“And I am telling you I’m not going…” That’s the best-known lyric from “Dreamgirls,” which will return to Broadway in the fall of 2026, but it’s being sung right now Off-Broadway in a funny, pointed moment in one of the six shows I reviewed last week, all but one of them likely to get less attention than a newly announced Broadway revival of a 45-year-old show opening a year from now. Don’t misunderstand: I embrace familiar old shows – I just reviewed one that’s been running for 22 years (that would be “Wicked.”) And “Dreamgirls,” which was one of the musicals directed and choreographed by Michael Bennett, who had already gained legendary status for “A Chorus Line,” will be directed and choreographed by Camille A. Brown, an exciting choice.
But I’m thankful for a theatrical universe that’s wide enough for a genre-defying show like “Essentialisn’t,” in which Eisa Davis instructs the audience to sing the famous “Dreamgirls” lyric as terribly as possible, to counteract the assumption that all Black women can sing. “Your authenticity has been challenged if you don’t hit that Jennifer Holliday or Jennifer Hudson note just right.”
That’s Davis in the upper left photograph corner, immersed in a tank of water (I’m not sure why), above Luke Newton, who has traded his Colin Bridgerton attire to portray a buzz-cutted Alexander McQueen. He’s to the left of Julio Torres, who is making his Off Broadway offering some surreal color theories.
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
Fashion designer Alexander McQueen seems readymade for a theatrical portrait, and “House of McQueen” is pieced together with bespoke extravagance. It is housed in a new Off-Broadway theater created expressly for this play, which includes a gallery…but much of his story is handled in a fleeting, perfunctory manner
The Brothers Size
Much like “Moonlight,” “The Brothers Size” is largely an exercise in oblique storytelling, where much is suggested rather than spelled out, and crucial events occur outside our presence. The approach is frankly more effective in Tarell Alvin McCraney’s later work…Still, there is power and beauty in this revival
Color Theories
“Color Theories” is funny and weird and sometimes confusing. It reminded me at various times of Pee Wee Herman (childlike tone, cartoonish set, puppetry), George Carlin (observational and political humor), and Andy Kaufman (is he kidding or for real?), although none of those comparisons are really accurate, since the show is uniquely Julio Torres. His gently surreal take on the world will be familiar to those who have seen his 2019 special “My Favorite Shapes,” 2023 movie “Problemista” or 2024 TV series “Fantasmas” (all on HBOMax.)
The Essentialisn’t
“Can you be Black and not perform?” Eisa Davis asks, then sings “No,” while playing her keyboard.
This is the central question, but not the only answer, in “The Essentialisn’t.” There’s also another question hovering over the show: What is it?
Davis, who collaborated with Lin-Manuel Miranda on “The Warriors” concept album last year, is the writer, director, main composer and principal performer in what I can justify calling performance art, but could just as easily be described as a concert, an art exhibition, a lyrical riff about Black female identity, a memoir in disguise. Just searching for the right genre label, though, misses the point: What are we meant to take from “The Essentialisn’t?
The answer I landed on is: A lot. This is an untidy, wet, entertaining, provocative, mystifying contrivance, composed of parts so widely disparate that they don’t really fit together; the show doesn’t really add up — except somehow it does anyway, because of Davis’ guiding intelligence and talent.
The Wild Duck
Sometimes it’s better to live with lies; the truth can be too destructive. That’s the message I came away with from “The Wild Duck,” which makes it hard for me to understand how the Theater for a New Audience thought this the right time to stage Henrik Ibsen’s rarely produced 1884 play. There is a solidity to this production of playwright David Eldridge’s 20-year-old adaptation, with fine ensemble acting and steady if sometimes stuffy direction by Simon Godwin. But I can’t fully embrace “The Wild Duck,” and not just because of the timing. The behavior of Ibsen’s antagonist, Gregers Werle, is even more inexplicable.
“Wicked” endures on stage. I saw it on Broadway this week, and I enjoyed it anew .Yes, it is now inescapably viewed through the lens of the 2024 movie version. But a movie has always hovered over the Broadway musical. It wouldn’t exist without the 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz.” …
In seeing it on Broadway for the first time since the Wicked movie came out, what most struck me is how palpable it is. The first characters we see are the flying monkeys in the flesh (and fur and wings.) The dense cloud of little bubbles that wreathe around Glinda as she descends in her big pink bubble somehow seem solid even as they quickly disappear. The imposing (Tony-winning) sets are sturdy enough to climb up on, which those monkeys do. When Elphaba offers to share her lunch with her professor Doctor Dillamond, who’s a goat, it’s somehow funnier that he eats the sandwich wrapper rather than the sandwich because the wax paper is so visibly and noisily chewed up. Everything looks so tangible, touchable, that that in and of itself turns the production into an argument for live theater.
