Weekly Margin 2025, W22: Just in Time, Dead Outlaw, Next to Normal, Yellow Face

5/27/25: Just in Time

What: Jonathan Groff stars in the Bobby Darin biomusical.

And? I'd read someone make the crack online that it's not Jonathan Groff playing Bobby Darin, it's Jonathan Groff playing Jonathan Groff playing Bobby Darin, but I thought at the time that was just someone dismissing his impression of Darin, rather than describing what the show is actually doing. Groff begins his audience banter by introducing himself as "Jonathan, I'll be your Bobby Darin tonight" and proceeds to make a few cracks about himself (growing up in Amish country, the low viewer count for Mindhunter) before stepping into the actual narrative of Bobby Darin's life, which includes just as much of Bobby himself breaking the fourth wall to narrate, often snapping his fingers to freeze the rest of the cast in order to do so. It's an interesting idea, though I wonder about the legs of this show past its initial run. Both this show and A Wonderful World tried to upend the usual expectations of a biomusical (Just in Time with the Groff-as-Darin lens, and Wonderful World by focusing on the wives), but they do both inevitably slide back into the usual moves of this genre, like an audience member gradually slouching in their seat as the show goes on (this metaphor brought to you by my poor tailbone, which was in a lot of pain that night).

Groff himself brings all his natural charisma and joy at existing to the performance (and all his sweat and spit, as he jokingly acknowledges during the Hi I'm Jonathan prologue. Seriously, y'all, "I'm a wet man" is now canon in a Broadway musical). And while the music is enjoyable and the supporting cast talented, I have to admit I didn't feel the show truly come alive until the second act, when Erika Henningsen appeared onstage in a creamy pink dress, cool as an ice cream cone, to play Sandra Dee. Her vocals are wonderful, as is her chemistry with Groff, and all their scenes felt more visceral and engaging than most of what had come before.

I'm not trying to fully dismiss the show. It's all very charming. Everyone's having a great time. But it feels all very surface until Henningsen shows up and brings everyone down to earth. Oh wait! I do want to praise director Alex Timbers, whose staging handles the challenging Circle in the Square configuration (my favorite Broadway house!) with an ease and confidence that makes you wonder why it's such a challenge to other directors.

Gracie Lawrence and Jonathan Groff as Connie Francis and 
Bobby Darin. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman.

5/30/25: Dead Outlaw

a repeat visit

Streaming Theater

Courtesy of PBS's Great Performance series, both 

• Next to Normal
• Yellow Face

Weekly Margin 2021, W28: Love's Labour's Lost, A Cold Supper Behind Harrods, Dumb Waiter, Sweat

 Live theater! I saw live in-person theater! My first live theater since March 11, 2020!

7/10/21: Love's Labour's Lost

What? Hudson Classical Theater Company's outdoor performance of Shakespeare's comedy (co-starring my friend Emily Bradshaw!), about four sets of would-be lovers and, well, the labours they undergo in the wooing, and then whoops it just sort of stops and the sequel is lost to the sands of time. Full disclosure: at the performance I attended, a light rain started about an hour and a half in, eventually increasing enough that the performance was called for rain before it concluded. We saw up to the prelude to the Worthies.

And? It was so thrilling to be back in a performance space again after all this time. Hudson Classical's production is fully vaccinated and semi-masked (when the performers are near the fully-masked audience). The courtyard area behind a monument in Riverside Park is a cozy and magical space, backed by trees and the sound of the city beyond. Fireflies even joined us around eight. This is a charming production of a play I'm not particularly fond of, and Nicholas Martin-Smith's direction helped remind me of the play's better parts, the charm and the banter, as well as the delights of Armado and Costard. John-Ross Winter's costume design is beautiful and appealing (including masks to match each costume), the women winsome and the men dapper. Among a generally solid cast of performers, highlights included Daniel Yaiullo's clever Berowne, Emily Bradshaw's brassy Rosaline, Bryan Bryk's Groucho-inflected Costard, Peter Sullivan's cheerfully dim Antony Dull, and Austin Reynolds's blustery and charismatic Don Adriano de Armado.

Streaming Theater Related Content I Watched

• Original Theatre's A Cold Supper Behind Harrods.
• The Old Vic's livestream of Dumb Waiter.
• Chance Theater's Sweat.

Weekly Margin 2021, W18: Romeo & Juliet, Little Gem, Baltimore Waltz, Being Mr. Wickham, The Lucille Lortel Awards

Streaming Theater-Related Content I Watched

• National Theatre's film adaptation of Romeo & Juliet.
• Irish Rep's reunion performance of Little Gem.
• The "Spotlight on Plays" series' Actors Fund benefit reading of Baltimore Waltz.
• Theatre Royale's Being Mr. Wickham.
• The Lucille Lortel Awards.

Theater Developments

• De Blasio is aiming for a full* NYC reopening July 1st.

*except Broadway, which probably won't come back until September.

Weekly Margin 2021, W14: Amplify 2021, Broadway Backwards, Ragtime Reunion, Fully Committed, Amour, War Horse

Streaming Theater Related Content I Watched

• Maestra Music's inaugural spring concert, Amplify 2021.
• BC/EFA's annual benefit concert, Broadway Backwards.
• Stars in the House's Ragtime Reunion.
• George Street Playhouse's production of Fully Committed.
• Art Lab and Showtown Productions' virtual revival of Amour.
• National Theatre Live's rebroadcast of War Horse.

Theater Developments

• The 2021 Drama League nominations are out, with categories specific the socially distanced theatrical work created this past year. Winners will be announced May 21st.
• Meanwhile, still no word on when the 2020 Tony Awards plan to actually ... be awarded.
• The Drama Book Shop is getting ready to reopen in its new location.
• Cabaret venues in New York are beginning to reopen.

2020 Theater: The Year of Streaming (with a small handful of live theater at the top)

The closest I've come to Times Square since
March 12th. Photo by Zelda Knapp.

I don't need to tell anyone reading this what a terrible year this has been. The devastation has been global, has impacted everyone, and isn't over yet. We're all still hurting. The theater community's wound has been manifold: loss of employment for performers, designers, musicians, stage crew, house staff, box office staff. Loss of an all-too-fragile scaffolding support structure reliant on our ability to gather in large groups for one communal experience, night after night after night. Performance and rehearsal venues, long staples of the Off-Off community, have closed their doors for good. Shows have shuttered permanently while others wait in the wings (so to speak) for their cue to return. And we've lost prematurely far too many artists in the industry, artists whose loss in a vacuum is already devastating, but whose accumulation is too heavy to bear (I know, not all on this list were from COVID, before anyone chimes in with a correction). 

Raise a glass for Terrence McNally, Mark Blum, Adam Schlesinger, William Wolf, Brian Dennehy, Shirley Knight, Peter Hunt, Bernard Gersten, Larry Kramer, Nick Cordero, Brent Carver, Howell Binkley, Herbert Kretzmer, Israel Horowitz, Ann Reinking, Rebecca Luker. For UCB, for Shetler Studios, for the Secret Theatre, for Simple Studios, for the Creek and the Cave. For Frozen and for Then She Fell.

Raise a glass for the fact that we still don't know when theater can safely return in the States, and what will be left of us when it does. (Also randomly, they never got around to having the Tony Awards, even though they released the nominations in October. The Obies, Drama Desks, Lortel, and Antonyo awards were either aired online or released as a list.)

So this is my year-end post, where I list the top shows I saw this year. What do I even write about? I saw 24 shows before the shutdown on March 12th. And then since then I've seen 173 streaming theater pieces (a mixture of archive recordings, formerly recorded broadcasts, quarantine bubble productions with no audience, zoom readings, and hybrid forms of theater and film) (also I have 3-4 items left on my to-watch list for this year). Some of it has been decidedly not good. Some of it has been wonderful, poignant and uplifting. None of it is the real thing, and I still ache at the memory of kinetic energy passing between an enthusiastic audience and a vibrant production. But it's been something. I keep thinking of AJ's speech in The American President:

People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

Replace leadership with live theater and that's where I've landed. I've drunk some sand this year. But. It hasn't all been sand. And too much of my nature is geared toward finding a glimmer of gratitude within my grief. So I've made a list of what was special this year: a smaller one for the live theater, and the rest for what I watched online. You can expect my usual cheats to get in more than just a paltry "Top Ten." It's 2020, the worst year in many of our lives, and I want to remember as much joy as I can.

Godspeed, my loves. We'll be together again.

Weekly Margin 2020, W48: Death of England: Delroy

Streaming Theater Related Content I Watched

• National Theatre's broadcast of Death of England: Delroy.

Weekly Margin 2020, W46: A Beggar Upon Horseback/A Beggar On Foot, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Emilia, The Heroines of G&S

Streaming Theater Related Content I Watched

• Irish Rep's A Beggar Upon Horseback / A Beggar On Foot.
• Blue Hill Troupe's The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
• An archive video of the Olivier-winning Emilia.
• NYGASP's The Heroines of G&S: We Really Know Our Worth.

Theater Developments

• Noted (if problematic) playwright Israel Horovitz passed away.

Weekly Margin 2020, W42: Give Me Your Hand, more Together LA, Alfie Boe, Sticks and Stones, A Gatherin' Place, Shipwreck

Streaming Theater Related Content I Watched/Heard

• Irish Rep's Give Me Your Hand.
• Alternative Theatre Los Angeles presenting a series of of ten minute plays for Together LA: A Virtual Stage Festival (You, Me and Margaret Atwood, Julie Alone, When We Can't Meet, The Jack Twidwell Story, Blackberry Wine)
• Alfie Boe's Bring Him Home Tour, courtesy of The Shows Must Go On.
• Sticks and Stones concert hosted on Broadway Cares.
• Syracuse Stage's A Gatherin' Place.
• The Public Theatre's radio play broadcast of Shipwreck.

Theater Developments

• The 2020 Tony nominations were announced. Read my thoughts here.
• Herbert Kretzmer, who wrote the English translation for the Les Miserables long-running hit musical, has passed away at 95.

Weekly Margin 2020, W41: Together LA and The Reunion

 Streaming Theater Related Content I Watched

• Alternative Theatre Los Angeles presenting a series of of ten minute plays for Together LA: A Virtual Stage Festival (A Fork in the Middle, Edge, Coriola, ON, Love in the Time of COVID)
• The Reunion concert from the original West End cast of Six.

Theater Developments

• Broadway has officially extended its shutdown to June 2021.
• The Tony Award nominations for the curtailed 2019-2020 season will be announced October 15th.

Weekly Margin 2020, W21: Still here

I don't really have any wisdom for us this week. Watchlist and developments below the cut:

Weekly Margin 2020, W17: Where I Am

This week I feel like I reached the acceptance stage, not of our global tragedy (that's a separate staggering grief), but at least of my current cocooned existence. I wake up around the same time each day, I brush my teeth, wash my face, make my bed, log into work remotely, and I exist. That's enough, for now. I've had people ask/assume that I'm writing a lot, with all this time to myself, and no, I'm not. I'm writing my two blogs, but I haven't written any new plays, stories, essays. If I think of something to write, I will, but I'm also not going to punish myself if I don't produce any brilliance out of all this beyond surviving. Surviving is enough.

In the darker recesses of my soul, it seems callous to me to dream of creating something brilliant out of this needless tragedy, this long moment in time that is killing so many people, and will forever scar those they leave behind. I am not saying it is callous to produce art. God, we need art. We need it desperately. I am so grateful to those who are producing art, and sharing it with us. But part of my current survivor's guilt, at still having a job, at having been sick but fully recovered, is also this whisper in my gut.

So I suppose that's where I'm at right now. I do remain impressed with and grateful to those who are able, not just to function, but to create. This past week Joshua William Gelb and his Theater in Quarantine experimentation finally presented a live performance, and this Wednesday Richard Nelson will present his newest play in The Apple Family series, written for this specific time and circumstance, called What Do We Need to Talk About? Conversations on Zoom. And last night, after an hour of technical difficulties, we got the Sondheim concert we could never have gotten in person, and we melted down online.

My past week's watchlist, and a brief list of theater developments, below the cut:

Weekly Margin 2020, W16: One Month In, and Counting

As of this past week, most New Yorkers in non-essential jobs have been homebound for a month. I've left my building three times since this began, twice for groceries, once to pick up a prescription.

As the span during which public gatherings (including attending my beloved live theater) are unsafe stretches further and further ahead of us, I'm quietly grateful that the last play I saw was The Inheritance and the last musical Six. At least I said goodbye to the season well, even if we didn't know it was goodbye at the time. Everything else is just quiet worry, grief, and fear.

This past week's watchlist and theater developments below:

Weekly Margin 2020, W15: Coping Mechanisms

Another hard week for everyone. I don't have a new insight for us this time. I hope those who celebrate had a festive Seder (I participated in a family one via Zoom) and/or a good Easter. I hope those who celebrate, celebrated still in isolation and safety.

Here's my positive thing to report: my brilliant friend Marissa and I had planned to watch the Tim Minchin arena tour production of Jesus Christ Superstar on Andrew Lloyd Webber's site but we forgot about time zones and missed our window (yes, we know it's on Prime to rent) and instead made good use of our time by planning the One True Good Revival of our favorite raccoon musical (it is a trash panda and we love it anyway). Someone please give us lots of money so we can produce it properly.

See below for other actual theater things, including this week's watch list and new developments on the theater landscape.

My Picks: Best Theater of 2019

Andrew Scott and Sophie Thompson as Garry Essendine and
Monica Reed in The Old Vic's Present Laughter.
Photo by Elliott Franks.

I had an easier time making my list this year than I normally do, but the tragic cause of that is my viewing numbers were down again, with a projected 109 unique shows, and 122 shows overall  for 2019 (one show to go on Dec 28th; also, I am fully aware of just how awful I sound, complaining about seeing only 122 shows this year. Please believe that I do not take my life here for granted, or my ability to see as much theater as I do). I definitely suffered from some activity fatigue this year, partly due to the exhaustion of moving into a new apartment and all its attendant stress; this resulted in some neglect of my Off- and Off-Off- options. In any case, the list wasn't as hard to whittle down, a small mercy for a weary Zelda. But I will say this: the shows that made my top ten list? Astoundingly good theater, every one of them. And while I'm attempting to rank them this year, it's tight as anything for the top five (except Octet, which I knew would top the list when I saw it; basically the top four after Octet are all second, but in an apples and oranges and bananas and mangoes situation).

This year gave us extraordinary new takes on older works, like Erica Schmidt's schoolgirl Mac Beth, the Yiddish Fiddler on the Roof, and the Old Vic's hilarious new spin on Coward's Present Laughter. It also gave us astonishing new work that defiantly challenged expectations of what can be done in the theater, like Dave Malloy's a cappella brain explosion Octet, Michael R. Jackson's breathtaking not-autobiographical A Strange Loop, and Jeremy O. Harris's uncomfortable and gutting Slave Play.  We had actual magic onstage, from Harry Potter to Derren Brown to Slava and his Snowshow (I know some of the shows I just mentioned weren't new in 2019, but Slava excepting, they were new to me in 2019, and as the old refrain goes, this is my blog, dammit).

(also, I hear people are making their Best of the Decade lists as well. That's cool, though as my friend Tyler pointed out, we technically have one more year in the decade, but also I think it would hurt my heart too much to boil a decade down to ten shows. Think of all the gems that wouldn't make the cut!)

Anyway, we had so many good shows in 2019. Here were some of the best:

Weekly Margin 2019, W49: Fefu and Her Friends, NTLive: Present Laughter

12/07/19: Fefu and Her Friends
What: Fefu hosts a gathering of her female friends at her house, ostensibly to plan for an upcoming fundraising presentation. Maria Irene Fornes's 1977 play helped begin promenade theater (with the middle section composed of four scenes performed simultaneously, the audience rotating among the four until they've seen them all), an important ancestor of immersive theater productions like Sleep No More and Then She Fell.
And? If you try to sort out what the show is "about," you might not have the best time. The reason the friends are gathered is more McGuffin than anything else. It's about who these women are when they're quietly unobserved: practicing French, philosophizing about love or genitals, quietly worrying for their safety or for the safety of their friends. And bourbon and ice cubes and croquet and water fights and bad jokes. The actors are perfect, distinct and human, full of will and contradictions, and Montana Levi Blanco's costume design is stunning. While I will admit to not perfectly understanding all that I saw, I'm fine with that; my only real complaint is about the nature of the promenade section of the play: it was not always communicated clearly who was meant to go where, which led to confusion at each stage of transition, and because each scene was in hearing distance of the others, I had trouble hearing the scene in front of me, as my ears strained at catching the farther away dialog.

Ronete Levenson, Lindsay Rico, Helen Cespedes, Jennifer Lim, and Brittany
Bradford as Sue, Paula, Emma, Cindy, and Julia. Photo by Henry Grossman.

12/08/19: NTLive: Present Laughter
NTLive broadcast of the same production I saw at the Old Vic this summer. Still perfection. I wouldn't mind seeing it five more times.

Weekly Margin 2019, W30: Hamilton, The Woman in Black, Rutherford and Son, Witness for the Prosecution, Present Laughter, Whodunnit [Unrehearsed], The Lehman Trilogy, The Bridges of Madison County, Henry V, or Harry England

London Week Continues!

7/22/19: Hamilton
What: The London run of a super obscure Broadway musical that you probably haven't heard of.
And? My seventh time (yes, I deserve to be hated). I am pleased to report that this show remains absolutely wonderful, though it gets fewer laughs throughout in the UK than in the US (except King George, whom they adore). The cast was great (especially Tarinn Callender, officially my favorite Hercules Mulligan), and the production is tight, high energy, and as thrilling and heartbreaking as one could want. King George's question to America, "Do you know how hard it is to lead?" felt very uh well ... apropos, if we look at where we are.

Jason Pennycooke as Thomas Jefferson with the cast. Photo by Matthew
Murphy.

7/2319: The Woman in Black
What: The long-running two hander adaptation of Susan Hill's novel, about an aging man who enlists the help of a young actor to tell the story of his haunted past.
And? Sure I've seen it like six times. What's your point? Scariest time I've had in a theater, and I adore the amazing storytelling achieved by just two actors and a wicker chest full of props.

Matthew Spencer and Stuart Fox. Photo source (no photographer given).

Weekly Margin 2019, W29: Hamlet, The Comedy About A Bank Robbery

Disaster struck my second attempt to see The Secret Life of Bees, as rainwater began leaking through the ceiling and dripping down the brick wall, causing the show to pause about twelve minutes in. Then as they cleared the area, the ceiling opened more and water started gushing down. Rather a disaster, but no one was injured and Atlantic handled things as best they could. It's bad luck, as the show closed that upcoming weekend so not many attendees were likely to be able to rebook--and as I left town Friday evening, I definitely wasn't. Holding out hopes that it gets that commercial transfer everyone thinks it will, so I can see it at last.

London Week Begins!

7/20/19: Hamlet
What: We kick off our London week with Iris Theatre's outdoor promenade production at St. Paul's Church. It's the same-ish story as The Lion King, but fewer lions. (you can call me the worst all you want, it won't stop me)
And? It's a tight-feeling cut of the show (though it still comes out to about two and a half hours), periodically moving the audience among different areas of the churchyard gardens as we follow the story of Hamlet's unintended self-destruction. This production has several different devices in play, some of which work more effectively than others (of all the Shakespeares, I think Hamlet is a much harder fit for a fascism frame than a number of the histories. That aspect ultimately feels forced without being activated or integrated with the rest of the piece). In this production, Hamlet, like their portrayer, is trans non-binary, and what then becomes particularly telling is the recognition of whom Hamlet is out to, who may suspect or outright know, and who is and isn't using the correct pronouns (going by the fact that court characters use masculine pronouns, but that schoolfriends Horatio and (initially) R&G use feminine, I infer that Hamlet is out at school but not at court). It lends a new and lovely affection and intimacy to Hamlet's relationship with Horatio, as well as an interesting edge to their relationship with Ophelia: how much does she know? She uses masculine pronouns when speaking to and of Hamlet, but is that only because she knows others are listening in? (A quick note: I looked at Jenet Le Lacheur's (Hamlet) twitter, which confirms she/they pronouns; my inference is that Hamlet’s pronouns are also she/they, as Horatio calls Hamlet "my lady," but Hamlet self-refers, in the Gravedigger scene, as "they." If I am being in any shape disrespectful or sweeping in my understanding, I welcome correction for my errors). I also know that Le Lacheur didn't want the production to just be about Hamlet's gender, as if it were a gimmick, but I didn't want to let this go by without celebrating their performance, or what this layer adds to the story.

Final wrap-up thoughts because I am sleepy and jetlaggy:

• great performances from Jenet Le Lacheur (hot damn, the nunnery scene), Paula James (Polonius, Grave Digger, others, all marvelous), and Iris alum Jenny Horsthuis (Ophelia, Guildenstern, Fortinbras, others); 
• for the rest, I don't think the text work is consistently strong or clear, and hearing is hampered by the side-effects of an outdoor space; 
• being in the churchyard gardens, a stone's throw from Covent Gardens, is a real treat of atmosphere, with roaring crowds for street performers, music, and the clanging of the church bells--you'd think all that would be distracting but instead it helps further isolate this small kingdom from the world around it.