Category Archives: NYC Theater Reviews
Broadway,
‘Schmigadoon!’ LOL Spoof, of a TV Spoof of the Golden Age of Musicals, Comes Home to Broadway
Based on the Apple TV Plus series first season, with book, music and lyrics by Cinco Paul, Schmigadoon is a celebratory spoof of iconic musicals of the 1940s-1950s. With clever twerks of plot, characters, musical phrasing, and acrobatic, balletic dancing from these Golden Age musicals, and a lot of original overlay, this heavenly production, directed by Christopher Gattelli, is where it belongs, Broadway’s the Nederlander Theater. Currently, the world premiere of Schmigadoon! is spreading its joy with an end date through Sept. 6, 2026.
Topped off with fanciful, colorful 1918 (The Music Man) period costuming by Linda Cho, whimsical scenic designs of a magical forest, a Schmigadoon town square surrounded by the beautiful facades of Victorian houses, a carnival barker’s Tunnel of Love ride (Carousel) and more by Scott Pask, one’s spirits are uplifted. We don’t want Josh Skinner (Tony award nominee for Beetlejuice, Alex Brightman) and Melissa Gimble (Sara Chase, The Great Gatsby) to leave the fairy-tale “take-off” of Brigadoon. This is especially so after enjoying the introductory song “Schmigadoon,” meeting the wacky town characters, hearing the vibrant chorus, “wowing at” the set and costumes, and experiencing the apparent peace and happiness Mayor Menlove (Brad Oscar) promises. And then there’s the gorgeous carney Danny Bailey (Max Clayton), who comes on to Melissa in “You Can’t Tame Me,” later that evening, reminiscent of Billy Bigelow in Carousel (1945). Well, well.
Alex Brightman’s orthopedic surgeon Josh is believable as the typical, unromantic, scruffy-bearded male who can’t dance, won’t sing and dislikes musicals where folks sing and dance for no logical reason. He prefers reality and sports to fantasy and “magic” which run counter to his scientific mind.(His type is a spoof in itself.) Sara Chase’s pediatrician is perfect as his opposite. Not only does she deliver babies (the union of love) she’s a romantic who loves musicals. Despite Josh’s dislike, she attempts to share her enjoyment of dancing, singing and romance by making Josh sit through the 1952 film of the most realistic, integrated musical of them all, Singing in the Rain. But she fails to convince Josh musicals are important precisely for the reasons Josh finds them odious. You need a break from reality now and then and love, passion, romance, poetry, singing and dancing provide a welcome respite from the stress and angst of daily pressures, don’t you.? Josh doesn’t buy it, yet.
So when their wanderings in the forest, arguing about Josh not dancing with her at a couple’s retreat, land them in the anachronistic Schmigadoon, Josh is beside himself when the band strikes notes for a song and dance number. He is also pissed that the innkeeper prodded by Ana Gayster’s Mildred Layton forbids Josh to room with Melissa because it’s not respectable in 1918. Only with marriage are “relations” permitted. That and no Wi Fi pings Josh to a fever pitch saying, “I hate this place,” as he pushes Melissa to leave after the waitress and townspeople sing about the delicious “Corn Pudding” for breakfast. A problem arises when Melissa joins in a verse of melody she finds easy to sing as if she belongs there with the chorus which is strange and wierds out Josh who must get home ASAP.
He especially is thrilled to go over the bridge from fantasy into reality, except that’s not happening. Every time they try, it turns them back to Schmigadoon. After their umpteenth time, they question the universe about this anomaly. A Leprechaun appears. He sings that they can only leave if they’ve found their true love. “But ’til ye’ve found it ye must stay, where life’s a musical every day!” Both Josh and Melissa are stunned at seeing the mythic figure. Using his scientific mind and deductive powers of reasoning, Josh concludes that they can’t be each other’s true love. This is particularly concerning when they test the magic by saying they love each other, but still are returned to Schmigadoon.
As they argue now about what true love is, enter the townspeople who moderate their fight in “Lover’s Spat,” then lead them back to Schmigadon because they are homeless and have nowhere else to go. With the motivation to return home, they split up and go on the hunt to find their “true love” since Josh is convinced that their coupling isn’t “true love.” For a man used to employing the scientific method, Josh misses the cognitive dissonance of his actions to find his true love in a fairy-tale musical, but we have a good laugh at his expense..
During twists and turns of adventure and song, more musicals are represented. Josh ends up with Betsy (McKenzie Kurtz) at the point of her father, Farmer McDonough’s, shotgun. But he is saved and falls for Emma Tate (the golden-voiced Isabelle McCalla). The schoolteacher with her brother Carson (Ayaan Diop) providing the latest town intel, ping character twists from The Music Man providing the romance for Josh in the hope that Emma is his true love to bring him home.
For her part Melissa establishes a bond with carney Danny Bailey (Max Carter is wonderful) which blows up when he shoots himself with his own gun unwittingly during a “robbery” to get money for their baby, though Melissa is not pregnant (a send up of Billy Bigelow in Carousel). But she does fall for Doc (Ivan Hernandez) who is older and a stern type like Colonel Von Trapp from The Sound of Music. She even gets to provide an instructive lesson in female anatomy to a pregnantt out of wedlock couple in “Baby Talk” that follows the tune of “Do, Re, Me,.” The scene is riotous.
This mayhem is brought to another level by Gaysteyer’s Mildred Layton with her anti-DEI campaign to remove self-outing, gay, Mayer Menlove, (Brad Oscar brings down the house with his reveal). “Tribulation” reminiscent of the “Ye Got Trouble” in The Music Man sends the production is “off the charts” LOL. But the truth unfolds eventually and Josh and Melissa’s enlightened “modern” energy bring renewal to the antiquated town’s old-fashioned ideas about love and sex. Positive changes and evolutions occur and with these interactions, Josh and Melissa are changed through wisdom they learn and share.
Paul’s tweaks to the musicals reveal his admiration and reverence for one of this country’s finest contributions to the arts historically, the American musical. The enthusiasm of the principals, the authenticity inhabiting their portrayals allows the audience to empathize because the characters are not superficially drawn or cartoonish. This is especially true of Alex Brightman’s Josh at the conclusion in his astounding moment of realization where reality and romance and hope merge in his soul. At that moment Brightman reaches an apex, proving that serious moments can convey theme with beauty in a hilarious production. It is all a matter of superbly balanced tone and meaning which Paul and Gattelli achieve in this memorable musical of musicals.
Schmigadoon! runs 2 hours 30 minutes with one intermission at the Nederlander Theater through September 6, 2026 schmigadoonbroadway.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.
‘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.
‘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.
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.
Carrie Coon and Namir Smallwood are Frightening in Tracy Letts’ ‘Bug’
She’s a cocktail waitress. He’s a Gulf War vet. When they get together they create an unforgettable relationship in Tracy Letts’ sometimes comedic, mostly compelling psychological drama Bug, currently making its Broadway premiere at Manhattan Theater Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre through February 8, 2026. Aptly directed by David Cromer for a maximum thrill ride, Agnes (Carrie Coon) and Peter (Namir Smallwood) gain each other’s trust in a world that increasingly threatens to destroy them.
Stellar performances by Coon (The White Lotus, The Gilded Age) and Smallwood (Pass Over on Broadway) carry the production through a slow build first act into the harrowing intensity and climactic finish of the second.
Letts’ chilling drama unfolds in a motel room on the outskirts of present-day Oklahoma City. Scenic designer Takeshi Kata features a typical mundane bedroom with cream colored walls and complementary cheesy lamps and appointments that spell out Agnes’ challenged socioeconomic position. By the second act, after a time interval during which Agnes and Peter panic and go through stages of emotional terror, the room’s once benign look transforms to a place whose inhabitants are under siege.
At this point Kata’s design shocks. It is then we understand how badly the situation has progressed in the minds of the characters .
At the top of the play we meet Agnes who lives in the motel room hiding out from her violent former husband Jerry Goss (Steve Key) an ex-convict. As Coon’s Agnes and her lesbian biker friend R.C. (Jennifer Engstrom) do drugs, R.C. warns Agnes to protect herself against Jerry whose prison release she questions because he is dangerous.
Ironically, Agnes asks about the background of the stranger using her bathroom. R.C. vouches for Smallwood’s Peter who she brought with her as they make their way to a party that R.C. also invites Agnes to. While R.C. is on the phone with personal business, Peter assures Agnes he is “not an axe murderer,” and expresses an interest in her.
Instead of going to the party with R.C., both Agnes and Peter decide to hang out together and talk, feeling more comfortable getting to know each other than being in a larger crowd. It is during these exchanges and Peter’s staying overnight at Agnes’ invitation that her emotional neediness clarifies. When Jerry shows up, they argue and he hits Agnes. After Jerry leaves, Peter’s attentiveness draws her closer to him. As Agnes and Peter settle in and do drugs, they share secrets and bond. Increasingly Agnes’ perspective shifts. She accepts Peter’s world view and personal reality despite its extremism.
Though Peter says he should go, Agnes uses his hesitation to encourage him to stay, insisting upon it. She makes a symbolic gesture that clever viewers will note conveys her acceptance of Peter because of her emotional desperation more than a belief in his perspective and backstory.
In the next act we see the extent to which Peter has made himself comfortable living with Agnes whose resolve against being with Jerry has strengthened because of her relationship with Peter. Because their concern and care for each other resonates with trust, Peter relaxes into himself. He examines his blood under a microscope and finds “proof” of a conspiracy theory that the government uses military vets and unsuspecting individuals as guinea pigs to experiment on. With convoluted half-truths about government cover-ups related to the war in Iraq, Oklahoma City bombing, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment and more, he panics, fearful that aphids bite him and Agnes, feed off their blood and infest their living space.
Convinced that egg sacks have been planted in him by doctors who also monitor and follow him with helicopters because he has gone AWOL, he persuades Agnes to accept his “bug” theory that he grounds in explanations. Together, they plan a way out of the infestation which has taken over their bodies and minds.
To complicate matters Dr. Sweet (Randall Arney) shows up and explains Peter’s medical case with R.C. and Jerry to legitimize taking Peter back with him to “Lake Groom.” Letts offers the intriguing possibility that there may be many truths about this situation. But without independent investigation and research, belief takes over. Whether Peter is part of an experiment and a guinea pig or not, Agnes expresses her love for him comforted by their bond which gives her life meaning. Within the horror of the infestation, they have found their emotional sustenance. Their relationship is their sanctuary from life’s pain.
Cromer’s vision and his shepherding of the fine performances by Coon and Smallwood make this stylized production all too real and terrifying. Thematically current, with various cultural attitudes related to government cover-ups, and conspiracy theories stoked by the questionable motives of those in power, the creative team’s efforts (Heather Gilbert’s lighting design, Josh Schmidt’s sound design) hit the sweet spot of relevance.
Though written decades ago, in Bug Letts intimates how and why certain women embrace what others deem to be their partner’s extremist perspectives. Wounded and seeking love, women like Agnes more easily accept their partner’s ideas, rather than search for facts and proof to dispute them. Governmental cover-ups of the truth fan the flames of extremist belief systems. The consequences can be socially and culturally devastating.
Bug runs 1 hour and 55 minutes with one intermission at the Samuel Friedman Theatre ( 47th St. between 7th and 8th) https://www.manhattantheatreclub.com/shows/2025-26-season/bug/
Kara Young and Nicholas Braun Fine-Tune Their Performances in ‘Gruesome Playground Injuries’
What do people do when they have emotional pain? Sometimes it shows physically in stomach aches. Sometimes to release internal stress people risk physical injury doing wild stunts, like jumping off a school roof on a bike. In Rajiv Joseph’s humorous and profound Gruesome Playground Injuries, currently in revival at the Lucille Lortel Theater until December 28th, we meet Kayleen and Doug. Two-time Tony Award winner Kara Young and Succession star Nicolas Braun portray childhood friends who connect, lose track of each other and reconnect over a thirty year period.
Joseph charts their growth and development from childhood to thirty-somethings against a backdrop of hospital rooms, ERs, medical facilities and the school nurse’s office, where they initially meet when they go to seek relief from their suffering. After the first session when they are 8-year-olds, to the last time we see them at 38-year-olds at an ice rink, we calculate their love and concern for each other, while they share memories of the most surprising and weird times together. One example is when they stare at their melded vomit swishing around in a wastepaper basket when they were 13-year-olds.
How do they maintain their relationship if they don’t see each other for years after high school? Their friends keep them updated so they can meet up and provide support. From their childhood days they’ve intimately bonded by playing “show and tell,” swapping stories about their external wounds, which Joseph implies are the physical manifestations of their soul pain. After Doug graduates from college, when Doug is injured, someone tips off Kayleen who comes to his side to “heal him,” something he believes she does and something she hopes she does, though she doesn’t feel worthy of its sanctity.
Joseph’s two-hander about these unlikely best friends alludes to their deep psychological and emotional isolation that contributes to their self-destructive impulses. Kayleen’s severe stomach pains and vomiting stems from her upbringing. For example in Kayleen’s relationship with her parents we learn her mother abandoned the family and ran off to be with other lovers while her father raised the kids and didn’t celebrate their birthdays. Yet, when her mother dies, the father tells Kayleen she was “a better woman than Kayleen would ever be.” There is no love lost between them.
Doug, whose mom says he is accident prone, uses his various injuries to draw in Kayleen because he feels close to her. She gives him attention and likes touching the wounds on his face, eyes, etc. Further examination reveals that Doug comes from a loving family, the opposite of Kayleen’s. Yet, he may be psychologically troubled because he risks his life needlessly. For example, after college, he stands on the roof of a building during a storm and is struck by lightening, which puts him in a coma. His behavior appears foolish or suicidal. Throughout their relationship Kayleen calls him stupid. The truth lies elsewhere.
Of course, when Kayleen hears he is in a coma (they are 28-year-olds), after the lightening episode, she comes to his rescue and lays hands on him and tells him not to die. He recovers but he never awakens when she prays over him. She doesn’t find out he’s alive until five years later when he visits her in a medical facility. There, she recuperates after she tried to cut out her stomach pain with a knife. She was high on drugs. At that point they are 33-year-olds. Doug tells her to keep in touch, and not let him drift away, which happened before.
Joseph charts their relationship through their emotional dynamic with each other which is difficult to access because of the haphazard structure of the play, listing ages and injuries before various scenes. In this Joseph mirrors the haphazard events of our lives which are difficult to figure out. Throughout the 8 brief, disordered, flashback scenes identified by projections on the backstage wall listing their ages (8, 23,13, 28, 18, 33, 23, 38) and references to Doug’s and Kayleen’s injuries, Joseph explores his characters’ chronological growth while indicating their emotional growth remains nearly the same, as when we first meet them at 8-years-old. In the script, despite their adult ages, Joseph refers to them as “kids.”
Toward the end of the play via flashback (when they are 18-year-olds), we discover their concern and love for for each other and inability to carry through with a complete and lasting union as boyfriend and girlfriend. When Doug tries to push it, Kayleen isn’t emotionally available. Likewise when Kayleen is ready to move into something more (they are 38-year-olds), Doug refuses her touch. By then he has completely wrecked himself physically and can only work his job at the ice rink sitting on the Zamboni.
Young and Braun are terrific. Their nuanced performances create their characters’ relationship dynamic with spot-on authenticity. Acutely directed by Neil Pepe, we gradually put the pieces together as the mystery unfolds about these two. We understand Kayleen insults Doug as a defense mechanism, yet is attracted to his self-destructive nature with which she identifies. We “get” his protection of her because of her abusive father. One guy in school who Doug fights when the kid calls her a “skank,” beats him up. Doug knows he can’t win the fight, but he defends Kayleen’s name and reputation.
The lack of chronology makes the emotional resonance and causation of the characters’ behavior more difficult to glean. One must ride the portrayals of Young and Braun with rapt attention or you will miss many of Joseph’s themes about pain, suffering and the salve for it in companionship, honesty and love.
In additional clues to their character’s isolation, Young and Braun move the minimal props, the hospital beds, the bedding. They rearrange them for each scene. On either side of the stage in a dimly lit space (lighting by Japhy Weideman), Young and Braun quickly fix their hair and don different costumes (Sarah Laux’s costume design), and apply blood and injury-related makeup (Brian Strumwasser’s makeup design). In these transitions, which also reveal passages of time in ten and fifteen year intervals, we understand that they are alone, within themselves, without help from anyone. This further provides clues to the depths of Joseph’s portrait of Kayleen and Doug, which the actors convey with poignance, humor and heartbreak.
Gruesome Playground Injuries runs 1 hour 30 minutes with no intermission through 28 December at the Lucille Lortel Theater; gruesomeplaygroundinjuries.com.
‘The Baker’s Wife,’ Lovely, Poignant, Profound
It is easy to understand why the musical by Stephen Schwartz (music, lyrics) and Joseph Stein (book) after numerous reworkings and many performances since its premiere in 1976 has continued to gain a cult following. Despite never making it to Broadway, The Baker’s Wife has its growing fan club. This profound, beautiful and heartfelt production at Classic Stage Company directed by Gordon Greenberg will surely add to the fan club numbers after it closes its limited run on 21 December.
Based on the film, “La Femme du Boulanger” by Marcel Pagnol (1938), which adapted Jean Giono’s novella“Jean le Bleu,” The Baker’s Wife is set in a tiny Provençal village during the mid-1930s. The story follows the newly hired baker, Aimable (Scott Bakula), and his much younger wife, Geneviève (Oscar winner, Ariana De Bose). The townspeople who have been without a baker and fresh bread, croissants or pastries for months, hail the new couple with love when they finally arrive in rural Concorde. Ironically, bread and what it symbolically refers to is the only item upon which they readily agree.
If you have not been to France, you may not “get” the community’s orgasmic and funny ravings about Aimable’s fresh, luscious bread in the song “Bread.” A noteworthy fact is that French breads are free from preservatives, dyes, chemicals which the French ban, so you can taste the incredible difference. The importance of this superlative baker and his bread become the conceit upon which the musical tuns.
Schwartz’s gorgeously lyrical music and the parable-like simplicity of Stein’s book reaffirm the values of forgiveness, humility, community and graciousness as they relate to the story of Geneviève. She abandons her loving husband Aimable and runs away to have adventures with handsome, wild, young Dominique (Kevin William Paul), the Marquis’ chauffeur. When the devastated Aimable starts drinking and stops making bread, the townspeople agree they cannot allow Aimable to fall down on his job. The Marquis (Nathan Lee Graham), is more upset about losing Aimable’s bread than the car Domnique stole.
Casting off long held feuds and disagreements, they unite together and send out a search party to return Geneviève without judgment to Aimable, who has resolved to be alone. Meanwhile, Geneviève decides to leave Dominique who is hot-blooded but cold-hearted. In a serendipitous moment three of the villagers come upon Geneviève waiting to catch a bus to Marseilles. They gently encourage her to return to Concorde, affirming the town will not judge her.
She realizes she has nowhere to go and acknowledges her wrong-headed ways, acting like Pompom her cat who also ran off. Geneviève returns to Aimable for security, comfort and stability, and Pompom returns because she is hungry. Aimable feeds both, but scolds the cat for running after a stray tom cat in the moonlight. When he asks Pompom if she will run away again, DeBose quietly, meaningfully tells Bakula’s Aimable, she will not leave again. The understanding and connection returns metaphorically between them.
Director Gordon Greenberg’s dynamically staged and beautifully designed revival succeeds because of the exceptional Scott Bakula and perfect Ariana DeBose, who also dances balletically (choreography by Stephanie Klemons). DeBose’s singing is beyond gorgeous and Bakula’s Aimable resonates with pride and poignancy The superb ensemble evokes the community of the village which swirls its life around the central couple.
Greenberg’s acute, well-paced direction reveals an obvious appreciation and familiarity with The Baker’s Wife. Having directed two previous runs, one in New Jersey (2005), the other at The Menier Chocolate Factory in London (2024), Greenberg fashions this winning, immersive production with the cafe square spilling out into the CSC’s central space with the audience on three sides. The production offers the unique experience of cafe seating for audience members.
Jason Sherwood’s scenic design creates the atmosphere of the small village of Concorde with ivy draping the faux walls, suggesting the village’s quaint buildings. The baker’s boulanger on the ground floor at the back of the theater is in a two-story building with the second floor bedroom hidden by curtains with the ivy covered “Romeo and Juliet” balcony in front. The balcony features prominently as a device of romance, escape or union. From there DeBoise’s Geneviève stands dramatically while Kevin William Paul’s Dominique serenades her, pretending it is the baker’s talents he praises. From there DeBoise exquisitely sings “Meadowlark.”
Greenberg’s vision for the musical, the sterling leads and the excellent ensemble overcome the show’s flaws. The actors breathe life into the dated script and misogynistic jokes by integrating these as cultural aspects of the small French community of Concorde in the time before WW II. The community composed of idiosyncratic members show they can be disagreeable and divisive with each other. However, they come together when they attempt to find Geneviève and return her to Aimable to restore balance to their collective, with bread for their emotional and physical sustenance.
All of the wonderful work by ensemble members keep the musical pinging. Robert Cuccioli plays ironic husband Claude with Judy Kuhn as his wife Denise. They are the cafe owning, long married couple, who serve as the foils for the newly married Aimable and Geneviève. They provide humor with wise cracks about each other as the other townspeople chime in with their jokes and songs about annoying neighbors.
Like the other townspeople, who watch the events with the baker and his wife and learn about themselves, Claude and Denise realize the lust of their youth has morphed into love and great appreciation for each other in their middle age. Kuhn’s Denise opens and closes the production singing about the life and people of the village who gain a new perspective in the memorable signature song, “Chanson.”
The event with the baker and his wife stirs the townspeople to re-evaluate their former outlooks and biased attitudes. The women especially receive a boon from Geneviève’s actions. They toast to her while the men have gone on their search, leaving the women “without their instruction.” And for the first time Hortense (Sally Murphy), stands up to her dictatorial husband Barnaby (Manu Narayan) and leaves to visit a relative. She may never return. Clearly, the townspeople inch their way forward in getting along with each other, to “break bread” congenially as a result of an experience with “the baker and his wife,” that they will never forget.
The Baker’s Wife runs 2 hours 30 minutes with one intermission at Classic Stage Company through Dec. 21st; classicstage.org.
Laurie Metcalf is Amazing in ‘Little Bear Ridge Road’
On 12 acres of property in Idaho on the top of the ridge, the sky is so intense it makes Ethan (Micah Stock) panicky because he feels that his life is insignificant against the vastness of the galaxy glittering before him. Sarah (Laurie Metcalf), Ethan’s aunt who owns the property and appreciates the nighttime view tells him she “thought once about buying a telescope, but you know. Then I’d own a telescope.” The audience laughter responding to Metcalf’s pointed, identifying statement that reveals her edgy, funny character peppers Samuel D. Hunter’s powerful, sardonic Little Bear Ridge Road currently at the Booth Theatre.
Metcalf is terrific as Sarah who delivers comments like darts hitting the bullseye and evoking laughter because her words are heavy with authenticity. Her statements convey meaning and pointedly eschew the gentility of polite conversation. Micah, Sarah’s nephew, is withdrawn, remote and masked, not only because the play begins during the COVID-19 pandemic, but because he wears his soul damage on the exterior with a covering of silence that withholds speech. Interestingly, these two estranged family members, one a nurse who doesn’t even nurture her own wounds, and the other, a self-damaged young man of thirty, who can’t really get out of his own way, eventually get along,
With this Broadway debut Hunter (The Whale, A Bright New Boise) weaves a poignant, humorous, fascinating dynamic. Metcalf and Stock inhabit these individuals with humanity and a fullness of life that is breathtaking.
Directed crisply with excellent pace and verve by Joe Mantello, Hunter’s comedic drama that premiered at Steppenwolf Theater Company, confronts human isolation and failed familial relationships. Hunter presents individuals who confuse self-supporting independence with misguided self-reliance. With spare, concise dialogue the playwright explores how Metcalf’s Sarah and Stock’s Ethan rekindle their sensitivity and open up while nursing their fractured, self-victimized souls, to help each other without acknowledging it as help.
Finally, Hunter’s dialogue has flourishes of well-placed poetic grace and rhythm. Within its meta-themes about human beings struggles with themselves, it’s also about knowing when to let go to encourage another’s growth.
Aunt Sarah and nephew Ethan have an ersatz reunion, when Ethan’s father, Sarah’s brother, dies and leaves the nearby house and estate to Ethan to dispose of. Estranged from his father and from her for a number of years, Ethan, who is gay, lived in Seattle with a partner, who emotionally abused him and self-medicated with a cocaine habit. Eventually, they split. Graduating from university with an M.F.A. in writing, Ethan has drifted, stunned by his devastating childhood where he was raised by an addict father, since Ethan’s mother abandoned the family when he was little. How does Ethan learn not to duplicate his problematic relationship with his father, with love relationships with other older men?
For her part Sarah remained in Idaho near where she was born and worked as a nurse during and after her husband left her. Fortunately or unfortunately, they had no children. This means that she and Ethan are the only Fernsbys left on the planet, dooming their family line to extinction, which according to Ethan seems pathetic. Selling her home in Moscow, Sarah tells Ethan she moved to a more remote area because “It suits me better. Not being around—people.”
With her prickly, self-reliance and proud stance refusing help, Sarah has taken care of her house and property, worked, organized documents and paperwork for Leon (Ethan’s dad, her brother). She generously gave Leon money to help him with his bills. When Ethan affirms that was a bad idea because his addict father used it for his meth habit, Sarah states she doesn’t know what he used it for. After all, Leon told her that he never did meth in front of Ethan. The truth lies elsewhere.
As the pandemic passes and circumstances improve, the relationship between aunt and nephew also improves. They communicate more intimately. They watch a TV series and comment about the characters. The dialogue is funny and Sarah and Ethan become family. Assumptions and mistaken views are dismissed and overturned. Realistic expectations fill in the gaps. A surprise occurs when Ethan meets and forms an attachment with James (the excellent John Drea).
Hunter uses James as a catalyst, who provokes a turning point to continue the forward momentum of the play. James comes from a more privileged, loving background and is studying at a nearby university to be a star-gazer for real, an astrophysicist. With eloquence James explains the magnificence of Orion’s Belt to Ethan, as it relates to our sun. Sarah welcomes him and encourages his relationship with Ethan, until once more circumstances gyrate in another direction, all perfectly unfolding with the emotion of the characters.
Mantello arranges the interlocking dynamic among Sarah, Ethan and then James, center stage on a “couch in a void.” From there the characters converse, sit, enter and leave stage right (to an invisible kitchen), stage left (to bedrooms). The recliner couch on a turntable platform in different positions establishes the passage of time between 2020 and 2022. Scott Pask’s set and the lighting by Heather Gilbert are symbolic and interpretive. Our focus becomes the characters and the actors’ exceptional portrayals as they struggle to find a home with each other and themselves, until the threads of grace in their alignment come to a necessary end.
After all, the Fernsbys have to have a legacy, if not in offspring, then in words. And the respite and connections they find together talking and watching TV on a “couch in void” becomes the place where Ethan’s legacy in writing is born, and the Fernbys legacy prevails.
Little Bear Ridge Road runs 1 hour 35 minutes with no intermission at the Booth Theater through February 15th littlebearridgeroad.com.
Bobby Cannavale, James Corden, Neil Patrick Harris Are LOL in ‘Art’
Superb acting and humorous, dynamic interplay bring the first revival of Yasmina Reza’s Tony-award winning play Art into renewed focus. The play, translated from the French by Christopher Hampton, is about male friendship, male dominance and affirming self-worth. Directed by Scott Ellis, the comedy with profound philosophical questions about how we ascribe value and importance to items considered “art” as a way of bestowing meaning on our own lives resonates more than ever. Art runs until December 21st at the Music Box Theatre with no intermission.
When Marc (Bobby Cannavale) visits his friend Serge (Neil Patrick Harris) and discovers Serge recently spent $300,000 dollars on a white, modernist painting without discussing it with him, Marc can’t believe it. Though the painting by a known artist in the art world can be resold for more money, Marc labels the work “shit,” not holding back to placate his friend’s ego. The opening salvo has begun and the painting becomes the catalyst for three friends of twenty-five years to reevaluate their identity, meaning and bond with each other.
As a means to reveal each character’s inner thoughts, Reza has them address the audience. Initially Marc introduces the situation about Serge’s painting. After Marc insults Serge’s taste and probity, Serge quietly listens, makes the audience, his confidante and expresses to them what he can’t tell Marc. In fact Serge categorizes Marc’s opinion saying, “He’s one of those new-style intellectuals, who are not only enemies of modernism, but seem to take some sort of incomprehensible pride in running it down.” As Serge attempts to pin down Marc reinforcing Marc’s lack of expertise or knowledge about modern art, he questions what standards Marc uses to ascribe his valuable painting as “this shit.”
At that juncture Reza emphasizes her theme about the arbitrary conditions around assigning value to objects, people, anything. Without consensus related to standards, only experts can judge the worth of art and artifacts. Obviously, Marc doesn’t accept modernist experts or this painter’s work. He asserts his opinion through the force of his personality and friendship with Serge. However, his insult throws their friendship into unknown territory and capsizes the equilibrium they once enjoyed. The power between them clearly shifts. The white canvass has gotten in the way.
During the first thrust and parry between Marc and Serge in their humorous battle of egos, the men resolve little. In fact we learn through their discussions with their mutual friend Yvan (James Corden), they think that each has lost their sense of humor. The purchase of the painting clearly means something monumental in their relationship. But what? And how does Yvan fit into this testing of their friendship?
Marc’s annoyance that Serge purch,ased the painting without his input, becomes obsessive and he seeks out Yvan for validation. First he warns the audience about Yvan’s tolerant, milquetoast nature, a sign to Marc that Yvan doesn’t care about much of anything if he won’t take a position on it. During his visit with Yvan, Marc vents about Serge’s pretensions to be a collector. Though he knows he can’t really manipulate Yvan about Serge because Yvan remains in the middle of every argument, he still tries to influence Yvan against the painting.
Marc believes if Yvan tolerates Serge’s purchase of “shit” for $300,000, then he doesn’t care about Serge. Tying himself in knots, Marc considers what kind of friend wouldn’t concern himself with his friend getting scammed $300,000 for a shit panting? If Yvan isn’t a good friend to Serge, at least Marc shows he cares by telling Serge the painting is “shit.” Without stating it, Marc implies that Serge has been duped to buy a white canvass with invisible color in it he doesn’t see based on BS, modernist clap trap.
In the next humorous scene between Yvan and Serge, knowing what to expect, Yvan sets up Serge, who excitedly shows him the painting. True to Marc’s description of him, Yvan stays on the fence about Serge’s purchase not to offend him. However, when Yvan reports back to Marc about the visit, he disputes Marc’s impression that Serge lost his sense of humor. In that we note that Yvan has no problem upsetting Marc when he says that he and Serge laughed about the painting. However, when Marc tries to get Yvan to criticize Serge’s purchase, Yvan tells him he didn’t “love the painting, but he didn’t hate it either.”
In presenting this absurd situation Reza explores the weaknesses in each of the men, and their ridiculous behavior which centers around whose perception is superior or valid. Additionally, she reveals the balance inherent in friendships which depend upon routine expectations and regularity. In this instance Serge has done the unexpected, which surprises and destabilizes Marc, who then becomes upset that Yvan doesn’t see the import behind Serge’s extreme behavior.
Teasing the audience by incremental degrees prompting LOL audience reactions, Reza brings each of the men to a boiling point and catharsis. Will their friendship survive their extreme reactions (even Yvan’s noncommittal reaction is extreme) and differences of opinion? Will Serge allow Marc to deface what he believes to be “shit” for the sake of their friendship? In what way are these middle-aged men asserting their “place” in the universe with each other, knowing that that place will soon evanesce when Death knocks on their doors?
The humorous dialogue shines with wit and irony. Even more exceptional are the actors who energetically stomp around in the skins of these flawed characters that do remind us of ourselves during times when passion overtakes rationality. Each of the actors holds their own and superbly counteracts the others, or the play would seem lopsided and not land. It mostly does with Ellis’ finely paced direction, ironic tone, and grey walled set design (David Rockwell), that uniformly portrays the similarity among each of the characters’ apartments (with the exception of a different painting in each one).
Reza’s characters become foils for each other when Marc, Serge and Yvan attempt to assert their dominance. Ironically, Yvan establishes his power in victimhood.
Arriving late for their dinner plans, Corden’s Yvan bursts upon the scene expressing his character in full, harried bloom. His frenzied monologue explodes like a pressure cooker and when he finishes, he stops the show. The evening I saw the production, the audience applauded and cheered for almost a minute after watching Corden, his Yvan in histrionics about his two fighting step-mothers, fiance, and father who hold him hostage about parental names on his and his fiance’s wedding invitations. Corden delivers Yvan’s lament at a fever pitch with lightening pacing. Just mind-blowing.
The versatile Neil Patrick Harris portrays Serge’s dermatologist as a reserved, erudite, true friend who “knows when to hold ’em and knows when to fold ’em.” Cannavale portrays Marc’s assertive personality and insidiously sardonic barrel laugh with authenticity. Underneath the macho mask slinks inferiority and neediness. Together this threesome reveals men at the worst of their game, their personal power waning, as they dodge verbal blows and make preemptive strikes that hide a multitude of issues the playwright implies. They are especially unwinning at successful relationships with women.
Reza’s play appears more current than one might imagine. As culture mavens and influencers revel in promoting and buying brands as a sign of cache, the pretensions of superiority owning, for example, a Birkin bag, bring questions about what an item’s true worth is and what that “worth” means in the eye of the beholder. Commercialism is about creating envy and lust and the illusion of value. To what extent do we all fall for being duped? Does Marc truly care that his friend may have fallen for more hype than value? Conclusively, Yvan has his own problems to contend with. How can he move beyond, “I don’t like it, I don’t hate it.”
As for its own value, Art is worthwhile theater to see the performances of these celebrated actors who have fine tuned their portrayals to a perfect pitch. Art runs 1 hour 35 minutes with no intermission through Dec. 21 at the Music Box Theater. artonbroadway.com.
CAROLE DI TOSTI 