Americans like to be scared even during scary times; how else to explain Halloween, a deliberately scary theater festival, and “The Phantom of the Opera,” which persists beyond Broadway, with two unusual new New York productions, one of which opened this past week, available live on your computer screen. It’s one of the five works of theater (a couple of the others scary in their own way) that I reviewed this past week, excerpted and linked below.
One of the five is a revival of John Patrick Shanley’s “Italian-American Reconciliation,” which is once again (as it was when it debuted four decades ago) overshadowed by “Moonstruck,” which is getting a one-night-only, first-time-ever, starry staged reading at Broadway’s Music Box Theater on November 10, a benefit for New York Stage and Film.
The interplay between stage and screen usually goes in the opposite direction. See below, for example, the “final trailer” of “Wicked: For Good” — which, come to think of it, is scary too, or at least rated PG for “some scary action.”
Clockwise from top left: Theater in Quarantine’s Phantom of the Opera, Boxcutter Collective’s Dimension Zero, Don Cheadle making his Broadway debut in “Proof,” Julia McDermott in “Weather Girl,” which is heading to Netflix.
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
Saul Rubinek long has wanted to play Shylock, a role that his father, a Yiddish actor and Holocaust survivor, never got a chance to play. But now that he has finally gotten to star in “The Merchant of Venice,” the production is being canceled after today’s performance because of community complaints that it is antisemitic. So, he comes out on stage fully dressed as an Orthodox Jew for the part, but rather than finish what’s supposed to be the final performance, he lets loose to the audience about antisemitism, censorship, the history and the beauty of “The Merchant of Venice,” and his own life as a Jewish actor. That is the premise and plot of “Playing Shylock,” weaving together fact and fiction…While there are some stirring and provocative moments, the enterprise is undermined by a script that revolves around a straw man argument about unfair attacks on “The Merchant of Venice” and is rife with dubious assertions.
Phantom of the Opera (yes, another one)
A French novel, several silent horror films, a Broadway musical, a site-specific work of immersive theater: It all has led to….Joshua William Gelb’s closet. “Many people have asked why we are doing another Phantom of the Opera,” Gelb said live on my computer screen. He gave an elaborate answer, but I was more focused on the chunks of monster makeup he was applying, to get ready for the latest Theater of Quarantine production livestreamed from the closet of his East Village apartment.
Dimension Zero
Boxcutter Collective, whose founding members are alumni of Peter Schumann’s venerable Bread and Puppet Theater, describe their new show at HERE Arts Center as “a sci-fi puppet-filled anti-capitalist musical theater spectacle.” To me, “Dimension Zero” is first and foremost deliciously inventive and playful puppetry — spiced with musical numbers, sprinkled with politics, dished out in a whimsical jumble of a plot.
Italian-American Reconciliation
Much like the better-known “Moonstruck,” the production of “Italian-American Reconciliation,” directed by Austin Pendleton, offers real pleasure, if not lots of reliable real-life insights about affairs of the heart, with a fine five-member cast including the always-fabulous Mary Testa portraying comically operatic characters who feel love and pain deeply, often confuse the two emotions, and need to talk about it loudly and at great length.
Are The Bennet Girls Ok?
The best thing to say about Bedlam’s irreverent, sister-centered riff on “Pride and Prejudice” is that it demonstrates once again the enduring appeal of Jane Austen’s centuries-old characters, even while playwright Emily Breeze has them saying and doing things – cursing and murder, for example — that would surely cause their original author to drop dead.
The Week in New York Theater News
Broadway Musicians Reach Tentative Agreement, Averting Strike (Hollywood Reporter)
Broadway Actors to Receive 3 Percent Pay Increase With New Contract: Breaking down the tentative agreement between Actors’ Equity and the Broadway League. (Playbill)
Proof will open April 16 at Broadway’s Booth Theater, Ayo Edebiri and Don Cheadle, both making their Broadway debuts.
There are now nine plays and musicals with completed dates and venues announced for the Spring 2026 Broadway season. (See my Broadway 2025 2026 Season Preview Guide)
Kate Baldwin and Alex Newell will join the cast as “Roxie Hart” and “Matron ‘Mama’ Morton”, respectively. Kate Baldwin will take over the role beginning November 10, and Alex Newell will join the cast beginning November 17.
Stage to Screen
When Hollywood Depicts Broadway Genius, the Results Rarely Sing: The new Lorenz Hart biopic “Blue Moon” gets a lot right about the creation of musicals that a spate of 1940s films got wildly wrong. (NY Times)
Weather Girl, a solo play about the California climate apocalypse that was a hit at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe and just finished a run at St. Ann’s Warehouse, is, yes as rumored, becoming a Netflix series. “The Netflix version of “Weather Girl” will expand the scope of the action beyond Stacey and will include people she dates, members of her family and colleagues at the Fresno, Calif. TV station where she works.” (Variety)
“Wicked: Part One” will make its Broadcast debut on NBC on November 19, 2025, from 8 to 11:30 p.m. ET/PT, two days before the sequel, Wicked: For Good, opens in movie theaters.
Everything You Need to Know About WICKED: FOR GOOD (Broadway World)
