It’s a minor theatrical annoyance, but one that does irk some critics: When your set displays a large wall clock, center stage, make sure it’s running. The wall clock in This Is Government, Nina Kissinger’s disappointing new comedy at 59E59, displays 4:55 in the 15-minute first scene and stays there, with the three denizens of Washington’s Cannon House Office Building moving the hands manually to tick off the subsequent scenes in a roughly seven-hour dramatic arc. It plays amateurishly, and so, unfortunately, does much of This Is Government.
With sharp humor and raw vulnerability, Michael Levin’s Sober Songs, directed by Chris Mackin, dives into the tangled lives of six young adults navigating recovery and their gruff but compassionate sponsor, Cap. Through emotional ballads and witty dialogue, the musical delivers a candid, character-driven look at the messy highs and lows of sobriety.
Any number of things can go wrong when attempting a musical parody of The Exorcist. After all, William Friedkin’s 1973 classic horror movie was itself rumored to be cursed, having experienced more than its share of injuries and deaths during filming. Plus, it can be tricky finding the yucks in William Peter Blatty’s story, which takes blood and puke as seriously as it does Satan and the priesthood. Writer and performer Michael Shaw Fisher gives it a shot nonetheless with Exorcistic: The Rock Musical. Its dynamic cast is wholly committed to the bit and sing as if possessed, but Fisher’s script, which he began drafting in 2012, is convoluted to the point that audience members may be left wondering what the devil is going on.
Romina Paula’s The Whole of Time chronicles the seismic impact of a seemingly casual visitor on an Argentine family. Written in 2009 and translated for the English-speaking stage by Jean Graham-Jones, the play was first presented in New York in 2024 at Torn Page, a nonprofit theater company in Chelsea. It was nominated for a Drama Desk Award that season. The Torn Page staging, directed by Tony Torn, has now been reassembled at The Brick in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as a co-production of The Brick and A/Park Productions.
After a year’s hiatus, Free Shakespeare in the Park triumphantly returns to the revitalized Delacorte Theater with Saheem Ali’s multicultural staging of Twelfth Night. With wit, music, and romance seamlessly entwined, this timeless comedy revels in love’s unexpected twists and delightful disguises.
Carl Holder’s new show is called Out of Order because, while it has all the usual components of a play—not only plot components like “inciting incident” and “rising action” but production components such as the curtain call, a talkback, even a content warning—they don’t occur in their usual order.
It’s impossible to ignore chemistry, whether it’s as basic and essential as two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen, or as toxic and unwelcome as a string of PFAs. In Charles Randolph-Wright’s Duke & Roya, the chemistry goes beyond the molecular level, as Jay Ellis and Stephanie Nur demonstrate in the title roles. It’s a powerful component for this play, which by turns is romantic and political and covers a lot of ground without quite bursting at the seams.
Jethro Compton’s stage adaptation of the classic short story The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance delivers a taut and compelling drama that both honors and subverts the conventions of the Western. Directed with precision and emotional clarity by Thomas R. Gordon, this new production retains the story’s essential moral conflict—between truth and legend, justice and lawlessness—but deepens its resonance by introducing a new character and themes that can speak powerfully to a modern audience.
In Emmanuelle Mattana’s Trophy Boys, four debaters huddle in an empty schoolroom (nifty scenic design by Matt Saunders), strategizing for the final match of an interscholastic tournament. They’re seniors at Imperium, an elite boys’ prep school; the imminent debate is against a team from a similarly tony girls’ school. This is the swan song of the boys’ high-school extracurricular lives. They’re undefeated and, being fiercely ambitious, terrified of losing this last debate, especially to a female team.
With Breakin’ NYC, director and choreographer Angel Kaba transforms the stage into a pulsing time machine, tracing hip-hop dance’s rise from the pavement of the Bronx to the global spotlight of the Olympic Games. More than a dance showcase, the production is a celebration of resilience, rhythm, and rebellion—told through the language of hip-hop. After a popular holiday run of 20 performances last year, Breakin’ NYC returns with its vibe intact. The charismatic Ajalé Olaseni Coard hosts the 75-minute show and keeps everything moving along.
Abby Rosebrock’s 2018 dark comedy, Dido of Idaho, featured an act of extreme violence carried out with a household object. Her 2019 follow-up, Blue Ridge, focused on addicts trying to form relationships in the midst of a recovery program. Her new work, a twisted tale of good will and bad romance called Lowcountry, utilizes both of these dramatic elements in its exploration of a first date warped by bouts of desperation and deception. In this Atlantic Theater Company production directed by Jo Bonney, some scenes might be over-extended, but the sexual tension simmers, then boils over.
Taylor Mac is chronicling slapstick goings-on backstage at a not-for-profit’s fundraising gala in his new comedy Prosperous Fools. Murphy’s Law is in high gear, and things are haywire. Since the not-for-profit is called National Ballet Theater, it’s clear this is Mac’s assessment of the state of the arts under the new federal administration that has made its leader chair of the board at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
LightningCloud, a portmanteau of the wife-and-husband writing team Crystle Lightning and Henry Cloud Andrade, have rumbled into town with their touring production of Bear Grease. Inspired by a certain 1972 stage hit, and even more so by the subsequent film version starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, this Indigenous take on an old favorite asks the musical question: What if the hot boys and cool girls of high school also happen to be Enoch Cree and Huichol? However, as directed by Lightning, the more relevant query for this rambling vehicle is: What happens when a piece that began life as a one-hour parody is stretched into a two-hour variety show?
In A Letter to Lyndon B. Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First, playwright-directors Natasha Roland and Xhloe Rice blur the line between 1960s Boy Scout rituals and the drafting of U.S. soldiers to Vietnam. What emerges is an absurdist meditation on masculinity, obedience, and the perilous passage to manhood.
Jordan Tannahill’s drama Prince Faggot, a love story about a gay heir to the British throne and his boyfriend, is admirably multifaceted: part fantasia, part social and political commentary, part agitprop. At heart, though, Prince Faggot is a bittersweet romance about a royal and a commoner, a sort of Roman Holiday for the 21st century—if Audrey Hepburn’s princess had become a devotee of drug-assisted intercourse and Japanese rope bondage.
The first thing to know about Out of the Box Theatrics’ Beau the Musical is that it’s mostly not about Beau. He’s an important supporting character in the show by Douglas Lyons (book, music and lyrics) and Ethan D. Pakchar (music), but Ace Baker (Matt Rodin) is very much the star. He narrates, plays the guitar, and sings practically every song. The next thing to know about Beau is, you have to stick with it. At first it feels pat, clichéd, and straight off the gay-pride-musical assembly line. Then, finally, Lyons’s characters acquire some individuality and become more interesting.
At the Barricades, a play drawn from original sources by James Clements and Sam Hood Adrian, explores the price of freedom and the complexities of political idealism. The play highlights the fight of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a battalion of international volunteers numbering roughly 2,800 Americans who fought on the side of the Republicans (the democratically elected government) during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) against the Nationalists, the rising fascist dictatorship under Generalissimo Francisco Franco.
In political parlance, the term A Special Relationship refers to the longstanding alliance of America and its “closest ally” Britain (the phrase “America’s oldest ally” refers to France). Disparities in language are a prominent feature in Tim Marriott and Jeff Stolzer’s winsome comedy, which is playing as part of the Brits Off Broadway festival. The piece takes as a major theme George Bernard Shaw’s maxim (sometimes attributed to Winston Churchill or Oscar Wilde): “England and America are two countries divided by a common language.”
John Krasinski first made a splash on the TV series The Office (2005–13), and after that with the creepy horror film A Quiet Place (2018) and its goosebump-laden sequels. He has a long film resume as actor, writer and director, and lately he has boosted his credits as an action star in the Amazon Prime series Jack Ryan. Yet, although Krasinski appeared in the play Dry Powder with Hank Azaria and Claire Danes in 2017, film acting doesn’t necessarily point toward stage prowess. But the confidence with which Krasinski takes the stage in the first moments of Angry Alan gives one hope that he’s an exception, and it only increases as the actor’s masterly performance opens Studio Seaview (formerly 2nd Stage) with a bang.
In a whirlwind of wit and whimsy, Abigail Pickard Price’s (with Sarah Gobran and Matt Pinches) new stage adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice offers an unexpectedly funny take on the classic, featuring just three actors who embody 18 characters. Directed by Price, this madcap rendition breathes fresh life into Austen’s sharp social satire, as the performers navigate cultural pitfalls of Regency England.
In life, people are all haunted by one thing or another. For some, it might be love, loss, or anything in between. For the characters in Tim Mulligan’s latest play, Point Loma, what haunts them are literal ghosts. The play explores the supernatural with an immersive production by the Manhattan Repertory Theatre.
Kelundra Smith’s The Wash is an inspiring play about the originators of the Atlanta Washerwomen’s Strike of 1881, a little-known chapter in American labor history. Making its New York premiere, Smith’s drama captures the black strikers’ struggles during the Jim Crow era in the post–Civil War American South, including public indifference to the women’s working conditions and the demeaning, hateful attitude of their white customers toward them.
Lunar Eclipse, Donald Margulies’s 2023 play now receiving a Second Stage Theater production (at Signature Center), opens with one of the two characters, George, sobbing alone. George is a farmer in his 70s, sitting in darkness in a field in western Kentucky, where he is soon joined by his wife, Em, to watch a lunar eclipse. George and Em will not simply observe the overnight event: they will overcome George’s gruff exterior and look back over the course of their life together, facing difficult subjects, including the death of a child, and ultimately reaffirming their connection.
The Imaginary Invalid is of interest to historians not just because it is Molière’s last play and not just because Molière himself performed the lead role of Monsieur Argan. It is also due to the fact that, while Argan is a hypochondriac, Molière suffered from dire, real-life ailments that caused him to collapse on stage during just his fourth performance. He died soon afterward. Such dark irony does not haunt his lighthearted comedy, though, and so it has floated, for more than 350 years, from one fizzy reinterpretation to the next. The latest, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher and produced by Red Bull Theater, is a loosey-goosey affair. The vibe is French farce à la The Marx Brothers. The company is a puff pastry stuffed with ham. And the story is King Lear, but with enema jokes.
Encountering adaptations of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice seems as inevitable as Orpheus’s fateful turning around to look toward Eurydice on their journey out of Hades. Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice, from 2003, is receiving a revival to conclude her Signature Theatre residency. The production is directed by Les Waters, who also helmed the play at Yale in 2006 and at Second Stage in 2007. Ruhl’s mournful and whimsical take emphasizes Eurydice’s life and point of view, hence the title excising “Orpheus and,” even bestowing its heroine with some agency, especially during that oh-so-famous moment of Orpheus looking back.
