Thankful Thoughts for This Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! 

It’s been a crazy month. An avalanche of shows have been opening both on and off Broadway. I’ve seen 20 of them over the past four weeks—some good, some just OK, a few actually great and, to be honest, at least one that was dreadful. But I’ve been so busy seeing them (and trying to tend to the other things in my life, including squeezing in a birthday celebration for my husband K who has very patiently put up with all this theatergoing) that I haven't had the chance to write here as much as I would have liked.

However I did manage to share some thoughts about a half dozen shows on Broadway & Me Quickies, my collection of short reviews that I hope give a sense of what’s good and not so good about the productions I’ve seen for folks who may not have time to get through longer reviews (you can check those quickies out by clicking here).

And last Sunday, I joined my BroadwayRadio pals James Marino, Peter Filichia and Michael Portantiere on the “This Week on Broadway” podcast to talk about a few of the season’s big shows, including Chess, Oedipus and the Tom Hanks’ play This World of Tomorrow (you can hear all of that by clicking here).

Finally, I do try to keep up with the news about what’s going on in the theatrical world and to share it in my Flipboard magazine, which you can read by clicking here. And I've created a Substack archive of all the episodes of "All the Drama," my podcast on Pulitzer Prize-winning plays and musicals (I’m really excited about the one for December that's going to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Hamilton and hope you’ll check that out)

So although I’m a bit tired—and despite the ongoing challenges in the world—I’ve a lot to be thankful for, including those of you who read this blog and listen to my podcasts. And I’m hoping that your holiday weekend is filled with loved ones, good food and drink, lots of laughter and maybe some theatergoing too.   

"Kyoto" is a Call to Action on Climate Change

The only thing small about Kyoto, the latest import from Britain that opened this week at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse theater, is its one-word title. Everything else is outsized: the show runs nearly three hours, it features a cast of 14, it has two authors (Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson) and two directors (Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin). And its subject is the 10-year struggle to get the nations of the world to come together on a plan to address the outsized issue of climate change. Those negotiations resulted in the titular Kyoto Protocol that was finally adopted in 1997 but which the U.S. Congress still has yet to ratify.

Now negotiations surrounding an international treaty would hardly seem to be compelling theater. And a lot of complicated information about climate science and bureaucratic procedures does get tossed around. Yet I found this to be a fascinating evening of theater. 

Murphy and Robertson, who a few years ago dramatized the international immigrant crisis with their much-acclaimed immersive piece The Jungle, have centered this story around Don Pearlman, the real-life American lawyer who became an oil industry lobbyist and the chief mastermind when it came to thwarting any efforts to address climate change (click here to read more about him). 

In the tradition of Shakespeare’s Richard III, Pearlman serves as the show’s narrator and its primary villain. The American actor Stephen Kunken portrayed Pearlman when this production played to sold-out audiences in London and he’s come home with it, offering the kind of seductively wily performance that makes you root for his character even though you know you shouldn’t.   

Most of the production takes a Brechtian approach to telling Pearlman’s story. Characters don’t have names but are identified by the countries they represent at the series of conferences held over the years to address the climate problem. 

And under Daldry and Martin's energizing direction both the delegates’ language and their movements are often highly stylized. Believe it or not, one of the most amusing scenes in the play is one in which the delegates debate grammar.

Video projections, aided by Aideen Malone's excellent lighting, help to establish the location of each meeting and provide context about what’s going on in the world at the time. The audience is pulled into playing a role too. When you enter the theater, you’re handed a badge that identifies you are as one of the groups attending the proceedings. I was an NGO. 

A few audience members are also seated at the big round table that is scenic designer Miriam Buether’s main set piece. At times they’re instructed to take an even more active part in what’s going on. The ones at my performance looked to be having a great time.

The actual actors also hand up a few cameo appearances of recognizable personalities who turn up at the various conferences: the German chancellor Angela Merkel, the film director Werner Herzog and the then-U.S. vice president Al Gore. 

But besides Pearlman the only characters we really get to know are Raúl Estrada-Oyuela, the amiable Argentinian diplomat who chairs the Kyoto meeting (Jorge Bosch reprises his Olivier-nominated performance) and Pearlman’s wife Shirley, who becomes increasingly horrified as she learns how far her husband will go to undermine any and all attempts to cut back on the damaging use of oil and other fossil fuels.

Played in a finely understated performance by Natalie Gold, Shirley Pearlman serves as a stand-in for those of us who are too often willing to look the other way from the climate threat for the sake of personal convenience and she's a reminder that we should be paying better attention if we have any interest in keeping the planet habitable for future generations.

And here's where I should confess that I have a weak spot for big one-word, state-of-the-world plays like Oslo, Patriots, Ink and my personal favorite Enron, which ran for just 16 performances back in 2010. Even when flawed, these shows make me reckon with my own role in the world, which is what I think good theater should do. 

Still reviews for Kyoto have been mixed and the response from the audience the night I saw the show was muted. Which is ironic because that kind of apathy is the point of the play.

 

 

Going Solo: "The Least Problematic Woman in the World," "Other" and "Did You Eat?

One-person shows are popping up everywhere. And it makes sense that they should.  They’re comparatively cheap to put on since by definitiion there’s only one performer to pay and the costume and set—when there is a set—are usually simple, all of which matter in this high-cost theatrical environment. Plus as United Solo, the theater festival currently running at Theatre Row through Nov. 23, demonstrates, these shows come in lots of different forms: stand-up routines, formal recitations, full narratives in which the one actor plays many characters and, increasingly, confessional pieces in which the performer shares past trauma. 

The latter seem to be the one breaking out of the festival circuit and I recently saw three of those autobiographical works in well-established off-Broadway venues. As I watched those shows, I found myself wondering why the performers were telling me such intimate things, whether it was difficult for them to relive those painful experiences night after night and, finally, why I should care about any of it. Yet each audience was full and many people seemed moved by what they were seeing. You may be too so here’s a sneak peek at each of them:

The show: The Least Problematic Woman in the World @ the Lucille Lortel Theatre

The performer: The social media personality Dylan Mulvaney, who chronicled her gender transition on TikTok

What she shares: The 28-year-old recounts her full life as a trans woman, from her childhood days desperately wishing she could dress as a girl right up through the controversy when MAGA conservatives threatened to boycott Bud Light after the beer brand featured Mulvaney in a social media promotion. Her show works because Mulvaney is not only naturally engaging but also a trained musical-comedy performer who appeared in The Book of Mormon and she uses all of her skills to give her current audience a good time so that even before the show starts, she wanders around in an angel-winged costume to take selfies with fans. Tim Jackson has directed the show smartly and both the set (primarily a pink Barbie’s Dream House interior) and her costumes are just tacky enough to fit in with the sweetly campy vibe. Plus there are nifty original songs by such well known composers as Ingrid Michaelson and Six creators Toby Marlow & Lucy Moss. 

Did I care:  Yeah. Although with an official 75 minute run time—that can stretch past 90—the show is too long but trans people are under serious threat right now and having someone like Mulvaney standing centerstage and proudly telling her story is meaningful.

 

The show: Other @ Greenwich House Theatre

The performer: Tony winner Ari’el Stachel, who won a supporting actor award for his performance in The Band’s Visit

What he shares: Shame is the motivating factor driving Stachel’s show. It charts his struggle with severe anxiety, which he traces all the way back to when he was diagnosed at just five with obsessive-compulsive disorder and which now manifests itself in panic attacks that can cause sweat to literally drip off the actor whenever he’s feeling stressed, including when he's onstage (many hankies were soaked as he blotted off the perspiration at the performance I attended). But the show is also fueled by the lifelong uneasiness and shame Stachel has felt about his racial identity as the son of a light-skinned Ashkenazi Jewish-American mother and a darker-skinned Yemenite Jewish father who bore a resemblance to Osama bin Laden, the latter a real problem in the wake of 9/11 when schoolmates started calling young Ari a terrorist. And so over the years, Stachel has claimed at various times to be white or black and he has faced push back when he has been cast in roles that others considered to be rightfully theirs. This show, under the tight direction of Tony Taccone, is his declaration that he is no longer ashamed of who he is or how he presents and is now on his way to making peace with himself.

Did I care: Kind of. I wish Stachel had settled on one of his issues and really dug deep into it. Instead, right now the show seems more like a therapy session than a performance piece. And to my shame, I have to confess that I was put off by all the visible sweating.

 

The show: Did You Eat?

The performer: Korean-American actor and writer Zoë Kim

What she shares: Emotional hunger and how to survive an abusive childhood are the subject of this autobiographical piece by Kim who grew up in Korea as the only child of parents who desperately wanted a son. And then when she migrated to the U.S. to attend school in her teens, she continued to be plagued by the obligations and oppression of her home culture that prized male children. Director Chris Yejin and choreographer Iris McCloughan have put together a production that uses English, Korean (subtitles are projected on screens) and stylized movement to tell Kim’s often harrowing story, which includes a kidnapping and a murder attempt.

Did I care: Not enough. Kim is a lovely performer but her story seems too specific to her and at the same time she skips over too many important plot points (how did she survive so much physical abuse without people noticing? how did she meet the man who helped her to heal?) The result is that I spent more time wondering how things could have happened than I spent truly feeling for what had been done to her.

 

 

 

 

 

Wrestling with the Head Trips of "And Then We Were No More" and "This Much I Know"

Every once in a while I see a show that is filled with smart ideas, and that is interestingly directed and well-performed and yet still leaves me cold. Over the past week or so I saw two shows like that: the new play And Then We Were No More, which is scheduled to run at La MaMa through Nov. 2; and a remounted production of the 2023 drama This Much I Know, which opened this week at 59E59 Theaters. I suppose they were so disappointing to me because I had so been looking forward to seeing both of them. 

And Then We Were No More is a cautionary tale about a future in which everyone seems to have given up all their rights in exchange for being kept safe, which in this case means that people who commit crimes can be tortured and then executed by a pneumatic device that, after its victims are dressed in weird outfits, vaporizes them out of existence. 

This dystopian view of where we might be headed comes with an impressive pedigree: it’s written by the actor Tim Blake Nelson who so loves exploring ethical and philosophical issues that he actually wrote a whole play about Socrates and it’s directed by Mark Wing-Davey who has frequently collaborated with the always thought-proving playwright Caryl Churchill. But I wanted to see this show because it stars Elizabeth Marvel, an actor whose performances consistently live up to her surname.

And once again Marvel delivers, this time as a lawyer assigned to represent a young woman who has committed a heinous crime. The lawyer knows that verdicts are pre-determined but she is so moved by her client (portrayed with aching vulnerability by recent NYU grad Elizabeth Yeoman) that she attempts to make the case for a more just judicial system. Meanwhile, Scott Shepherd’s government official argues that the needs of the greater society should outweigh those of the individual.  

It's important stuff.  But here it’s never really turned into dramatic stuff. And over the course of the two plus hours of back and forth debate I found my mind wandering to where my theatergoing buddy Bill and I might eat after the show and whether it might be warm enough for us to eat outside. None of which is what I think a play with such heady prentions intended me to be thinking about. 

I didn’t fare much better with This Much I Know either. I’d want to see this one because it’s written by Jonathan Spector whose Tony-winning play Eureka Day not only found a way to look at both sides of the intense debate over vaccination requirements for school kids but also managed to do that in an engaging—and sometimes even amusing—way. 

But This Much I Know is way more ambitious and far less accessible. Inspired by the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s bestselling book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” it’s a heady—and very talky—meditation on why people make the decisions they do and the moral implications that can accompany those choices. 

And Spector amps ups the complexities even more by exploring his theme through three storylines centered on different protagonists and set in different time periods: a present-day psychology professor who is trying to figure out why his wife recently left him, the college-aged son of a leading white supremacist who is trying to separate himself from his father’s beliefs and the young Svetlana Alliluyeva, the only daughter of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin who in 1967 would defect to the west.  

The three actors who play these roles—Firdous Bamji, Ethan J. Miller and Dani Stoller—also portray all the other people who interact with the main characters and under the nimble direction of Hayley Finn, they’re terrific as they switch from one to another simply by changing accents, gestures and maybe a hat or two. But I found it hard to care about any of them as the narrative hopped around from one storyline to the next and I grew tired of trying to figure out how each of those narratives connected to the other two.

And yet, I’m glad I saw both plays because they made me think really seriously about why I go to theater and what I’m looking for when the lights go down. It turns out that the priority for me is a visceral experience rather than a purely intellectual one. 

Now, I still like Big Idea shows. But watching these two made me realize that a show also needs to make me feel something. In other words to work for me, it needs to appeal to my heart as well as my head. And alas, neither of these did that.

"Mexodus": a Hip Mix of Hip-Hop and History

Theater lovers have been celebrating the 10th anniversary of Hamilton this year, and well we should. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical about the Founding Fathers made seeing musicals cool again, and judging by all the young people now mobbing stage doors that perception is still holding strong.  

At the same time Hamilton also made hip-hop a viable sound for the musical and so I thought rap lyrics and hip-hop beats would infiltrate subsequent musicals the way that jazz did in the 1920s after Shuffle Along or rock did a half century later after Hair. But, except for a novelty song here or there, that hasn’t happened.  

So it was a delight for me to discover the terrifically entertaining new show Mexodus that is now scheduled to run through Oct. 18 at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre, where it is billing itself as “a two-person live-looped new musical.”

The two persons are Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson, who wrote the show, are its only performers and its sole musicians (click here to read more about them). Although their show's impressive aural achievement owes a huge debt to the looping technique constructed by Mikhail Fiksel, the audio wiz behind the sound design for Dana H.  that helped Deidre O’Connell lip sync her way to a Tony back in 2022.  

The story Mexodus tells is as fresh as its format. It centers around the little-known history of the underground railroad's southern route that allowed slaves to escape into Mexico, which abolished slavery in 1829, more than three decades before Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. 

This version of that history, inspired by Robinson’s own family lore, focuses on the relationship between a black man named Henry who flees across the Rio Grande after accidentally killing the white man who owned him; and a Mexican man named Carlos, a former army medic whose bitterness about the way the U.S. confiscated so much of his country's land after the Mexican-American War makes him willing to take the risk of providing a refuge for Henry. 

In turn, Henry shares his farming know-how with Carlos, who's been having trouble bringing in his crops. The subtext about the way black and brown people can mutually benefit by uniting against "The Man" in the present day is clearly intentional.

Now these are admittedly heavy topics for a feel-good show (and this show is that) but Robinson, tall and almost majestic, and Quijada, more compact and mischievous, are equally engaging performers and they’ve laced their tale with the kind of sly humor and strategic fourth-wall breaking that allow them to sidestep pedantry. They’re also wonderfully versatile musicians. 

Between them, they play piano, drums, double bass, guitar, harmonica, accordion, trumpet and a washer board. The looping technique allows them to record live a few phrases or riffs on one of those instruments and then play it back as they overlay another track and another until a satisfying melody has been created. 

Plus they sing. Really well. And the resulting songs, which include blues ballads, canciónes rancheras and straight-ahead rap, are shoulder-bouncing good. They also serve the story, additional proof, if still needed, that this kind of music can bring a contemporary vitality to the standard musical vocabulary.

The entire creative team—including director and costume designer David Mendizábal, choreographer Tony Thomas, lighting designer Mextly Couzin, projection designer Johnny Moreno and scenic designer Riw Rakkulchon who has devised all sorts of clever places for the instruments to be stored when they’re not being played—is just as inventive. 

Throughout the show Quijada shifts back and forth between English and Spanish, with a little Spanglish thrown in for good measure. But there’s never a need for translation. The whole thing is simplemente fantástico.

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The 4 Shows I Most Want to See in Fall 2025

Once again I seem to be late to the party. Other bloggers, critics and influencers have been putting out lists of the things they most want to see in this new theater season since mid-August. And I can understand why they've been so eager to share their thoughts because this is shaping up to be the most promising fall season in years. There is so much I want to see but I’m limiting this list to just four shows, more or less.  It wasn’t easy but here goes:

BROADWAY PLAY: OEPDIPUS  @ the Roundabout Theatre’s Studio 54: This was the easiest choice for me because this is the single show I’m most looking forward to seeing this fall. Why? Well, I’m intrigued whenever there’s a major production of one of the great Greek plays because, unlike Shakespeare or Chekhov, they don’t get done a lot and almost never on Broadway; I just checked and over the last 80 years, there have been five productions of Oedipus that ran for a combined 32 performances (that was not a typo; really just 32 performances). I’m betting that director Robert Ickes’ update of Sophocles' tragedy about—two millennia spoiler alert—a man who unknowingly murders his father and marries his own mother will run longer. The production drew raves when it played in London and won the Olivier Award for Best Revival of a Play. But what has me most stoked is that Oedipus is being played by Mark Strong and his mother Jocasta by the can-do-for-me-no-wrong Lesley Manville, finally making her Broadway debut. 

Runner-Up: Little Bear Ridge Road Because this play about a gay man and his aunt—played by Laurie Metcalf—sheltering togetherr through the Covid shut-down is the Broadway debut of playwright Samuel D. Hunter, who has seldom let me down.

BROADWAY MUSICAL: THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES @ the St. James Theatre: Who wouldn’t want to see the first new musical that Stephen Schwartz has brought to Broadway since Wicked back in 2003, especially since he and his original Glinda, Kristin Chenoweth, have teamed up again to tell the true-life story of a rich couple’s foolish attempt to build the largest home in America. But what has really got me wanting to see this one is that the production is being directed by Michael Arden who over the past decade—and especially with last season’s Tony-winning surprise Maybe Happy Ending—has shown that he has one of the most inventive minds around when it comes to making musicals so I can hardly wait to see what he does with this one.

Runner-Up: Chess  Because although the ABBA duo Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus’s musical about a Cold War-era championship match has been revised over and over again, I’ve never seen it so I want to know what all the fuss has been about. 

OFF-BROADWAY PLAY: ANNA CHRISTIE @ St. Anne’s Warehouse: There were so many contenders for this slot that I almost lined them up and threw darts to decide which to choose but I have a soft spot for Eugene O’Neill and so this revival of his Pulitzer-winner about a prostitute seeking to reunite with the father who abandoned her as a child and to start a new life with a young sailor who doesn’t know about her past won out because the title role is being played by Michelle Williams, who is almost unrivaled at playing tough and tender women. She’s being joined by the equally gifted Brian D’Arcy James as the father and Tom Sturridge as the sailor and they’re all being directed by Williams’ real-life husband Thomas Kail, who in addition to being the director of Hamilton also seems to have written his college senior thesis on O’Neill.

Runners-Up (sorry but I just couldn’t keep it to one): Archduke, Rajiv Joseph’s political thriller about the start of World War I because it’s starring my will-see-him-in-anything fave Patrick Page; and And Then We Were No More, Tim Blake Nelson’s drama about capital punishment because it’s starring my will-see-her-in-anything fave Elizabeth Marvel.

OFF-BROADWAY MUSICAL: THE BAKER’S WIFE @ Classic Stage Company: It probably isn’t fair to choose two Stephen Schwartz shows but this one, with a book by Joseph Stein about French villagers who unite to bring back the young wife of their local baker after she runs off with a lover, has become a cult favorite among the musicals cognoscenti despite being rarely done—or ever seen by me—and this revival will feature Ariana DeBose, who will appear in a show on a New York stage—and a small and intimate stage at that—for the first time since winning an Oscar for her turn as Anita in Stephen Spielberg’s “West Side Story” and becoming everyone’s favorite awards show host.

Runner-Up: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee Because I’m really looking forward to seeing Jasmine Amy Rogers, who was so sensational as the animated-in-every-way Betty Boop in last season’s short-lived Boop!, put her spin on the very different shy bee contestant Olive Ostrovsky.

A Labor Day Salute to the Back Office Folks

Well, here we are: it’s Labor Day Weekend already.  And every year since I started writing here, I’ve marked this unofficial end of summer—and the real start of the fall theater season—with a tribute to the various folks who work so hard to make the theater so many of us love. I’ve shouted out actors, playwrights, musicians, stage managers, set designers, drama teachers and even unions. 

But to be honest I thought I might take a break this year because I’ve got a lot of other stuff I need to do. But then this morning I read my latest copy of “Nothing for the Group,” the terrific weekly newsletter that the dramaturg Lauren Halvorsen sends out each week (click here to learn more about it) and one off her entries in this recent issue made me rethink taking a hiatus.

Tucked in among Halvorsen’s usual roundup of premieres and other productions opening around the country was a feature she calls “not a living wage,” which lists jobs in the industry and compares their salaries to what it actually cost to live in the city where the theater offering that position is located. None of the jobs paid a living wage. And yet, I’m pretty sure that all of them are going to be filled, mostly by people who not only love the theater but who rarely get a chance to share fully in the glamor of it.  

The folks who plan the budgets, clean the theaters, work in the box office, order the supplies, manage the marketing campaigns and coordinate the educational programs don’t walk red carpets, get Tony, OCC or Drama Desk awards or have TikTok followings. And they don’t make a lot of money. Those who work in the increasingly financially-squeezed regional theaters make even less money. 

But the theater doesn’t work without them. And so the least I can do is to take this time to acknowledge all the marketing associates, literary managers, outreach coordinators, casting directors, props supervisors, logistics technicians and the scores of others who work in the back offices but whose labor plays an important role in producing the pleasure I get each time I walk into a theater. To all of them I say: Bravo—and thanks.

A Highly Subjective List of the (So Far) Best Plays and Musicals of the 21st Century

The New York Times recently published a fancy interactive list of what it considers to be “The Best Movies of the 21st Century.”  The editors say they assembled the list by asking more than 500 filmmakers—including directors like Pedro Almodóvar, Sofia Coppola and Barry Jenkins; movie stars ranging from the recent 26-year-old Oscar winner Mikey Madison to the 79-year-old vet John Lithgow and influential film fans (whoever they are)—to name what they believe to be the Top 10 movies that have been released since Jan. 1, 2000. Then the folks at the paper tallied up the results and came up with the final list (which you can check out by clicking here). 

Like all lists, this one says more about the people making the list than it does about the films on the list. But it got me thinking about what a similar list of the best plays and musicals that have opened over the past 25 years might look like. The Times weighed in on that back in 2018 when its then theater critics Ben Brantley and Jesse Green put together a list of “The 25 Best American Plays Since ‘Angels in America’” (click here for that one) but I didn’t agree with everything they had on their list. So I’ve put together my own. 

I started by listing all the Pulitzer winners and finalists since 2000, then I threw in all the shows that got Tony nominations for Best Play and Best Musical during that period. Finally, I added in the shows that made it onto the annual lists of my favorites that I’ve published in each of the past 18 years that I’ve been writing this blog. 

Whittling down the list proved easier than I thought it was going to be. I ended up with 10 (hey, it's just me and not 499 other people) and I was delighted to see that without even trying to make the list diverse, it more or less is in terms of gender, genre and race.

Now my 10 may not be the best shows (whatever that slippery adjective means) or the ones with the most awards or longest runs but they are the shows that regardless of when I saw them have stayed with me, changing the way I look at theater and the world. 

Of course what I’d really love to know is what your choices might be. In the meantime my contenders are below: 

Casa Valentina by Harvey Fierstein, 2014: A deeply moving piece inspired by the real-life stories of pre-Stonewall-era men who found comfort in dressing as women but also a work that courageously acknowledged the battles that can occur within a community struggling to self-define its place in the broader society

Cost of Living by Martyna Majok, 2016: A beautifully rendered meditation on the need to love and be loved and also a powerful reminder that disabled people should not be defined solely in terms of their physical limitations 

Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar, 2012: An uncompromising look at an assimilated Muslim attorney and his white wife in post-9/11 America that sidestepped all stereotypes.

Downstate by Bruce Norris, 2018: An unsentimental challenge to the ideas of empathy and forgiveness that centers around a quartet of pedophiles who have served their time in prison but who still have to figure out how to reckon with the burden of their sins

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity by Kristoffer Diaz, 2009: A laugh-out-loud satire that used hip-hop and pro-wrestling to examine America’s ongoing fixations on celebrity, money and race

Fun Home music by Jeanine Tesori, and book and lyrics by Lisa Kron, 2013: The poignant musical adaptation of Alison Bechdel's graphic novel contrasting her coming out as a lesbian and her father's closeted life as a gay man 

The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia by Edward Albee, 2000: It’s far from the most famous of Albee’s works but this challenging exploration of love, taboos and the meaning of fidelity rocked me to my core in a way that few things have

Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda, 2015: The reframing of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton's life not only revolutionized—and made cool again—the American musical but made the case that the passion, idealism and daring that went into making this country is shared by all who live here

The Hot Wing King by Katori Hall, 2020: A big-hearted rumination on black masculinity viewed through the experiences of a loving gay couple and their extended family and friends 

Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz, 2011: Dysfunctional family plays are the bread and butter of theater but Baitz added a new spin that goes right to the core of the right-left divide that has defined this country since the Baby Boom generation came of age

Why "Ginger Twinsies" Just Isn't for Me

It's often said that imitation is the highest form of flattery but sometimes it's just a knock-off of something more original. And I'm afraid the latter seems to be the case with Ginger Twinsies, which opened this week at the Orpheum Theatre.

Written and directed by Kevin Zak, this parody of the 1998 Lindsay Lohan version of “The Parent Trap” movies is clearly hoping to cash in on the newfound appreciation for campy humor that has turned Titanique and Oh, Mary! into mainstream hits. But Ginger Twinsies simply isn’t as clever as they are.

Those earlier shows didn’t skimp on looniness but they bolstered it with well-constructed storylines: what if Celine Dion got to bring her diva-like earnestness and her entire songbook to James Cameron’s movie about the sinking of the Titanic instead of just singing its theme song? what if First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln were a dipsomaniac who would go to any lengths to fulfill a dream of becoming a cabaret star?  

 As ridiculous as they may be, those conceits provide context for the daffiness that follows in each show and make it easy to enjoy them even if you’ve never seen Cameron’s movie or played hookey when your history classes covered the Civil War.

By contrast, the source material for Ginger Twinsies is both far-fetched and very specific. Identical twins who were separated at birth when their parents split up discover one another at a summer camp years later and decide to trade places as part of a scheme that’s supposed to get their parents back together. 

In short, it’s already so silly that there’s not much left to lampoon and if you're not familiar with the details of the plot, you probably won't get the jokes that are handed out.  

The show’s main riff is to make one of the twins black and the other white instead of having a single actor play both roles as the movie does. But the joke that everyone still confuses them despite their obvious difference gets old real fast. 

Meanwhile, the rest of the show tries to squeeze out laughs with winking shout-outs to other pop culture—Hamilton!  “The Devil Wears Prada”!! the “Sex and the City” reboot!!!—whether there's any connection or not.There's also lots and lots of shouting of the f-word and several butt hole jokes, both of which strike me as bargain-basement substitutes for truly imaginative humor. 

I'll confess that I was never a big fan of camp.  Then Titanique and Oh, Mary! came along and made me think I might be a fan after all.  But now I realize that what I liked about those campy shows is what I look for in any kind of theater: they took their art form seriously, worked hard to come up with a fresh take and produced something really good. Ginger Twinsies doesn't do enough of any of that.

Theater Books for Summer Reading 2025

We’ve already had our first heat waves of the season—the temperature hit 101° in Central Park this past week!—which is a sure sign that summer is here. But for almost 20 years now, the summer has truly begun for me when I share my annual list of theater-related books for you all to read from now until Labor Day (or beyond). 

There are 16 of them this year, two for each of the official summer weeks. And as has become my custom, many of them are novels because I love stories set in the world of the theater. But there are some nifty memoirs and theater histories too. So I think you’ll be able to find something to scratch your theater itch while you’re sitting at the beach, kicking back in your yard, hanging out in the park, or, like me, lolling around on your terrace with a cool drink in hand—this year I’m recommending a tequila sunrise, whose mix of tequila, orange juice and grenadine actually looks like summer in a glass—and I hope that you’ll have as much fun with these summer reads as I’ve had finding them for you. 

By Any Other Name: A Novel by Jodi Picoult  The debate over who wrote Shakespeare’s plays fuels this story set in two time periods: the 1600s when it imagines that the real-life Emilia Lanier—who is believed to have been the first woman to publish poetry in England—was an unacknowledged ghostwriter for the Bard; and the present in which a woman playwright who has written a drama about Lanier faces contemporary misogyny.

Every Day a Little Death: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Stephen Sondheim edited by Josh Pachter   Who doesn't love a good mystery? And what theater lover doesn't love Sondheim? So how smart to get writers from both worlds—including my BroadwayRadio colleague Michael Portantiere—to contribute short mysteries inspired by the composer's songs. The result: lots of playful mayhem. 

Flop Musicals of the Twenty-First Century: Part I: The Creatives by Stephen Purdy  Even the most diehard theater lovers get a kick out of gossipy stories about shows that failed. A Broadway insider, Purdy not only tells 13 of them, from Dance of the Vampires to King Kong, but digs deep, interviewing folks who don’t often turn up in these kinds of books—assistant choreographers, swings, wig managers—but who were there at the creation of these misfires and are happy to share what they know. 

The Hypocrite: A Novel by Jo Hamya  This very literary novel muses on the before and after events that occur when the playwright daughter of a world-famous novelist invites her unsuspecting dad to see a play she’s written exposing his shortcomings as a father, a husband and even as a writer.

If We Were Villains: A Novel by M.L. Rio   If you’re a fan of Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History,” you’re likely to love this thriller even more because the group of precocious college students at its center are all theater kids at an elite arts school where the drama program is devoted entirely to Shakespeare and their final year is filled with poetry, rivalry, sex and a mysterious death.

Margo: The Life and Theatre of Margo Jones by Helen Sheehey  Over the last year or so we’ve had a generational changing of the guard in the nonprofit theater world but this excellent biography takes us back to its roots with one of the true pioneers of the regional theater movement and an early cheerleader for such playwrights as Horton Foote, William Inge and her close friend Tennessee Williams. 

The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act by Isaac Butler  Almost everyone has heard of "the Method” but Butler takes a deep dive into this famous but often misunderstood acting technique, tracking its evolution from the Moscow Arts Theatre, where Konstantin Stanislavski developed it; to the Actors Studio, where actors from Marilyn Monroe to Al Pacino studied it.  

Mona Acts Out: A Novel by Mischa Berlinski  The title character is a self-centered pain in the ass but the novel itself is a fun look at the downtown theater world, a smart tutorial on some of Shakespeare’s major female characters and a meditation on what to do with someone whose great talent has made good art but whose bad behavior has justifiably gotten him canceled.

Our Evenings: A Novel by Alan Hollinghurst  One of Britain’s most acclaimed novelists charts the five-decades-long relationship between a mixed-raced actor and a Boris Johnson-like conservative who first meet in one of the country’s elite private schools and how their interactions over the years reflect the changes in that country’s political, social and theatrical life. 

Playworld: A Novel by Adam Ross  Drawing on its author’s experiences growing up in the ‘80s as a child actor in a family on the fringes of show business (mom teaches ballet, dad does vocal coaching) and as the prey of lecherous adults, this wonderful coming-of-age tale deals with sex, money, ambition and finding one’s place in the world. 

Putting the Rabbit in the Hat by Brian Cox  He’s now probably best known as the patriarch of the family on HBO’s “Succession” but the Olivier Award-winning Cox got his start on the stage and he ruminates openly about his ambivalence toward working in the theater and his not always generous feelings about his many illustrious co-stars from Laurence Olivier to Ian McKellen.

Stages: A Theater Memoir by Albert Poland  His fascination with show business began when Poland started the official fan club for Judy Garland while he was still in high school and it blossomed into a five decade career as a major player in the early days of the off-Broadway theater world, working behind-the-scenes on such shows as The Fantasticks and Little Shop of Horrors. 

Station Eleven: A Novel by Emily St. John Mandel  It begins with an actor dropping dead onstage, an early victim of a pandemic that will wipe out most of the earth’s population. But among the survivors in this award-winning novel (and later acclaimed HBO series) are a troupe of actors and musicians who travel the countryside offering hope that art can save civilization.

Theater Kid: A Broadway Memoir by Jeffrey Seller  Readers may be discouraged when they discover that the first third of this memoir by the guy who produced Rent, Avenue Q and Hamilton is devoted to his hardscrabble childhood and college years but they should stick with it cause they’ll be delighted once Seller moves into the development of Rent and what it takes to make it in the business end of show business.

To Repair the World: Zelda Fichandler and the Transformation of American Theater by Mary B. Robinson  This loving but warts-and-all oral history pays long overdue tribute to the woman who created Washington's Arena Stage, midwifed the regional theater movement and nurtured generations of up-and-coming theater makers at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.   

The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf by Isa Arsén  Two very attractive actors enter into an unconventional marriage, get caught up with a pill-pushing Dr. Feelgood-style shrink and become entangled with the mob as it moves its illicit businesses west in this 1950s-era melodrama that is just begging to be a streaming series.

Finally, as always, if you’re looking for even more to read, here are the links to my suggestions from previous years:

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020:

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

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2013

2012

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2009

2008

2007

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

Praise for the Reimagined Myth of "Eurydice"

In most tellings of the myth about the ill-fated love story between Orpheus and Eurydice that famously has him going to the underworld to bring her back from the dead, he gets top billing and sometimes he even flies solo in the title as in the 17th century opera “L'Orfeo” or the 1959 film “Black Orpheus.” But that’s not the case with Sarah Ruhl’s 2003 play Eurydice, which is currently being revived at Signature Theatre.  

Ruhl's version not only centers the story on Eurydice but offers a rival for her affection in the form of her dead father whose love for his daughter is so strong that he maintains his memories of their times together on earth even though it’s made clear that such recollections are usually wiped away in the afterlife.

Ruhl wrote the play while she was mourning the death of her own father and those feelings of grief and longing ripple through Eurydice. She had originally intended to be a poet and Ruhl's plays, particularly her early work, sometimes have the enigmatic quality of modernist verse, which can make them challenging to grasp. 

But the director Les Waters has made a specialty of translating Ruhl’s works, having staged 14 productions of them (click here to read an interview with the two of them). This is Waters' third go at Eurydice and although I didn’t see his earlier ones or the opera that Ruhl created in 2020 with the composer Matthew Aucoin, it’s hard to imagine a more hauntingly effective production than this.

That’s due in large part to the moving performances by Maya Hawke in the title role and Brian D’Arcy James as her father. There’s been a lot of badmouthing about nepo babies, the children of famous people who get prominent roles in movies and plays, and I confess that I rolled my eyes when I heard that Hawke was getting this one. But what’s seldom said in such conversations is that—credit nature or nurture—talent sometimes runs in families. 

Or at least so it seems with Hawke, the daughter of the much-acclaimed actors Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, who imbues Eurydice with a passionate intelligence that allows her to be simultaneously feisty and vulnerable and totally deserving of having the play named after her (click here for more about the actress). 

I had no reservations about D’Arcy James, who I’m convinced can do anything. And here he makes the father the ideal parent we all yearn to have as he tenderly reassures Eurydice when she arrives in the afterlife, patiently rekindles their relationship and then selflessly lets her go when Orpheus comes to reclaim her.

There are elements in this production—the commedia-costumed chorus called the Stones, the tricycle-riding Lord of the Underworld—that still left me scratching my head. But perhaps because I’m still working my way through a profound loss of my own, I found particular comfort in the play’s final image that suggests that in the end, and even beyond in oblivion, real love survives. 

Let Down By "Lights Out: Nat 'King' Cole"

Several years ago, I reported a piece on the Smithsonian's "American Popular Song" album, which was intended to be a collection of the best rendition of each song in the Great American Songbook. But the head curator told me that so many of the songs were best sung by Nat King Cole that they had to go with the second-best rendition for many of those tunes or they'd have ended up with an entire Nat King Cole album. So that was one of several reasons that I was looking forward to seeing Lights Out: Nat "King" Cole, the new musical that opened this week at New York Theatre Workshop.

Another reason was that the show is a passion project of Colman Domingo, who we theater lovers have claimed as one of our faves long before he became the twice Oscar-nominated actor that he now is. One other reason was that it stars Dulé Hill, a triple-threat performer—can act, can sing, can really dance—returning to the New York stage for the first time in a decade. 

And yet another reason—sadly relevant in this historical moment—is that the show focuses on the final episode of Cole’s pioneering TV show which ran for just one year between 1956 and 1957 because national advertisers wouldn't sponsor a show starring a black entertainer because they were afraid that doing that might alienate their white southern customers.

So I think you will understand how much it pains me to have to say how disappointed I was by Lights Out. Domingo has recruited Patricia McGregor, the artistic director at NYTW and one of the few black women to lead a major theater company, to co-write and direct the show (click here to read about their collaboration). But despite years of workshops and tryouts (earlier versions were done in Pennsylvania and L.A.) the show remains a work in progress.

Domingo and McGregor have imagined Lights Out as a fever dream that Cole has in the minutes before he goes on air for his final episode and is trying to decide whether he should bow out with the elegant graciousness that has become his trademark or let loose all the anger and frustration he's felt at both the major slights and micro-aggressions he’s had to endure throughout his career.

The subject of how black celebrities were mistreated in mid-century America—selling out at nightclubs around the country but only allowed to enter them through the back door—is a fascinating one and the idea of framing that experience as a fever dream is terrifically intriguing. But the storytelling here is convoluted and McGregor’s direction is so additionally muddled that it’s hard to keep track of what’s going on. 

And there is a lot going on in the show's 90-minutes of running time. Cole’s celebrity friends Eartha Kitt and Peggy Lee pop up to duet with him. Parodies of period commercials are performed. Ghosts from the singer’s past, including his mother, appear to give him advice. Openly racist versions of his white agents and producers turn up to harass him, even hurling the n-word at him.  And all of this is set, juke-box-musical style, to a playlist of Cole’s greatest hits, from “Mona Lisa” to “Unforgettable.”

The actors do what they can. Hill deftly mimics Cole’s smooth vocal stylings and as a former Tap Dance Kid, he brings both the noise and the funk during a dance battle (tap choreography by Jared Grimes) that is a true showstopper. The other challenger in that battle is Daniel J. Watts, who plays Sammy Davis Jr. as the mischievous trickster orchestrating Cole’s fever dream, daring him to stand up for himself and for black people as a whole.  

Cole and Davis were friends in real life (click here to watch them make fun of one another)  but the show never makes clear why Davis, who proudly allied himself with the otherwise all-white Rat Pack lead by Frank Sinatra and later endorsed Richard Nixon for president, has been assigned the role of Cole’s black conscience. 

Still, I’m very glad they gave him that role because Watts runs with it and is hands down the best part of the show. He not only mimics Davis perfectly but brings both a much needed energy to the antics he’s called to perform and a sharp edge to the questions about race that I had hoped the entire production would more ably explore.    

Why Just About Everyone Loves Kara Young

This is a slightly different post than I use write but maybe like me, you have wondered why the nominators for so many different theater awards seem to love the actress Kara Young so much that they keep nominating her for their awards. Over the past four years, Young has picked up more than two dozen nominations, including four consecutive Tony nods for best featured actress in a play. And she won that one last year for her performance in the much celebrated revival of Ossie Davis’ Purlie Victorious. 

The short answer to that “why” question is probably that Young is just good. But I think there’s something more to it than that. Young is one of those rare actors who has the ability to infuse each character she plays with her own personality (click here to read a bit more about her) and at the same time is able to fulfill the vision that the playwright intended for the character: so her performances are simultaneously comfortably familiar and reliably surprising. 

Part of that is casting her in the right roles. But a larger part of it is simply Young’s innate artistry. I remember the first time I saw her back in 2018 in a small off-Broadway production. I wasn’t crazy about the play but I was fascinated by the young actress at the center of it and I kept asking myself—and probably annoyingly my companion—“who is she?” 

Young popped up in a stream of productions after that, usually playing a streetwise teen and I started worrying that directors were just hiring her to do the same thing over and over again. But then I realized that she was coloring each character slightly differently, layering in the nuances that allowed her to sidestep the stereotype.

And then came Purlie Victorious. Ossie Davis had originally written the role of the naïve by spunky Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins for his wife Ruby Dee, a tough act to follow.  Then Melba Moore put her Tony-winning spin on Lutiebelle in the musical Purlie, another tough act to follow.  But Young proved more than up to the challenge. Her Lutiebelle was uniquely hers: loopy, sexy, altogether endearing and yes, Tony worthy.

Last summer, Young took on what struck me as her first fully adult role as a woman contemplating getting back together with an ex in Douglas Lyons' romcom Table 17 and she aced that one too. 

But now she’s being praised for her performance in Purpose, Branden Jacobs-Jenkin’s newly-anointed Pulitzer Prize winner about the dysfunctional family of a Civil Rights icon who bears more than a passing resemblance to Jesse Jackson. 

Young plays the outsider whose presence forces the family to confront the cost their public lives have exerted on their private ones. And hitting all the notes—hilarious and heartbreaking—that Jacobs-Jenkins has crafted for the character has made Young a frontrunner for yet another Tony win.

The Angry Young Women in "John Proctor is the Villain" and "Five Models in Ruins, 1981"

A new genre has been developing over the past few years, one that in tribute to the post-war change in British theater I’ve been calling “angry young women plays.”  

These new works more or less follow a certain formula: a group of women get together to engage in an activity as in Clare Barron’s 2018 Pulitzer finalist Dance Nation, then they start noting how society has misunderstood or mistreated them as in Liliana Padilla’s How To Defend Yourself which ran at New York Theatre Workshop a couple of years ago and finally they perform some kind of ritual to exorcise their frustrations and rally their abilities to deal with them as they do in Alexis Scheer’s Our Dear Dead Drug Lord.   

Intentionally tapping into both comedy and tragedy, these plays give lots of young actresses a chance to show off the full range of what they can do. And they give those of us in the audience fair warning that young women are tired of taking shit and ready to do something about it. Or at least that’s how I felt after recently seeing two shows that hewed to the angry young women formula—one doing it smartly, the other doing it messily.

The smart one is John Proctor is the Villain, playwright Kimberly Belflower’s sharp response to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and it has been nominated as best play of the season by the Tony, Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk awards.  

Miller used the Salem Witch Trials that began in 1692 to comment on the McCarthyism of the 1950s. His protagonist John Proctor has an affair with his teenage servant girl but Miller casts him as the play's noble hero for refusing to name his neighbors or himself as being—as the surrounding hysteria charges—allies of Satan.

Belflower focuses her play on a group of high school students in a small Georgia town as they read Miller’s play, debate all of John Proctor’s behavior and try to figure out what to do with the men in their own lives—boyfriends, fathers, teachers—during the height of the #MeToo revelations.

And so Belflower has crafted both a literary critique of one of the most popular classics in the midcentury canon and a social commentary on the ways in which today's young women are dealing with toxic masculinity.

She’s aided by a terrific cast of young actresses. Sadie Sink, one of the stars in the Netflix series “Stranger Things,” has picked up a Tony nomination (click here to read more about her) but under the surehanded direction of Danya Taymor, they’re all giving kickass performances. Their characters’ moment of catharsis, set to one of the best playlists of the season, left me with a big grin on my face.

More messy is the production of Five Models in Ruins, 1981 that opened this week in LCT3’s Clair Tow theater. Its conceit is that a group of models have been hired for a Vogue magazine fashion shoot that will photograph them in a dilapidated English country house wearing the also-ran bridal gowns that Diana Spencer rejected for her wedding (costume designer Vasilija Zivanic’s dresses are not only witty imitations of some name-brand designers but also say a lot about each of the characters wearing them).

Playwright Caitlin Saylor Stephens has assembled the expected crew of twentysomething models—an eager newbie, a drug-addled prima donna, a jaded old-timer, a wisecracking outsider—but she doesn’t know what to do with them. And so they just stand around griping for most of the play’s 100-minute. running time.

Some of what they say about what they've experienced in the business is truly disturbing, justifying any anger they might have. But the models are more often treated as superficial twits and too much of what they say is just blather.

The play’s most potentially interesting character is the female photographer who is finally getting the chance to shoot a cover for the magazine. Although that could be because she’s played by the always watch-worthy Elizabeth Marvel (if you get to the theater early you’ll be treated to a silent pre-show of Marvel moving the set’s furniture around while fully in character). 

But even Marvel has a tough time with the storyline about how the photographer’s failing love affair is inhibiting her work. And there’s more than a hint that she may have gotten the job because she was sleeping with someone influential. I mean what the hell kind of feminism is that supposed to be representing? 

And even worse is director Morgan Green’s decision to let the climactic scene go on and on and on and on for almost four minutes, sending the audience out of the theater feeling exhausted instead of exhilarated.

Celebrating the OCC's 75th Anniversary— and Its Nominees for the 2024-2025 Season

The 2024-2025 theater season ends on Sunday with the dual openings of the musicals Dead Outlaw and Real Women Have Curves. And I’m exhausted. But it’s the kind of good exhaustion that comes from doing something you love. For over the past four weeks, I’ve seen 22 shows as I worked my way through all the final Broadway and major off-Broadway openings so that I could fulfill my responsibilities as a nominator for this year’s Outer Critics Circle Awards, which were announced yesterday. 

Helping to put together the OCC's slate of nominees is a task I never take lightly but it’s one that I’m particularly proud to be a part of this year because this season marks the 75th anniversary of the OCC, which was started by a group of critics who didn’t write for the major New York newspapers (there were seven of them) but who were just as passionate about the theater as those who did.

The major force behind the OCC back then was John Gassner, who emigrated with his family from Hungary to this country when he was eight. He had planned to go to medical school but gave that up while still a college student at Columbia University to pursue his true love of theater. 

Over the following years, Gassner, who died in 1967 at the age of just 64, headed the play department at the Theatre Guild, wrote and edited several books, taught playwriting at the Yale School of Drama, chaired the drama jury for the Pulitzer Prize for many years and served as an early booster of and mentor to many of the leading midcentury playwrights including Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. So it’s fitting that every year, the OCC gives a special award in his honor to a new playwright.  

This year’s nominees for the Gassner Award are an eclectic group but all of their works deal in one way or another with important contemporary topics including climate change, free speech and gender politics. They are:

Amy Berryman for Walden


George Clooney and Grant Heslov for Good Night, and Good Luck


Marin Ireland for Pre-Existing Condition


Lia Romeo for Still


Emil Weinstein for Becoming Eve

It's been a fascinating season (whittling down our choices was tough) and the competition for awards—ours and others—is going to be fierce and fun to watch over the next six weeks until the Tonys are given out on June 8. 

Our OCC winners, who will be voted on by our full membership, will be announced a few weeks before that on Monday, May 12 and we’ll celebrate them at a ceremony on May 22, which is always one of my favorite events of the year. In the meantime, below is the full list of our nominees:  

 

*OUTSTANDING NEW BROADWAY PLAY


Cult of Love


The Hills of California


John Proctor Is the Villain


Purpose


Stranger Things: The First Shadow


*In case you're wondering, we nominated both Job and Oh, Mary! when those productions ran off-Broadway last season; in fact, Oh, Mary!'s co-stars Cole Escola and Conrad Ricamora graciously announced all of our nominees
for this year

*OUTSTANDING NEW BROADWAY MUSICAL

Boop! The Musical


Death Becomes Her


Maybe Happy Ending


Operation Mincemeat


Real Women Have Curves

*And we nominated both Buena Vista Social Club and Dead Outlaw when those productions ran off-Broadway last season 


OUTSTANDING NEW OFF-BROADWAY PLAY

The Antiquities


Grangeville


Here There Are Blueberries


Liberation


Table 17
 

OUTSTANDING NEW OFF-BROADWAY MUSICAL

The Big Gay Jamboree


Drag: The Musical


We Live in Cairo


OUTSTANDING REVIVAL OF A PLAY

Beckett Briefs: From the Cradle to the Grave


Glengarry Glen Ross


Romeo + Juliet


Vanya


Yellow Face
 


OUTSTANDING REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL

Cats: The Jellicle Ball


Floyd Collins


Gypsy


Once Upon a Mattress


Sunset Boulevard
 


OUTSTANDING LEAD PERFORMER IN A BROADWAY PLAY

Kit Connor, Romeo + Juliet


Laura Donnelly, The Hills of California


Mia Farrow, The Roommate


Jon Michael Hill, Purpose


Louis McCartney, Stranger Things: The First Shadow
 


OUTSTANDING FEATURED PERFORMER IN A BROADWAY PLAY

Kieran Culkin, Glengarry Glen Ross


LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Purpose


Francis Jue, Yellow Face


Mare Winningham, Cult of Love


Kara Young, Purpose
 


OUTSTANDING LEAD PERFORMER IN AN OFF-BROADWAY PLAY 

Caroline Aaron, Conversations with Mother


F. Murray Abraham, Beckett Briefs: From the Cradle to the Grave


Jayne Atkinson, Still


Adam Driver, Hold On to Me Darling


Anthony Edwards, The Counter


Paul Sparks, Grangeville
 


OUTSTANDING FEATURED PERFORMER IN AN OFF-BROADWAY PLAY

Betsy Aidem, Liberation


Sean Bell, The Beacon


Michael Rishawn, Table 17


Richard Schiff, Becoming Eve


Frank Wood, Hold On to Me Darling
 


OUTSTANDING LEAD PERFORMER IN A BROADWAY MUSICAL

Darren Criss, Maybe Happy Ending


Jeremy Jordan, Floyd Collins


Audra McDonald, Gypsy


Jasmine Amy Rogers, Boop! The Musical


Nicole Scherzinger, Sunset Boulevard


Jennifer Simard, Death Becomes Her


OUTSTANDING FEATURED PERFORMER IN A BROADWAY MUSICAL

Danny Burstein, Gypsy


Jak Malone, Operation Mincemeat


Michele Pawk, Just in Time


Christopher Sieber, Death Becomes Her


Michael Urie, Once Upon a Mattress
 


OUTSTANDING LEAD PERFORMER IN AN OFF-BROADWAY MUSICAL

Nick Adams, Drag: The Musical


Marla Mindelle, The Big Gay Jamboree


Nkeki Obi-Melekwe, Safety Not Guaranteed


Alaska Thunderfuck, Drag: The Musical


Taylor Trensch, Safety Not Guaranteed
 


OUTSTANDING FEATURED PERFORMER IN AN OFF-BROADWAY MUSICAL

Ali Louis Bourzgui, We Live in Cairo


Paris Nix, The Big Gay Jamboree


Eddie Korbich, Drag: The Musical


J. Elaine Marcos, Drag: The Musical


Andre De Shields, Cats: The Jellicle Ball


Henry Stram, Three Houses
 


OUTSTANDING SOLO PERFORMANCE

David Greenspan, I'm Assuming You Know David Greenspan


Khawla Ibraheem, A Knock on the Roof


Sam Kissajukian, 300 Paintings


Andrew Scott, Vanya


Sarah Snook, The Picture of Dorian Gray
 


OUTSTANDING BOOK OF A MUSICAL (BROADWAY OR OFF-BROADWAY

Will Aronson and Hue Park, Maybe Happy Ending


David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson, and Zoë Roberts, Operation Mincemeat


Daniel Lazour and Patrick Lazour, We Live in Cairo


Bob Martin, Boop! The Musical


Marco Pennette, Death Becomes Her
 


OUTSTANDING SCORE (BROADWAY OR OFF-BROADWAY)

Will Aronson and Hue Park, Maybe Happy Ending


David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson, and Zoë Roberts, Operation Mincemeat


David Foster and Susan Birkenhead, Boop! The Musical


Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez, Real Women Have Curves


Julia Mattison and Noel Carey, Death Becomes Her
 


OUTSTANDING ORCHESTRATIONS (BROADWAY OR OFF-BROADWAY)

Will Aronson, Maybe Happy Ending


Doug Besterman, Death Becomes Her


Joseph Joubert and Daryl Waters, Pirates! The Penzance Musical


Daniel Lazour and Michael Starobin, We Live in Cairo


Andrew Resnick, Just in Time
 


OUTSTANDING DIRECTION OF A PLAY

Trip Cullman, Cult of Love


Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin, Stranger Things: The First Shadow


Sam Mendes, The Hills of California


Phylicia Rashad, Purpose


Danya Taymor, John Proctor Is the Villain


OUTSTANDING DIRECTION OF A MUSICAL

Michael Arden, Maybe Happy Ending


Christopher Gattelli, Death Becomes Her


Robert Hastie, Operation Mincemeat


Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch, Cats: The Jellicle Ball


Jerry Mitchell, Boop! The Musical
 


OUTSTANDING CHOREOGRAPHY

Jenny Arnold, Operation Mincemeat


Warren Carlyle, Pirates! The Penzance Musical


Christopher Gattelli, Death Becomes Her


Shannon Lewis, Just in Time


Jerry Mitchell, Boop! the Musical
 


OUTSTANDING SCENIC DESIGN 

Miriam Buether, Jamie Harrison, and Chris Fisher, Stranger Things: The First Shadow


Rachel Hauck, Swept Away


Rob Howell, The Hills of California


Dane Laffrey, Maybe Happy Ending


Derek McLane, Death Becomes Her



OUTSTANDING COSTUME DESIGN

Gregg Barnes, Boop! The Musical


Wilberth Gonzalez and Paloma Young, Real Women Have Curves


Rob Howell, The Hills of California


Qween Jean, Cats: The Jellicle Ball


Paul Tazewell, Death Becomes Her
 


OUTSTANDING LIGHTING DESIGN

Kevin Adams, Swept Away


Natasha Chivers, The Hills of California


Jon Clark, Stranger Things: The First Shadow


Ben Stanton, Maybe Happy Ending


Justin Townsend, Death Becomes Her
 


OUTSTANDING SOUND DESIGN

Paul Arditti, Stranger Things: The First Shadow


Adam Fisher, Sunset Boulevard


Peter Hylenski, Death Becomes Her


Peter Hylenski, Maybe Happy Ending


John Shivers, Swept Away
 


OUTSTANDING VIDEO PROJECTIONS

59, Stranger Things: The First Shadow


Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom, Sunset Boulevard


David Bergman, The Picture of Dorian Gray


Hana S. Kim, Redwood


Finn Ross, Boop! The Musical

In case you're counting, Death Becomes Her lead the pack with 12 nominations and Stranger Things: The First Shadow was the most nominated play with 7 nominations. Other multiple nominees were Maybe Happy Ending with 9, Boop! The Musical with 8, The Hills of California and Operation Mincemeat with 6 each, Drag: The Musical and Purpose with 5 each and Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Sunset Blvd. and We Live in Cairo with 4 each. And then we spread our appreciation around to lots of other shows.