Over the weekend, “Merrily We Roll Along” and “Hamnet” opened in cinemas nationwide, each connected to live theater in very different ways – one, a recording of a live Broadway production, the other a movie about Shakespeare. Both are the latest in a banner year for theater on screen.
Other recordings of live theatrical productions include “Waitress The Musical,” a capture of the 2016 Tony-nominated Broadway show, which is currently streaming on HBO Max, and “Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical,” which (despite its title) captured a production on the West End, and is streaming on Disney+. “Hamilton: An American Musical,” a recording of the Broadway production with its original cast, which was initially streamed during the pandemic on Disney+, was re-released in cinemas in September, in celebration of the show’s tenth anniversary on Broadway
Other films of shows that originated on Broadway were adaptations that made changes big and small, including of course Wicked, which opened last November and is now streaming on HBO Max, and Wicked: For Good, which opened in cinemas this November; as well as “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” released in October and now available to rent or purchase online, and “The Piano Lesson,” currently on Netflix.
“Hedda,” released in October and currently streaming on Amazon Prime, is so different from “Hedda Gabler,” the Ibsen play that inspired it – this Hedda is a Black woman in 1950s England – that it’s officially called a “reimagining” rather than an adaptation.
And then there are the movies, like “Hamnet,” which have theater as their subject. These include
“Griffin in Summer,” still in some cinemas and also streaming on Hulu and available for rent and purchase elsewhere online, which is a hilarious and knowing film about a super serious 14-year-old thespian who falls for his leading man. In “The Last Showgirl,” available on Hulu, Pamela Anderson portrays the star of a Las Vegas revue that’s closing after thirty years. In “Song Sung Blue,” opening in cinemas on Christmas Day, Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson portray two down-on-their-luck musicians who form a Neil Diamond tribute band (based on a true story.) In “Blue Moon,” which is still in some cinemas but also available for rent or purchase online, Ethan Hawke (brilliantly) portrays the lyricist Lorenz Hart on the night when his writing partner of 24 years, composer Richard Rodgers, has the biggest hit of his life, “Oklahoma!” – with a new lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II.
“Avoiding hagiography along with garbled then-I-wrote timelines, ‘Blue Moon’ offers a corrective to the biopic disease,” Jesse Green wrote in a Times assessment of the film that also looks at the good and (mostly) bad of past biographical films about theater artists.
Wicked For Good, Blue Moon, Hamnet and Hedda were among the theater-related movies that just received Golden Globe nominations. (Broadway World)
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
Peter and the Wolf at the Guggenheim
“Peter & the Wolf” is a terrific way to introduce young children to the glories of both classical music and theater, which is surely why it has generated countless recordings and productions over the past ninety years, and drawn in an astonishing range of celebrity narrators (a small sample: Leonard Bernstein, David Bowie, Carol Channing, Boris Karloff, Eleanor Roosevelt, Weird Al Yankovic.) If Mizrahi might consider being a bit more circumspect in his effervescence, he is a worthy inheritor and innovator of the tradition.
Is “Dirty Books” itself obscene? Not at all, if we go by the Supreme Court’s three-pronged test. The theater company Bated Breath does enlist the audience to write erotica, but 1. The show begins with a history exhibition about book banning in the U.S. that certainly doesn’t lack serious political and educational value, 2. The exhibition is followed by a plot that is so bland one might wish for a little patent offensiveness, or even 3. prurience, but none exists. Besides, the enlistment is half-hearted and the effect not all that erotic.
Kara Young and Nicholas Braun were so much fun to watch in this latest production of Rajiv Joseph’s peculiar play that it hurt. As Kayleen and Doug, they portray friends who are consistently ill or injured over a span of thirty years, from age eight to 38. “Gruesome Playground Injuries,” like several other Joseph plays, tries to make pain funny. When Doug enters a scene in a wheelchair, the audience is meant to laugh, and we did; a queasy accomplishment.
The Week in New York Theater News
Helen Shaw moves from her three-year stint at the New Yorkers to become the chief theater critic of the New York Times, starting in January.
Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series, curated by Clint Ramos, will run March 18-May 23, 2026,. Some highlights: Ella & The Duke (March 18) Ruthie Ann Miles first solo concert (March 19); 50th anniversary concert of Ntozake Shange’s “for colored girls…” (April 6)
BroadwayCon 2026 will take place January 23-25, at 2 new hotels, Palladium Times Square & New York Westin at Times Square. Anthony Rapp, co-founder of the annual event in 2016, has described it “like Comic Con but with more jazz hands and green face paint”
From Improv Class to Mayor-Elect: How New York’s Culture Shaped Mamdani (NY Times)
“I went to Magnet Theater for Improv Level One,” Mamdani said of that winter in 2017, when his eight-week course at the Chelsea theater ended in a student showcase. “I think I had dreams of going to the Upright Citizens Brigade.”…Other cultural forays would be familiar to many New York City kids: Mamdani saw “The Lion King” on Broadway and loved the American Museum of Natural History….“I remember loving the Blue Man Group,” Mamdani said,
The Kennedy Center Honors gets a shakeup from its host: Trump (Washington Post)
The 48th iteration of the awards gala kicked off Sunday evening with President Donald Trump taking the stage as the first head of state to act as the show’s host. Trump, who seized control of the Kennedy Center earlier this year, appeared to be enjoying himself as he introduced each of the honorees: glam metal band Kiss, actor [Tony winner for Phantom of the Opera] Michael Crawford, country music legend George Strait, actor Sylvester Stallone and disco star Gloria Gaynor…The president addressed the room several times to deliver relatively tight, short remarks and jokes that won cheers and laughter. His hosting — never an especially involved job at the Honors — eventually took the form of prerecorded videos introducing most acts. Legends dotted the crowd, especially from the country music world, but Hollywood turnout was noticeably down.
