Last week, four new Broadway shows announced their dates and venues for Spring 2026: Dog Day Afternoon, opening March 30. Fallen Angels, April 19. Schmigadoon, April 20. The Rocky Horror Show, April 23 – which makes 22 shows in total now for the Broadway 2025-2026 season.
Over the past two weeks, three solo shows opened in New York that originated at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (Weather Girl, Weer, and one at Dixon Place I review below), with a fourth opening this coming week. The Fringe has become almost as palpable a presence in New York as New Yorkers are at the Fringe, the latter illustrated by my HowlRound article on New Yorkers Xhloe and Natasha’s triumph in Edinburgh. (The Fringe Society is trying to encourage an even greater presence, having begun this year disbursing $2,500 grants to theater artists from the United States from a Keep It Fringe US fund)
Meanwhile, while the federal government has been shut down since the beginning of the month, Republican authoritarian attacks continue. (Where the Battle Over Free Speech Is Leading Us.) The theater community is not immune, nor is it unaware; several current shows (two of which I review below), and some of those opening later in October, offer in effect a response. In Mexodus, for example, the creative team is using a little known chapter in American history to riff quite explicitly on current politics, seeing it all as a continuum:
No more walls or borders, no more police brutality
No more staying complicit in this twisted reality!
Here’s to more years of black and brown solidarity
October 2025 New York Theater Openings
New York Theater Reviews
And Then We Were No More
As cryptic futuristic dystopian procedurals go, “And Then We Were No More” has much to recommend it. The title is enough of a tip-off that things will not end well, but the downbeat journey is made worthwhile by a splendid cast, an impressive set, and some provocative philosophical observations.
Mexodus
In its thrilling opening rap, “Mexodus” gives an overview of the little-known history of Mexico as a refuge for thousands of escaping American slaves before the Civil War. Rhythmic, uncommonly melodic, densely informative, “Two Bodies” may remind you of another opening number, from a certain Broadway musical that’s also based on American history.
Unlike “Hamilton,” though – or “1776” or “Suffs” or “Assassins” – “Mexodus” doesn’t keep strictly to the historical record after that… Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson, the talented creators and stars of this two-man musical, seem less interested in dramatizing the history than in riffing on it…. if its music is stronger than its storytelling… it has proven irresistible to the audience
The First 3 Minutes of 17 Shows
In her hour-long solo show, Abby Wambaugh both spoofs and nails a wide variety of comedy styles, from standup to slapstick to Moth-style storytelling to musical comedy…. Little of this seems worth developing into more than the sketch-like glimpses that we get…[In the one exception] Wambaugh explains how she worked as a teacher and didn’t consider a career as a comedian until she was hospitalized after a miscarriage. It was there, she tells us poignantly, that she started thinking about “new beginnings.”
The Week in Theater News
New Broadway Discount Policies
Liberation: $30 tickets to those under 30 years old. In-person and digital rush: $45. Digital lottery (through Telecharge): $50
Little Bear Ridge Road: Digital lottery, digital rush (both through Telecharge): $49
Queen of Versailles: In-person (at St. James), digital rush (through TodayTix) and digital lottery (through Lucky Seat): $45.
Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York): Digital lottery: $48. In-person rush: $42
Check out Broadway Rush and Lottery Policies
Broadway Strike?
Broadway actors prepare to strike, union says (Reuters)
Broadway Performers Pledge Support For Actors’ Equity As Possibility Of Strike Looms (Deadline)
Jimmy Kimmel, who spent the week in Brooklyn, mentioned the strike vote in his Thursday monologue: Like the federal shutdown, the issue is also over healthcare. “Actors Equity, the union that represents all Broadway performers, has voted to authorize a strike unless producers agree to improve their healthcare coverage. And I hope they do. Broadway actors need healthcare. They deserve healthcare – except for the cast of Cats; they go to the vet.”
What’s Behind the Rising Costs of a Broadway Show (Broadway World)
“..ultimately what causes shows to take longer to recoup their initial capitalization is the high costs associated with operating a show. It’s well documented that the single largest line item in most shows budgets is the cost of being in the theatre. A show like the recent revival of Gypsy likely was paying upwards of $350,000 per week for the privilege of being in the Majestic Theatre, if you combine the 7% that The Shubert Organization takes off the top of the grosses as well as the theatre fixed cost. This is in line with most shows, theatre expenses usually amount to more than 30% of the total expenses of a show
The War Against Culture
Trump Fires Members of Humanities Council (NY Times)
Why is “Cabaret” still packing them in on the West End but bombed on Broadway? (Observer)
“Why was such success not replicated in New York…“Not a day goes by where I don’t ask myself that question”, [producer Adam] Speers admits. The official line is that Broadway audiences had their fill of Cabaret with Sam Mendes’s production, which ran for 2,377 performances between 1998 and 2004, and returned in 2014. More discontented voices blame the creative sidelining of the show’s first producers – Underbelly, best known for their work on the Edinburgh fringe – in favour of Broadway money-men with big marketing budgets. They point to the time spent at Vogue photoshoots instead of in the rehearsal room….The other answer is that [director Rebecca] Frecknall’s production made a series of strong choices loved in London and hated in New York….Notably, Frecknall seems to see Sally’s decision to stay in Berlin, even as Nazism descends, as an act of resistance rather than complicity
