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Laurie Metcalf and Micah Stock in Little Bear Ridge Road at Steppenwolf. Credit: Michael Brosilaw |
Tuesday, July 8, 2025
B'way Update: Rudin's Return Official
Monday, July 7, 2025
Off-B'way Review: Prince Faggot
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John McCrea and Mihir Kumar in Prince Faggot. Credit: Marc J. Franklin |
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N'yomi Allure Stewart and John McCrea in Prince Faggot. Credit: Marc J. Franklin |
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.
Wednesday, July 2, 2025
Off-B'way Review: Trophy Boys
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Louisa Jacobson, Emmanuelle Mattana, Esco Jouléy, and Terry Hu in Trophy Boys. Credit: Valerie Terranova |
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Louisa Jacobson and Terry Hu in Trophy Boys. Credit: Valerie Terranova |
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.
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Louisa Jacobson, Emmanuelle Mattana, Terry Hu and Esco Jouléy in Trophy Boys. Credit: Valerie Terranova |
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.
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
The 14th Annual David Desk Awards
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Operation Mincemeat deserved better in this season's award-giving, IMHO. Credit: Julieta Cervantes |
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
Monday, June 30, 2025
B'way Update: Joe Turner Returns
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Taraji P. Henson and Cedric the Entertainer |
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Ed Hall and Bo Rucker in Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988) Credit: Joan Marcus |
Friday, June 27, 2025
Off-B'way Reviews: Lowcountry; Duke & Roya
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Babak Tafti and Jodi Balfour in Lowcountry. Credit: Ahron R. Foster |
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.
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Jodi Balfour and Babak Tafti in Lowcountry. Credit: Ahron R. Foster |
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Babak Tafti and Jodi Balfour in Lowcountry. Credit: Ahron R. Foster |
Thursday, June 26, 2025
B'way/Off-B'way Update: Vineyard; Dates for Punch, Oedipus, Chess
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Anne Washburn |
||: 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
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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.
Sunday, June 22, 2025
B'way/Off-B'way Update: St. Ann's; Endgame; Jeffrey Ross; Etc.
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Julia McDermott in Weather Girl. Credit: Mihaela Bodlovic |
Justin Vivian Bond will play folk legend Marianne Faithful in Flaming September (Sept 24-28), directed by Daniel Fish (Oklahoma!).
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Michelle Williams, Mike Faist, Justin Vivian Bond |
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Aaron Monaghan and Marie Mullen in Druid's Endgame. Credit: Ros Kavagh |
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....
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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.
Friday, June 20, 2025
Book Review: Old Babes in the Wood
Thursday, June 19, 2025
Off-B'way Reviews: Prosperous Fools; The Imaginary Invalid
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Jennifer Regan, Kaliswa Brewster, and Taylor Mac in Prosperous Fools. Credit: Travis Emery Hackett |
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Sierra Boggess and Aerina Park Deboer in Prosperous Fools. Credit: Travis Emery Hackett |
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.
Monday, June 16, 2025
Off-B'way Update: Tartuffe, Spelling Bee
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Brian Bedford and Henry Goodman in Tartuffe (2003) from Roundabout Theater Company. Credit: Joan Marcus |
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.
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Original cast of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Credit: Joan Marcus |
Thursday, June 12, 2025
Broadway Review: Call Me Izzy
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Jean Smart in Call Me Izzy. Credit: Marc J. Franklin |
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Jean Smart in Call Me Izzy. Credit: Marc J. Franklin |
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Jean Smart in Call Me Izzy. Credit: Emilio Madrid |
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
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Patti LuPone and Kurt Petersen in The Baker's Wife (1976) |
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.
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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.”
Tuesday, June 10, 2025
Tony Thoughts
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Cynthia Erivo closes the Tonys. Producers of Maybe Happy Ending in the background. |
Book Review: America Fantastica
Sunday, June 8, 2025
Off-B'way Reviews: Lunar Eclipse; Bus Stop
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Lisa Emery and Reed Birney in Lunar Eclipse. Credit: Joan Marcus |
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.