The season for free, outdoor theater is well underway, both throughout the country and here in New York: A new epic “Memnon” began over the weekend (see below.) This coming week, Broadway in Bryant Park will launch its 25th season on Thursday, and the 27th annual Broadway Barks with hosts Bernadette Peters and Beth Leavel will pair human stars with adoptable animals in Shubert Alley on Saturday.
July 2025 New York Theater Openings
(Featuring many outdoor plays, most of them free)
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
Centuries before Othello, and millennia before Black Panther, there was Memnon, the king of the Ethiopians, who came to the defense of Troy during the Trojan War. Homer mentions Memnon in both the Iliad and The Odyssey, and Virgil writes about him in the Aeneid, although he appears in all three works only briefly; Sophocles wrote an entire play about him, but it hasn’t survived.
Now Memnon is restored to glory by the Classical Theatre of Harlem…”Memnon” makes for a memorable theatrical outing: It’s free and outdoors; the staging is majestic, and the diction elevated (it’s a verse play written in iambic hexameter) so that it can feel like a genuine Ancient Greek tragedy; yet, the production also acknowledges its 21st century audience…
John Krasinski’s character Roger seems as affable and appealing as Krasinski himself at the start of Penelope Skinner’s superficially entertaining play, but Roger quickly descends into the manosphere, becoming a full-fledged disciple of an Internet influencer who calls himself Angry Alan. Alan’s online videos and articles convince Roger he is a victim of the “Gynocracy, the female dominated political regime” that has taken over the country.
“Angry Alan” itself descends quickly into what can most charitably be called a missed opportunity. Scene after scene lays on the irony, exposing Roger as such a gullible fool and a hypocrite — each of his arguments so transparently false and delusional– that no actor could fully wrestle the character away from the playwright’s heavy hand. But Krasinski does his best; his performance is at times riveting. …
The Week in Theater News
In a record-breaking speech of nearly nine hours on the House floor, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries railed against the damaging effects of what he called “the big ugly bill.” The Republicans passed into a law a nearly 900-page bill that contains about $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, which could add $3.3 trillion to the deficit, and deep reductions in funding for Medicaid and food assistance.
Among Its arts-related allocations and provisions — $257 million for restoration, repairs and security at the Kennedy Center, which is in contrast to the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, both of which the president wants to eliminate, and $40 million towards a National Garden of American Heroes, 250 statues of people (not all of whom everybody would consider heroes) completed in time to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next July. (Associated Press and Deadline)
Cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities have impacted groups around the country, including Phamaly, a theater company in Denver that gives disabled actors and audiences the chance to participate. “I know some arts organizations and some nonprofits are taking their DEI statements off their websites because they’re afraid. And if we do, then it’s our entire mission” – Corinne Melon, Phamaly’s managing director..(NPR)
The Library of Congress announced that it has acquired more than 5,000 items from Sondheim’s collection, which became available to the public on July 1. There are notes, manuscripts and sheet music, ranging from drafts of songs that never made it to first rehearsal, as well as a spiral music book titled Notes and Ideas that document some of his musical efforts while a student at Williams College. In one 40-page document, Sondheim lists more than 150 possible professions and types of people who could have been baked into pies written for the song “A Little Priest” from “Sweeney Todd” (CBC)
In Memoriam
Richard Greenberg, 67, a witty playwright best known for his Tony-winning play Take Me Out, about a professional baseball player who comes out as gay, and Three Days of Rain, which marked the Broadway debut of Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper. I interviewed him a dozen years ago for Playbill when he had three plays opening nearly simultaneously in New York. Nearly all his plays were set in New York, and he wrote them all in a neighborhood diner. “This is a very New York thing, diners. People talk about alienation in the city. Diners are a place where you feel comfortable, an extension of your house.”
Tom Fay, 82, Broadway music director
Karl E. Held, 63, producer
