Label•less Off-Broadway Reviews

Rent closed in 2008, but you wouldn’t know it from walking into the Duke on 42nd Street for Label•less, Drew and Lea Lachey’s pop-music Gen Z tribute. Staged on mobile scaffold units, the devised work features hits from Sam Cooke to Lady Gaga, ...

Rent closed in 2008, but you wouldn’t know it from walking into the Duke on 42nd Street for Label•less, Drew and Lea Lachey’s pop-music Gen Z tribute. Staged on mobile scaffold units, the devised work features hits from Sam Cooke to Lady Gaga, performed by an exuberant cast determined to say something. While the words often fall flat, the voices soar. And when Lea trusts her dancers with the level of choreography they’re capable of, Label•less strikes a propulsive chord that proves the next generation of musical theater performers is ready for its close-up.

Day also wraps things up by addressing each of his castmates by name (“I see you, Aaron”) in a ritual of inclusion that feels forced — especially since so many of his fellow performers never get a monologue of their own. That’s the problem wi...

Day also wraps things up by addressing each of his castmates by name (“I see you, Aaron”) in a ritual of inclusion that feels forced — especially since so many of his fellow performers never get a monologue of their own. That’s the problem with theater: It doesn’t lend itself to absolute togetherness, or to having 17 leads trying to carry a show. Leveling the playing field also means flattening it so that nothing stands out.

Who is this show for? Who in the off-Broadway audience still needs to be told that racism is wrong and gay people deserve dignity? Label•less gestures toward brave truth-telling but delivers a message so inoffensive it could be produced at most Ame...

Who is this show for? Who in the off-Broadway audience still needs to be told that racism is wrong and gay people deserve dignity? Label•less gestures toward brave truth-telling but delivers a message so inoffensive it could be produced at most American high schools without much pushback (for all the show’s rainbow flag-waving, trans issues are conspicuously absent). It feels like something you might have seen onstage at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, an earnest song-and-dance routine celebrating pluralism and the fact that we’re Stronger Together. In 2026, that feels like an unsatisfying response to a world on fire.