Off-B'way Review: Prince Faggot

John McCrea and Mihir Kumar in
Prince Faggot.
Credit: Marc J. Franklin

When Prince Harry of England married Meghan Markle, an African-American actress, in 2018, I was teaching high school. On the Monday morning after their royal wedding, I was sitting in the faculty lounge with a colleague, an older white woman. When I asked her what she thought of the monumental nuptials, she responded with anger and dismay over the presence of an African-American minister and a black gospel choir. I opined that it was Meghan’s wedding and she could have whatever or whoever she wanted there; the minister and the choir were reflecting her culture. My fellow educator just bristled with indignation that if it were Harry’s brother’s wedding, such a transgression would never be tolerated by his grandmother the Queen. I later realized that my co-worker was really fuming over the intrusion of black identity onto her lily-white ideal of the British royal family. 

N'yomi Allure Stewart and John McCrea
in Prince Faggot.
Credit: Marc J. Franklin

Jordan Tannahill goes several steps further with his imaginative and riveting fantasy Prince Faggot, now in a co-production from Playwrights Horizons and Soho Rep in PH’s intimate Peter Jay Sharp Theater. Starting off from the infamous photo of toddler Prince George striking what could be interpreted as a fey pose, Tannahill imagines a future where George has grown up to become the first (openly) gay heir to the throne. To add to the drama, his boyfriend and potential spouse Dev is a Brit of Indian descent with radical views on the monarchy. The provocative plot (and the even more provocative title) are used to explore what happens when racial, sexual, and gender barriers fall and queerness and otherness in general intrude onto traditionally majority-only spaces. My co-worker would have probably run screaming from the theater. The sex and language are explicit and realistic. Kudos to UnkleDave’s Fight-House, who usually coordinate onstage battles, but here are listed as intimacy coordinators and are responsible for a different kind of contact.

Tannahill adds another layer of meaning by having the cast of six—four gay men and two transgender women—directly address the audience as versions of themselves and explaining how the issues raised by the play have impacted them. In a program note, the author clarifies that two of monologues are based on the actors’ actual experience and the rest are fictional. 

Off-B'way Review: Trophy Boys

Louisa Jacobson, Emmanuelle Mattana,
Esco Jouléy, and Terry Hu in
Trophy Boys.
Credit: Valerie Terranova

In a program note for her play Trophy Boys (at MCC Theater), Emmanuelle Mattana observes, “Gender is a scam but it is also a gift. Drag is radical joy and liberation.” She is explaining her choice to cast the four male roles of an elite-school debate team with female, non-binary and non-cis gendered actors. This tactic of drawing the performative aspects of toxic masculinity into relief by opposite casting has been done before—in such productions as Operation Mincemeat, Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine, the long-running Off-Broadway musical The Club, and an all-female production of The Taming of the Shrew in Central Park. Thanks to Mattana’s sharp writing, Danya Taymor’s fierce direction and fearless performances, the choice comes off as more than a mere gimmick but an insightful commentary on sexual political and power plays.

Louisa Jacobson and Terry Hu in
Trophy Boys.
Credit: Valerie Terranova

The play’s premise is explosive enough. The championship debate team must argue in the affirmative for the statement “Feminism has failed women” and they are pitted against their sister school’s all-girl squad. At stake is a prestigious trophy and the boys’ hopes of getting into Ivy League colleges and positions of power and influence. Mattana gets in some witty satire of male privilege as the debaters prep by twisting logic and playing with semantics in order to strengthen their position. This despite their constant affirmation that they love women and are strong allies of progressive causes. Taymor ups the testosterone level by inserting desk-humping dance breaks, unleashing the kids’ ravenous libidos. 

The plot takes a dangerous twist when an anonymous rumor surfaces that one of the boys committed sexual assault. Mattana goes in for the metaphorical kill as the lads abandon all semblance of civility when their dominance is threatened. They turn on each other when it’s revealed each could be guilty of the anonymous accusation. This is a edgy political cartoon, a detonating comic sketch, staged by Taymor like a series of time  bombs, going off several times during the 75-minute running time.

Louisa Jacobson, Emmanuelle Mattana, 
Terry Hu and Esco Jouléy in
Trophy Boys.
Credit: Valerie Terranova

The able cast adds depth to the cartoonish quartet of adolescent narcissists. Playwright Mattana also plays Owen, the entitled chief debater. She endows him with a fierce intelligence, a brittle vulnerability, and an adept ability to manipulate words and the emotions of his teammates. Louisa Jacobson perfectly captures the alpha jock machismo of Jared, the diametric opposite of Marian Brook, the prim, reserved heroine she plays on HBO’s The Gilded Age. (Ironically, Jared is the one who constantly states he loves women even as he plans the downfall and humiliation of his feminine opponents including his girlfriend.) Terry Hu displays the sensitive exterior and the dark interior of David, the low man on the team’s totem pole, struggling to gain the respect of his fellows. Esco Jouléy robustly limns the braggadocio of sports-minded Scott who is concealing more than friendly feelings for Jared.

Matt Saunders’ classroom set captures the staid academic atmosphere and Cha See’s lighting aprropriately shifts the mood from raucous rock-infused anarchy (augmented by Fan Zhang’s high-decibel sound design) to ominous and frightening. This is a tight, short show with a powerful message on the still-pervasive problem of gender inequality.

June 24—July 27. MCC Theater Space/Susan and Ronald Frankel Theater, 511 W. 52nd St., NYC. Running time: 75 mins. with no intermission. mcctheater.org.

The 14th Annual David Desk Awards

Operation Mincemeat deserved better
in this season's award-giving, IMHO.
Credit: Julieta Cervantes

The Tonys, Drama Desks, NY Drama Critics Circle, Outer Critics, etc. are all long over. So it is time to deliver my own accolades with my choices for the best of the 2024-25 Broadway and Off-Broadway season. I was not as enamored with Maybe Happy Ending as all the major theater awards. Operation Mincemeat got my vote for Best Musical but Happy Ending won everything in spite of my opposition. I also felt Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends, Smash and We Had a World were unfairly overlooked for nominations.

Outstanding Play
The Antiquities, Jordan Harrison
Grangeville, Samuel D. Hunter
The Hills of California, Jez Butterworth
Liberation, Bess Wohl
Purpose, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Vladimir, Erika Sheffer
We Had a World, Joshua Harmon

Outstanding Musical

The Big Gay Jamboree

Death Becomes Her

Operation Mincemeat

Smash

Outstanding Revival of a Play

Eureka Day

A Streetcar Named Desire

Yellow Face

Outstanding Revival of a Musical

Cats: The Jellicle Ball

Gypsy

Sunset Blvd.

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Play

George Clooney, Good Night and Good Luck

Adam Driver, Hold On to Me Darling

Jon Michael Hill, Purpose

Louis McCartney, Stranger Things: The First Shadow

Paul Mescal, A Streetcar Named Desire

Paul Sparks, Grangeville

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Play

Laura Donnelly, The Hills of California

Francesca Faridany, Vladimir

Patsy Ferran, A Streetcar Named Desire

Lily Rabe, Ghosts

Jeanine Serralles, We Had a World

B'way Update: Joe Turner Returns

Taraji P. Henson and Cedric the Entertainer

August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone will return to Broadway next spring at a Shubert theater to be announced. Golden Globe winner and Tony, Oscar and Emmy nominee Taraji P. Henson (Netflix's Straw) and 6-time NAACP Image winner Cedric the Entertainer will star as Bertha and Seth Holly, the owners of a boarding-house in 1911 Pittsburgh. Bertha and Seth host numerous guests including the mysterious Herald Loomis who is searching for his wife from whom he was separated during slavery. Emmy and Golden Globe winner and Tony nominee Debbie Allen will direct. Henson was a producer of Jaja's African Hair Braiding and Joe Turner marks her Broadway acting debut. Cedric the Entertainer was last seen on Broadway in American Buffalo in 2008. Further casting will be announced at a later date.

Ed Hall and Bo Rucker in
Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988)
Credit: Joan Marcus

Joe Turner opened on Broadway in 1988 and ran for 108 performances. It was nominated for 5 Tony Awards (winning one for L. Scott Caldwell's featured performance as Bertha) and won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Lincoln Center Theater presented a revival in 2009 which ran for 69 performances and was nominated for 6 Tony Awards, winning for Roger Robinson's featured performance as Bynum and Brian MacDevitt's lighting. 

Off-B'way Reviews: Lowcountry; Duke & Roya

Babak Tafti and Jodi Balfour in
Lowcountry.
Credit: Ahron R. Foster

Two unconventional plays about odd romantic pairings recently opened Off-Broadway. Both attempt to tackle significant topics outside of the “boy-meets-girl” arena, and both come up short. Abby Rosebrock’s Lowcountry at Atlantic Theater Company takes the awkward-first-date premise into dangerous territory but stretches credulity too much for its themes to reach full impact. 

Both participants in the rendezvous are seriously damaged individuals. David (Babak Tafti, deftly conveying suppressed trauma) is a divorced father emerging into the dating world after wearing an ankle monitor for a sexual offense (the true nature of his crime is slowly revealed during the course of the date). By court order, he must attend a recovery program for sex addicts and report to a probation officer who has issues of his own (Keith Kupferer in an effective cameo). David’s date Tally (Jodi Balfour in a kinetic, jittery performance) is a hot mess returning to her hometown after stints in Los Angeles as an actress and gig worker. She’s still dealing with the death of her mother when she was a child as well as coping with her difficult father. 

Jodi Balfour and Babak Tafti in
Lowcountry.
Credit: Ahron R. Foster

Their encounter takes place in David’s cramped apartment in small-town South Carolina (Arnulfo Maldonado designed the realistic, squalid setting).  According to the terms of David’s parole, any encounters must be in public. The play opens as he is preparing a pasta dinner for Tally while lying about the location to his parole officer Paul in his regular phone check-in. The main focus of the play is David and Tally’s clumsy attempts to connect. Rosebrock uses their fumbling reaching out to provide social commentary on our fractured society. (Perhaps that could be the meaning of the title, indicating our polarized, degraded American culture as well as the coastal region of South Carolina.) David is foreign-born, adopted and made a citizen as a child. His country of origin is never revealed but the specter of ICE deportation hangs over him like a menacing cloud. Tally drinks and smokes weed to cope with her rage, presumably over her mother’s early demise which she claims was brought on by the mom’s dislike of then President Bill Clinton. 

Babak Tafti and Jodi Balfour in
Lowcountry.
Credit: Ahron R. Foster

Jo Bonney’s direction is well-paced and Tafti and Balfour deliver compelling portraits of two desperate losers oppressed by bad luck and bad choices. But Rosebrock’s central theme is not entirely clear. Is she saying our divisive culture has pushed David and Tally into an impossible corner with no escape but tragedy? Tally’s motives are not focused either, though they gradually become somewhat clearer. The play does culminate with a shocking act of violence which is not completely earned by the proceeding character development. In the script provided, Rosebrock reveals Lowcountry is part of a trilogy. Perhaps the other two plays would explain further. 

B'way/Off-B'way Update: Vineyard; Dates for Punch, Oedipus, Chess

Anne Washburn

Vineyard Theater has announced two productions for its upcoming 43rd season. A third winter production will be announced soon. First up this fall is The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire by Anne Washburn (Mr. Burns: A Post-Electronic Play) in a co-production with The Civilians and directed by Obie winner Steve Cosson. The story concerns a community living off the grid who must cope with the death of one of its members.

||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| by Eisa Davis (Warriors concept album) follows in a winter premiere. Tony and Drama Desk winner Pam McKinnon (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) directs. Four gifted teenagers collaborate and collide one pivotal summer at a prestigious girls’ music program in Berkeley. As their connections intensify, the world outside thrums with a steady

Eisa Davis

undercurrent of disaster and emergency – and they must find new ways to improvise on stage and off.

In other news, three previously announced Broadway shows have confirmed dates and theaters.

Punch at Manhattan Theater Club's Samuel J. Friedman Theater will begin previews Sept. 9 ahead of a Sept. 29 opening.

The revival of Chess will begin previews at the Imperial Theater (where the original Broadway production ran in 1988) on Oct. 15 in advance of a Nov. 16 opening.

Robert Icke's adaptation of Oedipus starts previews at Studio 54 Oct. 30 and opens on Nov. 13.

B'way/Off-B'way Update: St. Ann's; Endgame; Jeffrey Ross; Etc.

Julia McDermott in Weather Girl.
Credit: Mihaela Bodlovic

St. Ann's Warehouse has announced its 2025-26 season which will include a rare Eugene O'Neill revival, a performance by cabaret star Justin Vivian Bond, and the London hit Weather Girl. The season opens with Brian Watkins' Weather Girl (Sept. 16--Oct. 12), a one-character play about the climate change crisis seen through the eyes of Stacy, an underpaid and oversexed California TV forecaster. Julia McDermott repeats her Edinburgh and London performance.

Justin Vivian Bond will play folk legend Marianne Faithful in Flaming September (Sept 24-28), directed by Daniel Fish (Oklahoma!). 

Michelle Williams, Mike Faist, Justin Vivian Bond

Oscar and Tony nominee and Emmy winner Michelle Williams (Blackbird, Fosse/Verdon) and Tony nominee and Emmy winner Mike Faist (Dear Evan Hansen) will headline a revival of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie directed by Tony winner Thomas Kail (Hamilton) (Nov. 25--Feb. 1). O'Neill's 1922 Pulitzer Prize winning drama about a reformed prostitute seeking redemption was last seen on Broadway in 1993 with Natasha Richardson and Liam Neeson. (Note: this Michelle Williams should not be confused with the pop singer from Destiny's Child of the same name who is currently appearing in Death Becomes Her. I thought Equity had a rule against that.)

Aaron Monaghan and Marie Mullen in
Druid's Endgame.
Credit: Ros Kavagh

In other news: Ireland's Druid Theater Company will present its production of Samuel Beckett's Endgame at the Irish Arts Center (Oct. 22-Nov. 23) Director Garry Hynes and actress Marie Mullen who won Tony Awards for The Beauty Queen of Leenane stage and are featured in this nihilistic play taking place after a nuclear holocaust. Bosco Hogan, Aaron Monaghan (The Banshees of Inisherin), and Rory Nolan also star. Endgame was last seen in NYC at the Irish Repertory Theater in 2023....

Stand-up comic Jeffrey Ross will bring his solo show Take a Banana for the Road to Broadway at the Nederlander Theater, starting previews Aug. 5 and opening Aug. 18 for a limited run until Sept. 29....

Jinx Monsoon will take over the lead in Oh, Mary!

Oh Mary! has benefitted from its Tony wins for Best Actor and Director. Cole Escola's wild rewrite of history has been extended to Jan. 2026. Escola gave his final performance in the title role June 21 and Titus Burgess will take over starting June 23 until Aug. 2. On Aug. 4, RuPaul's Drag Race winner Jinx Monsoon will go straight from Pirates! The Penzance Musical to Mary! through Sept. 27.

Book Review: Old Babes in the Wood

(Borrowed from Jackson Heights Library): Margaret Atwood's collection of stories follow new patterns. The contents consist of a group of tales about an elderly couple Tig and Nell at the beginning and at the end (the latter stories follow Nell's journey through widowhood, all very touching). In between are a series of unrelated stories with an undertone of fantasy and fairy tales (hence the title, I guess). My Evil Mother reminded me of a more mature version of the 1960s sitcom Bewitched with a woman recounting growing up with an eccentric mother who claimed to be a sorceress. Freeforall is a sort of gender-reversed Handmaid's Tale with a matriarchy victimizing fertile young boys. In The Dead Interview, Atwood talks with the ghost of George Orwell during a seance. A snail is reincarnated in the body of a woman in Metempsychosis or The Journey of the Soul. I've read a lot of Atwood's books and this one was fun and moving. 

Off-B'way Reviews: Prosperous Fools; The Imaginary Invalid

Jennifer Regan, Kaliswa Brewster, and
Taylor Mac in Prosperous Fools.
Credit: Travis Emery Hackett

Moliere is having a modern moment. Two adaptations of the 17th century French playwright’s comedies are now on display Off-Broadway. Both employ contemporary tropes to satirize issues afflicting 21st-century society with varying degrees of success. Multi-hyphenate artist Taylor Mac is starring in his own meta-madcap meditation on arts funding, Prosperous Fools, “loosely inspired” by Moliere’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (The Would-Be Gentleman) at Theater for a New Audience. While Jeffrey Hatcher has taken a more conventional route with a straightforward adaptation of The Imaginary Invalid, skewering modern medical practices at New World Stages in a production from Red Bull Theater. Both have plenty of laughs and ideas, but both have their drawbacks, delivering us two mixed bags.

Sierra Boggess and Aerina Park Deboer
in Prosperous Fools.
Credit: Travis Emery Hackett

Mac’s Fools is a cloud-cuckoo concoction veering wildly between broad farce and intelligent cultural commentary. It has a lot to say about the state of philanthropy and the arts in general and at times the play (if you can call it that) says it with intelligence and style. But too often the playwright-star has ignored Polonius’s dictum that brevity is the soul of wit and he and his director Darko Tresnjak allow their gags and monologues to go on too long. 

The premise takes off from Moliere considerably (Charles Ludlum wrote and starred in a more faithful version in his Le Bourgeois Avant-Garde in 1983.) The original focuses on the middle-class Monsieur Jourdain who aspires to the aristocracy by taking lessons in the arts but only succeeds in making an ass of himself. In Mac’s free adaptation, the focus shifts to the Artist (played by Mac in a fine comic turn) who worries that he is selling out by allowing his world-premiere ballet on the myth of Prometheus to be financed by a contemptible boor (the bourgeois figure). This character, combing the worst self-aggrandizing traits of Elon Musk and Donald Trump, is identified in the program as $#@%$ and his name is pronounced as the sound of a game-show buzzer when a contestant delivers the wrong answer. 

Off-B'way Update: Tartuffe, Spelling Bee

Brian Bedford and Henry Goodman in
Tartuffe (2003) from
Roundabout Theater Company.
Credit: Joan Marcus

Moliere is having a modern moment. In addition to contemporary updates of The Imaginary Invalid and The Would-Be Gentleman (new title: Prosperous Fools) currently presented by Red Bull Theater and Theater for a New Audience respectively, New York Theater Workshop will present a new adaptation of the French master's Tartuffe by NYTW Usual Suspect Lucas Hnath (A Doll's House: Part 2, Red Speedo) this late fall. The cast, which is full of Tony, Emmy, Obie and Drag Race winners and nominees, will include Tony Award winner Matthew Broderick (Plaza Suite, How to Succeed) as Tartuffe, Emmy Award winner David Cross (“Arrested Development”) as Orgon, Obie Award winner Emily Davis (Is This A Room) as Mariane, “RuPaul’s Drag Race” winner Bianca del Rio as Mme Pernelle, Tony Award nominee Amber Gray (Hadestown) as Elmire, Obie Award winner Ryan Haddad (Dark Disabled Stories) as Damis, Tony Award winner Francis Jue (Yellow Face) as Cleante, Tony Award winner Lisa Kron (Fun Home) as Dorine, and Emmy Award nominee Ike Ufomadu (“Ziwe”) as Valére.

A satire on pious hypocrites, Tartuffe has been seen on Broadway five times, most recently in 2003 from Roundabout Theater Company. Since it was written in 1664, the play has been in the repertory of France's Comedie-Francais.

Original cast of The 25th Annual Putnam
County Spelling Bee.
Credit: Joan Marcus

Also Off-Broadway this fall, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee will return for its 20th anniversary in a new production at New World Stages. Performances begin Nov. 7 before a Nov. 17 opening. Danny Mefford directs. The musical with a score by William Finn (Falsettos) opened Off-Broadway in 2005 at Second Stage and moved to Broadway's Circle In the Square, winning two Tony Awards for Rachel Sheinkin's book and Dan Fogler as Best Featured Actor in a Musical.

Broadway Review: Call Me Izzy

Jean Smart in Call Me Izzy.
Credit: Marc J. Franklin

Even though there is much that is familiar in Call Me Izzy, Jamie Wax’s new solo play at Studio 54, its star Jean Smart gives it a unique individual life. The storyline is nothing new and reeks of Lifetime TV movie tropes (Smart has lent her detailed and dazzling talent to a few of those). A repressed housewife in a Louisiana trailer park finds solace from her dead-end life in writing. Once her poems have been published and embarrassed her brutal spouse, he beats her and forbids her from committing pen to paper. So she is reduced to hiding in the bathroom in the middle of the night and scribbling her works onto toilet paper with an eyebrow pencil. We first meet Izzy as she rhapsodizes on the shades of blue provided by her toilet bowl cleanser and she relates her tale of blighted artistic expression. She begins with an allusion to Melville’s famous start for Moby-Dick, asking the audience to call her Izzy rather than Isabel. Eager school girl is succeeded by teenage bride and artistic promise is replaced with marital disappointment.

Jean Smart in Call Me Izzy.
Credit: Marc J. Franklin

Of course, there are the requisite eccentric neighbor and sympathetic teachers to support Izzy’s dream of becoming an author as well as a philanthropic couple from New York who swoop in to the rescue. The intervention of the latter characters is a tad credulity-stretching. Izzy’s husband is a stereotypical thuggish Neanderthal, but Wax does provide some unexpected plot twists and characterizations. The playwright also supplies reasonably complex and richly-described poems for Izzy to write so it’s somewhat believable she has a gift and would be recognized by her instructors.

Jean Smart in Call Me Izzy.
Credit: Emilio Madrid

Fortunately, Smart endows Izzy with a galaxy of actions and objectives. What could have been a routine feel-good story of cliches is lent a degree of depth thanks to the actress’ investment in creating a full physical and emotional life as she has with her TV characters on Designing Women and Hacks. Watch as she recreates a day at the beach and transforms her observations of a group of young girls next to a pair of elderly gentlemen into a beautiful ode to time and memory. She seems to inhabit the people Izzy is writing about, evoking youthful joy and middle-aged melancholy. She’s also screamingly funny as Izzy sarcastically recounts her drab routine of housework and the contents of the bathroom which has become her sanctuary. She also gives vibrant life to Ferd, Izzy’s volcano of a husband, her kooky neighbor, and the surprisingly complex couple of literary patrons.

Sarna Lapine’s direction flows seamlessly and is varied enough to keep this one-woman show from becoming monotonous. Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’ suggestive sets and Donald Holder’s soft, ephemeral lighting evoke the confided environment of Izzy’s reality and the expansive spaces of her imagination. 

June 12—Aug. 17. Studio 54, 254 W. 54th St., NYC. Running time: 85 mins. with no intermission. callmeizzyplay.com.

Off-B'way Update: CSC Season

Patti LuPone and Kurt
Petersen in The Baker's Wife
(1976)

Classic Stage Company has announced its 2025-26 season which will include two rare productions and a new play. The season opens in October 2025 with the musical The Baker’s Wife, featuring a book by Tony Award winner Joseph Stein (Fiddler on the Roof), music & lyrics by Oscar, Grammy, and Tony Award winner Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, The Queen of Versailles), based on the 1938 film La Femme du Boulanger by Marcel Pagnol and Jean Gionoand, and direction by Gordon Greenberg (The Heart of Rock and Roll). 

The cult-status tuner was the last show presented by legendary producer David Merrick. It played out-of-town in Los Angeles and Washington, DC in 1976. Topol and Carol Demas started the tour as the leads and were eventually replaced by Paul Sorvino and a pre-Evita Patti LuPone. But the show closed out of town. LuPone's rendition of the song "Meadowlark" became a favorite of musical theater fans and a standard choice for auditions. A 1989 London production had a brief run, and was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Musical.

In February 2026, CSC will present the World Premiere of Marcel on the Train, co-written by Tony Award nominee Ethan Slater (Spongebob Squarepants, Wicked) & Marshall Pailet (Who’s Your Baghdaddy, Private Jones), directed by Pailet, and starring Slater as legendary mime artist “Marcel Marceau.” The play chronicles Marceau's days as a young man in Nazi-occupied France, guiding Jewish children to safety.

Marcel Marceau

CSC’s season will conclude in May 2026 with the New York Premiere of master American dramatist Thornton Wilder’s final play, The Emporium, adapted and completed by Kirk Lynn (Lipstick Traces) and directed by Rob Melrose (Born with Teeth).

 

“Launched in 1947 amid a storm of rising acclaim and honorable artistic duties and distractions here and abroad, Thornton Wilder (who appeared on the cover of Time in January 1953) struggled unsuccessfully for a decade to complete a major new drama. Thanks to enticing and regular press coverage, its title was known far and wide: The Emporium,” said Tappan Wilder, nephew to Thornton Wilder.

 

“The Wilder family can’t be too grateful to Kirk Lynn for exploring the known published and little-known vast unpublished archival record of this work, grounded in Wilder’s passionate post-WWII encounter with existentialism, and then agreeing to complete a play exploring the loneliness of the American experience in all its humor, sadness, hope--and freedom. With a deep bow of thanks to Classic Stage Company, it is no small benefit of this unusual artistic collaboration across the decades that it celebrates the life, times and creativity of two distinguished artists, then and now.” 

Tony Thoughts

Cynthia Erivo closes the Tonys.
Producers of Maybe Happy Ending in the
background.

This year's Tonys were a ratings high with a 38 percent increase in viewership from last year. That's a great sign. When I was working at Back Stage from the 1990s into the early 2010s, the ratings would drop every year. Cynthia Erivo did a great job as hostess, delivering a socko opening and closing specialty number. Including the pre-show on Pluto TV, the ceremony clocked in at just under four and a half hours, and they STILL didn't include the recipients of the Tony Honors (Great Performances, the New York Library for the Performing Arts, New 42 and Michael P. Price, executive director of Goodspeed Musicals) or two special Tonys (the band for Buena Vista Social Club and the special effects team for Stranger Things: The First Shadow). They could have at least mentioned them, it would only taken a few seconds. Also, apart from Edwin Robinson of Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn, the winner of the Theater Educator Tony, they didn't mention the winners from the Pluto TV segment for those who couldn't find it on their Smart TVs.  

I did pretty well with my predictions, getting 19 out of 26 right. The biggest surprise was Nicole Scherzinger winning for Best Musical Actress over Audra McDonald for Gypsy. Though I voted for Scherzinger, I expected McDonald to win her record-breaking 7th Tony because she was served a side of shade by Patti LuPone in a New Yorker interview which set the Internet afire. (LuPone said McDonald was "not a friend" and remained silent when asked about her performance as Mama Rose. LuPone has since apologized profusely to McDonald and Kecia Lewis who accused LuPone of "microaggressions" when the former complained Lewis' show Hell's Kitchen was too loud.) Scherzinger is now next in line to play Rose in about ten years, maybe after Lady Gaga.

Some All That Chat posters were upset that Scherzinger won because she is allegedly a Trump supporter. This accusation surfaced when the former Pussycat Doll liked a picture of Russell Brand wearing a red hat resembling Trump's MAGA logo. Even if she did vote for Trump and supports him, that has nothing to do with her outstanding performance as Norma Desmond. Those who would deny her recognition because of her political beliefs are no better than Trumpers who would punish anti-Trumpers for their views.

The musical numbers were mostly entertaining but the sound was awful, garbling the lyrics. Death Becomes Her and Just in Time probably came off the best, while the numbers from Operation Mincemeat and Dead Outlaw didn't work well out of context. (I still don't understand why Just in Time and Real Women Have Curves were given numbers since neither was nominated for Best Musical.) The first casualty of the Tony aftermath has announced its imminent closing. Smash which only received one nomination for Brooks Ashmankas' featured performance (he won a Drama Desk in a three-way tie with Tony and OCC winner Jak Malone of Mincemeat and Michael Urie for Once Upon a Mattress), will close on June 22. 

Book Review: America Fantastica

(Bought with the remains of a gift card at Barnes and Noble): I needed a thick novel to read on my cruise to Bermuda and this dark satire from Tim O'Brien caught my eye. I have never read him before, but I'd heard a lot about The Things They Carried, his Vietnam novel which was taught at the high school where I worked a few years ago. This sharp-edged comedy has a farcical sheen, sort of in the Myra Breckenridge and Dr. Strangelove mode--cataloging the ills of contemporary America through a skewed lens. Lies and deceit permeate every transaction between the many nefarious characters, none of whom of are strictly sympathetic. I really disliked the protagonist, Boyd Halveston, compulsive liar, former fake-news journalist, and JC Penny manager who impulsively robs a bank and kidnaps motor-mouthed teller Angie Bing for a cross-country spree. Double-crosses multiply as Boyd's crazed felony ripples across the lives of his ex-wife Evelyn, her new husband, her billionaire father and his male lover, Angie's murderous ex, the corrupt couple running the bank Boyd stole from, the crooked cop the bank president's wife is having an affair with, etc., etc. Everyone is a liar. O'Brien indicts the national craze for falsehood started by you know who (POTUS, a minor character here but a distinct influence.) Funny and dark, but too long at 449 pages. I felt that the story ended at about page 300 and the rest was tying up loose ends. I finally wound up actually feeling sorry for Boyd at the end.

Off-B'way Reviews: Lunar Eclipse; Bus Stop

Lisa Emery and Reed Birney in
Lunar Eclipse.
Credit: Joan Marcus

Donald Margulies’ tender and moving new play Lunar Eclipse from Second Stage at the Signature Theater Center, is a simple, direct depiction of a long marriage, the elusiveness of memory, and the endurance of love. George and Em, an elderly couple, are sitting up in a field in the middle of the night on their farm in Western Kentucky, to obverse the titular astronomical event. As the seven stages of the eclipse progress, we gradually learn the intricacies, compromises, joys and pitfalls of their decades-long union. George is going through a deep depression after the loss of his beloved dog (the last in a long line of cherished canines) and his growing frustration with the futility of life in general. “We’re taught that good triumphs over evil. Right? And love and generosity triumph over hate and greed. But, what if it turns out we’re wrong. The bad guys won the battle?,” he moans, without specifically naming any political figures or movements. Even Em’s cheerfulness drives him to distraction. 

Em attempts to lighten the mood, but, after a couple of shots of bourbon, she lets her smiley-face mask slip and reveals a long-term sadness, largely over the death of their adopted son Tim from a drug overdose. (We eventually learn Tim’s birth mother was an addict.) Margulies subtly reveals the couple’s inner conflicts through realistic details such as the fate of a telescope and attempts to bring failing crops to fruition.

At times, his language is bit too writerly and on-the-nose as when Em compares her melancholy to an eclipse or when George contrasts his blighted efforts at connecting with Tim with raising a non-productive batch of sugar beets. But this is a minor flaw in an otherwise endearing and heartbreaking play with a physically beautiful production under Kate Whoriskey’s sensitive, nearly invisible direction and a pair of veterans actors bringing two everyday people to vibrant life. 

2025 Tony Predictions

The Tony Awards are this Sunday, June 8 on CBS with a pre-show on Pluto. I have cast my Tony ballot and made my predictions. Maybe Happy Ending will probably be the big winner as the robot romance musical has dominating the Drama Desks, Outer Critics and New York Drama Critics Circle Awards. Here are my predictions and preferences:

Best Musical:
Prediction: Maybe Happy Ending
Preference: Operation Mincemeat

I preferred the British satiric take on a WWII secret operation to the sentimental South Korean-set robt romance, but Happy Ending has dominated awards season and Tony voters will go along.

Best Play:

Prediction and Preference: Purpose by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

I'm going out on a bit of a limb here, but I think Purpose will defeat the nearest competitor Oh, Mary! which is a riot, but Best Play seldom goes to an out-and-out satiric comedy.

Best Musical Revival:

Prediction and Preference: Gypsy

The avant-garde Sunset Blvd. has divided audiences and critics, but all have agreed on this new, fresh take on Gypsy after countless retreads of Jerome Robbin's original staging and choreography.

Best Play Revival:

Predictions and Preference: Yellow Face

It's a toss-up between Eureka Day and Yellow Face. Both shows send political anti-Trump messages, but Yellow Face's recent broadcast on PBS may push it to the top of voters' minds and over the top.

Actor (Play):

Prediction: Cole Escola, Oh, Mary!

Preference: Louis McCartney, Stranger Things: The First Shadow

Escola is brilliantly funny as an alcoholic, narcissistic, nightmare version of Mary Todd Lincoln but I was stunned by McCartney's visceral, intense performance as Henry Creel, battling with demons from the Upside Down. (BTW, I went back a second time to Stranger Things and they added a preview of Season 5 of the TV series after the curtain call which drove the audience wild.)

Actress (Play):

Prediction and Preference: Sarah Snook, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Give an actress a solo show and she wins a Tony. Previous solo winners include Jodie Comer, Julie Harris, Lily Tomlin, Deirdre O'Connell. (Another BTW, I STILL don't understand why Snook was placed in the Leading Performance category by the Drama Desks instead of their Solo Performance slot, which the Outer Critics did. The Tonys have no Solo performance category.)

Actor (Musical):

Prediction: Darren Criss, Maybe Happy Ending

Preference: Jonathan Groff, Just in Time

Criss will probably win as part of the Happy Ending tidal wave. But Groff really worked his ass off as Bobby Darren in Just in Time--singing, dancing, acting almost constantly onstage throughout the show.

Actress (Musical):

Prediction: Audra McDonald, Gypsy

Preference: Nicole Scherzinger, Sunset Blvd.

I have to admit, McDonald does deserve a seventh Tony for his ferocious Mama Rose, but I voted for Scherzinger's equally tiger-like Norma Desmond.