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

B'way/Off-B'way Update: Warriors Cast and Tilda Swinton

Amber Gray, Jasmine Cephas Jones and
Casey Likes will star in Warriors.

Warriors, the new musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis based on the 1979 cult film has announced its main cast and dates. Previews begin on March 9 at the Lunt-Fontanne prior to an April 8 opening. In this adaptation, the film's all-male Warriors street gang will be all-female. The cast will include Jaci Calderon, Aneesa Folds, Amber Gray (The Rocky Horror Show, Hadestown), Julia Harriman, Gizel Jiminez, Jasmine Cephas Jones (Hamilton), Kenita R. Miller (for colored girls), Sasha Allen (Hair), Casey Likes (Back to the Future, Heathers) and Donald Webber, Jr. many are repeating their roles from the concept album.

In Off-Broadway news, Oscar winner Tilda Swinton will make her NYC stage debut in Man to Man at the Lucille Lortel with previews beginning Feb. 21 and opening Feb. 28. Swinton is currently starring in Man to Man at London's Royal Court Theater in a sold-out run. She originated the role of Ella/Max, a woman who dons her late husband's trousers in 1930s Germany, in the show's UK premiere in 1987. Man to Man will play Scotland and Germany at the Berliner Ensemble before opening in NYC.

Tilda Swinton in Man to Man in London
Credit: Rudiger Glatz

B'way Update: Rhino, Three Days

Tatiana Maslany and John Turturro in
Rhinoceros at ART.
Credit: Hawver and Hall

The rumors were true. As reported in our last Broadway update, Diane Paulus' revival of Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros will be coming to the Main Stem. There were rumors that the production, previously seen at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., would be replacing Roundabout Theater Company's revival of The Full Monty on its spring schedule. Roundabout has confirmed that Rhinoceros will stampede into the Todd Haimes Theater for preview performances on April 7 in advance of an April 25 opening. (The Full Monty will be rescheduled.) John Turturro and Tatiana Maslany will repeat their ART performances. Tony winner Tony Shalhoub will take over the role of Jean, played by Paul Giamatti in Cambridge. Jean is the bravura role calling for the actor to transform into the titular horned behemoth for which Zero Mostel won a Tony in the 1960 Broadway production. Ionesco's political allegory concerns a society where conformism demands everyone change into rhinos.

In other Broadway news, the revival of Richard Greenberg's Three Days of Rain has announced dates and a theater. Previews will begin Jan. 20, 2027 at the Longacre Theater with an opening set for March 1 for a limited 16-week run. Tony winner Anna D. Shapiro directs a three person cast consisting of Francois Arnaud (Heated Rivalry), David Corenswet (Superman) and Yvonne Strahovski (The Handmaid's Tale).

Off-B'way Review: Good Time Charlie; Fish; Anon

Ryan Haddad and Jonathan Raviv in
Good Time Charlie.
Credit: Joan Marcus

“There is no plot, but there is a narrative,” exclaims Ryan J. Haddad in his autobiographical play Good Time Charlie, at the Public Theater. Despite the lack of a cohesive storyline, this is a heartwarming, tender love letter to a cherished relative and a celebration of theatre fandom and participation. Haddad is playing a version of himself, and when speaking this line about the plotnessess of his work, he is explaining to the character enacting the title figure, his beloved uncle Charlie, that they are not in a conventional “well-made” play. Instead they are in a tender evocation of Ryan’s childhood, his relationship with Charlie, their mutual love of theater and their contrasting experiences as gay men of different generations. Several playwrights have offered similar strolls down memory lane, most recently Joshua Harmon with We Had a World in which Broadway-loving, gay narrator-protagonist similarly declared “There is no straight line in this play.” Like Harmon’s evocation of his past, Charlie is a combination love letter and excorism of family secrets and buried resentments told in meta-theatrical terms, often directly to the audience.

Haddad has previously explored his background and development as a gay, handicapped Lebanese-American theater artist in solo or semi-solo shows such as Hold Me in the Water and Dark Disabled Stories. Here he expands his canvas to include his whole family, focusing on his uncle (actually a cousin) who introduced him to theater and encouraged him to fully explore his sexual identity. Haddad and Jonathan Raviv as Charlie have a believable bond as the relatives seeking strength and comfort from each other and sharing a joy of the stage.

Ryan Haddad, Tim Bagley, Beth Malone,
Jonathan Raviv, and Michael Cristofer in
Good Time Charlie.
Credit: Joan Marcus

We also meet Charlie’s empathic partner Lou (warm and loving Tim Bagley from Will and Grace), their longtime friend Sheldon (acerbic and tender Michael Cristofer) who runs a revival cinema, Ryan’s supportive lesbian aunt Janice (sturdy Beth Malone), and the parents of both Ryan and Charlie who deal with their offspring’s coming out in vastly different ways. Nael Nacer and Artemis Pebdani double as both sets of elders, differentiating between the two with subtle variations and with the aide of Robert Pickens’ hair and wig design.

Book Review: Liberation Day

(Borrowed from the Jackson Heights library): After not enjoying George Saunders' previous collection, Civilwarland in Bad Decline, I decided to give him another chance. After all, reviewers were praising him to the skies and calling him the best short-story wrier alive today. My local library had Liberation Day and it was only a little over 200 pages, so I took it out. My main objection to Civilwarland was all the stories followed the same pattern: dystopian future, usually in a nightmare version of a theme park, some poor schmuck is oppressed, winds up dead or in jail. Not all the stories in Liberation Day were based on the same template--some took inventive departures--but a few were in the same old Saunders rut.

The title story opens the collection and though it was yet another nightmare-future story, it was ingeniously different. In this fantasy, the poor snooks get their memories wiped and are imprisoned as vocal performers recreating historical events by means of computers flooding their brains with information so they become the participants. Ironically, the mind-slaves are reenacting Custer's Last Stand as a group of protesters invade the performance and violence ensues. The historic details are fascinating and offer parallels with the sci-fi elements.

Ghoul and Elliott Spencer are more schleimel-in-nighmare-world stories. The former is set in an abandoned amusement park (again???) and the latter features memory-wiped poor people (again!!!) being used as protestors. Well written, but the same old thing.

The Mom of Bold Action, Mother's Day and A Thing at Work at least offer totally new story arcs. I liked Mom best--well-constructed and full of believable, flawed characters. A children's author finds herself full of unreasoning rage when her son is pushed in the street by a derelict. Her reactions take her and the reader to uncomfortable places. Sparrow is the biggest surprise of all since it has a happy ending and no one winds up dead or in prison. Love Letter and My House are only a few pages each, but are probably the most powerful works in the collection.

I will probably read more of Saunders' work. He is a skilled storyteller and his tales are compelling, even if they're repetitive and the themes are almost always the same.

Book Review: The Rent Collector

(Bought on Amazon for $10): The second book for my Zoom book group. A moving, but weepy melodrama which pushes all the right emotional buttons a little too neatly. The setting is a mammoth garbage dump in Phnom Phen, Cambodia where the poverty-stricken characters live, ferreting through refuse to eke out a meager existence. Sang Ly discovers her miserly, nasty rent collector is a former teacher and begs her for reading lessons. Of course an unlikely friendship develops and the title character's mysterious past is finally revealed towards the end as the Hallmark TV movie music plays in the background.

The author explains in an afterword the novel was inspired by the real people his son encountered when making a documentary in Cambodia. I think the documentary would have been more realistic and interesting than the novel. 

Off-B'way Reviews: Slam Frank; creation stories and all the important importants; How Shakespeare Saved My Life

Rocky Paterra, Jaz Zepatos, Olivia Bernabe,
Alex Lewis, and Austen Horne in
Slam Frank.
Credit: Shawn Salley Photography

Are there certain topics which should be strictly off-limits when it comes to parody and satire? That’s the difficult question that the explosive new musical Slam Frank, at the Orpheum after a run last season at Asylum NYC, is not afraid to tackle. This bizarre, uproariously funny and sharp-edged cartoon of a show was inspired by a 2022 Twitter debate which started with the horrifying premise, “Did Anne Frank have white privilege?” The initial comments were widely condemned by Jewish groups. They also served as inspiration for Joel Sinensky (book) and Andrew Fox (music and lyrics) to use the teen Jewish diarist’s tragic story of hiding from the Nazis with her family in an Amsterdam attic as a springboard for a merciless attack on a myriad of political stances, both right and left. The authors skewer everything from extreme woke attitudes to unfettered capitalism to a host of musicals such as Hamilton, Rent, In the Heights, and The Producers. Sinensky’s snarky, smart book and Fox’s intricate and hilarious songs hit their targets with stunningly witty accuracy and take us to dangerous comic territory. No spoilers, but the final 20 minutes are satiric dynamite and will probably be more controversial than any piece of theater in the last 28 years (since Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi which imagined a gay Jesus.)

Sinensky imagines Frank’s story as a play-within-a-play presented by a pretentiously

Olivia Bernabe, John Anker Bow, Rocky Paterra,
Austen Horne, Jaz Zepatos and Alex Lewis
in Slam Frank. Credit: Shawn Salley Photography

progressive theater company, determined to be inclusive even if it doesn’t make historical or dramatic sense. In this bizarre, fun-house mirror version, the Frank and Van Daan families become representatives of every minority and political viewpoint. Anne herself (comically daring Olivia Bernabe) is a pansexual Latina hiding her true Hispanic identity in order to sell more copies of her diary. Her mother Edith (hysterically fierce Austen Horne) is a black American woman clad in traditional African garb (Sarah Lockwood designed the humorous costumes.) Horne delivers a riotous rap poem mixing feminist rage with declamations against misogynist playwrights like David Mamet. 

Anne’s father Otto (delightfully goofy Rocky Paterra) bursts out of the closet as a gay man and tells everyone he is neurodivergent every few minutes. Sister Margo (surprisingly passionate Amelia Louise Barr) remains quiet until those last volcanic scenes. Barr also doubles as Anne’s abuela, serving as a ghostly symbol of the family’s abandoned Hispanic heritage (the story gets weirder and weirder.) 

The Van Daan clan is led by the blustering bullyish father (appropriately despicable John Anker Bow), who dominates his flibbertigibbet of a wife (jazzy Jaz Zepatos) and his son Peter (funny, flighty Alex Lewis). Peter enjoys dancing (much to his dad’s displeasure) and comes out as non-binary. The entire cast handles the difficult task of enacting broad caricatures while pursuing truthful objectives. Like the characters in a Christopher Durang play, they are sane to themselves but they are in an insane universe.

B'way Update: Dirty Dancing, Macbeth, Rhino Rumors, Etc.

There is plenty of news and rumors of upcoming Broadway and Off-Broadway shows. 

Annalese Starzec and Blake Zelesnikar in
Dirty Dancing: The Musical in Chicago.
Credit: Matthew Murphy

The current North American tour of Dirty Dancing: The Musical will make a stop on Broadway. Previews begin at the Lena Horne Theater on Feb. 12, 2027 prior to a March 14 opening in time for the 40th anniversary of the 1987 film. The engagement runs through Sept. 5. Lonny Price who appeared in the original film directs. The score features songs from the film including the Oscar-winning "(I've Had) The Time of My Life." This is the latest in a series of stage adaptations of the story of Frances "Baby" Houseman who falls in love with a dance instructor while vacationing with her family in the Catskills. 

According to Deadline.com, Anthony Mackie (the new Capt. America in the Marvel film franchise) will take on the lead in the 49th Broadway production production of Shakespeare's Macbeth. He will follow in the bloody footsteps of Maurice Evans, Paul Rogers, Philip Anglim, Nicol Williamson, F. Murray Abraham, Christopher Plummer, Kelsey Grammar, Patrick Stewart, Alan Cumming, Ethan Hawke, and Daniel Craig. Kenneth Branagh, Alec Baldwin, Raul Julia and Liev Schrieber are among those to essay the role Off-Broadway. Previews begin in late March or early April 2027 at a Broadway theater TBA. Further casting will be announced at a later date.

Anthony Mackie will switch from Marvel
to Macbeth.

This production is a transfer of a 2023 Donmar Warehouse staging in London starring David Tenant and Cush Jumbo. The staging featured an innovative sound design by Tony and Olivier winner Gareth Fry with the audience wearing headphones and the actors speaking into microphones so it feels as if they are right in the middle of the action. (Other than the Deadline report, there has been no official press release.)

B'way Update: Wonderful Live Radio Play

Andrew Rannells will play George Bailey
in It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play.

The holiday classic It's a Wonderful Life continues its journey of conquering all media after film and TV with a Broadway version recasting the heartwarming story of George Bailey and his Christmastime redemption as a radio play. It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play will begin a special limited holiday engagement at the Broadhurst Theater on Nov. 4 with an opening set for Nov. 18, running through Jan. 3, 2027. Tony winner Jerry Zaks will direct the adaptation by Joe Landry, based on the story "The Greatest Gift" by Philip Van Doren Stern which served as the basis of the beloved Frank Capra film (Screenplay by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Capra and Jo Swerling). 

The cast will be headlined by Andrew Rannells (Book of Mormon) as George Bailey, Megan Hilty (Death Becomes Her, Smash) as Mary Bailey, Titus Burgess (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) as the Angel Clarence, Harry Hamill (LA Law) as Mr. Potter and others, and Lisa Rinna (Days of Our Lives) as Violet and others. 

The production which was first presented professionally at the Stamford Connecticut Center for the Arts in 1996, takes place in a 1940s radio studio complete with foley sound effects and holiday carols performed during commercial breaks. This adaptation has been subsequently presented on numerous regional stages.

"This story has touched the hearts of millions for generations, and I'm thrilled to now be bringing it to the Broadway stage this holiday season with this sensational cast of musical theater, television, and comedy greats," said director Jerry Zaks. "This production's unique format as a radio play calls back to the charm of a bygone era, while also folding in exciting surprises to thrill modern audiences, making for a memorable and joyful holiday experience for all!"

A scene from one of the many regional
productions of It's a Wonderful Life:
A Live Radio Play (Peterborough Players)

B'way Review: School Girls or, The African Mean Girls Play

Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls or, The African Mean Girls Play is much more than a variation on

Denee Benton, Jordan Rice, Nia Otchere-Sarfo, 
Lucia Aremu, Erin Morton, and
Heather Alicia Simms in School Girls
or The African Mean Girls Play.
Credit: Matthew Murphy

Tina Fey’s Mean Girls screenplay and musical adaption. Originally presented Off-Broadway at MCC Theater in 2017 and now in a vibrant, explosively comic Manhattan Theater Club revival on Broadway, Bioh’s clever play employs the basic template of a queen bee making life miserable for her classmates to explore themes of racism, colorism, sexism, and self-destructive behavior. She doesn’t merely transport the nasty power dynamics of Fey’s world and that of Heathers, the similar film comedy now running as a musical Off-Broadway, to an African setting. She gives individual riotous life to each of her characters and full vent to the issues that face them. 

Director Whitney White and a seamless ensemble deliver a rollercoaster of hilarity and pathos on a rollicking 80-minute ride. White’s tight and flavorful staging exhibits exquisite timing so that the laughs and the dramatic blows land solidly and build to a disturbing conclusion.

Denee Benton and Jasmine Amy Rogers
in School Girls or The African Mean Girls Play.
Credit: Matthew Murphy

Set in a girls’ boarding school in 1986 Ghana and according to a playwright’s note inspired by real events, the plot revolves around the visit of a recruiter for an upcoming beauty contest. Bioh wisely rises the stakes of gaining a spot in a seemingly unimportant event like a pageant and makes the competition revealing of character and motivation. The main conflict is between dominating bully Paulina (enjoyably hissable Denee Benton) and new, friendlier girl from the States Ericka (steely Jasmine Amy Rogers). Their struggles are more than skin deep, literally. The darker-skinned Paulina resents lighter-toned Ericka and applies toxic bleaching creams to “whiten” her complexion with damaging results. Despite her American advantages and wealthy family, we learn by play’s end Ericka is just as vulnerable and needy as Paulina. Benton and Rogers are equally versatile in conveying the shattered, vulnerable interiors of these seemingly combative social warriors. 

B'way Update: Damn Yankees

Austin Scott, Julianne Hough and
Neil Patrick Harris will headline a 
new production of Damn Yankees.
Credit: Emilio Madrid

The new revival of Damn Yankees announced its lead cast, theater and dates at a press conference at Yankees Stadium. Major League Baseball and its production label MLB Studio will serve as co-producers of the baseball-themed 1955 musical. Tony and Emmy winner Neil Patrick Harris will star as Applegate, the incarnation of the devil who tempts a middle-aged baseball fan into becomes a youthful hitter in return for his soul. Julianne Hough of Dancing with the Stars plays Lola, his seductive accomplice and Austin Scott (Hamilton) will play Young Joe, Applegate's target. Previews begin March 24, 2027 at the Marquis Theater prior to an April 20 opening.

Tony winner Sergio Trujillo (Ain't Too Proud) directs and choreographs. The setting will be updated to the early 2000s with an adapted book by Doug Wright (I Am My Own Wife) and Will Power. Lynn Ahrens (Ragtime) writes additional lyrics. The original 1955 production was directed by George Abbott with choreography by Bob Fosse. Abbott co-wrote the book with Douglass Wallop based on the latter's novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant. Richard Adler and Jerry Ross wrote the score. A 1995 revival with Victor Garber and Bebe Neuwirth also featured book revisions and played the Marquis.

This revised edition previously appeared at Washington DC's Arena Stage.

Off-B'way Review: The Invention of Love

David Greenspan and Annabel Capper
in The Invention of Love.
Credit: Paul Lutvak

Tom Stoppard’s dense literary masterpiece The Invention of Love receives a thoughtful, moving production at the tiny space at Theaterlab, highlighted by luminous performances by eight-time Obie winner David Greenspan as the poet-scholar A.E. Housman, Yaron Lotan as his younger self, and an insightful ensemble cast. The play is a challenging three-hour examination of Housman’s life as a brilliant student of Latin and Greek at Oxford followed by his career as a writer and professor, and his unrequited, gay passion for classmate Moses Jackson. Stoppard also traces attitudes towards homosexuality in British society in the same period (the 1880s-90s) as the government passes anti-sodomy laws and Oscar Wilde rises and falls as a symbol of aesthetic art and then decadence. The dazzling Stoppard frames the narrative with the just-deceased Housman's crossing into the underworld on the river Styx guided by the grumpy mythical ferryman Charon. Figures from the poet’s past appear and debate each other on the beauty of classical literature, male love, and who created the first love poem (hence the title).

Stoppard had been criticized for writing heady intellectual theatrical head-scratchers (to some), such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Travesties, and Jumpers—wordy plays that mined heady academic and historical themes—while failing to create emotionally-motivated characters. He finally broke through with The Real Thing in 1984, balancing witty wordplay with a heartbreaking love story between a playwright and an actress. Here he manages to perform a similar balancing act, illuminating Housman’s passion for the works of antiquity while delineating his forbidden love and the society that forces him to repress it. 

Book Review: Civilwarland in Bad Decline

(Taken out of the 40th Street NYPL): I almost didn't finish this one, which is rare for me, especially for a book this short (just under 200 pages.) I enjoyed George Saunders' recent best-seller Lincoln in the Bardo. Also I kept hearing he was the greatest thing since sliced bread--or Kurt Vonnegut. Critics were dubbing him another Mark Twain. But these stories in his first published collection did not appeal to me. The title story which opens the book was gripping and funny. A sad-sack middle manager of a failing historical theme park bemoans his sorry fate and consorts with a family of ghosts. It was darkly funny. But then every story that followed was EXACTLY the same. Some pitiful wretch is stuck in a bizarre setting (usually a theme park), whines about how awful his or her life is, commits a mistake that makes things even worse and either dies or goes to jail. The final novella, Bounty, is a Candide-like voyage tale set in a dystopian future where those born with genetic mutations (called Flaweds) are oppressed into slavery by the Normals. The hero escapes from his prison to seek out his sister and encounters endless misery. What fun! 

The 2012 edition is fleshed out with an introduction and an author's afterward to fill out 198 pages. I liked the afterword better than the stories. Saunders describes his early years struggling to fulfill his dreams of being a writer while working as at a boring job as a technical writer in Rochester, NY. His description of the reality was more compelling than his repetitive, depressing fantasies.

B'way Update: Blue Man Group; Encores News

Blue Man Group will make its Broadway debut
this holiday season.

Blue Man Group, the three-person performance troupe which had one of the longest runs in Off-Broadway history, will be making their Broadway debut with A New Holiday Surprise at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater. The limited holiday-season engagement will begin previews Nov. 12 with an opening set for Nov. 17 and play through Jan. 3, 2027. The group's run at the Astor Place Theater ended on Feb. 2, 2025 after three decades and more than 17,000 performances. The brainchild of three friends, Chris Wink, Matt Goldman, and Phil Stanton, Blue Man Group had the bald, blue-faced trio pounding drums full of paint, oozing Twinkies from their chests and performing other various oddities. During the course of the run, several actors took over the roles and the franchise expanded to Orlando and Las Vegas. 

"This production marks two exciting milestones: Blue Man Group's first-ever holiday production as well as its Broadway debut," said Marie-Josée Adam, President and CEO of Blue Man Group. "This is exactly how we envisioned the iconic trio would re-enter the New York marketplace: with a brand-new show packed with holiday fun, unexpected surprises, and a few twists that only Blue Man could pull off. We can't wait to welcome a whole new generation of families into the Blue Man world for an unforgettable and wonderfully unpredictable holiday experience."

The show will tour to Chicago and Boston and other cities to be announced.

In other news, Encores has announced the complete cast for its concert staging of You're a Good Man Charlie Brown. SNL veteran Rachel Dratch (The Rocky Horror Show and those homeowner insurance commercials) will play Patty (not Peppermint Patty) and Emmy winner Jeff Hiller (HBO's Somebody Somewhere) will play Schroeder. They will join previously announced David Hyde-Pierce as Charlie Brown, Danielle Brooks as Lucy, Jin Ha as Linus, and Ayo Edebiri as Snoopy. Sam Pinkleton (Oh Mary!) directs. This indicates they will be using the original script by Clark Gesner and not the one for the 1999 Broadway revival which replaced Patty with Charlie Brown's little sister Sally (played by Kristin Chenoweth who won a Tony for the role.) Charlie Brown will play Feb. 3-14 at City Center.

In addition, Encores' previously announced production of Hallelujah, Baby! will be replaced by a new staging of Let 'Em Eat Cake, the 1933 sequel to Of Thee I Sing. Hallelujah has been postponed for further development--probably meaning updating the book for this 1967 tuner on race in America. Cake (March 17--28) should be interesting. It's a satiric political fantasy depicting a sitting President disputing his loss for re-election and mounting a revolution to regain power. Sound familiar? This sequel by the Gershwins, George S. Kaufman and Morris Ryskind takes a darker tone than its predecessor Of Thee I Sing and only ran 90 performances.

Off-B'way Review: Pre-Existing Condition; In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat

Lupita Nyong'o in Pre-Existing Condition.
Credit: Jessica Kourkounis

Marin Ireland is one of our most versatile and talented actresses, usually turning up as conflicted and struggling mothers, daughters, wives, or girlfriends in perceptive, searing Off-Broadway plays. With her play Pre-Existing Condition, now at the Greenwich House Theater after an engagement at the tiny Connelly Center last season, she joins the ranks of promising playwrights. In 80 shattering minutes, she documents the wrenching experience of an unnamed woman A, vainly attempting to come to terms with exiting a toxic relationship after her ex assaulted her. The protagonist turns to the law, counseling, therapy, friends, and new relationships, but none offers her resolution or closure. “I don’t know what I want,” she cries more than once. Often she tells whoever will listen (except her distant mother whom she can’t bring herself to tell about the violence she has endured) she just wants the feeling of powerlessness and victimization to go away. But there is no resolution other than the slow process of unpacking her emotions and facing them. 

Ireland painstakingly documents A’s journey through rage, self-blame, and guilt through a

Lupita Nyong'o and Jeff Keller in
Pre-Existing Condition.
Credit: Jessica Kourkounis

series of short, fragmented scenes that flow smoothly thanks to Maria Dizzia’s subtle, graceful staging and Isabella Byrd’s sensitive lighting. The entire play takes place on Cate McCrea’s bare set which resembles a nondescript, support-group meeting room. The play opens with A leaving numerous voicemail messages for a lawyer. He finally returns her calls and informs her there is little legal recourse for her situation since there were no outside witnesses, the police weren’t called, and the laws are antiquated. From there A tentatively embarks on dating, attends individual and group therapy sessions and meets with a friend offering an apology from the former boyfriend. 

In an interesting casting choice, the lead role will be played by a series of different performers during the show’s limited engagement. Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o opens the run and delivers a complex, deeply-felt performance as A. She charts the main character’s circuitous path from numbness to rage to hard-won reflection. She  bubbles with anger, flirts with humor, and hards back tears. She jiggles her leg nervously in one scene, giggles with suppressed anxiety during a first, tentative date in the next. A bravura range of reactions to a ruptured romance. (Philipa Soo, Edie Falco, Hari Nef, and Susanna Flood will follow.)     

Book Review: The Weight of Ink

(Bought at the Strand Bookstore for $8): The was the first volume assigned for my new book club. I found it at the Strand and said to myself, "This thing is over 500 pages! How am I gonna finish it in time for the first class?" Luckily I had a couple of weeks and was able to get through it. A fascinating, complex story on two time tracks. In 2000, scholar and historian Helen Watt discovers a trove of documents from a 17th century rabbi in a London suburban house. She clashes with

brash Jewish-American grad student Aaron who has issues of his own. Helen is not Jewish, but flashes back to her time working in the new state of Israel. But that's not the second timeline. We also trip back to the 1660s and the story of Esther, the blind rabbi's scribe. Rachel Kadish explores women's roles, religion, love, philosophy, Jewish history in an absorbing novel. The ending wherein everything is resolved and explained is a bit too tidy for me.

It reminded me of Possession which employed a similar format with two modern scholars unearthing the correspondence of two Victorian poets. 

Book Review: The Crying of Lot 49

(Borrowed from the NY Public Library on 40th St.) Back in the mid-70s when I was in my teens, I tried to read Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, a massive best-seller in paperback. It was a big, important book that got a bunch of glowing reviews and I thought I should read it. I couldn't finish it or make head or tail out of it. There was something about missiles and Nazis, but I can't recall any characters or why I should care about them. But Pynchon is a highly regarded author and now 50 years later, I needed something short to read until the next session of my online book club when they assign us another novel. So while scanning the Fiction section of the NY Public Library at 40th Street, I found this work which is only about 150 pages. Just as confusing as Gravity's Rainbow, but at least I finished it. The heroine Oedipa Maas goes on a wild goose chase once she becomes executrix of her millionaire ex-lover's estate. She finds a weird symbol on a ladies' room wall and somehow it's connected to an ancient independent mail system. Somehow this secret society of mail carriers is important, but it's not clear why. They're killing or threatening all the men in Oedipa's life. Why or what it has to do with an auction of a set of rare stamps is not sufficently explained. And how is Oedipa like the Greek tragic figure Oedipus? Well, the ex-lover was older, so is it because she had sex with a father figure? Did she metaphorically blind herself?

There are several well-written and intriguing passages such as Oedipa's drunken seduction with Metzger, the estate's handsome lawyer where she dons several layers of clothing so she won't lose in strip poker. I also like the Paranoids, a teen garage band Oedipa encounters. But the conspiracy Oedipa investigates didn't seem particularly dangerous or vital to expose. What was she after, what made her journey one I wanted to follow? It didn't make me want to return to Gravity's Rainbow or pick up Pynchon's later novel Vineland, which Paul Thomas Anderson filmed as the Oscar-winning One Battle After Another.

This cover from a paperback edition was groovier than the book itself.

Off-B'way Update: Patti LuPone in Full Gallop

Patti LuPone will star in Full Gallop.

Three-time Tony winner Patti LuPone (Evita, Gypsy, Company) returns to the New York stage as legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland in the solo play Full Gallop written by Mark Hampton and Mary Louise Wilson, who played the role in the original 1995 production. The production directed by Gordon Greenberg (The Baker's Wife) begins previews on Jan. 8, 2027 at NY City Center Stage II, with an opening set for Jan. 17. 

Wilson played Vreeland when the play premiered at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego and again for NYC engagements at Manhattan Theater Club and the West Side Theater. She won an Obie, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Solo Performance. Vreeland served as fashion editor for Harper's Bazaar, editor-in-chief for Vogue and consultant for the Metropolitan Museum's costume collection. 

B'way Update: Annie; Princess Bride

Reid Shelton and Andrea McArdle 
in the original Broadway production on
Annie.
Credit: Martha Swope

The sun will come out tomorrow...or next fall. Tony-winning director Sam Pinkleton (Oh Mary!) will direct a 50th anniversary production of Annie, the beloved musical based on the long-running comic strip about the spunky, red-headed orphan who gets adopted by multi-millionaire Daddy Warbucks. 

“If you ask any of my closest friends what I love more than anything on the planet, everyone will have the same answer: Annie,” says Pinkleton in a statement. “Annie is everything I love about New York City: gutsy, fearless, and funny as hell. It’s a perfectly constructed musical comedy that my collaborators and I will run toward with joy and abandon—with open hearts and total adoration for this legendary show that has made generations fall in love with musicals.”

Annie opened on Broadway in 1977, won seven Tony Awards, and ran for 2, 377 performances. There have been Broadway revivals in 1997 and 2012 and a touring production played Madison Square Garden in 2024. Film versions were produced in 1982, 1999, and 2014, and a live TV version aired on NBC in 2021. No word on casting, but there is already speculation on who will play Miss Hannigan, the deliciously evil mistress of the orphanage. Some on social media predict Jinx Monsoon of RuPaul's Drag Race and the recent Pirates of Penzance revival. Others vote for Cole Escola, star and author of Oh Mary!