My Reliably Inaccurate Tony Predictions

I've been saying all Spring that we've had such a weird and varied list of new musicals to land on

Broadway, and that's pretty delightful to me. One gets tired of cookie cutter tourist-aimed fare and jukebox after jukebox. This season we had fourteen new musicals, including a spinoff of a cult favorite but unsuccessful TV show (Smash), four biomusicals (Tammy Faye, A Wonderful World, Just in Time, Buena Vista Social Club), a classic cartoon come to life (BOOP! The Musical), another Sondheim revue (Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends), two shows about the adventurous life a corpse can have after he dies (Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical and Dead Outlaw), another one about the long life two living corpses can have once they've each murdered each other and lost their man (Death Becomes Her), a story about an immigrant family trying to succeed in America while worrying they'll be deported (Real Women Have Curves), a story about grief and tree-climbing and sophisticated projections (Redwood; also, how long until we get a Tony category for Best Projection and Video Design? We're long overdue), a musical about a shipwreck and cannibalism (Swept Away), and finally my favorite show of the season, a robot road trip/love story (Maybe Happy Ending).

That's not even accounting for the dueling divas on 44th Street (Sunset and Gypsy), two beloved Off-Broadway musicals finally landing on Broadway (Floyd Collins and The Last Five Years), and the more straightforward romps of Elf, Once Upon a Mattress, and Pirates! The Penzance Musical.

Meanwhile the plays have been celebrity-stacked and charging ticket prices to match. There are a number of plays this season I skipped for those prices alone (I wouldn't mind seeing Good Night, and Good Luck, if I could get a decent price on a ticket, but I'm not bothering with Othello, and I didn't bother with Glengarry Glen Ross or All In either). Still, there were some worthy pieces this year, including the forgotten early shows in the season, Job and Home.

Let's go!

Weekly Margin 2025, W20: Bus Stop, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Eurydice, She Takes Flight

5/13/25: Bus Stop

What: Classic Stage Company, in collaboration with NAATCO and Transport Group, presents William Inge's play about a cafe attached to a bus stop, with several passengers stranded overnight when the roads are closed for a storm.

And? A pretty sublime production. There have been issues for a few years of CSC staging favoring one end of the audience over the two longer sides (which not only seems dumb, since that's less than a third of the audience space, but is also just bad direction. Thrust stages were meant to be activating and dynamic, not staid like any old proscenium), but I'm happy to report that's not the case here. While it did feel like one side was more heavily favored than the other (the side we sat on), I think the staging by Jack Cummings III is still largely effective. Peiyi Wong's scenic design, moreover, which includes black bands framing the floor and ceiling, elongate the space; and, with the Tiffany blue cafe counter, evokes Hopper's Nighthawks very effectively. For the most part, the cast has an appealing natural quality, with especially standouts of Cindy Cheung and Delphi Borich, who run the cafe; Rajesh Bose as the sleazy Shakespeare-loving professor (every moment of his is compelling and true); and Moses Villarama, giving an understated but fully present performance as Virgil. His final moments are still and quiet and heartbreaking, even as they go unwitnessed by everyone else around him. This one was a real treat.

Cindy Cheung and Delphi Borich as Grace Hoylard and Emma Duckworth.
Photo by Carol Rosegg.

5/14/25: The Picture of Dorian Gray

What: The Broadway transfer of Sarah Snook's one-woman turn in the Oscar Wilde controversial classic as adapted by Kip Williams, about a young man whose portrait absorbs all his sins while he remains youthful and beautiful.

And? Really quite an extraordinary execution of the piece. One-woman turn isn't technically correct, as Sarah Snook's performance is facilitated by a masterful camera (and prop) crew following a tightly-planned and intricately-timed choreography with such precision I honestly think they should get their own Tony Award (but they're already doing two of those this season: one for the musicians of Buena Vista Social Club, and one for the illusion/technical effects of Stranger Things: The First Shadow). While Sarah Snook's face is the only face we see on the many screens onstage (including the various portraits hanging in Dorian's house), we see her doubled and redoubled in different guises, wigs, makeup, accent. Even when onstage Snook seems to be interacting only with a camera or an empty chair, we are seeing the echoes of her other selves reacting.

I was describing this show to someone who said they'd never heard of this kind of stunt before. I think it's the first time I've seen it on this scale and on Broadway, but Theater In Quarantine has been experimenting with this sort of thing since 2020, and I'm sure they're not the only ones either. Still, it's really something to see in person.

The production is a bit breathless (I'm shocked Snook isn't hoarse by the end), which is effective, but it did have me longing for a moment of calm and quiet just to balance it out. That's a small nit to pick, though, as she had the entire audience in the palm of her capable hands for two hours straight. Major props to Kip Williams for pulling this whole thing off.

Sarah Snook as Dorian Gray. Photo by Marc Brenner.

Margin Notes: She Takes Flight

She Takes Flight

The cast of She Takes Flight. Photo by Charles Chessler.

Seen on: Friday, 5/16/25.

Plot and Background

Chrysalis Theatre Company presents the world premier of a devised theatrical piece written and performed by Sora Baek, Cindy Keiter, Gabriela Kohen, Adina Taubman, and Susan Ward, about, per the press release, "reaching middle age and not giving a f&*k."

What I Knew Beforehand

That it was a devised piece by five women about, in part, processing adulthood, middle age, and beyond.

Thoughts:

The stage is a workzone, with caution tape and warning signs. The stage is a playground, with toys and ribbons. The stage is a storage room, with piles of pillows and other forgotten detritus. The stage is a memory box, festooned with strings of photographs and crates of old keepsakes. The stage is a memorial, with the names of women dead due to restrictive anti-abortion laws, hand-drawn in careful, serifed font. The stage is a support group, with five wooden chairs waiting to be filled. The stage, as designed by Yi-Hsuan (Ant) Ma, is all of these and none of these, that glorious and liminal space to allow these five women to tell their stories, to be both here and now, and also many years ago and far away.

Weekly Margin 2025, W19: Stranger Things: The First Shadow, Those Who Remained, The Archduke

5/08/25: Stranger Things: The First Shadow

What: The Broadway transfer of the West End hit, a prequel to the Netflix series where we see the full origin story of Henry Creel/Vecna.

And? Let's get through the bad stuff first so we can end on a positive note. To begin, I don't know why they keep trusting Jack Thorne with these (he's also responsible for Cursed Child and that mediocre Christmas Carol). His scripts are full of holes, character assassinations, and full disregard for canon. In this play, Henry Creel is the same generation as the adults of the TV show (Joyce, Hopper, Bob, etc.). Not only does this not align with his age on the TV show in relation to Brenner and Eleven, it also raises some pretty big questions. Questions like "How come when Will disappears in Season One, Joyce and Hopper act like this is the first supernatural occurrence? Do they not remember that time in high school that a bunch of pets were murdered gruesomely during electrical surges?" Or "How come no one talks about Bob's sister almost being murdered by that weird kid that we never saw again?" Does everyone in Hawkins have Sunnydale Syndrome? The story itself isn't necessarily terrible, but trying to nest it in existing canon and timeline without actually respecting that canon or timeline is just plain stupid. 

And it didn't need to be this way. They could have gone the Cloverfield route. They could have gone to the Hellmouth in Cleveland. They could still have used Dr. Brenner as a young man if they want to keep their shadowy government villain the same, but the rest of this just doesn't play out. 

Oh! And. They make a point of being lightly racist against one of the characters (she's adopted, parentage unknown, so they call her Mystery Meat), but meanwhile the casting of the show is largely colorblind. It's just odd to have them be racist against a light-skinned mixed race character but be totally chill with a dark-skinned Black girl (who is also class president) standing right next to her. In 1959 in Indiana. You can be true to the history of racism in America, or you can say fuck it and go colorblind casting. I'm fine with either approach. But you can't do both at the same time.

My other complaint is just a weird disconnect between me and a lot of the audience: there were some spectacular special effects (more on that later), but often attached to devastating, horrible things. So while I was sitting there feeling the horror of the moment, the audience around me burst into rapturous screaming applause at the amazing spectacle of it. So it comes off a bit like they're applauding the full manifestation of Vecna, or a teenage girl being murdered.

Let's do the positives now! Holy shit, you guys, the design of this show is incredible. Under the direction of Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin, the collaboration of scenic designer Miriam Buether, lighting designer Jon Clark, and illusions & visual effects designers Jamie Harrison and Chris Fisher (and video & visual effects of 59), it's uncanny what they're able to portray on the stage. I don't really want to say too much and spoil things, but if you were transported by the magic effects in Cursed Child, it's the same team and they've only gotten better (though: warning for the squeamish, this is gory). Even more uncanny though is the performance of lead actor Louis McCartney as Henry Creel. Small and withdrawn at the beginning, he's able to turn menacing almost imperceptibly. And then his physical control as he battles with the darker shadows within him is astounding. I don't know how he does everything he does, managing his physical contortions with such present emotional honesty throughout, but in my opinion he should be the front-runner for the Tony (I have no idea what the actual buzz is, prediction-wise).

The company of Stranger Things: The First Shadow. Photo by Matthew
Murphy and Evan Zimmerman.

5/09/25: Those Who Remained

What: La MaMa presents Sophia Gutchinov's solo piece about how to be a living monument to the history of her ancestors and a staunch advocate for her existence here today.

And? full review here.

Sophia Gutchinov. Photo by Rani O'Brien.

Streaming

• Wilma Theater's The Archduke.

Margin Notes: Those Who Remained

Those Who Remained

Sophia Gutchinov. Photo by Rani O'Brien.

Seen on: Friday, 5/09/25.

Plot and Background

La MaMa presents Sophia Gutchinov's solo piece about how to be a living monument to the history of her ancestors and a staunch advocate for her existence here today. The descendants of both Italians and Mongolians, Sophia's family emigrated first from Asia to Europe, then to New Jersey.

What I Knew Beforehand

That it was a solo piece.

Thoughts:

Sophia Gutchinov ably conjures her grandmother, still with the accent of her native land and trying to teach her descendant what she can of the family story. Her people are of the Kalmyk tribe, a tribe which dates back and back but which has scant records due to multiple attempts to wipe them out. Kalmik means "those who remained" and it speaks of Sophia's grandmother, of her family that fled Germany for America after the second world war. And it speaks of Sophia, who remains here, now, carrying the story of her ancestors in her body, her blood. How does she channel that through her existence?

Weekly Margin 2025, W18: The Grand Duke, Wonderful Town

 4/30/25: The Grand Duke

What: Blue Hill Troupe presents Gilbert & Sullivan's rarely produced operetta, their final collaboration.

And? It's ... not a great show (writing-wise). Less tripping happily through the topsy-turvy nonsense and patter songs and more an ungainly skip. Still, there's something to be said for the cleverness this production finds. Blue Hill always double-casts so I can speak only to the cast I saw, but David Pasteelnick in the title role and Suzanne R. Taylor as his betrothed Baroness are a comedic delight. And Ted Cubbin's scenic design is full of happy surprises throughout.

5/03/25: Wonderful Town

What: New York City Center Encores! series presents the Comden and Green and Bernstein (and Fields and Chodorov) musical about two sisters from Ohio who arrive in New York and almost immediately sing a song wondering why they left Ohio. And then there are many many hijinks.

And? Some enjoyable songs but a lot that don't grab me. But as always, nice to hear the score sung by such a great cast, especially Aisha Jackson and Anika Noni Rose as the two sisters, and Javier Munoz as Rose's swain.

Anika Noni Rose and Aisha Jackson as Ruth and Eileen. Photo by Joan Marcus.

On a different note: some recent publications

 I forgot to brag here, but I've had a few pieces published over the last few months. Take a look!

Running Water (we came to New York)

published by Instant Noodles in their Currents issue

A prose poem meditating on the ebb and flow of those of us who come to New York from elsewhere, and those of us who leave again.

Imogen, Hector, and the Squirrel

published on Flash Frog

A chance encounter with a dead squirrel while walking with her older brother inspires Imogen's meditation on what death looks like, and how it's different from dying.

A Search for Light

four poems published in Judith Magazine

"That Fucking Refrain"

"Phoenix"

"I Held Your Hand Tonight"

"27 Av 5784"

For Saba

published in Judith Magazine

A woman marks the one year anniversary of the passing of her grandfather with a jar of pickles.