Over this past week Broadway has been awash in crooners and corpses, monsters and marauders, immigrants and miners, as the final six shows of the Broadway 2024-2025 season had their opening nights; my reviews of five of them below, plus one Off-Broadway.
The theater award season has begun in earnest, with two major awards announcing their nominees last week, and three more planning to do so this week, including the Tonys on Thursday, May Day, announced by Sarah Paulson and Wendell Pierce at 8:30 am
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
Stranger Things: The First Shadow
“Stranger Things: The First Shadow” is strictly for fans of “Stranger Things”…Those who don’t know the series get smoke and mirrors. Admittedly, they’re spectacular smoke and mirrors, state-of-the-art, high-tech, costly, intense — smoke volcanically erupting from the ground or gruesomely pouring out of bodies; mirrors suddenly cracking or shattering…many “whoaaa” special effects…As for making sense of it all: The best the novice can hope for is that the cacophony, convolution and confusion on stage will finally prod him to join the addicted screen-watching horde to figure out the point of it all. Truthfully, Stranger viewers are not immune to the confusion….
Before launching into the funny, sweet, sad, slight, sometimes sexually graphic story of his first love, the author and performer of this one-man show introduces himself in telling and trademark ways. “I’m Ryan J. Haddad. For those of you who don’t know me, I don’t know how you ended up here,” he says, in what could be modesty, or could be the opposite, but in either case charms the audience and gets a laugh. Then he takes some time to describe himself visually “for our blind and low vision audience members’….Haddad, a gay man in his thirties with cerebral palsy, is a pioneer in fully integrating access into theater productions in a way that makes sense dramatically.
‘Pirates!’ is billed as a reimagining of Gilbert and Sullivan’s 146-year-old comic operetta. But luckily there is plenty it shares with the twenty-six previous Broadway productions of “The Pirates of Penzance, or The Slave of Duty.” The creative team’s noodling doesn’t get in the way of some exciting performances, such as David Hyde Pierce’s, mastering “I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major-General,” the granddaddy of all patter songs, and Ramin Karimloo’s, swashbuckling his way through “I Am The Pirate King,” leaping from the ship’s deck, sword at the ready. The most thrilling performance for me is actually the one that Nicholas Barasch gives as Frederic, the juvenile/romantic lead, a character who sets off the deliberately silly (and mostly unchanged) plot.
Bobby Darin frankly does not strike me as having either the endurance in the culture or a uniquely compelling enough story to be the most obvious figure to build a Broadway show around. This is where Jonathan Groff comes in. While telling of Darin’s life, Groff in effect stars in a nightclub act, combining his talents and charm with those of the ostensible subject of the show, as well as with other first-rate performers portraying the women in Darin’s life.
Elmer J. McCurdy was killed in a shoot-out with sheriff’s deputies in Oklahoma in 1911, but took 66 years to be buried, his mummified remains having been exhibited all that time by a series of macabre showmen.
It took much less time for the novelty to wear off for me that a Tony-winning team of theater artists had put together a musical about such a bizarre true story. Composer David Yazbek, librettist Itamar Moses, and director David Cromer are not merely a higher caliber of macabre showmen; they are the team behind “The Band’s Visit,” and their talent is reflected in some of the cleverer musical numbers, backed by a busy ensemble and a felicitous folk-rock band. But this self-conscious slice of Americana winds up almost as creepy as clever, and less resonant than it might intend.
This musical about mostly undocumented immigrants in a L.A. dress factory has heart, something in short supply these days, especially when it comes to immigrants. It also features bellies. In the catchy title song, the factory ladies disrobe down to their undergarments. These are zaftig women – full-figured, fleshy, curvaceous. None of them you should call “fat” – they’re too comfortable in their bodies to be labeled that.
“Real Women Have Curves”…marks choreographer Sergio Trujillo’s Broadway directorial debut. If it has a predictable plot, it’s all these women together, and the proud characters they portray in the show, that make it work.
The Week in New York Theater Awards
Harvey Fierstein will receive a Tony Award for Life Achievement. In a Broadway career of more than four decades, he previously won four competitive Tony Awards, as an actor, a playwright and a librettist
Drama League Award 2025 Nominations
The nominations for the 91st annual Drama League Awards were announced by Sarah Hyland and Orville Peck at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. The awards will be held May 16th at the Ziegfeld Ballroom.
Outer Critics Circle Award Nominations 2025
“Death Becomes Her” leads the nominations at the 75th annual Outer Critics Circle Awards, announced by Oh, Mary! stars Cole Escola and Conrad Ricamora at the Museum of Broadway. The winners will be announced on May 12, 2025 followed by a private awards ceremony on May 22.
