New York

NOT DEAD YET, BUT CLOSE Another revival of the sometimes sassily sophomoric Spamalot, or rather Monty Python’s Spamalot, slammed onto Broadway with a hot-to-trot, eager-beaver and carnivorously comic production filled with Python’s “take no prisoners” spoofery, where every gag, sight or sound is grist for a very silly mill, especially that flying cow. Michael Urie,…

St. Ann’s Warehouse will present the American premiere of  Life & Times of Michael K, the Baxter Theatre Centre / Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus  puppet theater production adapted from J.M. Coetzee’s 1983 award-winning novel. The show will run November 29-December 23. South African director Lara Foot adapted the novel in collaboration with  the Tony Award-winning  Handspring Puppet Company (War Horse). Life…

A GORGEOUS SHOW! Make Me Gorgeous! is the reworking of Mr. Madam by Donald Horn (aka Donnie) that premiered in Portand, Oregon, at triangle — one the oldest queer-identified theaters in the US — starring triple-threat Wade McCollum as Kenneth/Kate Marlowe. It now has a new name, but the same playwright and actor have brought…

THIS COMPANY KNOWS HOW TO QUARK IT One of Tom Stoppard’s most accessible plays gets a fine Off-Broadway revival by Bedlam Theatre Company. Like a very cerebral whodunit, the plot of Arcadia follows Thomasina Coverly, who in 1809 is a gifted teenager with very advanced ideas about physics and math. She studies with Septimus Hodge,…

GREAT STUFF IS COOKING IN THIS KITCHEN The world premiere of new coming-of-age musical, HELL’S KITCHEN, with music and lyrics by New York’s own 15-time Grammy Award winner Alicia Keys and playwright Kristoffer Diaz (The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Diety), now in previews at The Public Theater with the official opening on November 19, 2023….

TAKING REFUGE IN THEATER Where does one find refuge? Is it somewhere in this physical world or on the spiritual plane? Or is there some intersectional vortex where the two meet and handily co-exist? Possibly in a hand-hewn house with no address, maybe off the grid and deep in the Illinois woods? In Nathan Alan…

THE LONG-PLAYING STEREOPHONIC SHOULD’VE BEEN A SINGLE David Adjmi’s Stereophonic at Playwrights Horizons, directed by Daniel Aukin, has an excellent ensemble cast, a perfectly realistic set by David Zinn and pleasant, if derivative music by Will Butler. Unfortunately, that doesn’t quite make up for the verbosity and excessive length of the play. Eli Gelb and…

THE BLOOM IS SOON TO BE ON THE WHITE ROSE Based on the true story of young people bravely standing up to injustice, White Rose: The Musical , which begins its Off-Broadway debut   January 17, 2024, is a powerful new musical that follows the inspiring story of a courageous group of university students who stood…

DRAC-OOH-LA-LA Beware ladies and gentlemen and every other gender expression currently walking the planet.   There’s a new Dracula in town and he is HAWT! Looking much more like a young Dolph Lundgren than an old Bela Lugosi, the tall, blonde, Aryan ideal at the center of Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors  is on the prowl for…

FINALLY, A MUSICAL THAT ISN’T GUTEN-FREE Those who saw Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells in The Book of Mormon have been looking forward eagerly to their return as a team in Gutenberg! The Musical!  They will not be disappointed. Scott Brown and Anthony King’s Gutenberg!, nimbly directed by Alex Timbers, is a blast from beginning to…