Accompanying the hoopla of reaching 250 (Tall Ships and fireworks and patriotic singing) is an unfortunate urge to sum up America and everything in it, including theater.
In a NY Times podcast that asked 23 contributors the most American thing on their beat, theater critic Helen Shaw answered: August Wilson’s American Century Cycle, the ten plays (including “Fences” and “The Piano Lesson”) that Wilson set in each of the 10 decades of the 20th century, all but one of which taking place in the Hill District of Pittsburgh.
American Theatre bravely attempts a history of American theater, with Professor Charlotte M. Canning noting such threads as the connection between theater and democracy, and American interest in spectacle over literature. An interesting tidbit is how much Americans have always loved Shakespeare, Ralph Waldo Emerson describing the Bard as “the father of the man in America” (an observation that James Shapiro parlayed into one of my favorite theater books, Shakespeare in a Divided America)
Among the freshest takes is L.A. Times critic Charles McNulty on the “unexpected upside” to the “bleak” state of American theater: “a boom time for American playwriting.”
“Instead of worrying about the timid taste of subscription audiences, these dramatists have been writing for themselves and their communities, dreaming up plays that don’t have to fit into institutional slots or stay within the staid bounds of traditional proscenium house decorum. The irony is that in not trying to pass muster with more conservative theatergoers (and their fastidious institutional guardians), playwrights have been winning over not just critics but also formerly squeamish artistic directors and perennially nervous Broadway producers.” The playwrights he names Young Jean Lee, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Annie Baker, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Samuel D. Hunter, Martyna Majok, Jeremy O. Harris, Will Arbery, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Ayad Akhtar, “are of different ages, sensibilities and backgrounds. What they share is an appreciation of the complexities and contradictions in being an American.”
Meanwhile, theatergoers focus more on what’s coming up, this month and this season:
July 2026 New York Theater Openings
Preliminary Broadway Poll: Which is your # 1 show of the 2026-2027 Season and why?
Leading in popularity so far: Warriors, Paddington the Musical, Evita.
Leading reasons: The composer/score, the cast, word of mouth.
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
A Walk on the Moon
“A Walk on the Moon” is the disappointing musical adaptation of the 1999 indie movie about the romance between an unhappy bouffant-wearing Jewish housewife named Pearl and a long-haired blouse salesman named Walker, who meet when he shows her his wares at a Borscht Belt bungalow colony in the summer of 1969. That is the summer of both the lunar landing (hence the title of both movie and musical) and the Woodstock music festival, which happens to be nearby.
Camping
Camping is the most American of summer activities, the tent a symbol of our pioneering spirit, family adventures, adolescent bonding, adult escape. For Ari and Brit, their tent is simultaneously a place of refuge and frustration, and they never leave it. It’s the only setting in “Camping,” Victoria Lynne Barclay’s sad, well-observed play about thwarted love between the two women over the course of 25 years.
The Week in New York Theater News
Ragtime”will participate in a voter registration drive every Wednesday in July, from 5:30 to 7:30 in the Lincoln Center Theater lobby.
After almost a century in business, Sardi’s is now owned by the Shuberts, and has closed for renovations, scheduled to reopen in November. “The restaurant will keep its name, its walls of celebrity caricatures, and much of its historic dining room. Klimavicius said the more than 1,000 caricatures — appraised at $6.9 million in 2020 — will be placed in temporary storage during construction and returned afterward….The menu could change” (Eater)
Theater etiquette is changing (CBC)
“On opening night of the Paranormal Activity stage show in Toronto this June [a show coming to Broadway this season], someone booed the lead actor in the middle of his performance. The jeerer didn’t seem dissatisfied with acting, just the choices of the character on stage….Patrick Heusinger, who has been starring in Paranormal Activity since the stage show premiered in 2025, isn’t getting hung up on audience behaviour. “We do attract an audience that hasn’t been to the theatre before. With that, we get folks who don’t know what … the etiquette is and they often feel like they’re in their living room…We’re used to it at this point, you know, people just munching away on popcorn, ripping open candy in very tense moments.”
Broadway at MSG
While there were several Broadway veterans among the thousand invited guests at the Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce wedding over the weekend — Jessica Chastain, Bradley Cooper, Hugh Grant, Mariska Hargitay, Ethan Hawke, Julianne Moore, Jason Sudeikis — an official Instagram post by a certain Broadway show revealed a crasher (sort of):
This Week’s Theater Video
Viewed from Little Island in the Hudson River.
Idina Menzel performs the National Anthem on July 4th, 2026 at Philadelphia Stadium ahead of Paraguay vs France World Cup competition.
