Photos: BEAUTY FREAK Opens Off-Broadway At The Cell

What Will the Neighbors Say? and Nancy Manocherian’s the cell theatre officially opened “Beauty Freak,” a new play by James Clements, directed by Danilo Gambini. Get a first look at photos from the production here!

The play explores the meteoric rise of filmmaker and Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. This strictly limited engagement runs April 24 – May 17, 2026 at the cell theatre with an opening set for Thursday, April 30. 

“Beauty Freak” centers on Riefenstahl during the creation and promotion of her magnum opus “Olympia,” a film about the 1936 Berlin Olympics commissioned by the Third Reich. Act I is set during the preparations for the Olympics, and Act II during her U.S. publicity tour in 1938, during which the events of Kristallnacht unfolded. As the regime that supports her artistic vision escalates their campaign of terror and commits increasingly flagrant atrocities, Riefenstahl and her colleagues are forced to reckon with their own complicity and responsibilities as artists.

The cast for “Beauty Freak” includes features Baize Buzan as Leni Riefenstahl along with Sam Hood Adrain as Werner Klingenberg, James Clements as Walt Disney, Peter Coleman as Joseph Goebbels, Luca Fontaine as Max Borgman, Slate Holmgren as Ambassador Hans-Heinrich Dieckhoff and Keith Rubin as Ernst Jäger.

The creative team for “Beauty Freak” includes Suzu Sakai (scenic design), Stephanie Bahniuk (costume design), Yung-Hung Sung (lighting design), Liam Bellman-Sharpe (sound design), Emily Mustillo and Samantha Tutasi (props) and Isabel Criado (production stage manager). Photography by Alexia Haick.