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.