Spring is shaping up, and Fall is heating up: This past week, I got to see Caryl Churchill slyly anti-Trump play starring Annaleigh Ashford, Ryan J. Haddad’s ambitious expansion beyond solo autobiography, the newly reopened “Slam Frank” that’s generated such polarized views; the inaugural play at the thrilling new People’s Theater; a performance by a singer-songwriter who spent forty years in prison; a too-brief run of a visceral Brazilian play about homophobia that’s been performed more than 600 times around the world. I even found the time to write about some of these (so far, just the first three; see below)
“Organized perception is what art is all about,” the painter Roy Lichtenstein used to say — as quoted in the new exhibition of his pop art at the Whtiney Museum,,another show I saw this week.
Top row left to right: Broadway 2026-2027 season. Nobel laureate Anne Carson. scene from Tom at the Farm
Middle row: Ryan J. Haddad, Annaleigh Ashford and Joe Tapper in “Triumph,” Amelia Louise Barr in Slam Frank
Bottom row: Justin Guarini, Michael Kearns, Eva Marie Saint.
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
In Caryll Churchill’s new 20-minute play, Annaleigh Ashford portrays Iris the press secretary to the emperor, boasting during a press conference of his having turned this city “from brick to glorious marble.” This would make us think of Trump even if the play’s poster did not egg us on to conjure him (not-at-all-subliminally.) But what’s brilliant about “Triumph” is that Iris’s announcement is taken directly from “The Lives of the Twelve Caesars,” written some two thousand years ago by the historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus.
You’re likely to be charmed by Ryan J. Haddad and nearly everybody around him in “Good Time Charlie,” from the moment he introduces the family members he roped into “The Haddad Theater” starting at age five….”Good Time Charlie” is not meticulously plotted; it’s no “Sound of Music,” just like the Haddads were never a tightly polished troupe like the von Trapp family. It’s informal, familiar, familial. Ryan takes us on a tour through the decades with the family he loves, especially his gay, found family
“Slam Frank,” a problematic musical that revels in its provocations, winds up a muddle and maybe something worse. But it begins with a premise that at least is clear: What if a hopelessly woke theater company dramatized the story of Anne Frank – transforming it (according to the show’s website) into “an intersectional, multi-ethnic, genderqueer, decolonized, anti-capitalist, hyper-empowering Afro-Latin hip-hop musical.”…Near the end of “Slam Frank,” a quartet of stereotypical Jews with prosthetic hooked noses and the black coats of the Orthodox, sing about their impending conquest of Palestine…This is classically, shockingly, antisemitic…
Book: Justin Guarini Center Stage Confidence
a self-help book about how to build confidence and reach one’s goals. But it is more interesting to me as a kind of sporadic incidental memoir. This includes anecdotes from his Broadway career
The Week in New York Theater News
Anne Carson has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature. Identified as a Canadian poet, she has extensive connections to the theater, Some of her decidedly avant-garde theatrical works have been produced in New York over the last few years, including “The Mile-Long Opera: A Biography of 7 o’clock” at the High Line in 2018, and “Norma Jean Baker of Troy” at The Shed in 2019, starring Renee Fleming and Ben Whishaw
Richard Greenberg’s “Three Days of Rain” will open at Broadway’s Longacre Theater on March 1, starring François Arnaud (“Heated Rivalry”), David Corenswet (Superman), and Yvonne Strahovski (“The Handmaid’s Tale”). A revival of the play that marked Julia Roberts’ Broadway debut. Siblings Walker and Nan reunite with childhood friend Pip in the downtown loft where their architect fathers designed the house that made them famous. A cryptic journal and a startling will leave them asking: who were their parents before they became parents?
‘Dirty Dancing: The Musical’ is coming to Broadway. The jukebox musical adapting the 1987 movie will run at the Lena Horne Feb 12- Sept 5
Complete cast for Dolly A True Original Musical: opening January 19 at St. James Theater: Katie Rose Clarke as ‘Dolly Parton,’ Carrie St. Louis.as ‘Dolly,’ Norah Nunes as ‘Little Dolly,’ John Behlmann as ‘Carl Dean,’ and Gabriel Ebert as ‘Porter Wagoner., Crystal Kellogg as ‘Judy Ogle,’ Dolly’s best friend since the third grade
Ensemble: Piper Allen, Bill Army, Josh Canfield, Lincoln Cohen, Ryan Demoville, Haley Fish, Sarah Hunt, Erin Kei, Evan Kinnane, Ryland J. Mar, Jenny Mollet, James Moye, Julian Ramos, Larkin Reilly, Maddie Robert, Alex Ross, and Quinn VanAntwerp. Swings: Sarah Bockel, Sadie Daniels, Tiffany Engen, Michael Milkanin, and Rixey Terry.
The digital lottery for “Wanted” starts a day before its first preview on October 15, with a limited number of $35 tickets available for each performance at rush.telecharge.com. The show, about two Black sisters on the run in 1893 Texas, opens November 8 at
Nicholas Christopher, Tony nominee for ”Chess,” will portray Bobby Darin in “Just in Time” starting on November 10. Jeremy Jordan’s last performance is October 18, Matthew Morrison will take over the role from October 20 to November 8.
In Memoriam
Eva Marie Saint, (July 4, 1924 – October 6, 2026. Yes, 102 years old ,Better known for her movie roles opposite Marlon Brando, Cary Grant and Paul Newman (She won an Oscar for her movie debut in “On The Waterfront,”) she was also a two-time Broadway veteran, including the 1953 production of A Trip To Bountiful, with Lilian Gish.
Michael Kearns, 76, stage and acreen actor, director, pioneering gay and AIDS activist. He made his Broadway debut in 1974 in a little-remembered play called “Tubstrip,” an erotic farce taking place in a New York City gay bathhouse over the course of a single evening. In 1986, he directed Robert Chesley’s Jerker, about two gay men who develop a relationship after phone sex, which sparked national controversy after excerpts aired on a radio station, and the FCC threatened its license.
