David Cote — Theater Critic

I never expected to leave a musical about undead bloodsuckers thinking, “That was kind of fun.” Maybe when the world is run by actual ghouls and fiends, when our phones drain our will to live at night, it feels good to stick the platelet-sipping devils center stage and make them sing, then cheer as they burn to dust at dawn.

I mean, the venue has a new name. It used to be the Biltmore, now it’s the Samuel J. Friedman. Same producer: Manhattan Theatre Club. Same playwright. The Balusters is not bougie grief porn. It is a bougie meta-woke social comedy. It steps into the well-trodden furrow of the Hypocritical Liberal Play. Other examples (every other critic will list them) include The Thanksgiving Play, Eureka Day, and The Minutes. I wasn’t crazy about any of those previous titles, and The Balusters doesn’t elevate the formula.

Scott Ellis’s zippy and graceful staging on David Rockwell’s Art Deco-tastic set goes down easy as box wine, even if the comic fireworks are muted. An all-English cast would nail accents and tone better. Fallen Angels runs but 90 minutes and while you wish for bigger laughs and more assured style, it’ll be over before you feel like sneaking out.

Watching director Joe Mantello’s monumental yet intimate revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, it’s also hard to suppress thoughts of the not-yet-dead huckster running our country. In 1949, Miller could not have predicted an American economy perched so precariously on fraud, speculation, and antihuman tech. At least, not quite. There are signs of technology’s power to capture reality in a wire recorder that the young supervisor Howard (John Drea) demonstrates for a befuddled Willy Loman (Nathan Lane). In another scene, careworn spouse Linda (Laurie Metcalf), tells Willy the refrigerator needs a new belt. His bilious reply:

Becky Shaw is a breath of fresh satirical air, refreshing in our oversensitive, overcautious times (a scene where Becky talks about her complicated past with Black men is masterfully cringe). Do you savor the stylish sadism of novelist Ottessa Moshfegh? Then hie thee to Becky Shaw.

A hardworking and very effective Coon is left to maintain dramatic tension. In her TV triumphs as plucky social climbers (The Gilded Age and The White Lotus), Coon’s fresh beauty and vivacious yet sensible vigor has elevated so-so scripts. She makes a smart and relatable protagonist either in nineteenth-century bustle or Thai resort muumuu. Adopting a Southern-Midwestern twang and artfully revealing the full depth of Agnes’s trauma and hunger for meaning, Coon relishes the scuzz and grace of Agnes, even if her dance partner’s limp.

All the same, to make Anna Christie truly sing, the tortured lovers need animal magnetism: sex appeal, they used to call it. I never saw the 1993 Broadway revival, but to judge by photos, Natasha Richardson and Liam Neeson had the goods. That gorgeous pair met through the Roundabout production, left their partners and got hitched a year later. In Brooklyn, the showmance already happened: Williams and her director, Kail, are married, with children, and live not far from St. Ann’s in DUMBO. I sincerely hope that their next family affair takes place on a more seaworthy vessel.

Still relevant after its world premiere at Playwrights Horizons, the 90-minute chamber drama sparkles and unsettles in its Broadway debut, positing that holographic avatars will remember us after we’re gone, airbrushing life’s sorrow and complexity from every snapshot. In 2025, such a message is not ahead of its time, but perfectly punctual.

Capitalized at $25 million and extended into next February, Masquerade tries to be a lot: a karaoke Phantom by hard-working troupers; a theme-park ride inside the world; a two-hour chunk of fan service with extra back story; an IRL mingle for Phans to play dress-up and quaff champagne in the bar afterward. What it wasn’t, for me, is fun or emotionally resonant. If you think Phantom of the Opera is legit art, that’s your problem. I’ll assume you’re not reading this, that you’re busy charging $500 on a pair of tickets. I hope the actors are well compensated, because they don’t get a bow—shameful. We all know the modern musical has to evolve to survive in the face of technology and economic precarity, but this cash-grab stunt tries to look backward and forward at once: hard to do with a silly mask on your mug.

For Beckett devotees, this Godot will come across as both idiosyncratic and faithful, a weird masterwork seen and heard afresh. Fans of Bill & Ted and the John Wick franchise may be converted to theater of the absurd. Because if they attend expecting time-travel gags or hitman Gun-Fu, it’ll be a long wait.

James Corden was legit hilarious in One Man, Two Guvnors, but that was 13 years ago, before he became a late-night tryhard and the bane of Balthazar. neil patrick harris still has impeccable sitcom timing. Bobby Cannavale has paid his stage dues for years—whether or not he’s right for the part. Is this cast worth half a grand? Is the play? Reza’s 1998 comedy abounds in witty chuckles and elegant structure, but it remains a slight boulevard comedy: three self-obsessed Frenchmen bickering over a pricey painting.

These comedies are intrinsically musical, peppered with songs of the time. Accordingly, composer Michael Thurber’s vibrant, polyglot score excels, with pieces for an all-women string quartet, a jazzy art song for Sumney and even a burst of Elizabethan rap for Viola. In addition to the natural musicality of Shakespeare’s verse, we also hear bewitching fragments of Swahili (translated from the source) when Viola and Sebastian fall back into their native tongue. Dialect coach Karishma Bhagani and the Nyong’o siblings weave these lilting, wonderful notes into a swoon-worthy night’s symphony.

Beyond its sociological themes, Heathers is a ton of stylish, well-crafted fun with top-notch acting and top-to-bottom earworms. After intermission, the score grows darker and introspective, giving individual characters moments to unburden their hearts... Neat thing about Heathers: it may appear to be coldhearted and ice-blooded, but by the end, there’s a thaw and everyone is part of the club.

Catchy and crammed with memorable hooks and lyrics that are clever as well as touching, Yazbek and Della Penna have written what is easily the best new score on Broadway since, well, Yazbek’s masterful score for The Band’s Visit (which also had a superb book by Moses). Bearing influences from Frank Loesser to Britpop band XTC, Yazbek has for 25 years remained one of my favorite composer-lyricists. He’s got a witty, skeptical way with melody and lyrics that always reminds you of his roots as a singer-songwriter (Dead Outlaw’s quirky black comedy sent my mind back to the 1996 album The Laughing Man). Along with Jeanine Tesori and Dave Malloy, Yazbek is an artist who sustains hope for the American musical.

It’s a remarkably lived-in play. You have the sense that Smith built her world in granular detail, establishing a hefty biography for each camper, tracking everyone’s location at all times over the 15-day span of the action. The design enhances this sense of place and the lazy, dreamy passing of time... Grief Camp is a banquet of perfectly meshed design, fully inhabited by the lovable, convincing cast.

I cannot overpraise the talented cast and the snappy production, which moves like a bullet train and ends with a rebellious “Presentation Day” dance that sends shivers down your spine and tears down your cheeks. Sink and Yoo enter in white peasant dresses and enact a visionary feminist rewrite on The Crucible, then burn the house down with a war dance to, yes, “Green Light.”

Loosely adapted from a short-lived television series, this musical comedy about the making of a musical is full of showstopping songs and powered by a phenomenal cast.

Since Snook’s eyeline often goes straight to the camera, as characters in close-up or when Dorian stares at his portrait, the identity of the screen itself grows slippery. When Snook looks at the portrait, she’s looking at the audience, as if through a portal. She and we are simultaneous stand-ins for the enchanted canvas: two black mirrors gazing narcissistically into each other’s fatal depths.

This world is colorless and impersonal (Derek McLane’s towering gray columns on wheels), and so are its inhabitants. At the top, a supertitle says the story takes place in some unspecified tomorrow. How I longed to jump to that near future, in which Washington has taken his bow and I’m sipping a martini at Joe Allen.

Operation Mincemeat is totally lovable and expertly zany, with Big Let’s Put on a Show Energy. See it now before SpitLip’s visas are revoked and they get thrown in Guantánamo.

The Irish film and TV star (All of Us Strangers, Normal People) may be the name driving up ticket prices and attendance at BAM, but his performance is carefully integrated into Rebecca Frecknall’s keen, intelligently deconstructed revival. Mescal doesn’t shrink from his role’s indelible association with young Marlon Brando; the actor’s credibly flat accent (urban Midwest dusted with Brooklyn) and unforced physical beauty constitute what you might call a Brando-adjacent reading: not trying to reinvent the wheel but perfectly able to handle the curves.

In its spareness and dreamy drift from fragmentary scene to direct address, director Arin Arbus’s superbly focused and balanced production inevitably brings to mind Our Town, but with ecological dread and greater social anomie. The ghost of Thornton Wilder surely perched on Koogler’s shoulder during the composition. This current production remounts the one Clubbed Thumb premiered in Summerworks two years ago and remains a model of less-is-more eloquent restraint.

While the design team does much dramaturgical lifting, the acting is equally superb. Just when you think you’ve seen every vocal twang or behavioral quirk from the longtime secret weapon Paul Sparks, he whips up another virtuosic portrait of a damaged, complicated weirdo (they tend to be more country than urban).

I don’t care how balsa-weak that joke is (will I be the 14th hack to use it, or the only one lacking self-restraint?). Redwood rhymes with deadwood, the derogatory term for people or things that no longer serve a function. Menzel has plenty to give. She could be the greatest squandered resource on Broadway in decades, which makes this well-intentioned misfire more frustrating: they are literally hanging Menzel out to dry.

It’s a pity: The Antiquities is a compelling concept and Harrison has a poetic, philosophical bent, but the execution lacks a certain audacity. One wonders what Caryl Churchill would have made of the premise (as with Love and Information, she’s master of the short, sharp shock). Not even a tightly directed cast and boldly designed production can overcome the sense that we’ve seen these tropes before on screens.