‘The Balusters’ A Riotous Look at Hypocritical Political Correctness
If every accusation is a projection and people’s duplicity comes out under pressure, David Lindsay-Abaire constructs characters that wear “their truth” on their unwashed sleeves, as they unite together to protect their exclusive, land marked section of town which is a protected island that abuts the housing projects nearby. The LOL world premiere comedy The Balusters, directed expertly by Kenny Leon sports a title that refers to an upright vertical, molded form which provides foundational support in architectural features. This comedy with several points about our history and culture and the hypocrisy that keeps it bolstered runs at the Manhattan Theatre Club through May 24, 2026.
Initially, the topic of balusters is brought up by President Elliot Emerson (the superb Richard Thomas), during the Vernon Point Neighborhood Association Board meeting when he shares that a neighbor is using inferior balusters not up to the grade to maintain the historic look of their land-marked community.
Microcosms of political manipulation are everywhere USA. They are perhaps nowhere more evident than in school boards and neighborhood associations. And they are as plain as day in The Balusters for our delight, as Lindsay-Abaire sets us up to laugh at ourselves. The setting is in Vernon Point, a community whose land-marked homes on the esplanade are gorgeous Queen Annes and other Victorians. The historic styles landscaped with trees, lawns and acreages that are pricey, must abide by the architectural features, materials and design of the period of their first construction. Additionally, like many communities in the US which support institutional racism via redlining and zoning laws, Vernon Point most probably has a zoning acreage limit whose pricier real estate keeps out the “riff raff.”
In other words, purchasing a home in this enclave upholds housing discrimination, one of the most egregious forms of discrimination, regardless of the handful of diverse individuals who may live there. To live there especially if one is DEI is particularly, problematically hypocritical. But doesn’t everyone want to achieve the American Dream, especially if it vaults o ne into upper class heights? The dream is as flawed as the 9 individuals of the neighborhood association who live there to keep it in place. How can anyone move ahead contentedly, if most have been left behind?
Issues are nuanced at the top of he play as the Venon Point Neighborhood Association Board meeting gets underway, gaveled in by Thomas’ Elliot, the patriarch and gatekeeper of community sanctity. A master of portraying the “hail fellow well met” poseur, Thomas’ folksy, warm, congenial, open-hearted mien belies the negatives we discover about him later in the play. Elliot is assiduous about the esplanade homes’ historic preservation. As the group settles in he discusses his ire at the previous owner of Kyra Marshall’s house which is where the VPNAB meeting is held. Kyra (the wonderful Anika Noni Rose) volunteers to host the meeting, she tells Luz her housekeeper, to establish herself and fit in. As Elliot goes on about Dr. Klein, the previous owner who put ugly aluminum siding on the exterior two months before the homes were land-marked forty-years prior, we realize he is obviously glad that Kyra had it pulled down, restoring the house’s former glory.
Like the community she wishes to fit into, Noni Rose’s Kyra, favors the old styles like Elliot Emerson. Her assiduous attention to living well is evident in her gorgeously appointed, color-coordinated living room and adjoining foyer and dining room, whose table is perennially set with fine china and stemware as most upper middle class owners often do. Derek McLane’s scenic design speaks volumes and symbolizes the director’s thematic vision for The Balusters, as does Emilio Sosa’s costume design which dresses Kyra in attire that is tasteful, appropriate and colorful, and the others in relaxed casual wear. Interestingly, the lighting during scene changes gyrates to mesmerize the audience to focus on the painting of a Black woman surrounded by flowers that turns garish under the striking lighting (Allen Lee Hughes). And Dan Moses Schreier original music and playlist loudly proclaims the themes as a stark warning. Are we listening; are we seeing the nuances?
The restored shingles may have been the sub rosa reason why real estate broker Elliot sold Kyra (a forty-something Black woman with a family), the house which she can easily afford. However Melissa (Jenna Yi), an Asian friend of Kyra’s lives there, and Kyra mentions that along with safety and beauty, the diversity of the community is why she chose Vernon Point. The VPNAB represents a picture-perfect model of diversity that is laughable with most genders and most races represented. In effect this community has achieved a type of admirable perfection on the surface, but as Margaret Colin’s edgy, raw mouthed and sardonic Ruth Ackerman suggests, it is far from perfect. And during the course of the play through various meetings, we find out how imperfect Vernon Point and its inhabitants of houses, as land-marked as the Victorians don’t want to budge from their positions to change things.
Newbe Kyra isn’t like the others in some aspects. But in other aspects she is just like them and even becomes their “queen.”
The familiar friends, neighbors, and board members push each other’s buttons as they tussle over items which arise concerning safety vs. maintaining the integrity of the historic preservation which of course keeps housing prices higher. Kyra raises a key safety issue about putting up a stop sign because cars speed past a corner and crash into each other at least once a week. This becomes the conflict that moves the play forward creating tension between Elliot and Kyra which gathers momentum as members take sides, research is done and facts are presented to support Kyra’s imperative. Yet, Thomas’ Elliot is eloquent in his arguments against putting up signs which will ruin the picturesque and beautiful esplanade which is becoming a “one-of-a-kind” setting as modernization and commercialization reconfigure the culture of the country, and not in a good way.
The disparity of who the members present themselves to be and who they are clarifies by the conclusion with great humor. Nuanced funny insults are swapped as a means of leveraging arguments. Clearly, some egos are obvious like Isaac Rosario (Ricardo Chavira), who protects his construction workers but only to jawbone that they don’t steal packages or do shoddy work, while he pays them less than what they are worth. Mark Esper’s Alan Kirby feels put upon and interrupted by LGBTQ Willow (Kayli Carter). Willow’s PETA stance and ethos rankle both him and Colin’s Ackerman who intentionally flaunts her rabbit coat to Willow to provoke a comment. Brooks Duncan (Carl Clemons-Hopkins) drums the race card in a subtle way while bestowing nuanced racial animus toward a Muslim business owner. Lindsay-Abaire turns this on its head and has someone reveal what is really going on related to his male partner. The result is riotous.
When one in the group is injured in a “crash” as Kyra predicted, the stakes go through the roof and we are shocked at the results which occur at an explosive meeting. Once more events turn the characters upside down in their reveals, especially the clever Elliot and the subtle Kyra caught, like the others in their own hypocrisies and conflicts of interest.
The one-offs and jokes are plentiful. And Marylouise Burke, as always is a shining light with superb timing and adorableness. When she speaks for decency later in the play, the theme rings loudly and clearly through her, as it does through Maria-Christina Oliveras’ Luz whose spilling the beans on Elliot is only topped by her quiet, underplayed comment about Kyra.
At the conclusion we realize that the playwright also selected the title as a symbol to call out foundational institutions, thought patterns and stereotypes which support a way of life that is entrenched in inequality. This is so, despite each of the characters’ assumptions that adhering to political correctness ends stereotypes and indecent behavior that attacks individuals for elements they have no control over (ethnicity, race, gender, age). Whether used or ridiculed, PC is a blind that deflects from dealing with institutional inequities. Cleverly, Lindsay-Abaire takes swipes at everything, especially cultural hypocrisy and human fallibility at not recognizing it. He reveals that decency can’t be shamed or forced upon others, and the use of political correctness as a weapon and ready bludgeon to defend oneself, also is used to deflect and cover a multitude of secret agendas to gain power and influence unjustly and inequitably. Regardless of political party, regardless of using it to act like an example of correctness, it is meaningless because the true intent behind its facade is real, dangerous and corrupt.
The Balusters runs 1 hour 50 minutes with no intermission at the Friedman Theater through May 24. manhattantheatreclub.com.
These ‘Fallen Angels’ are Beautiful, Starring Rose Byrne and Kelli O’Hara
When Noël Coward’s comedy Fallen Angels was first performed in London, an official who was a censor in the Lord Chamberlain’s office denied its license because the married female characters had licentiously cavorted in premarital sex and planned to commit adultery. Only until the Chamberlain personally intervened, was the hilarious, slapstick comedy given its license and performed.
Far from being an “unpleasant play,” as critics suggested in 1923, Coward’s early work reveals his ingenious wit and love of turning situations on their heads. In this, Julia Sterroll (Kelli O’Hara) and Jane Banbury (Rose Byrne), riotously turn to alcohol to get up the courage to see Maurice, an old beau both were madly in love with at different times. When their affairs with Maurice ended, they married spouses who were the opposite of their lover and settled down. But the aftershocks of their love are very much ever present and cause the old friends to be jealous of one another, which they keep just under the surface of their close relationship. Then the “green-eyed monster” rears its ugly head when Maurice announces he is coming to visit them turning their settled lives inside out with riotous consequences. Fallen Angels is currently spreading its joyous, madcap delight at the Todd Haimes Theater through June 7, 2026 in a limited engagement.
O’Hara’s Julia and Byrne’s Jane are left to their own entertainments when husbands Fred (Aasif Mandvi) and Willy (Christopher Fitzgerald) go off on an overnight golf outing. After a relaxed breakfast with Fred before he leaves for golf, Julia brings up a divorce reported in the papers. With this theme of the end of love announced, Julia tells Fred she loves him but is not in love with him, Fred avers. His ego is upset that the passion and sex have gone out of the relationship, and companionship has taken its place as Julia suggests. Coward has cleverly set up the farcical conceit which he will play upon with wit, whimsy and alcohol, throughout the comedy because as it turns out, Jane feels similarly about her husband Willy.
Are the women teasing their spouses or are they serious about Julia’s suggestion she is not in love with Fred and Jane’s presentment that disturbs Willy? Clearly, the men don’t feel the same and still love their wives, they believe, and passionately. And why not? O’Hara ad Byrne are lovely. On the other hand their husbands, thanks to hair and make up by David Brian Brown and Victoria Tinsman, are not gorgeous Leo DiCaprio types to swoon over. They have aged and are not their wives physical equivalents.
Not only is this a casting coup, by director Scott Ellis, it ridicules a patriarchal, cultural more in relationships and marriage about what is appropriate. It is incumbent upon lovely women to pretend that average looking men are “sexy” and “attractive,” if they have money and status. Clearly, the money and status are the alchemy that transforms the men’s looks. Also, clearly, Julia and Jane are younger than their husbands, another more that Ellis’ casting takes a swipe at.
After all, a wealthy older man with money is not to be seen with a status-downer, i.e. a fat, older woman (sorry, this is the psycho culture). The younger, more beautiful the woman he is with (eye candy), the more the average-looking man’s status and attractiveness increases. Of course the absurd end result of this is one-sided. Heaven forbid, if women practice the same and seek out younger men or more attractive men around their age as Maurice is. Abomination! Ellis takes advantage of these unspoken cultural folkways and enhances Coward’s wit because of his choice of the attractive TV persona he casts to play Mauice Duclos, their old flame, who is to- die-for-adorable in comparison to their husbands. He causes the fallen angels to fall more quickly and deeper into the abyss of “shame.”
Julia and Jane have married up for money. They have most probably compromised and settled for Fred and Willy, though if the situation was right, they easily would have gone with Frenchman Maurice if he proposed. Their husband’s wealth and status are revealed from their lifestyles, thanks to David Rockwell’s set design, a lovely Art Deco apartment with a balcony, large paintings, columns, appointments, and an eye-popping chandelier.
Their period costumes, dressing gowns, street clothes, evening gowns and accessories, designed by Jeff Mashie, show their personalities and economic status. Only Byrne could wear the deep emerald green, silky, long gown to cavort around in and look totteringly-elegant as the champagne, wine and cocktails wreck her balance. O’Hara’s pratfalls include sliding belly-front down a flight of stairs in a lavender gown with cinched waist and chiffon, floor-length skirt. She is beyond riotous. Both are dressed to the nines after having blown up their imaginations with expectation of the passion to come with their former lover.
Saunders (Tracee Chimo), their prodigiously qualified and hyperbolically talented servant bests then at every turn of a glass of alcohol. Chimo’s Saunders, a new hire, is smashing in the role of the foil, the straight woman whose sincerity at showing up the “angels” with her knowledge of piano, opera, languages, her prior appointments to exotic places, her infinite talents, and her expertise as a chef and efficient servant is breathtaking. Saunders deserves every tuppence she makes and reveals she is five times more accomplished than the leisure trad wives Jane and Julia who, by comparison, are useless toys, perishing of boredom. Chimo’s Saunders also has preternatural hearing and anticipates where Jane and Julia are going, a function of her job, which they find annoying because all they discuss is Maurice. Indeed, Saunders must not hear them go on and on. This sets up more Coward wit when the women change the subject to outrageous topics to throw off Saunders’ sniffing out their over-the-moon conversation about Maurice’s visit, which they fear will never come and must get drunk to salve their over-excited imaginations at the mere thought of him.
The mayhem and gradual explosion of their drunken riot is beautifully timed, staged and wrought. Byrne and O’Hara are world-class comedians.
The hilarity really explodes after the set up when the women wait for their beloved Maurice to appear before dinner, singing his praises, and drinking, and singing his praises during dinner, and drinking, and singing his praises, and drinking after dinner. As they drink, eat and swoon over Maurice, they are interrupted by phone calls which drive them to more drink because everyone but Maurice calls. Finally, even they become overwrought with their own fantasies and turn against each other, the jealousy manifesting. Jane stumbles and storms out. Julia is beside herself thinking Jane is meeting Maurice behind her back which ratchets the excitement and wild comedy toward the heavens.
Who will calm the situation down? Not the husbands. In shock at Jane’s treason Julia spills the beans to Willy, who conveniently shows up moments after Jane huffs out. He questions where his wife is. At the height of the chaos, when Fred and the wayward, back-stabbing Jane return, there’s another twist. The two women unite to fawn off their husbands’ probing queries about their antics. It is then that Coward, perfectly read by Scott Ellis, reveals the pièce de résistance. In walks the stunning Maurice, every inch the living fantasy brought to life in Mark Consuelos, who is having the time of his life. The audience was thrilled to see him. Indeed, he is Julia’s and Jane’s equivalent, but not for marriage, for love and passion.
Interestingly, the implication is that neither Julia or Jane would be adverse to a ménage à trois, if the situation wandered in that direction. Coward suggests this inherent possibility at the conclusion when Jane and Julia follow Maurice upstairs to see his apartment. (Ironically, he has moved into their building.) This most probably was another unspoken reason why the British censor withheld the comedy’s license. Seventy years later since Fallen Angels appeared in the U.S. the play has found its moment.
Fallen Angels runs 1 hour 30 minutes with no intermission at the Todd Haimes Theater though June 7, 2026. roundabouttheatre.org.
‘Fear of 13’ Starring Adrien Brody in an Incredible Tour de Force
Based on the titular 2015 documentary directed by David Singon, The Fear of 13, directed by Davd Cromer is a prison drama with twists that upends easy assumptions. With Adrien Brody portraying Nick Yarris who spent years on death row. Brody is assisted by the wonderful Tessa Thompson as Jacki Miles, Yarris’ friend, confidante and spiritual lover until she isn’t. The two portray individuals who help each other and then acknowledge they must end their relationship because they have had enough of waking up to dreams that have no hope of manifesting. Currently, the play runs at the James Earl Jones Theater through July 12, 2026.
Written by Lindsey Ferrentino the production opens against a dark stage with a spotlight on Brody who speak as an everyman, Man 1. He discusses the nature of time’s variability: “a blisteringly fast thing, where in the blink of an eye – ten years are gone from your life, but the next week is agony.” “… then you look out the window …and it takes all day for the sun to go down…”
This theme about time relates to Brody’s Yarris who has an intimate, hyper-conscious knowledge of time as an inmate on death row. It is in this setting that we experience events through his perspective and the horrors of incarceration on the death row cell block in a prison in the state of Pennsylvania. On death row where time can’t be “done,” it exists in a state of suspension. On the one hand “time is of the essence,” as the appeals process runs for years and the men like Yarris wait for exoneration or execution. On the other hand, when the final result is achieved, it’s a matter of days to the inmate’s release or death.
We learn about Nick Yarris’ time constructs as the play unfolds and the lights come up on death row, Arnulfo Maldonado’s black, wall cell block with lights by designer Heather Gilbert suggesting the men housed behind the impassive doors closing out freedom. Against this backdrop, the plays events unfold in flashback as Nick Yarris relates his amazing story to Jacki Miles. Cromer stages various events in scenic vignettes with props (Tessa’s home, a pawn shop) but the bulk of the scenes take place against the dark, prison backdrop. Jack’s ability to speak to volunteer Jacki is one of the miraculous occurrences that happen to Nick, who was just out of teenagehood when he received his death sentence.
Ironically, the theme about time reflects the play’s pace. Toward the conclusion from Yarris’ perspective time slows to a crawl. But in the beginning time moves at a clip. Yarris relates events that Cromer theatricalizes when volunteer Jacki Miles visits and eventually has sessions with Yarris alone, becoming a friend. Cromer stages his visits with Jacki stylistically with minimal fan fare, as he stages Nick’s interactions with his appellate lawyer Beau Mullen (Victor Cruz) and others. Nick’s interactions in the prison setting are powerful and terrifying, thanks to Cromer’s direction and the ensemble’s superb acting.
During Nick’s one hour visits with Jacki, he tells her that death row used to be a place where they were buried alive, as Lieutenant Walker (Jeb Kreager) tells him, “you’re already dead.” The inhumanity he experiences is egregious and the play advocates for an end to the death penalty as punishment, as well as an end to the horror of the traumatic, abusive prison atmosphere and barely livable conditions. To make matters worse, when Nick first arrives, there is no redress; there is no communication between or among prisoners or others. When Nick is encouraged to speak by Walker after he’s told he can’t and Nick answers “yes” out of politeness, Walker punches him in the stomach.
Nick tells Jacki about the brutality and sadism of the guards who abuse the inmates to instill hopelessness and fear to keep them in line. He intimates the guards’ personal satisfaction at beating those who can’t fight back to bolster their “masculinity.” Of course the guards allow the prisoners to harm each other and don’t protect them.
When Nick describes a brutal murder he witnessed in the shower, Nick asks whether Jacki believes him. She hesitates. He tells her his assigned appellate lawyer Mullin didn’t believe him either. When Nick mentions he’s been waiting 7 months for the appeal process to begin, Mullin tells him coldly, “Before you go on, know that I am a Christian… and an officer in the U.S. Army, and so I fully support the death penalty.” Then Mullin tells Nick, “You are guilty due to overwhelming evidence.” The play turns into the abyss as we watch hope leave Nick and are swayed to believe Mullin’s comments that Nick raped and murdered a woman. Nick doesn’t speak or communicate to anyone for two years. Years later when Nick shares Mullin’s comment with Jacki, she leaves abruptly and we note she realizes she is speaking to a killer and a rapist. Why would she ever return?
However, she does. As Thompson’s Miles continues to visit Nick, though she questions herself, she drives miles to see him. Clearly, a bond forms and as a result Nick is able to tell her how everything changed when they found drugs in the music room and gay lovers Wesley and Butch, who were in the men’s choir, were moved into their cell-block temporarily. Brody’s Nick moves between the present with Thompson’s Jacki to the past as he relates the situation between Wesley (Ephraim Sykes) and Butch (Michael Cavinder). The scene is powerfully drawn and theatricalized, thanks to the superb acting by Sykes and Cavinder and the ensemble who sings creating a high point emphasizing how Nick’s hope is stirred. Even the guards change after the event. Communication is allowed and volunteers like Jacki are brought in.
The events well staged by Cromer are thrilling and more adventures follow as Brody actualizes Nick’s story and makes us hope that Nick, who says he is innocent, gets off on DNA evidence. Brody is mesmerizing, heartfelt, amazing. Thompson gives him a superb performance to exchange emotional resonance against. Brody conveys the extremity of emotions that Nick goes through with each encounter as he smashes into the penal system and shocked, we empathize with him. We learn how Nick is able to maintain his psychological well-being because he reads voraciously. It is his reading which brings his discovery in 1988 about DNA being used. Nick, tells Jacki he is innocent. And he affirms his innocence saying, “If DNA is getting people convicted, why can’t it get people released?” Then he tells Jacki, “I love you.”
The interaction is another turning point in a series of unexpected occurrences, one of which is Nick’s incredible escape during a sheriff’s transfer which the ensemble humorously activates. Unfortunately, the adventure ends up in Nick’s arrest and return to death row. But gradually, Nick reveals his life to Jacki and together they work to unravel “the evidence” that Mullin said was overwhelmingly against him, but which they find out is non-existent. Then, the action and events slow down to stasis. Mullin employs the use of DNA evidence and we understand that Mullin is right when he says the process can take a long time. But undeterred, Jacki’s and Nick’s love blossoms. She receives his calls from home and their hopes and anticipation lead to a marriage in prison.
The problem is neither Nick nor Jacki understand the import of Mullin’s words about the DNA process. And it is at this juncture when the play has been unfairly criticized for dropping its pace. At this point the themes about time’s variability apply and “ten years are gone from your life, but the next week is agony.” It is at this juncture that we realize how “it takes all day for the sun to go down.” We and the characters agonize. Yet, Nick cannot reveal his deepest secret to Thompson’s Jacki: the mystery of how and why he ended up doing drugs, getting kicked out of his house, stealing cars and getting arrested by a cop which led to his incarceration on death row. Sadly, she never finds out. But we do and in Nick’s revelation of trauma and darkness, his salvation comes.
The Fear of 13 runs 1 hour 50 minutes with no intermission through July 12 at the James Earl Jones Theater. thefearof13broadway.com.
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‘Titaníque,’ the Crazy Romp on the High Seas is Unfathomable, Riotous Genius
The story how Titaníque moved from a concept to a concert, gained momentum traveling from venues to its final ascension to premiere on Broadway, garnering awards along the way, is as miraculous as the survival of any passengers from the ship it is named after with a French-Canadian flourish. Thanks to its solid team who adore Céline Dion and her music, their ingenuity, prodigious talents and playfulness couldn’t resist a parody of the 1997 blockbuster film Titanic. If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then Titaníque, which is at the St. James Theater through July 12, surely “represents.”
At the top of the zany, fanciful musical, tourists come down the audience aisles and go onstage to enter the museum of the Titanic to view the artifacts collected, and learn the history. All of a sudden, who emerges but Céline Dion (Marla Mindelle) dressed to the sparkling gold nines, looking every inch a star, because she is a star, and she has a new gig. She’s rocking-out a re-imagining of what happened on the Titanic that seems vaguely familiar if you saw the James Cameron film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslett.
However, surprise! You didn’t see it this way, through the perspective of Dion with references to Ru Paul’s Drag Race, Rent, A Chorus Line and more, spilling out its fun-filled, chaotic, pop-culture vibrancy into the audience. They hop on the roller-coaster for the thrills, jokes and clowning and never want to get off. As Mindelle’s Dion tells it, she was was on the doomed Titanic, though it’s an impossibility, because she would be over 150 years-old. However, through her mega-watt celebrity, force of personality, our suspension of disbelief and love of farce, she convinces the audience she was there to bring us her LOL version of events.
Quickly, the time reverts to the early twentieth century and we see the costumes of the period (Alejo Vietti) which are simply, tastefully designed so that Dion’s over-the-top, gold lame-like outfit outshines the other women’s outfits, maybe with the exception of Molly Brown (the anointed Deborah Cox plays a feisty Unsinkable Molly Brown with Kathy Bates’ riffs) and Ruth De Witt Bukater (a phenomenal Jim Parsons who enjoys being in drag every moment). Parsons who wears a hat with two large birds, that are presumably live because he refers to their incontinence, portrays the cruel, broke, “aristocratic” mother of Rose (the lovely Melissa Barrera). Parson’s Ruth is not adverse to physically slapping the disobedient Rose (leaving two feet of airspace between them) as Ruth’s hand makes contact with Rose’s cheek in the perfect timing of “slapstick,” seamlessly shepherded by Tye Blue.
By this time, the curtain has long fallen away to show the innards of the ship with scaffolding, erector set, lighted beams (Gabriel Hainer Evasohn & Grace Laubacher for Iron Bloom Creeative Production and Paig Seber lighting design). The band is situated upstage center with an elegant, lighted staircase on either side, and a balcony connected to the stairs where Mindelle’s Dion sometines narrates events. The director also stages her on the balcony for signature songs from Dion’s well known music catalogue. She is helped by the glorious cast whose voices are top-notch under Geoffrey Ko’s music direction.
Intruding into the action and serving as the guide to “what really happened” with ad libs, one-offs and her endearing, audience- interactive, Dion essence, Mindelle supervises and sings. She is the glue that holds the show together. Mindelle originated Dion’s character. She also co-authored the show with actor Costantine Rousouli (the heroic and romantic Jack Dawson), and Tye Blue who also directs. Titaníque is every inch a farce that speeds from beginning to end, covering most of the important scenes from the film sending them over-the-top and into gales of audience laughter.
Not one character escapes farcical treatment with bits that actually reference the film and take the opportunity to send up the characters’ foibles with affectionate humor. Frankie Grandie who plays Luigi from the Mario Brothers gaming universe perfectly, also plays Victor Garber, the actor who portrayed the Titanic’s architect in the film. John Riddle is LOL boorish and always behind the 8-ball, as Rose’s fiance Cal Hockley. Rousouli’s Jack Dawson, Rose’s escape hatch from a disastrous betrothal with Cal, makes reference to his “bootleg Newsies outfit. The tight, form-fitting khakis feature his muscular, dancer’s athleticism and hottie persona. As Dawson, Rousouli’s costume offers Mindelle’s Dion a chance to make an untoward advance toward him, winking at the audience which she lovingly plays to throughout.
From the very beginning Mindelle shatters the fourth wall with ease and capitalizes on the audience energy to stoke their response and in turn find new ways to electrify her performnce. She is a comedian with superb timing, waiting for the audience to get the humor which they always do. Yet, Mindelle’s superb voice faultlessly vibes with Dion’s musical instrument and stage presence. She manages to be adorable and funny at the same time as she does high fives with the front row at the conclusion.
As the ship steams toward disaster and Rose and Jack go to steerage and enjoy the dancing with the poor folks who will perish, then consummate their love, the iceberg is looming and ready to take Victor Garber’s poorly designed ship to the ocean bottom. In an enlightened moment, the creators decided to “soften the blow” of the cataclysmic event by casting a ferocious performer as the iceberg who knows how to sing “hard” like a b&tch. Layton Williams dressed in a glorious, white, spiky wig (Charles G. LaPointe) and Tina Turner-type rhinestone drag outfit made just for him, cavorts with fury, sings and dances raucously and amazingly to bring on the riot. Williams who won the UK’s Olivier Award for “Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical” kills the part with comedy, dance and song a la Tina Turner. His height-defying split perfectly lands and is just smashing, which is what Williams’ Tina Turner iceberg does to the ship.
Every aspect (from spectacle to performances, voices, dancing {Ellenore Scott’s choreography}) of this gobsmacking show is worthy of its second 2025 Olivier Award for “Best New Entertainment or Comedy Play.” It is no coincidence that the show continues to draw crowds in a time where much-needed live farce holds a special place in audience hearts to stave off the dire headlines and news stories that beat the same egregious drum of our sinking ship of state. Thankfully, there’s live theater to offset censored news which, if truth be told, is probably much worse than what is reported. In contrast even the rats refuse to desert Titaníque. They are having too much fun.
Titaníque runs 1 hour 40 minutes through July 12 at the St. James Theater. titaniquebroadway.com.
‘Titus Andronicus’ Patrick Page is Mesmerizing, Heartbreaking, Over-the-top
William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus comes with a warning label about the bloodshed and violence in this profound, incredibly acted Off-Broadway production at Pershing Square Signature Center. As I was watching the visceral, gut-wrenching performances of Patrick Page’s Titus Andronicus and Olivia Reis’ portrayal as Lavinia, Andronicus’ treacherously abused daughter, I thought of the brutal, unjustifiable bombing of women and children in Gaza, Israel. However, the difference of watching reports via screens from the safety of one’s sofa versus watching fictional live-action bloodshed onstage seems moot. One requires imagination to understand what is happening that media doesn’t show: the eviscerated bodies, the scattered arms and legs of blown up children. That horror compared to immersing oneself in stage acting with the well timed bursting of fake blood capsules during a fight or murder scene? Violence and murder are inhumane. Blood and gore in fictional drama loudly points to the heinous, triggering realities of war going on today.
Thus, the themes of William Shakespeare’s goriest tragedy are impactful. But one must understand that the result of Titus Andronicus‘ gore is tragic. Murder, treason, blood-lust, vengeance all turn the warriors’ swords against their own entrails. This is especially so when the ones maimed and brutalized are offspring the enemies leverage to emotionally annihilate their parents. There’s nothing like watching one’s future inheritance and legacy wiped out and being unable to find peace afterward. That is the ultimate tragedy in the magnificent Titus Andronicus produced by Red Bull Theater at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre. Titus Andronicus has been extended through May 3, 2026.
At the top of the play victorious, intrepid Roman general Titus Andronicus returns from the wars in triumph, but having paid a stiff price. During the battles he sacrificed three of his sons for Rome. However, he did succeed in bringing Rome the spoils of his win. Titus presents these captives to Rome: Tamora (Francesca Faridany) the Queen of Goths, her ambitious warrior/lover Aaron the Moor (McKinley Beelcher III), and her three sons played by Jesse Aaronson, Blair Baker, Adam Langdon. Their captivity in chains gives more light to shine Rome’s mighty, justified conquests.
During the Andronici family reunion which includes Titus, Titus’ Tribune sister Marcia (Enid Graham), his daughter Lavinia and his three living sons, played by Anthony Michal Martinez, Zack Lopez Roa and Anthony Michael Lopez, they perform burial rites. Additionally, a ritual of recompense is made of Goth blood for Andronici blood. Lucius (Anthony Michal Lopez) states, “Give us the proudest prisoner of the foe, that we may hew his limbs and sacrifice his flesh to these our fallen brothers.” It is an act to appease the deceased son’s spirits who were killed in the war with the Queen of the Goths, and to stop any “prodigies” from being visited upon the Andronicis.
If bloodletting is ever fair, the balance is that three were lost and the blood of one is the equivalent of three. This is a ritual always performed on the battlefield and to Tamora’s pleadings, Titus asks her to pardon him. His sons perform the ritual killing of Alarbus without rage, but as a tradition. One could argue this duty is more than fair, a viewpoint Titus holds, but Tamora does not.
In truth, Titus should have killed all those he captured, instead of just Tamora’s oldest, her firstborn son. Dismissive of Roman tradition, the Goth Queen sees this act as a gruesome provocation-killing her son in front of her. She is a Goth; she doesn’t “get” Roman traditions or values. She dispenses with the mercy Titus bestows on her, the Moor, and her sons by letting them live and roam free to do damage to Titus and his family. Titus’ mercy is a brutality from Tamora’s perspective. And Titus doesn’t remind her of the fact that she and the others live by his grace. In tragic blindness she refuses to acknowledge or see his act as just and a Roman tradition (I read the script’s stage directions about killing her son as ritual.). And Titus is completely blind to her ferocity and the possibility that she will get vengeance on him and his entire family when the opportunity arises. She has chosen not the way of life bestowed by Titus’s grace, but of vengeance, bloodshed and death. Tragically, blindly Titus lets down his guard and opens the door to Tamora’s hell with fate’s help.
In their blindness lies their downfall.
Most probably if Tamora had won, Titus and his sons would have been killed. We note in her future actions and those of Aaron, her lover, what she would have done. Humiliated, a captive in chains, a loser, she chooses to feel provoked by her eldest son’s sacrifice, not acknowledging the lives his blood saves. As they take her and the captives off, she rants, beats her breast and waits for a time of revenge saying, “I’ll find a day to massacre them all.”
Unfortunately, that day comes sooner than later. It is hastened by Titus’ choice not to be the Emperor of Rome, though the people want him, and though Lavinia’s betrothed Bassianus (Howard W. Overshown), Saturninus younger brother, supports him with his troops and followers. Why? Romans are not idiots. Saturninus, the late emperor’s eldest son is unlikable, silly, pompous and incompetent. They want Titus, but Saurninus, the child, protests, not caring about Rome, but caring about himself. In fact Titus would make the better leader proven by his track record of service, leadership competence and popularity. (The parallels with the US are staggering)
Titus makes his ultimate mistake not taking the emperor-ship, stating he is too old and that he wants to enjoy peace after forty years of wars. Titus persuades the people to accept Saturninus as the head of Rome. Under his rule, all hell breaks loose and chaos and violence are unleashed by this terrible decision. Mathew Amendt portrays Saturninus as an infantile, asinine, petulant fool easily duped by one who ends up with a ruling partner as unfit as he, but worse- the bloodthirsty Tamora. Not able to have Lavinia, though Titus suggests it to her, then relents when she says she is betrothed to Bassianus, Saturninus elevates the bloodthirsty Tamora to the throne as his queen. There, she is all about peace and unity. Titus doesn’t see her coming. Nor does he see coming her instrument of vengeance, the gleeful, sneaky Aaron who suggests rape, mutilation and torture for Lavinia to Tamora’s slothful sons. He also suggests a means of impunity so she will never confess the crimes nor bring about her own healing.
Jesse Berger’s staging works, though the tone of the tragedy shifts off its axis in Act II from sorrowful horror to an outrageous, sometimes weirdly comedic tone. In the last scene of Act I Page’s Titus experiences the full effects of Tamora’s trickery and the loss of two of his sons. When Page’s Andronicus beholds what the spirit of vengeance and hate have done to Lavinia, he is broken. With breathtaking, magnificent, touching grief, he cannot absorb what an anonymous “they” have done to his daughter. Reis’ pitiable cries at the heinous treatment during her violent struggle with the heartless Aaronson’s Chiron and Langdon’s Demetrius (both excellent) are symbolically representative. She is the archetype of women’s soul murder and it is clear why men use rape and mutilation as the defining weapon of war. In the scene Reis conveys what every woman in that position feels. Beyond words.
Page and Reis are incredible together. Page’s Titus slides into madness with laughter and screaming, the extreme emotions of a father unable to protect his daughter or help her. As the destroyed Lavinia, Reis’ cries in echoing response to stage father Page are shattering. One cannot help but weep for empathy at their loss of identity, beauty and valor.
Of course Act II is almost anticlimactic as we wait for the coming revenge on one who chooses vengeance and death rather than life and peace when she vows to “massacre them all.” In that, too, Tamora fails for Lucius lives to become emperor welcomed by both Romans and Goths alike with Tribune Marcia serving his mission of peace, ending the cycle of revenge. Belcher III’s is superb. As Aaron he speaks passionately to save the son birthed by Tamora who in humiliation gives up the Black child to be killed to hide her shame. The speech softens Aaron’s Iago-like wickedness as the engineer of Tamora’s revenge. His humanity extends to his innocent son, whom he forgives, as he wallows in despair and condemnation.
When Page’s Titus sits his guests down to dinner dressed in a chef’s hat and outfit grinning from ear to ear, he holds Tamora’s sons flesh pie. The laughter from the audience is a confusion of emotions: gladness that he is holding Tamora accountable with a just revenge; empathy that anyone would be driven to this. In fact laughter at serving up Tamora’s sons in a meat pie is all that is left of his sanity.
By this juncture Titus has released all his grief and sorrow. Life has become absurd. What’s left when nothing’s left? Page who worked on the script and did a masterful job sluicing it to crystal clarity reveals the descent of a noble individual who was better at fighting wars, than living in peace. His act of killing Lavinia is an act of mercy. If she could do it herself, she would. But the sons have chopped off her hands so she can’t reveal her abusers. Titus knows her yearning for death like he knows his own soul. He lovingly kills her ending her torment, which she will never get over in life, stripped of her identity and empowerment of words and actions, and cutting off any opportunity for her to heal.
Titus Andronicus runs a swift 2 hours through May 3, 2026 at the Pershing Square Signature Center.
redbulltheater.com.
How do you spell perfect? ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’ currently in Revival
For endearing family fun that only triggers nostalgia and laughs about middle schools and students’ serious obsessions about words, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is your musical. Currently at New World Stages in its second extension, the Off-Broadway revival of the ebullient show runs in the live time of the competition, from the opening to the celebration of the winner. With William Finn’s music and lyrics and Rachel Sheinkin’s book providing delight and plentiful humor, the production was conceived by Rebecca Feldman. Jay Reiss is responsible for the additional material. This revival runs until September 6, 2026.
Directed and choreographed by Danny Mefford, with music supervision and vocal arrangements by Carmel Dean, a nod goes to James Lapine, the original director of the show which premiered on Broadway and ran from 2005-2008. This updated version presented at New World Stages, takes advantage of the venue for jokes. Excitedly Logainne (Autumn Best) asks Leaf Coneybear (Justin Cooley), “Have you ever been in a gymnasium next to a production of Heathers before?”
Teresa L. Williams’ set design effectively puts the students centrally on bleacher seats with easy entrances and exits of those eliminated, including the volunteer audience members who portray middle-school students and come from audience seats. Looking at the walls of the audience section, one sees the school’s mascot, “Piranhas” in bold letters, on the wall adjacent to stage left and artfully rendered, smiling, toothy fishes looking for prey on the adjacent wall stage right.
Truly, the reference to ferociousness applies. All the competitors want to win, and some connive insidiously against their opponents. And, some have caveats. The students reveal their hidden motivations and emotional reasons for competing to the audience in song as the competition gathers steam.
Cleverly adapting the script to today’s relevance, we note Logainne’s humorous comments about AOC and current events. These land to a surprised, pleased audience. Indeed, to those who may have thought that spelling bees in general are a throwback to the 20th century, families of school age children know that national and local spelling bees are hotter than ever. The 2026 Scripps National Spelling Bee is scheduled for May 26-28, 2026, proudly keeping an almost 100 year tradition happily running.
What makes this show charming and poignant are the quirky personalities of the students, unafraid or thankfully unable to fit in with their peers because of their extraordinary spelling talents. Refreshingly, unlike cut-out AI duplicates, they range along a continuum from “forced by her parents to perfectionism,” Marcy Park (Lana Rae Concepcion), to Glee actor Kevin McHale who portrays William Barfée (pronounced “Bar-fay”) in an uproarious turn. Barfée’s genius spelling is because of his magical foot which he uses to print out the word spellings on the floor before he states them.
The kids are humorously idiosyncratic which makes them human and authentically adorable, with Leaf Coneybear as the most loving, sweet and positivist of anyone I’ve experienced in a long time. Spoiler here. At his elimination, Leaf responds with upbeat grace and joy. Though he loses, his equipoise reveals him to be an emotional winner with wisdom that teaches important lessons about balance. The individual in the East-Wing demolished White House should sit at the feet of Coneybear and learn “how to lose with dignity, grace and beauty.”
The adult standouts include audience members selected beforehand to front as children with hilarious results. The evening I saw the show, the adults couldn’t stop laughing before, during and after their eliminations. The one who received the word “cow” was over- the-top, drop-dead funny.
Additionally, as the Vice Principal Douglas Punch and Comfort Counselor Mitch Mahoney, Jason Kravits and Matt Manuel guide those eliminated with aplomb and pacing thanks to Mefford’s astute direction. Kravis, who announces whether the contestant at the microphone spelled their word correctly or incorrectly creates suspense and adds nuanced surprise in a calm, soft-spoken voice.
The beautiful score is organically woven with the jokes in the dialogue to reveal the lives of these believable characters. Carmel Dean’s top notch music supervision and vocal arrangements allow the songs to shine their hope, heartbreak and humor. Paramount are the dark undercurrents revealed in the lives of the students. Present is the notion that the upbeat momentum charged by the students’ exuberance and youthfulness will fade as all happiness is fleeting. But then, there is always next year’s competition.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee runs 1 hour 40 minutes with no intermission through September 6, 2026.
spellingbeenyc.com.
‘Becky Shaw’ Brilliant Acting, in a Mind-blowng Play
Becky Shaw is titled for the female character who shows up one-third of the way into the play written by two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Gina Gionfriddo. The character Becky Shaw is the linchpin that sets the hellish interactions in motion as the wheel goes round in this profoundly drawn comedy of dark complications. When the pieces of the puzzle fit at the conclusion revealing who the play is actually about, the revelation shatters. Perhaps the adage people are hell (a theme of Jean Paul Sarte’s No Exit) has validity here. For by the conclusion we certainly see the hell continuing into the future of all the characters Gionfriddo sets in motion in her tight, sardonic, superbly woven comedy. Smartly directed with pace by Trip Cullman, the Broadway premiere of Becky Shaw currently runs at the Helen Hays Theater through June 14, 2026.
We expect the opposite of darkness at the top of the play as Gionfriddo brightly introduces us to the sharp retorts and humorous thrust and parry between family/friends Suzanna (Lauren Patten), a psychology grad student and Max (Alden Ehrenreich), a money manager handling her recently deceased father’s estate. It turns out these two have been like family for over twenty years for Max was adopted by her father. So they grew up together and know each other’s insides and outsides and count on each other in a symbiotic way for emotional support and purposefulness. Max runs interference for Suzanna, helping her with her imperious, controlling mother Susan (Linda Emond), who, to Suzanna’s disgust, has taken up with a younger opportunistic man because she has money and needs him emotionally, sexually and psychologically.
During Suzanna’s and Max’s discussion of Susan, her man and the family’s dwindling finances, we understand how domineering, remote and unavailable Susan is when she drops by Suzanna’s room to talk to her daughter and Max. After her snide remarks to Suzanna, Susan makes her demands known, ignores Max’s explanation why funds had been siphoned from the family business by their accountant, and leaves after stating she will be taking Lester with her to dinner and everywhere else, especially her bed. Bereft at losing her father though he passed four months ago, Suzanna turns to Max for comfort. And he is there for her in a way he never was before, assuring her it will not change their relationship.
Because of their close family dynamic, Max’s comedic, ironic responses as the wiser person and Suzanna’s dependence on him, though there is only one year difference in age, sets up the next step into intimacy. This doesn’t surprise and seems natural when Max assures Suzanna sex is not as she suggests “epic,” and it doesn’t have to change anything as they make love. Unexpectedly, the stage crew upends Max who initially watches with surprise then helps them as they move in tables and chairs and rearrange the room (David Zinn’s excellent, symbolic design displaying Cullman’s insightful vision.). Max exits following Suzanna as the former hotel room in New York City becomes Suzanna’s apartment in Rhode Island, months later. Strangely during the set up, a skier in a jazzy, hot outfit zooms across the stage. In the next scene we understand this transition.
The scene opens into a modest apartment with the same dark walls as the hotel room reflecting the lack of prosperity and luxury because of the family’s diminishing finances. However, we expect to see Suzanna and Max follow up their new found intimacy in better digs since Max has money, but that’s not the case. Gionfriddo effects a bend in the characters’ journeys when we note Suzanna has a new man whom she met on the ski slopes. In a whirl wind romance, she marries the younger office worker and unproven writer Andrew (Patrick Ball), on the rebound from Max and mourning her father’s death. Andrew manages to distract her, somewhat, but thing have indeed upended from Max and Suzanna’s sexual encounter which was “epic,” after all.
Suzanna’s needy personality forces her to move from the familiar Max who loves her but hesitates, to Andrew, whose kindness and savior complex propels her with little thought to permanently coupling. This marriage to someone she doesn’t know opens the door to Becky Shaw (Madeline Brewer), Andrew’s co-worker, a college drop-out though obviously smart. Down on her luck, with little money, no car and the desperation to prove herself less of a loser at thirty-five because of bad life choices, Becky Shaw manipulates others with an eerie, savvy, innocence.
Andrew’s savior complex draws him to needy women like a dog to bacon, so he listens to Becky’s problems. With Max nearby in Boston on business, Suzanna and Andrew arrange a double date with independent, prosperous Max and the needy, pretty Becky. Knowing the sardonic, Max as intimately as she does, with his no nonsense snarkiness and duty-bound obligation to her mother, we wonder how Suzanna could set Max up after their intimacy. Additionally, how could she agree to Andrew’s co-worker who is more Andrew’s equal than Max’s? Without thought Andrew and Suzanna agree to this date for Becky and Max clearly for their own ulterior reasons whether they realize it or not. Max’s hilarious, blunt comment about Becky’s dress (Kate Voyce’s costumes) dials up the initial introductions to tense, though Suzanna and Andrew front for her. But the double date fizzles because of a complication with Susan. So Becky and Max go out on a town Max doesn’t know and Becky can’t afford.
Gionfriddo’s characterizations are incredibly rich, nuanced and perceptive. Humorously apparent are the foibles of people trying to extricate themselves from emotional mine fields while endangering themselves the more they attempt escape. And so it goes for the men who fall prey to Becky Shaw’s steely velvet machiavellian femininity and Suzanna’s hapless fear of being alone.
The introduction of Becky Shaw into the family dynamic brings another turning point. Becky’s smarmy desperation has found new, welcome ground upon which to seed itself. Cleverly, she mines an unfortunate incident that happens on their dinner date, which she exploits as an irresistible damsel in distress who needs salvation twice. One salvation is from the upsetting incident which she believes Max mishandled. The second is from inconsiderate Max who is not particularly empathetic or responsive to her charms to answer her numerous phone calls and soothe her soul. With his behavior as proof that she is a loser, her desperation sends her to the brink. She must be rescued from her misery, and the white knight to do it is Andrew, who feels guilty for introducing her to Max and is thus responsible to help her get over her distress and impulse to self-harm.
Meanwhile, when Suzanna’s fear of losing Andrew to Becky manifests, she involves Max. She chides him for Andrew’s sake and on Becky’s request. The mounting chaos erupts like a volcano. It will take someone of Susan’s ironic gravitas and queenly stature to “save the day.” With her threat to Suzanna that Andrew may cheat on her, to allowing Becky to wait at the house instead of at the train station so she can be around Max, Susan encourages the same dependency, fear and desperation she feels with Lester to be unleashed on Max and Suzanna via the subtle machinations of Becky and Andrew. For future entertainment to assuage her chronic illness, Susan will referee and make presumptuous determinations about the two couples.
If not for the exceptional ensemble, and perfect timing of one liners and Cullman’s expert shepherding of the actors, Gionfriddo’s work would not soar into the heavens as it does. Cullman’s vision, especially the changing of scenes (Stacy Derosier’s lighting and M.L.Dogg’s sound design) conveys themes and symbolism. The contrast between the darkness of the city hotel rooms and the couple’s apartment against the creme colored beige decor and appointments of Susan’s upscale house in Richmond, Virginia reminds us of the safety and security of wealth even on the downhill slide to someone like Becky who is on the edge of poverty.
Financial problems create desperate individuals who prey upon those with money. The irony at the conclusion is that Max has the wealth and holds the cards, but he becomes the most vulnerable to be exploited, not only financially but psychically. Alden Ehrenreich gives an amazing portrayal of a character who we feel has the most to lose. Predators Becky and Andrew will bind up Max and Suzanna with each manipulation, demand and velvet gloves of domination, as Susan watches and criticizes. What we’ve seen is only the beginning.
Becky Shaw runs 2 hours 25 minutes through June 14 at the Helen Hayes Theater. 2st.com.
Jon Bernthal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach in ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ Humorous, Riveting
Murphy’s Law (what can go wrong, will go wrong) upends the plan of 3 bank robbers reduced by one who is high on drugs, forgets a shot gun and leaves in a panic literally sh&tting his pants, while apologizing for being unable to do any of what Sonny (Jon Bernthal) asked him. Also, he didn’t bring the getaway car, but took the subway instead. If this isn’t the makings of a gonzo, botched, bank heist, it just may be the makings of a riotous play. However, don’t compare it to the film it is based on.
Sonny can’t believe that the evacuating Ray Ray (Christopher Sears) dumped their well-made plans into the toilet. Indeed, what other situations will be turned over in the Broadway premiere of Dog Day Afternoon at the August Wilson Theater running through July 12, 2026? Directed by Rupert Goold (Ink), Stephen Adly Guirgis (Pulitzer-prize winning Between Riverside and Crazy) wrote the script. He based it on the article “The Boys in The Bank” written by P.F. Kluge and Thomas Moore, published by Life Magazine, and the titular Warner Bros. film directed by the impeccable Sidney Lumet. The production softens the film’s tension and danger and adds humor that provokes raucous laughter.
I’ve resisted the temptation to compare the urgency and depth of the iconic 1975 film with this production that leans heavily on irony and humor to convey a wild situation in a 1972 New York City, itself under siege. More enlightened critics have drawn contrasts and found the play seriously wanting. Judging from the audience’s response the night I saw the production, Adly Guirgis and Goold succeeded in creating a vehicle for friends Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach (TV series The Bear) who elucidate Sonny and Sal with their exceptional talents. They emphasize the “haywire” in a bank heist inspired by real events.
Gould and Adly Guirgis have kept the setting of Brooklyn, 1972 with a few updates in ideas and language (oligarchs substituted for the rich). However, the tone of the play is vastly different from the film which critiqued the social issues looming throughout the decade and became a landmark for cultural reform by creating sympathy for its LGBTQ characters. In this production Sonny’s wife is played convincingly with humor and pathos by Eseban Andres Cruz to reveal Sonny’s explosive relationship and foreshadow the inevitable conclusion.
In light of the state of the world’s particular horrors, the play’s memorializtion of that time in a deteriorating New York City becomes eerily soothing. The tone that borders on farce feels safe. We can look at a less problematic time where decency abides. It’s in the character of Detective Fucco (John Ortiz), and Colleen (Jessica Hecht) and security guard Mr. Eddy. And it’s reflected in Sonny. Ironically, the sinister, cynical, cold cruelty of the FBI’s Sheldon (Spencer Garr), reflects today’s cynical law enforcement. Overall, the production succeeds with its sometimes riotous approach, sterling performances by Bernthal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Hecht, Ortiz, fine ensemble work, and period set, lighting, great music selections and sound design (David Korins, Isabella Byrd, Cody Spencer).
The set design features a revolving stage which effects the exterior 1972 bank facade on the streets of Gravesend, Booklyn. The stage swivels to the bank’s interior of teller’s stations, seating area adjacent to the office manager’s desk and a view into the vault upstage.This set design effectively engages the audience when Sonny steps outside to address the crowd in the play’s most theatrically satisfying moment. Outside the bank Bernthal’s Sonny dynamically, humorously chides the cops. He invites the crowd (audience members) to participate, rousing their enthusiasm. Various passages of Adly Gurirgis’ seminal writing resonate for us today as Sonny’s works the crowd who identify with his truth.
Cops in the audience aisles point their guns at Sonny while he says, “All this show of force — all this shit — it ain’t for me! They don’t need a whole army of blue bozos to put two in the back of my head — bag me, tag me — this is for you people! Make no mistake. They wanna scare you!” As we cheer him on, Hecht’s Colleen encourages him with the word “Attica!” which he shouts arms raised in remembrance of the prisoners and hostages who unjustly were shot by law enforcement in the 1971 riots.
The one-off jokes arise from the situations that Gould pulls off with fine pacing. Bernathal explores Sonny’s vitality, electric energy and sociability as the mastermind manipulator who thinks on his feet, corrects what goes wrong as it happens, all the while capitalizing on helpers like flirtatious older Colleen who becomes a friend. She is LOL when she decides it’s more fun to stay behind, though Sonny offers her the chance of being the first released hostage. Ironically, the other tellers joke amongst themselves that the one least liked should go first. This is the most adventure they’ve had in their lives. Clearly, they believe Sonny when he repeatedly assures them no one will die, a statement that runs counter to what Sal and Sonny privately agreed to.
Because of the light-handed approach, there is a reduction of the overall tension and danger which essentially has been left to the character of Sal (Ebon Moss Bachrach) to convey. Additionally, Sonny and Sal are pitted against the dark, insulting Sheldon and Feds as the enemy, a current theme today. Moss Bachrach thoughtfully portrays emotionally broken Sal as the former convict with PTSD from his prison experiences. His attendant nihilism has left him with two bad choices: worse crimes (Sonny’s hair-brained robbery) or suicide vengeance, taking others with him. Even though Mr. Eddy was accidentally shot when Ray Ray dropped the gun, having guns in an armed bank robbery in which a security guard was shot, means more prison time that Sal tells Sonny he won’t do.
As circumstances progress, the more the charismatic Sonny shines socially even creating a weird Stockholm Syndrome effect with Colleen (Jessica Hecht), the more Sal loses the bond he thought he formed with Sonny. Abruptly, Sal ends Sonny’s love fest. With an edgy brutality he stomps out the congenial atmosphere and stomps on the donuts that John Ortiz’s Detective Fucco gets them. It’s an important moment when the fun stops and the audience are reminded of what he is capable, though Sonny might not be as desperate.
When Lorna (Wilemina Olivia-Garcia) tries to calm him with a Boston creme doughnut, we are frightened when he says, “I’m not your friend. He’s not your friend. And this — this ain’t no fuckin’ picnic, got it?” We realize Sal has chosen and will probably stir that choice unless the congenial Sonny with his positivity and charisma convinces him to calm down. Sal’s speech to Sony about his speaking “words” in a manipulation resonates with power. He’d like to believe Sonny about a helicopter escape, but he can’t because he knows all too well Sonny is a con artist and his words don’t ring true.
Dog Day Afternoon runs 2 hours 15 minutes through July 12 at the August Wilson Theater, Manhattan; dogdayafternoon.com.
John Lithgow in ‘Giant,’ a Towering Triumph in a Giant of a Play
Roald Dahl, beloved British children’s author and poet, has sold more than 300 million copies world wide. He has been called “one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century.” Dahl was also a self-proclaimed anti-Semite. How could a tender-hearted children’s author who answered children’s letters and nursed his wife back from death, be a bigot? The answer to this question turns the drama Giant by Mark Rosenblatt into thrilling, dynamic and controversial theater. Acutely directed by Nichols Hytner and designed by Bob Crowley, Giant runs in a limited engagement at the Music Box Theatre until June 28, 2026.
Mark Rosenblatt’s thought-provoking and slippery play about Dahl takes place in 1983 in the deconstructed living room of Dahl’s family home in Buckinghamshire, England during a summer afternoon. At the odd moment workers who renovate upstairs, pepper the quiet with loud bangs thanks to Darron L West’s sound design, which supports the set design, an undressed living room awash in plastic curtains, boxes and a table and chairs. The cacophony drives John Lithgow’s Dahl up the wall as he discusses the final draft of his latest children’s book, Witches, with Tom Maschler (Elliot Levey). Tom, the managing director of his British publisher, counters Dahl’s complaints with cheerfulness and irony.
With this foray into book corrections we get a glimpse of the terrific John Lithgow’s best selling children’s author responsible for Mathilde and James and the Giant Peach to name a few. Rosenblatt painstakingly constructs the direct, intrusive style of the author with specificity. We note that Dahl listens to every word and humorously spits out whiplash retorts. Apparently, he finds fun in provocative wordplay and enjoys stirring argument.
Lithhgow, who has gotten inside the skin of Dahl and walks in his shoes comfortably, reveals Dahl’s steel-trap mind, and his prickly personality, a mine field to carefully navigate with eyes open. His adversary Mrs. Jessie Stone (Aya Cash), discovers by the play’s end that his cheeky, dark, playfulness should not be underestimated as silly or childish. Indeed, his actions reveal intention. His demeanor may be dismissed as egotistical and inflexible, but it can also be described as adamantine regarding his convictions, however wrong-headed one may think them. On closer investigation Dahl is the giant that should not be self-righteously challenged. He must be responded to in like kind to bring out his generous, sensitive heart to receive the best results for all involved.
Tom and Liccy, Dahl’s long-time lover and fiancée (Rachael Stirling), have learned to smartly counsel him. And this particular day of aches and pains and banging and agitation requires that he be subtly “managed.” Grumbling about royalties, Dahl waits for Jessie Stone, the sales representative from his American publisher. Prompted by the publishing house, she visits to discuss a scandalous review he wrote that exploded with negative press into a death threat by a “crank-caller.” The book Dahl reviewed was God Cried by Catherine Leroy and Tony Clifton. It concerns the 1982 siege of Beirut, Lebanon where Israeli soldiers killed 22,000, mostly Lebanese women and children.
An RAF fighter pilot who shot down German Junker 88s during WWII, Dahl knows the death threat was from a coward because “genuinely violent people don’t call beforehand.” He remains nonplussed, despite Liccy and Tom’s concern, but he keeps the hired policeman stationed outside to protect his family. Furthermore, he dismisses the impact of his review. Later in the play Liccy implies he knew what he was doing and avoided discussing it with her because she would have moved him to take out his inflammatory statements.
Gradually, we learn of the trouble Dahl caused for himself as Liccy and Tom discuss how to “make the stink go away.” Liccy quotes the “Spectator’s” Paul Johnson, who said Dahl’s book review was, ‘The most disgraceful thing to be written in the English language for a very long time.” Though Tom dismisses Johnson as “a hysteric,” Liccy says the criticism about Dahl is “everywhere. All the rags. Left and right.” The point seems to be how badly this will tank his career, reputation and book sales without an apology.
However, we don’ t know what Dahl wrote in his book review until after Jessie arrives. Her mission is to run interference, reveal the fallout in the United States and get Dahl to make a statement, at best, disavowing his objectionable comments so the company’s profitability and launch of Dahl’s Witches goes swimmingly.
The controversy begins when Dahl asks if she’s Jewish, a question Liccy gently chides him about because of its rudeness. However, Jessie’s answer about her name change from Stein to Stone helps Dahl consider how he should proceed. Does she feel attacked by Dahl’s remarks which she deems antisemitic because they are anti-Israel? Dahl’s provocative question rankles her. A cut-out of his review with her accusatory notes scribbled on it that falls out of her son’s book she wished him to sign provokes him.
Rosenblatt sets up the mounting drama conveniently. Tensions increase as Jessie backs Dahl into a corner and the celebrated author reacts defensively. In a private moment Tom criticizes Jessie for not keeping quiet and for not “managing” Dahl away from his incendiary impulses. If only she had returned Tom’s call so he might have debriefed her about how to best conduct the meeting which now, crashes and burns.
As adversaries, Cash’s Jessie and Lithgow’s Dahl electrify the audience to side with their opinions as the characters take their stands. Obviously, Dahl feels justified about condemning Israel for its heartless massacre in the siege of Beirut. He will not amend his comments, one of which stated, “Never before in the history of man has a race of people switched so rapidly from being much pitied victims to barbarous murderers.” But by the end of Act I Cash’s Jessie counters his view with forceful righteousness. She points out Israel’s response to Lebanon’s attack as self-defense. And, she takes umbrage with Dahl’s blaming all Jews for the actions of Israeli soldiers. Additionally she reminds Dahl that 400,000 Israeli citizens condemned and protested the attacks, “protested Sharon, and the Supreme Court forced him out of the army.” The audience responded to Cash’s Jessie with applause and cheers the night I saw the play. She wins a vital, personal victory in her confrontation with Dahl.
Her remarks, however forceful, propel the second act into darker rumblings, her conciliation, Dahl’s growing uncertainty about his remarks, and further attempts by her, Tom and Liccey to get Dahl’s apology on the record. When Liccy reveals his antisemitic comments may inhibit his investiture, Dahl hesitates for her sake, though he dislikes the thought of doing a “begging” interview before a committee to qualify for a knighthood. Further insights into Dahl’s character in a conversation with his gardener Wally, reveal a kind, loving individual who Wally counsels to be himself. But in his last conversation with Jessie, she cannot resist provoking him with one final salvo about how she responds to this experience with Dahl.
Unwittingly, she escalates Dahl’s anger with the revelation of a “white lie” that pushes Dahl over the edge. He sees what he now must do in a final response to the press in remarks which he will not take back. He proclaims his antisemitism with a caveat and qualification, easily overlooked because he mentions Hitler. Only long after his death does the family apologize. How and why he responds to a white lie that Jessie reveals clues us in to his identity. Depending upon how one perceives the portrayal of events, Rosenblatt’s alignment of Dahl with a giant found in his stories, may be interpreted a number of ways in this memorable, wonderfully acted, tragically current play.
Giant runs 2 hours 20 minutes through June 28 at the Music Box Theater, gianttheplay.com.
‘Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)’ Review
Strong performances from the leads Celia Keenan-Bolger, Susannah Perkins and Tony Shalhoub lift up Anna Ziegler’s unbalanced, convoluted feminist revision of Sophocles’ masterpiece Antigone. An irony not to be overlooked is that Antigone is a tragedy about a profoundly heroic and powerful woman who overturns the rule of the patriarchy-her Uncle Creon’s leadership-and destroys it and its future by adhering to spiritual and moral laws rather than the state’s. Ziegler gives a nod to the inherent “feminism” in Antigone in her adaptation which must be lauded for her attempt. However, its execution and rearrangements fall far short of the original. Directed by Tyne Rafaeli, Antigone (This Play I Read in High School) runs at the Public Theater until April 5, 2026.
Zigler reconfigures Antigone through the lens of Keenan-Bolger’s unnamed “Chorus/Narrator.” The playwright uses modern, feminist issues to frame and review Antigone’s heroism by having the Chorus/Narrator create her own scenario of the play she knew from high school. In effect, she imagines the Antigone/Creon conflict in a winding plot that relates to the Chorus/Narrator’s womanhood and identity.
Finding she is pregnant at an older age, the Chorus/Narrator must decide if she should keep the child or get an abortion, given who she thinks she is. However, this straightforward question comes after we witness her shadow her version of Antigone (exiled Oedipus and deceased Jocasta’s rebellious daughter) calling her up during events in the Chorus/Narrator’s life. In effect she uses Antigone to surge power into her own life over the years and help her resolve her problematic relationship with her mother, who she believes didn’t love her. The process of revisiting her own reclamation of the Antigone/Creon conflict enables her to validate her identity and her choices, and establish the power of her voice which she does by the play’s conclusion.
Through the Chorus/Narrator’s lens Antigone is a hip teenager with cropped hair (designers Robert Pickens, Katie Gell), wearing a black leather jacket, loosely fitting top and red plaid skirt courtesy of Ever Chakartash’s costume design. All of the characters are in modern dress, save Ismene, Antigone’s sister, who the narrator “sees” in a smock dress which she wears during her own self-imposed isolation, while Antigone makes defiant decisions. The set design (David Zinn) is minimalist mostly defined by props, for example, a lectern when Creon speaks to the crowd, a security screener at the palace entrance, a settee for Ismene’s room and more.
In the narrator’s first scenario the wild and recalcitrant, Antigone carouses in a bar and ends up with a pickup instead of going to her Uncle Creon’s coronation. She hears he’s become a hard-line politician and to keep control has established many strict laws to create order out of a chaotic Thebes. One of his laws is the banning of abortions which gives rise to illegal abortionists in the back of bodegas. Antigone eventually visits one of these after discovering her pregnancy from her love relationship with Haemon, Creon’s son, her fiance whom she has cheated on.
Key to the Chorus/Narrator’s conflict with herself is establishing her own life and identity, so scenarios especially between Creon and Antigone that she envisions help her. In the second act Antigone confronts Creon about having the illegal abortion. She tells him her body is her own and her choices are her own. They are acts of freedom. She will not be ruled by state laws or Creon’s laws, but by herself. The fact that she asserts this because she believes she can and should is a revolutionary act. The Chorus/Narrator’s view of Antigone is an independent, autonomous being beyond any laws, speaking truth to power, brave and unafraid. Her ultimate power is in ending a pregnancy, another life, if she chooses.
Creon has no power over Antigone in this context, over her reproductive rights. Thus the Chorus/Narrator imagines a dynamic scene where Antigone illustrates her act of freedom and of owning her own body to Creon. Perkins’ Antigone disrobes and points to various injuries and scars only she knows about. Naked, in full possession of herself in front of Shalhoub’s Creon, we believe in the power and determination of Perkins’ Antigone. Only she can objectify her own body, if she so chooses. Perkins makes a meal of this scene and we can identify with her argument keeping in mind how long it took for women to get to this point which was overturned federally in Dobbs after women experienced the freedom to choose via Roe v Wade for 49 years.
Apart from this high-point and Shalhoub’s Creon’s impassioned speech justifying why she must apologize publicly for getting the abortion, the characters don’t resonate. In Sophocles’ Antigone/Creon conflict we feel the enormity of the stakes and the depths of Antigone’s despair which prompts her decision to disobey Creon and not let her brother’s spirit wander for eternity. Unfortunately, Ziegler’s Chorus/Narrator’s inner conflict is not fully explored with grist or emotion. This prevents us from engaging with her as we look through the Chorus/Narrator lens darkly and have difficulty completely identifying with her version of Antigone.
It is an irony that Tony Shalhoub’s Creon, so expertly acted, elevates Creon. We note his character loves his son, niece and family. Unlike the more brutal tyrannical Creon of Sophocles’ original, Shalhoub’s Creon delivers the most reasoned and believable argument for his actions. Shalhoub actually humanizes Creon. Antigone’s choice to end her pregnancy, apart from her action of naked self-possession, becomes reduced from the heroic, noble Antigone in the original play to that of a willful revolutionary who does what she wants not because of any other reason, but to assert her will against the state, because she can. She refuses to apologize but her revolutionary act of facing death is not realized in Creon’s death penalty. She bleeds out from the bad abortion, the meaning of her act diminished.
Unfortunately, Ziegler’s framing structure reduces the characters’ stakes and prevents the audience from being drawn into the plight of Keean-Bolger’s Chorus/Narrator or Perkins’ Antigone to care about what happens to them. This occurs despite the acting chops both women acutely display. The structure is at fault, not their performances.
Antigone (This Play I Read in High School) runs 2 hours15 minutes through April 5 at the Public Theater https://publictheater.org/productions/season/2526/antigone-this-play-i-read-in-high-school/
CAROLE DI TOSTI 