with imagination and prickly fire.

Went’s frightening vision of isolated, screen-obsessed youths takes place in a fractured void where communication in real life, or IRL as the characters would say, is rare and potentially dangerous. Significantly, we first encounter them as voices in the dark. The despondent Kemp (a brilliantly devastated Tyler Nowell Felix), friendless and unable to attract a girlfriend, desperately phones a suicide prevention hotline. His aching need to be loved is unrelieved by the anonymous counselor on the other end (Olivia Rose Barressi plays all the females roles). After Kemp howls out his anger and sorrow, we enter into the cyber world of his fellow incels, spewing venom and disgust at women for rejecting them. Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’ splintered set depicts the stark environment of these frustrated souls. Miller (intensely snarling and magnetic Zachary Desmond) inhabits a barren basement apartment in his parents’ house while girly, agoraphobic Target (sympathetic and sweet Christopher Dylan White) snuggles in a nest of plush stuffed animals and a riot of anime posters. In a group chat with Miller and Target, Kemp is still unseen as is Serge (Juan Arturo) who is rejected from the group when it’s revealed he is divorced and has a child, meaning unlike his online misogynist compatriots, he has had sex.

The dynamic between Miller, Target and Kemp shifts several times throughout the play as they seek comfort from each other and then push away when they get too close. Went treats these sometimes nasty, sometimes relatable guys with a balanced hand. We see their sexist, racist rage but also the cruel treatment they’ve received. Miller and Kemp recount horrific childhood encounters with girls that still pain them. Like Anne Washburne in her play Anon, Went depicts a culture where people are unable to exist without validation from social media. At one point, Target watches and rewatches coming out as trans to his sister as if to confirm the experience really happened.

Trump and Vance: High School Bullies

High School Bullies

As we approach the midterms, the President and Vice-President are showing their true natures: high school bullies. We always knew this about Trump, but Vance's thuggish aspects are becoming more apparent as the two reflect the growing desperation that the GOP will lose power. Vance has resorted to insinuating Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico is gay. That is the last resort of the high-school bully who fears the smart, slightly different kid. Kids in school use the term "gay" to mean someone weird, unusual, outside the norm, not necessarily being attracted to the same gender.  

Trump has descended even further, despite that fact that he claims he never insults people--he actually had to gall to say this in a Fox News interview, claiming he would never insult someone because he might have to make a deal with them. Does he not listen to himself?

Trump's latest example of childish name-calling is labelling Dr. Annie Andrews, Dem. candidate for SC senator against nepo-sib Darlene Graham, Tranny Annie. What? Where did that come from? Like Vance's jibes against Talarico, it's strictly high school. Trump is replaying that tired old record about Dems wanting kids to have sex change operations in school without parents' consent. Not only is that crazy, but there is absolutely no evidence of anything even close to that happening. It's probably generated from a report that some schools want trans kids to able to change their pronouns without parents being informed. From this they've blown it up into operations when most schools can'r even afford crayons, let alone surgical equipment.

The cruelty goes on with Trumpy's support for Vivek Ramaswamy's disgusting attack ad against Amy Acton, using her estranged mother to exploit Acton's horrible experience of childhood abuse. Ramaswamy has claimed he just exposing his opponent's flaws. How is something vile that happened to her from ages 9 to 12 a flaw? If anything, it shows what a strong character she is. Such circumstances would have crushed most people, yet she has become a doctor and a candidate for governor of Ohio. And her mother calls her daughter whom she hasn't seen in 48 years and who was removed from her care, a liar. What has she lied about? Court records corroborate Acton's version of events that she was raped as a child and lived in a tent.

Plus what's all this with men's asses? Is it just Trump is obsessed with appearances? A good ass means you'll be a good senator? 

Hopefully, a blue wave will wash all this high-school cruelty away.

Broadway Review: Billy Crystal: 860; The Imaginary Invalid

The two most recent Broadway shows to open, Billy Crystal: 860 and a new adaptation of Moliere’s The Imaginary Invalid, have the same theme: laughter is the best medicine. But the dosages vary and the resultant benefits are not similar. Crystal’s solo show combines tragedy with humor for a pathos-and-chuckle-filled evening while the Moliere never finds its rhythm despite individual bright spots.

Billy Crystal in 860.
Credit: Avery Brunkus

The numbers in the title of Crystal’s autobiographical effort refer to the address of the Pacific Palisades home that he lost in the massive Los Angeles wildfire of 2025. In 90 intermissionless minutes, the 78-year-old comedian relates the story of the house and his career, taking up his story after the events of 700 Sundays, his previous Broadway show from 2004 chronicling his childhood and relationship with his father. We begin with the star reliving that fateful day when a few backyard embers and historically high winds led to an out-of-control inferno rapidly approaching and eventually consuming his home. The effective video design by Hana S. Kim and Kylee Loera displays news and I-phone footage as Crystal recreates driving away from the blaze in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Then, we travel back to 1978 when Crystal was starring on the TV series Soap and buying his first West Coast house which had its own fascinating show-biz history.

Off-B'way Review: Midnight; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Todrick Hall and Jeremy Beloate
in Midnight.
Credit: Valerie Terranova

You have to admire Todrick Hall’s ambition. The YouTube star and veteran of five Broadway shows and several reality TV programs has the rare distinction of directing, choreographing, writing the book, music, and lyrics, producing and playing the lead role in a new Off-Broadway musical Midnight. Just getting an original show with a cast of 20 up and running is a difficult feat in today’s challenging theatrical economy and Hall deserves full marks for that. However, the production itself could have benefitted for at least one more set of eyes and a red pencil. Clocking in at close to three hours, this musical fantasy on race relations and suppressed gay love is too long, monotonous and self-indulgent. There are impactful and well-performed individual moments, but they are drowned in a sea of excess.

Hall’s premise is intriguing and the opening number sets the stage for a promising evening. A huge clock is suspended above the stage (Morgan Large designed the imaginative set) as well as several mannequins sporting Beck Jones’ gorgeous and elaborate costumes. The cast consisting of an equal number of white and African-American performers enters in rehearsal clothes, the mannequins descend, and the actors sing of assuming identities as they don Civil War-era garb defining their roles along racial lines. 

The subsequent story follows a slave named Rail (Hall)—his monicker derives from his birth near train tracks—and his illicit same-sex affair with the white landowner and master Richard (The Voice finalist Jeremy Beloate). Their clandestine trysts occur at the titular hour, thus the ominous timepiece dominating the action. Hall’s direction moves the action along swiftly and engagingly (aided greatly by Jake DeGroot’s dynamic lighting) and many of Hall’s songs are soaring and effective, but the characters act as if it’s 2026 instead of 1862. Would black slaves really serve their white enslavers a dead mouse on top of the dessert? (The move was probably inspired by Octavia Spencer’s character’s hilarious act of gastronomic revenge against her white employer in The Help.)  Would a white Southern landowner really encourage black slaves and white workers to treat each other as equals while the Civil War raged? 

B'way Update: Jonathan Groff and Tom Hanks Return

Jonathan Groff

Tony winner Jonathan Groff and Oscar winner Tom Hanks will return to Broadway later this season, Groff in a new solo play The Amish Project and Hanks in a transfer of This World of Tomorrow, a play he co-wrote which previously played The Shed Off-Broadway.

Groff (Merrily We Roll Along, Just in Time) will take the stage alone in Jessica Dickey's The Amish Project at the Broadhurst Theater with performances beginning Feb. 10, 2027. Sarna Lapine (Sunday in the Park with George) directs. The play is inspired by a 2006 school shooting which occurred in a small Pennsylvania town near where Groff grew up.

The Amish Project debuted at the New York International Fringe Festival and was developed at the Cherry Lane Theatre before premiering Off-Broadway at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in 2009. It has since become Jessica Dickey’s most-produced play, with productions at the Guthrie Theater (Minneapolis), Milwaukee Rep, American Theater Company (Chicago) and City Theatre (Pittsburgh), among others at theaters around the world.

“20 years ago this month, an unimaginable tragedy happened in a one room Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Jessica Dickey wrote an astounding work of art in response," Groff said in a statement. "Sarna Lapine sent me The Amish Project last year and I was floored by the urgency and potent poetry of Jessica’s writing as she dives headfirst into the many aftershocks of this horrific event and explores the idea that sometimes the most radical human act is forgiveness. I am profoundly grateful to be bringing Jessica’s play to Broadway alongside Sarna and this incredible team.”

Kelli O'Hara and Tom Hanks in
This World of Tomorrow.
Credit: Marc J. Franklin

Tom Hanks will join Tony winner Kelli O'Hara in a Broadway transfer of This World of Tomorrow which he co-wrote with James Glossman, scheduled for fall 2027 at a Shubert theater TBA. This will be the first time Hanks has appeared on Broadway since Nora Ephron's Lucky Guy in 2014. The play previously played The Shed Off-Broadway in 2025. Based on a short story from Hanks' collection Uncommon Type, World of Tomorrow is a sci-fi tale about a scientist from the late 21st century who travel back in time to the the World's Fair of 1939 where he meets and falls in love with a woman named Carmen (O'Hara, reprising her Off-Broadway role). Tony winner Kenny Leon returns to direct.

Book Review: Theo of Golden

(Ordered from Amazon for about $10): The third book for my online book club. I knew I was in trouble in the first few pages when a young woman gives her life story to a complete stranger who has sent her a letter promising to gift her with a portrait. By the end of the book, I thought I was getting diabetes. The premise is straight out of a Hallmark card. A mysterious, wealthy old man (Theo of the title) shows up in a small Georgia town called Golden. He happens upon a coffee shop with portraits of the customers on the wall. He decides to buy the pictures one by one and present them to the subjects cause he's such a saintly fellow. Of course, each giftee has their own fascinating life story which they spill to Theo upon the bestowal. The nice people are so nice and the mean people are so mean, it made my teeth ache. There is a final twist which explains Theo's altruistic actions, but it's not believable.

Levi is an attorney and judge and this is his first novel. Good for him for getting it published and making it into a best-seller. But it's a predictable, easy, unchallenging read. A box of feel-good chocolates, nowhere near real life.  

I just read Tom Hanks is planning to star in the movie version. How appropriate, another Forrest Gump role.

B'way Review: Other Desert Cities

Allison Janney and Julia Louis-Dreyfus in
Other Desert Cities.
Credit: Emilio Madrid

When Jon Robin Baitz’s incisively-written Other Desert Cities opened at Lincoln Center’s Off-Broadway Mitzi Newhouse Theater in 2011 and then transferred to Broadway later the same year in Joe Mantello’s sensitive production, it was praised as an even-handed yet scathing examination of the state of our polarized nation. Each of the members of the politically and emotionally divided Wyeth family, a powerful clan with influential government, show business and literary connections, was seen as a fully-drawn, three-dimensional human being, not a representative of a particular point of view along the ideological spectrum.

The current Broadway revival at the Hudson is just as indicative of a fraught nation, even more so as the battle lines between left and right are more deeply and seemingly permanently drawn in Trump’s America. John Benjamin Hickey’s polished staging lands the laughs and heartbreaking moments solidly, but the acting choices made by the all-star cast have thrown the balance slightly off. 

Baitz’s story remains compelling. Over Christmas week 2004, the Wyeths reunite at the palatial Palm Springs home of parents Lyman and Polly (Scott Pask designed the gorgeous set.) Mom and Dad are a power couple in elite GOP circles. Lyman’s an ex-movie star and ambassador (possibly based on John Gavin) and Polly had a run as a Hollywood screenwriter of fluffy comedies with her liberal sister Silda, now a broke, recovering alcoholic living with her sister and brother-in-law. Daughter Brooke, a writer recently emerging from a devastating depression, and son Trip, a producer of a hit TV reality show, are visiting. The catalyst for the drama is Brooke’s about-to-be-published memoir in which she focuses on the family’s deepest wound. At the height of the Vietnam War, eldest son Henry was involved in a radical underground group which set off a bomb at a recruiting station, resulting in the death of a janitor and Henry’s subsequent suicide.

Lily Rabe, Joe Keery, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus
in Other Desert Cities.
Credit: Emilio Madrid