Two of the plays that opened this past week dramatized the stories of two New York City architectural landmarks, one an imposing structure of granite, wrought iron and pine (the Brooklyn Bridge), the other an imposition of glass and steel (The Vessel)

This same week, two recently built theater buildings that promote themselves as architectural landmarks – the Perelman Performing Arts Center, and the Shed (which happens to be next door to The Vessel, in Hudson Yards) – have come under  less than adoring scrutiny in an article entitled “The hyperflexible theater and its limits” by New York magazine’s architecture critic Justin Davidson. Both theaters were designed to be configured in different sizes and shapes depending on the show (“In the nearly three years since the center opened, it has used 28 different setups… [which] keep renegotiating the relationship between audience and performers.”) 

“There are trade-offs for transformability, and one of them is the pure pleasure in being there. A sense of welcome, comfort, and glamour are usually obligatory in new cultural buildings; here, so much focus, money, and square footage has gone into the technical capacities that there’s not much left for seducing the audience.”

This provokes a larger question about real estate and New York theater. How many theater companies have been seduced by the supposed glory of possessing their own piece of New York…and suffered unintended consequences, financial and otherwise? How important is theater the building to theater the art form? This brings up so many other current issues, such as 1. the rising prices and failing success of Broadway, 2. the rise of pro-shots and, especially, 3. the supposed death of American nonprofit theater movement (“the big buildings agreed with the bigger building…No one thought to call a storefront…”) See links to essays below.

The Week in New York Theater Reviews

The Pass 

The revival of this 12-year-old English play about a closeted footballer might seem well-timed to take advantage of the heightened interest both in gay athletes (thanks to a certain TV series) and in the world of soccer (coming as it does in the tailwind of this year’s World Cup.)…But “The Pass” is something of a tease — sexy, twisty, suspenseful, but also downbeat and misleading. Full Review

The Vessel

It’s a 150-foot spaceship in the middle of Manhattan, a stairwell to nowhere, a $200 million monumental misfire that New Yorkers love to mock. The Vessel is a troubled tourist attraction ready-made to deconstruct. It might feel natural to do so comically. But playwright Brendan George focuses instead on the real tragedy connected to the structure – within the two years after its opening in 2019, four people jumped from it to their deaths – and the imagined effect on three fictional characters hired to make sure such tragedies do not keep on happening… Full Review

Brooklyn’s Bridge

The building of the Brooklyn Bridge is a remarkable story; in some ways a ghastly one. “Brooklyn’s Bridge,” an earnest and largely workmanlike musical, deserves respect for wanting to give some of the bridge’s unsung heroes a chance to sing. Emily Roebling (portrayed by Sarah Joyce) is the central character, having wound up in effect in charge during eleven of the thirteen years it took to complete this monument to ingenuity and persistence. But “Brooklyn’s Bridge” employs a large, competent cast to go beyond simple biography. Full Review.

How Jeremy Jordan Changes ‘Just in Time’

“Just in Time” is much the same show (with Jeremy Jordan as Bobby Darin rather than Jonathan Groff) – it looks the same.. it sounds much the same – but when I saw it again recently, the cast change somehow made it feel to me like a completely different show.
At first, this didn’t make much sense to me. Jeremy Jordan and Jonathan Groff have much in common. They were born within four months of one another, they are both talented musical theater stars who act as well as they sing; they even each had supporting roles in TV musical series – Jordan in Smash and Groff in Glee. But I landed on what I suspect may account for my differing reaction…

The Week in New York Theater News

Three Broadway shows closed this weekend. Two more close this month

Julianne Moore will star in “Faydra,” a new play by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Les Waters, opening February 25, 2027  at New York City Center in an MTC production: Aphrodite aims her bow at Faydra and lets an arrow of love fly. Nothing is the same. Mostly because the object of Faydra’s sudden, all-devouring lust is her soon-to-be stepson.

Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody will release an original cast album on September 18. A single of ‘Gym Song’ is now available everywhere you stream and download music. (See video of “Gym Song” below)

In celebration of the New York City Center run of “In The Heights,” a special event on August 23 at the United Palace will offer 5,000 of tickets at $28  to those who register at the event any time from 9am to 12pm.. The free community event celebrates the neighborhood that inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes’s musical, featuring music, food vendors, merchandise giveaways.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee announces third and final e-l-o-n-g-a-t-i-o-n of its run now through Sunday, October 11 

The insufficiently heralded David Greenspan will star as poet and scholar A. E. Housman looking back at his life and unrequited love in a revival of Tom Stoppard’s “The Invention of Love” Sept 17 – Oct 3 at Theaterlab.

Anna D. Shapiro has been appointed dean and director of the drama division at Juilliard. A Tony winner in 2008 for directing August: Osage County and Steppenwolf’s artistic director from 2015 to 2021, she currently runs the graduate directing program at Northwestern University. At Juilliard, where her tenure begins next July, she succeeds Evan Yionoulis, who is now dean at Yale’s School of Drama. 

In Memoriam

Glen Hansard, 56, co-songwriter of “Once”
Elizabeth Smith, 91, voice coach to acting royalty
Abbe Lane, 94, Broadway dancer turned star vocalist

THINKING THEATER

The Rising Prices and Falling Success of Broadway

London’s West End is booming, and upstaging Broadway (Wall Street Journal)
Why a Fabulous Broadway Show Can Fill Its Seats and Still Close by Naveen Kumar (New York Times)

The Rise of the Proshots

Hadestown the Musical (the movie) was a hit. Other Broadway shows are taking notes (NPR)

“‘Hadestown: The Musical’ was only supposed to be in movie theaters for five days. But after its opening weekend brought in $10 million and the No. 3 slot at the box office, the theatrical run was extended indefinitely. Brett Sullivan’s been directing proshots for more than a decade of musicals like “Billy Elliot,” “Newsies” and “Waitress.” And other hit musicals have gotten the proshot treatment too, like “Hamilton” on Disney+. But none of those had the box office success of “Hadestown,” $19 million and counting. It’s now the highest grossing proshot in U.S. box office history”

The supposed death of the non-profit theater movement

The Movement is Alive, Turn the Music Up, by Alexandra Meda (Network Ensemble Theaters blog)

When Oskar Eustis announced he will step down from the Public Theater in 2028, the interview that followed handed the field an obituary. “The American nonprofit theater movement is over,” he told the LA Times. “It’s not coming back.” The papers printed it like weather.
I read it on my phone in Boyle Heights and my face went hot. The heat of hearing a eulogy read for people who are sitting right there, alive, passing the rice….when the leader of the best-resourced nonprofit theater in America says the movement is over, he is describing the weather at one altitude. The LA Times took that forecast and rounded up the artistic directors of the biggest buildings in Los Angeles to confirm it, and the big buildings agreed with the bigger building.

Somewhere in an entire feature about the death of a movement, no one called a storefront. No one called an ensemble. No one asked a culturally specific theater that has been producing for forty years on one percent of the Public’s budget what dying feels like, or what building feels like either….he was looking from the wrong floor.

This Week’s Theater Video

Watch Broadway in Bryant Park Week 3:  MJ, The Outsiders, Operation Mincemeat, Two Strangers and Schmigadoon, as well as the long-running Off Broadway production of Little Shop of Horrors, now starring Ethan Slater and Betsy Wolfe.