Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson makes her one-night-only Broadway debut in “& Juliet” (see videos below)
What’s most intriguing about the end-of-year assessments, by both professional theater critics (Top 10 Lists of Top 10 NYC Theater in 2024) and everyday theatergoers (Poll: Best and Worst Broadway Show of 2024?) is not the consensus choices that emerge – this year “Maybe Happy Ending” gets love from critics and theatergoers alike – but the conversation that it engenders. Among hundreds who contributed to a Broadway Reddit thread in response to the poll, there are dozens of respectful debates, e.g.:
Bootsmontivergen: Sunset Boulevard is the best show of the century !!!
Onewaypendulum: It’s fascinating how polarizing this show is. I almost left at intermission.
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WildBill1226:
Best: Suffs
Worst: Tough call between Illinoise and Days of Wine and Roses.
NotPatReilly:
Crazy. Illinoise and Days of Wine and Roses are two of the best things I saw this year. Suffs is easily on the weaker side for me…
WildBill1226:
Story is primary to me. Suffs had a great story and a really good score. Illinoise needed to tell me why they were dancing. Days of Wine and Roses took too long to get to the point and when they did it was too late to grab my attention.
NotPatReilly: Illinoise was a ballet… And the way they can convey story through dance, next level storytelling….Days of Wine & Roses, I think that’s a taste thing. Like if you like a heady chamber musical then it’s perfect…
Suffs, I felt was a pale shade of other shows and didn’t do anything new or inventive….I did like it overall. A friend said “it’s like is Sara Bareilles wrote a Hamilton” and I think that nails it.
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Excerpt from Cirqueamy’s breakdown of the year’s Broadway offerings:
Show which stuck with me the most: Sunset Blvd.
Most delightful show: Maybe Happy Ending
Best whole experience: Cabaret (the preshow is almost worth its own ticket!)
Funniest: tie between Once Upon a Mattress and Oh, Mary!
Pulled on my heartstrings: The Notebook
Fired me up: Suffs
Intellectually stimulating: An Enemy of the People, with Job as runner up
Sleeper (I liked the show more a while after I’d seen it vs right after the show): Lempicka
Enjoyed stage door most: Mary Jane (Rachel McAdams is such a sweetheart!) …
That’s Broadway Past.
Broadway Presents:
Last Minute Holiday Gifts for Theater Lovers
Broadway Future:
Broadway Spring 2025 Preview Guide
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
Despite the Christmas carols sung from beginning to end, the playwright seems intent on subverting the formula of the Christmas story. But she replaces it with another formula, that of the dysfunctional family drama. This genre at its best can generate shattering moments and fresh insights, and I kept on expecting “Cult of Love” to deliver them. This is thanks to the one undeniable strength of the production: the fine ensemble acting of the cast…I questioned whether all the seemingly meandering moments in “Cult of Love” really added up to an intentional design, or were more like random pieces for a jigsaw puzzle the playwright hadn’t fully pictured yet.
The Week in New York Theater News
The Original Broadway Cast Recording of Maybe Happy Ending will be released sometime in the spring of 2025,
Swept Away, which was going to close on December 15, has been extended to December 29. Listen to “Ain’t No Man” from the forthcoming Original Broadway Cast Recording, below.
Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr, Michael Mckean to star in Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet’s Pulitzer winning play about cutthroat salesmen, opening at The Palace on March 31 (four days after another Succession alum, Sarah Snook, opens in “The Picture of Dorian Gray”)
Full cast announced for “Purpose,” a play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins about a prominent Black family, directed by Phylicia Rashad, opening on Broadway March 17: LaTanya Richardson, Kara Young and Alana Arenas join three who were in original Steppenwolf production:Harry Lennix, Glenn Davis, and Jon Michael Hill
As the Public Theater announced previously, The Delacorte will reopen this summer after a year-long renovation with a production of Twelfth Night starring Peter Dinklage, Lupita Nyong’o, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Sandra Oh. But that’s the only show that will be at the Delacorte. The usual Labor Day weekend production by the Public Theater’s Public Works, which enlists hundreds of residents from all five boroughs, will produce Shakespeare’s Pericles, directed by Carl Cofield and featuring music and lyrics by Troy Anthony, but at a different venue. Performances will run August 28-September 1, 2025, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
She Has 155 Million TikTok Followers. Will They Pay to See Her on Broadway
Charli D’Amelio catapulted to social-media fame with dance videos. Now she’s part of the ensemble of ‘& Juliet,’ where stunt casting is becoming part of the sales strategy. (WSJ)
The Week’s Theater Video
Most Watched New York Theater Video in 2024
