February is usually the peak month for SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), but it’s still striking that four of the five plays I reviewed this past week involve family trauma. Three do offer some hope at least.
February is also marked with holidays and anniversaries: Below are takes on Friday the 13th, Valentine’s Day and Presidents Day through a Broadway prism, and the tenth anniversary of Timothée Chalamet’s Off-Broadway debut.
Also below: News of the Broadway return of Raul Esparza, and a new musical by Lynn Nottage, as well as new casts of Broadway shows, which should cheer people up.
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
By the time that Big and Lil are lunging at one another with all the brutal skills they’ve developed as mixed martial arts fighters, we already realize they aren’t monsters at all. They are a brother and sister on a rough road toward reconciliation and forgiveness. Okieriete ‘Oak’ Onaodowan and Aigner Mizzelle are every bit as adept in the emotional dance between their characters as they are in the physical interaction enacted on stage with the aid of a choreographer, a fight director, and an “MMA consultant.”
heatergoers may identify with Anne (Emma D’Arcy) if they have had to deal with a family member during a crisis who showed no interest in collaboration or compromise, only wanting to be in control. “It’s not fair that you get to decide on behalf of everyone,” she tells her uncle Chris (Tobias Menzies.)
Others may sympathize with Chris if they have had to deal with an unstable relative: “We need to move on, and so do you,” he says to her.
The two are arguing over a funeral urn in “The Other Place,”…at its best an intensely acted exploration of grief and family dynamics. But the play is inspired by Sophocles’ “Antigone,” and Zeldin’s loyalty to Ancient Greek tragedy sometimes makes for an awkward fit, as it did in a different way in the just-concluded Broadway run of Robert Icke’s “Oedipus,” another 2,500-year-old tragedy by Sophocles set in modern times.
If the ending in particular made little sense to me, I’m not sure how much logically the rest of the play holds up under scrutiny either. Yet logic be damned: “The Unknown” plays masterfully from moment to moment with audience expectations. Sean Hayes portrays eleven distinctly different characters with what feels like effortless clarity, even as the story becomes ever-more clouded and convoluted.
Twelve Minor Prophets” might sound like a Hebrew School pageant, since it’s an educational and playful stage adaptation based on the last twelve books of the Old Testament. But the playfulness is sophisticated: Each book is dramatized differently, as a musical, or a Western, or a puppet show. And the Biblical stories are given a contemporary frame involving a group of friends and family arguing over theology and politics while grappling with grief. It’s a busy, witty, erudite, ambitious work of theater that doesn’t completely hold together. But it’s a great calling card for a scrappy, inventive Brooklyn-based theater company, the Eno River Players, founded 11 years ago in North Carolina by Leo Egger, then 14 years old, seeded by his Bar Mitzvah money.
The Dinosaurs” is not just what it at first seems, which is an ordinary meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous… full of moments that seem positively banal. But the banality engenders a feeling of authenticity, and the authenticity at its best – rendered by some of the finest stage actresses working in New York – helps us at least pause and consider the significance of moments that we might otherwise have ignored.
The Week in New York Theater News
Raúl Esparza will return to Broadway after a fourteen-year absence to star in the title role of Galileo, a new musical inspired by the life of the 17th century Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, which is set to open December 6 at the Shubert Theater.
Lynn Nottage and John Legend’s new musical, Imitiation of Life, to debut at the Shed in Fall 2026, based on Fannie Hurst’s 1933 novel + 1934 & 1959 films about two women, one Black & one white, who struggle to raise their daughters in a world shaped by inequalities.
Watch Me Walk, which just concluded its stage run as part of the Under the Radar Festival, will be streamed February 28 – March 7.
Operation Mincemeat’s new all-American cast begins February 24: Julia Knitel, Jeff Kready, Brandon Contreras, Jessi Kirtley and Amand Jill Robinson. Understudies: Robert Ariza, Allison Guinn, Sam Hartley, Gerianne Perez, Lexi Rabadi.
Stranger Things: The First Shadow was filmed over the weekend for eventual streaming on Netflix. The original cast will play its final performance on March 29. Two days later, Victor de Paula Rocha will take over as Henry Creel alongside Ayana Cymone as Patty Newby, Shea Grant as Joyce Maldonado and Juan Carlos as Bob Newby. Matthew Erick White makes his Broadway debut as James Hopper, Jr.,
Joining Alex Brightman and Sara Chase in the cast of “Schmigadoon,” opening April 20 at the Nederlander:Ana Gasteyer, Ann Harada, Brad Oscar, Isabelle Mccalla, Ivan Hernandez, Max Clayton, Mckenzie Kurtz, Ayaan Diop.
Also: Afra Hines, Becca Petersen, Brandon Block, Clyde Alves, Jess LeProtto, Joshua Burrage, Kaleigh Cronin, Keven Quillon, Kimberly Immanuel, Lauralyn McClelland, Lyrica Woodruff, Maria Briggs, Miles McNicoll, Nathan Lucrezio, Richard Riaz Yoder, Shina Ann Morris, and Zachary Downer
Joining Adrien Brody and Tessa Thompson in the csst of The Fear of 13, opening April 15 at the James Earl Jones Theater: Ephraim Sykes, Michael Cavinder, Eddie Cooper, Victor Cruz, Eboni Flowers, Joel Marsh Garland, Jared Wayne Gladly, Joe Joseph, Jeb Kreager and Ben Thompson
Joining John Lithgow, Aya Cash, Elliot Levey,and Rachael Stirling in the cast of “Giant,”opening March 23: Stella Everett as Hallie, David Manis,as Wally, and understudies Geoffrey Cantor, Annie Hӓgg, Eleanor Handley, and Paul O’Brien
Ben Jacoby and Brent Thiessen will join Jessica Vosk and Kelli Barret in Beaches, opening April 22 at the Majestic Theater
Suffs will air on PBS May 8
February anniversaries seen through a Broadway prism
Theater Superstitions on Friday the 13th
On Valentine’s Day 2026, What Broadway Says About Love
Timothée Chalamet’s Off-Broadway Debut
In Memoriam
Robert Duvall, 95, Oscar-winning movie actor with a chameleon career, was also a two-time Broadway veteran, in “Wait Until Dark” and the original production of “American Buffalo. “
He studied with Sanford Meisner and spent much of the 1950s performing in plays in New York while working day jobs at Macy’s and the post office.Once he made it in the movies, he sometimes returned to the stage, seeing it as “an investment in the long run — it makes you a better actor.”
“To prepare for one of his signature stage roles — as the hustler Teach in the original 1977 Broadway production of David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” — he spent time with an ex-convict, taking from him the idea of carrying his gun over his genitals.”
The Week’s Theater Video
How TikTok Is Becoming Broadway’s Biggest Stage: Fans are recreating stellar performances in song-and-dance videos that put themselves in the action. (NY Times)
