In late 2025, as wealth inequality reaches historic levels and millions struggle with housing costs, “The Queen of Versailles” arrives on Broadway at the St. James Theatre to ask: wouldn’t it be fun to watch billionaires build a 90,000-square-foot mansion? The musical, based on Lauren Greenfield’s 2012 documentary about timeshare mogul David Siegel and his wife Jackie constructing their own…
The recently opened new Broadway musical “Two Strangers Carry A Cake Across New York” leans towards the formula of a savvy rom com that is unassuming and charming, thanks to Christiani Pitts and Sam Tutty, who star in this two-hander. They are challenged by the superficial and at times rambling script penned by Jim Barne and Kit Buchan, who are…
Most coming-of-age plays invite us to relate to individual characters as they navigate adolescent turmoil. We watch from outside, recognizing ourselves in their struggles. Else Went’s “Initiative,” receiving its world premiere at The Public Theater, does something far more ambitious and profound: it draws us inside the collective unconscious of seven teenagers coming to terms with trauma, sexuality, violence, and…
Thornton Wilder wrote “The Skin of Our Teeth” in 1942 as the world burned. Ethan Lipton’s musical adaptation “The Seat of Our Pants,” now at the Public Theater, arrives as history repeats itself with eerie precision. The Announcer’s opening number catalogs our contemporary disasters—”We made it through the recession-pandemic-wildfire-oligarchy by the seat of our pants”—and suddenly Wilder’s absurdist chronicle of…
In Samuel D. Hunter’s “Little Bear Ridge Road,” currently playing at the Booth Theatre, James, an astrophysics graduate student, explains to his boyfriend Ethan that the three stars forming Orion’s Belt look aligned from Earth but are actually separated by eight hundred light years. It’s a casually delivered bit of astronomy that becomes the play’s quiet revelation: perspective changes everything,…
After garnering mostly rave reviews in London’s West End and Stratford-upon-Avon, “Kyoto” by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson is currently running Off-Broadway at Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater. The play spans 1989-1997 and is narrated from the point of view of Don Pearlman (Stephen Kunken), an American oil lobbyist who works to sabotage UN climate negotiations. It’s framed as…
It is very rare that a revival of a musical is imagined better than the original production and exceptional that its message is more relevant now than when it first opened on Broadway nearly thirty years ago in 1997, garnering four Tony Awards. That is the case for the glorious revival of “Ragtime” with a book penned by Terrence McNally,…
With HBO’s “The Gilded Age” drawing record-breaking viewership, it’s clear America remains fascinated by the elegance, extravagance and traditions of that dazzling era. Now, food writer and historian Becky Libourel Diamond invites readers to savor the holiday season the way society’s elite once did with her new release, “The Gilded Age Christmas Cookbook.” Equal parts nostalgic confections, culinary history and…
Jen Tullock’s “Nothing Can Take You from the Hand of God” has been hailed as a searing examination of how evangelical Christianity wounds its queer children. Critics have called it “the best solo show in years,” praising Tullock’s tour-de-force performance as she embodies multiple characters to tell the story of Frances Reinhardt, a writer whose memoir about growing up gay…
A new solo show has opened at the Greenwich House Theater, written and performed by Ari’el Stachel, who won the Tony award for best supporting actor in the musical, “The Band’s Visit.” It is not a “coming out” story, but it is about his personal struggle with anxiety and his journey to “figure out” his identity. It started when he…