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.

Weekly Margin 2025, W17: Dead Outlaw, 七月半遗愿清单 Of Ashes and Souls, Miscast 2025

 4/22/25: Dead Outlaw

What: The Broadway transfer of the Off-Broadway hit by Itamar Moses, David Yazbek, and Erik Della Penna, inspired by the true story of Elmer McCurdy, an inept criminal whose preserved corpse endured a legacy longer and stranger than his thirty-one years of life.

And? This Broadway season's musicals is a continuing chain of "what an odd idea for a musical!" Some of them are successes, like the gem of Maybe Happy Ending or the delightfully silly Operation Mincemeat. Some disappeared quickly, like Swept Away. Some are still stubbornly kicking around, like Redwood. This one had a much-celebrated Off-Broadway run at the Minetta, which I missed, so I am grateful it got a transfer so I could see it. It's strange. It's good, I think, but yes another unusual show to land on Broadway this season. And not just because of the unusual subject matter (Andrew Durand spends half the show in perfect stillness, propped up in his display coffin), but also because of the way the story is told: a band jamming onstage in a little hut (lovely lighting by Heather Gilbert) with the lead singer telling us the story, periodically reminding us this is all true, and stepping into the story as bandit Jarrett, who lures Elmer into his gang to be the safecracker. The scenes happen in the spaces around the rotating hut, but the music remains the centerpiece of the action. The production is also a lovely showcase for a number of talented performers often relegated to thankless supporting roles: particularly Thom Sesma, but also Eddie Cooper and Dashiell Eaves.

Andrew Durand, Julia Knitel, and the band of Dead Outlaw.
Photo by Matthew Murphy.

4/25/25: 七月半遗愿清单 Of Ashes and Souls

What: Zihe Tian & Shall See Theater present the world premiere of Zijun (Neil) Wang and Zihe Tian's comedic horror story about a group of influences in a haunted house during the Hungry Ghost Festival, attempting to discover what caused the fire that killed eight people twenty-five years earlier.

And? full review here.

Streaming Theater Related Content I Watched

• MCC's Miscast 2025 concert.

Margin Notes: 七月半遗愿清单 Of Ashes and Souls

七月半遗愿清单 Of Ashes and Souls

Seen on: Friday, 4/25/25.

Plot and Background

Zihe Tian & Shall See Theater present the world premiere of Zijun (Neil) Wang and Zihe Tian's comedic horror story about a group of influences in a haunted house during the Hungry Ghost Festival, attempting to discover what caused the fire that killed eight people twenty-five years earlier. This is the debut production of Shall See Theater.

What I Knew Beforehand

That it would be in Mandarin. I was, as Sondheim said, both excited and scared.

Thoughts:

Play: It feels so rare to see an original story these days, and this one is delightfully original. Nine online influencers (gamers, amateur sleuths, and other personalities) have all gathered during Zhongyuan Festival (Hungry Ghost Festival) at a haunted mansion, determined to discover what caused the gas fire a quarter of a century ago, and find themselves in a time loop, stuck in the last hour of this day when the veil parts, and the spirits of the dead may cross over to inhabit the living. As one by one each influencer is taken over by another spirit, we step closer to the truth and the past, and a reconciliation among the dead for what went wrong that day when all seemed about to finally go right. Playwrights Zijun (Neil) Wang and Zihe Tian have crafted a script that is both tense and funny, and increasingly engaging as the audience comes to understand the story being told (it is, I admit, a bit overwhelming at the top, at least for a non-Mandarin speaker). Moreover, Wang, who also directs the show, crafts a coherent arc across the scene-jumping script. I will say, for future revisions, the countdown to the reset doesn't quite make sense in execution of the story--or at least, it was unclear to me if we were seeing multiple resets or just the one hour; if it's just the one hour, the timestands slated at the top of each scene don't match the flow of time as we or the characters are experiencing it. This is nitpicky, but it was distracting in the moment.

Weekly Margin 2025, W16: Genius, The Last Five Years, Canaan Unremembered, Floyd Collins

4/14/25: Genius

What: The Lucille Lortel hosts a benefit reading of a new musical adaptation of Patrick Dennis's novel, about a celebrated film director who flees creditors and the IRS for Mexico where, when he encounters bestselling author Patrick Dennis, devises a scheme to make a new movie and pay off his debts.

And? It's okay. Some of the songs are fun, but there's still a ways to go before it has the sharpness needed to be the kind of musical farce it wants to be. But it was a treat to see the incredibly talented and charismatic Douglas Sills in a leading role again: confident, clear-voiced, and as polished as if he'd been working on this role for weeks and not the 25 hours the director told us. Also making delightful comic turns were Lesli Margherita, Natascia Diaz, and Johanna Carlisle-Zepeda.

4/16/25: The Last Five Years

What: Jason Robert Brown's semi-autobiographical musical about his first marriage finally makes its Broadway debut. This is the one where she's living the story backwards, he's living it forwards, and they meet in the middle, when they get married.

And? We should start with Adrienne Warren. She is fan-flipping-tastic. A rich throaty voice, Disney princess eyes, and full conviction in her character. Even when she's just standing there listening, she's riveting and heartbreaking. Nick Jonas next to her is ... okay. He's sipping a delicate cocktail of low expectations, almost no dialogue, and being directed within an inch of his life. He moves well, and so he shines when he's got a dynamic song to perform, especially when he does high vocal riffs (his lower register remains weak). But when he's abandoned to the more staid serious songs, he crutches on leaning forward as his only tool to show he really means it.

This production breaks from the others I'm aware of, by sometimes having the other player present during their partner's song; perhaps they are borrowing from the film adaptation's success with that move (thinking specifically of the camera holding on Anna Kendrick's reaction to Jamie's "If I Didn't Believe in You"). The difference, though, is that the film was grounded in a clear reality (I am ignoring anyone who comes in yelling about musicals not being grounded in any reality, you're deliberately missing my point), and the stage show exists in a much more amorphous and flexible space. Beyond that, the show is already written with some overlap (Jamie taking phone calls during Cathy's songs, etc.), and those moments are clearly taking place in their individual character's time, not the time of the song they're interrupting. When either character remains onstage in the same costume to receive a song from a different time, that clarity becomes muddled. It also steals some of the power away from "The Next Ten Minutes," the one time the two characters are actually in sync. When Cathy was already onstage for the entirety of "The Schmuel Song" five minutes ago, her entering to duet with Jamie on their wedding doesn't feel like the momentous moment it should. It feels instead like the director was afraid of letting the show be what it is, and still exist on Broadway--a tiny two-person chamber musical in one of Broadway's biggest theaters (oops). I've seen this show done Off-Broadway (revival, not original), and in concert staging (JRB/Lauren Kennedy, and Joshua Henry/Cynthia Erivo), and honestly it doesn't need a lot of pyrotechnics to sell it. It just needs two powerful performers who have both the acting and singing chops.

I also don't understand why the side lighting was so loosely aimed that it kept illuminating the first few rows of the orchestra (including a bored-looking usher). I even saw an audience member have to hold their hand in front of their face to block the light. And I don't really know what the set design was doing, if it was doing anything.

Adrienne Warren and Nick Jonas as Cathy and Jamie in the aforementioned
"Schmuel Song." Photo by Matthew Murphy.

Weekly Margin 2025, W15: The Devil's Due, Smash: The Musical, Humpty Dumpty, Real Women Have Curves

4/07/25: The Devil's Due

What: The Tank presents a new play by Meron Langsner about Johanna, a young physicist, who conjures Doctor Faustus and Mephistophilis in her quest for knowledge, and must face the question of whether scientific discovery can be "pure" when in the hands of those who would corrupt its intentions.

And? Due to a few behind-the-scenes challenges, the performance I saw was a semi-staged reading, though in full costume and still utilizing key props. While the first act had a bit of unevenness as a result of this, the cast found their stride, and act two was fantastic. Doctor Faustus's curse after death is to corrupt the brilliant scientific discoveries that have come since his life, and he fears that his influence here under Johanna's summoning will finally bring about the end of life on earth (a valid concern for us here in 2025). I found myself thinking about the development of AI, and the wonders that it could achieve, but how often it is corrupted to replace thinking and processing in people ourselves. Are we drifting ever closer to energy sources kept in gooey pods? Were the Wachowski sisters right? Or is there still a chance for us to redeem ourselves? Without giving too much away, I will say that this play discusses the idea of hope quite a bit--the last thing in Pandora's Box, the thing that keeps Faustus going even as he is wracked with pain, the thing that drives Johanna to keep tempting fate (and the devil) to keep seeking knowledge and discovery. Hope that there is a better we can be, a better we can do. It's hard to choose hope right now, has been hard for years. But I'm grateful playwright Langsner chose hope here. Also marshmallows.

4/08/25: Smash: The Musical

What: A new stage adaptation of the cult favorite TV show, a backstage musical about trying to adapt Marilyn Monroe's life into the musical Bombshell.

And? It's pretty strange, actually. It's not until the finale that Smash itself becomes a musical. It would probably call itself a backstage musical, but I'd be more inclined to call it a play with music--every song (except the finale) is diegetic, and nearly all of them are from the show-within-the-show Bombshell. As such, while some of them have some emotional resonance for the meta-character singing them, they're all still tied to the bombastic musical comedy energy of a show we only ever see pieces of. Sure, the songs are fun, but they're also a bit emotionally inert as a result. They do get to show off Stro doing what she does best though. And while I did miss getting to hear Brooks Ashmanskas sing, his comedic timing is unparalleled, and he earned some huge laughs.

It is interesting to see how the soapy hijinks and backstabbing viciousness of the TV series are adapted for this musical adaptation: dynamics are changed, with characters becoming different archetypes, and new elements introduced (I say archetypes because they don't bother to make Karen a real character so much as the sweet and wholesome perpetual understudy waiting for her Sutton Foster moment). It took until near the end of the first act for the show to actually surprise me, but I enjoyed that surprise very much.

tl;dr the show's kind of a mess, but it's a benevolent mess, and there's a lot of real talent onstage.

Robyn Hurder, Caroline Bowman, and Bella Coppola as Ivy, Karen, and Chloe.
Photo by Matthew Murphy.

Margin Notes: Humpty Dumpty

Christina Elise Perry, Gabriel Rysdahl, Marie Dinolan,
and Kirk Gostkowski as Nicole, Troy, Spoon, and Max.
Photo by Matt Wells.

Humpty Dumpty

Seen on: Wednesday, 4/09/25.

Plot and Background

The Chain Theatre presents the New York premiere of Eric Bogosian's 2002 play about a vacation "off the grid" is thrown fully off the grid when there is a mass power outage, the range of duration of which is unknown.

What I Knew Beforehand

I have seen and reviewed a number of Chain productions over the years; and I knew some of Bogosian's work.

Thoughts:

Play: It's chilling how current a play from over twenty years ago feels, particularly one so fixated on the technology available at that time: Palm Pilots, cell phones with patchy signals (that were not yet smartphones), and wall-mounted landlines and fax machines. As the characters, in the wake of both Y2K and 9/11, get distracted by cell phone calls, crab about increased TSA guidelines, and idly discuss the chances of another plague wiping out millions, there's a certain grimness to the Greek Tragedy of it all. We in the audience know the distant future, even as we don't know the immediate future awaiting these characters. What caused this blackout? How long will it last? And, even more grimly for us city-dwellers watching, the keen awareness that while out in nature these characters have some access to fresh food, those in the city would be cut off from supplies much more immediately. We remember the short-supply panic of March 2020.

So all this feels both prescient and immediate, and brings back memories of that isolation and uncertainty. Director Ella Jane New crafts the dynamics of the group with agility, maintaining the lines of tension as the dangers, both outside and in, increase.

Weekly Margin 2025, W14: John Proctor is the Villain, Vanya, Iolanthe, The Threepenny Opera, Pirates! The Penzance Musical

4/01/25: John Proctor is the Villain

What: A new play by Kimberly Belflower, about the high school English class of a small Georgia community in 2018, currently rocked by a recent #MeToo revelation about one of the student's parents, the return of another student after an unexplained six-month absence, and the reading of Arthur Miller's The Crucible.

And? Parts of it are perhaps a bit on the nose (the title does rather give the game away, considering the payoff for it doesn't hit until two-thirds in), but perhaps that's appropriate for a play set entirely in a high school classroom. It still packs a hell of a punch, helped largely by a rudely talented ensemble (able to authentically bring back what it was like to be a teen girl who just wanted to have her inside jokes with her friends), and an epic climactic sequence. It was a great modern read on what is a standard high school text (raise your hand if you were also in your high school's production of it?). Is it an overly simplified read of Proctor? Probably, but that's also a very teenage thing, that absolutism. In any case, the larger sentence should be "John Proctor is the villain in Abigail's story." My friend that I saw it with remarked as we were leaving that the people who needed to see this play probably wouldn't (she made a similar remark when we left Prayer for the French Republic, and she was right). But in this case, I replied, "I needed to see it." Today, now, this year, I needed to see it.

What is true that the primary audience will probably be there for Sadie Sink, star of Stranger Things. Good news, she's fantastic, as is the rest of the less-famous cast. 

4/03/25: Vanya

What: The Lucille Lortel hosts the New York transfer of the London hit, Simon Stephens' one-person adaptation of  the Chekhov classic, starring Andrew Scott.

And? I forget sometimes how terrible most of the sightlines are at the Lortel. Oh well. Andrew Scott is heartbreaking and funny and astonishing and wonderful, and the adaptation is interesting, but it is still Chekhov, who's not my favorite. Still glad I saw it, as Andrew Scott is always worth seeing live.

Andrew Scott. Photo by Marc Brenner.

Weekly Margin 2025, W13: Maybe Happy Ending, Love Life, Nye, The Half-God of Rainfall

3/25/25: Maybe Happy Ending

a repeat visit

3/27/25: Love Life

What: City Center Encores! presents the 1948 Kurt Weill/Alan Jay Lerner musical about an unhappy couple whose children cause them to look back on their relationship to see where it went wrong--with each time we visit them being a different point in America's history, even though the four family members do not age, spanning from 1791 to 1948, when the show itself premiered. Does that sound weird? It kind of is, but it's easy enough to follow in the moment.

And?  This is a classic example of how valuable the Encores! series is: a show that is not often revived (in this case, there isn't even a surviving cast album), presented with full orchestra and high-caliber talent, to give new voice to the score. And often with this sort of thing, we can see why that show isn't often revived. Though this production ran for a year, it's rather unfocused in its concept (though perhaps with a stronger director than we have here, that focus would be more precise: there's a clear framing lens of vaudeville acts around this archetypal nuclear family, though I missed the consistent flavor that would have made that clear enough that the Pippin-esque finale didn't feel so far out of left field.

The family themselves don't really become people I invest in, but I think this show must have hit very very differently in 1948. My dad writes about the mythologizing of America in musicals like Oklahoma!, The Music Man, and Guys and Dolls. He also writes about the marriage trope, wherein the central couple's union represents the cohesion of community as a whole. This musical is a prime candidate for both those lenses--a look back at America's history through the frame of this family, but even more so, the nation's precarious state of maintaining unity in the wake of the Second World War, which had ended only three years previously (I wonder now why there wasn't a chapter in the show that took place during the Civil War, but then we probably know the answer to that one). America was very divided over this war--whether to enter the fray or not (not even touching on how many supported Hitler's campaign), and then the devastating outcome of our use of nuclear force. Is this the sort of thing a nation can survive and still feel united? Though the musical itself doesn't address any wars (the closest it gets to commentary of any sort are Susan's campaign for the right to vote, and a scene set during the Prohibition Era), it is meant to present the couple with the same degree of uncertainty. Indeed, their final moment is the two of them carefully reaching across a tightrope to each other, trying to hold their balance and hopefully hold each other as well. It's not just the future of their family--it's the future of our nation's soul.

So I can see what's interesting about this show, conceptually (and it must have been something with its original Michael Kidd choreo!) without having particularly gotten a lot emotionally out of the Encores! staging. That being said, the music is lush (even if Alan Jay Lerner is outed here as recycling a lyric and song concept from this show later for Gigi), and my god, the voices. Brian Stokes Mitchell, always a powerful voice, infuses everything he does with such warmth and joy (even back in 2020 when he stood at his open window every night to sing "The Impossible Dream" to anyone walking by) that you can't help but love him. Kate Baldwin matches him for warmth and powerful vocals. And then the ensemble! Stunning voices and harmonies throughout, in a score that really does make a point to feature many of its players. John Edwards, as both the Hobo and the M.C., has an extraordinary baritone and it's a treat to hear him sing.

Kate Baldwin and Brian Stokes Mitchell as Susan Cooper and Sam Cooper,
with the ensemble. Photo by Joan Marcus.

Streaming Theater-Related Content I Watched

• National Theatre at Home's Nye.
• Wilma Theater's The Half-God of Rainfall.

Weekly Margin 2025, W12: Operation Mincemeat, BOOP!, Fog and Filthy Air

 3/18/25: Operation Mincemeat

What: The Broadway transfer of the West End hit, a tongue-in-cheek musical adaption of the real-life British mission of deception in World War II.

And? Y'all, this show is a goddamn delight. The five actors--three of whom also cowrote the piece--have perfected the timing of their physical comedy to help make this sharp, hilarious, and without falter. Jak Malone, who won an Olivier for this production, is a particular standout in his various roles, and manages to break everyone's heart with a six-minute song sung in total stillness--that's when you know the audience is hooked. Ben Stones, responsible for the set and costume design that help facilitate the countless quick character changes and space shifts, is a magician with his designs full of trap door surprises and delights that keep us gasping and laughing. This one's a real treat.

Claire Marie Hall, Zoe Roberts, David Cummings, and Natasha Hodgson.
Photo by Julieta Cervantes.

3/19/25: BOOP! The Musical

What: A new splashy musical about Betty Boop who, tired of her life in the spotlight, escapes to the real world to discover they love her just as much. Sort of Enchanted/Barbie vibes, but with Betty Boop.

And? This show knows who its audience is, and is catering to it like mad: tourists in town looking for a brightly colored, dance-filled, feel-good musical. I found myself questioning if I've missed the immense popularity of a cartoon I vaguely remember from childhood. More than that, though, I was often disappointed by what I felt were missed opportunities by the designers. When we're first introduced to Betty Boop's world, of cartoonish grey-scale, it's delightful and imaginative, and a balanced use of projections and practicals. But I desperately want more contrast once we journey to the real world. In those scenes, the use of projections feels lazy, like they just didn't feel like building real things. But the whole point that keeps getting hammered in is that this is real, everything here is real, so why can't the design reflect that? Form and content, baby! That being said, the costume design is pretty great (and has a beautiful reveal at the top of the second act), and the lighting design does wonders to balance the look and feel of the characters when we're seeing both worlds at once onstage: bathing the real world in warmth while washing out the cartoon world. Even the vocals were tailored to this contrast, as we heard the more legit singing of Betty's film colleagues contrasted with the hard-belt (and no vibrato) of her real-world love interest. I also think they could shave off a half hour on this show if they cut Faith Prince's character (I love her, but she's wasted here and not plot-essential). But the performers in general are great: good voices and good stylized delivery in particular from Jasmine Amy Rogers as Betty, and Stephen DeRosa as Grampy.

Stephen DeRosa, Jasmine Amy Rogers, and Phillip Huber as Grampy, Betty
Boop, and Pudgy. Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman.

Margin Notes: Fog and Filthy Air

Fog and Filthy Air

Seen on: Thursday, 3/20/25.

Robert Homeyer as Father. Photo by Peter Welch.

Plot and Background

Theater For the New City presents Tom Diriwachter's new play, inspired by true events, about Tim, a playwright working as a waiter in a restaurant, who travels by bus to Memphis in the middle of the night to rescue his parents, staying in a purgatorial motel and unable to drive themselves home.

What I Knew Beforehand

That it was about a family in crisis.

Thoughts:

Play: It's hard, with plays based on real events, to decide how faithful you must stay to reality, and when you are allowed to take liberties. This play ultimately feels like its intent is an apology and a tribute to Tim's (playwright Tom Diriwachter's stand-in) parents, flawed as they are. In the play itself he is frustrated with them, frustrated with their inability to take his writing seriously or to communicate with him frankly. But when Tim himself is offstage the audience sees the deep love his parents have for each other, the way his mother protects her husband from the creeping frailty of his own faculties. The play then is Tom/Tim apologizing for not seeing that at the time, but recognizing it now, decades later. However, beyond that, I don't know what the play itself is actually about. Its focus drifts, as well as its conviction as to whether what we're even seeing is real or not. The poster image includes a line from the show invoking "the Devil's eyes" haunting the father as he drove; the characters repeatedly refer to the motel room as Hell (though to me it reads more as a purgatory, with a very Godot/Dumb Waiter energy of wondering if the characters can actually leave), and I wonder if the playwright hoped for the play to leave the literal into some bizarre otherspace where perhaps all three characters are dead and the story is about them accepting that truth. But maybe it really is just about a father having a nervous breakdown, and his wife and adult son gently helping him collect himself enough to go home.

Long I Stand

This weekend I took a walk in a forest blanketed with pale crepe-paper leaves. And I thought of the Robert Frost poem. People tend to focus on the moral of it: "I took the one less traveled by,/And that has made all the difference." But that's an ending, a look back. That's the writer's purview, of course. But what's always stuck with me was the opening pause: 

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

Long I stood. It's the pause, the wonder. That phrase has haunted me for years; I kept trying to write a meditative story on the paralysis of choice, with that phrase as its title. Choice doesn't have to paralyze, but we don't need to rush the choice either. We can take a pause, take a breath, knowing we are only one traveler. Long we can stand, before we choose our next path. I grew up in a small town but I'm a city girl. As an introvert, the only way I can keep loving the city is to leave it every now and again. To visit the other path. It's not an either-or, though. It's both. We need both. It's the contrast that makes it matter, like how music has to be about change--otherwise it's just noise.

This weekend I practiced Shinrin Yoku, the Japanese practice of forest bathing, to let the sound and the feel, the smell and the taste of the forest wash over you. To take your path slowly and with intention.

I've been thinking about what March means. It's a month of transition, of shucking winter off, of stomping through the mud until we reach a warm rebirth. It's also a time of griefs, many griefs. It was March 2000 when we found out the cancer had returned, even after a bone marrow transplant. It was March 2020 when my city shut down, when writers who had shaped my world began dying around us. It was March 2021 when we grieved a year of isolation and loss. March 2023 had myriad griefs for me. March 2024 had the grief of watching people I thought were friends lionize men who celebrated the destruction of my people, my family. March 2024 was when I finally began the conversation of starting on antidepressants, when the griefs were too numerous to hold. March is also my birthday month.

The day before I left for my weekend away, I saw Redwood, a new musical about a woman who, unable to process her grief for her son, flees New York City for the California Redwoods. That too put grief in my head this weekend, as I stared at my own little forest in Massachusetts.

This weekend I had a hot stone massage on my birthday. The music playing under was a piano piece that was sometimes lively and tripping, sometimes desperate, sometimes quiet and ponderous, like water slipping easily over stones (I've always associated piano pieces with the movement of water). This music felt like grief to me, but not the dirgeful trudge of it, the weighted drowning over it. More the ways our minds and bodies try to cope with its heaviness. Movement, distraction, and the chosen moments when we look it in the face before turning away again.

And I thought that it's been five years of grief, March after March after March after March after March of it, slipping through and slipping by and trying to choose our moments of looking it in the face before we turn away again.

March is a good month for it.

This weekend I talked to a tarot reader about my burnout. I talked to an acupuncturist about my anxiety. I talked to a yellow wood about the best way to use my voice.

Most of my online "activism" takes place on one of the few platforms I'm still on (Facebook), and--I don't think it's helping. Maybe it is, maybe there are people quietly reading but not replying, quieting reading and taking strength in knowing they're not alone. Maybe there are people who know I'm not a monster and therefore if I've been advocating so staunchly on what is clearly an unpopular side for Left-leaners, there might be something worth interrogating. I don't know.

But it doesn't feel like I'm helping most of the time. I haven't seen additional people take up the call as a result of anything I post. The primary engagement I get lately is from gentile men who think they understand antisemitism better than I, a Jewish woman, or who think they understand the Middle East better than I, a woman who's had family in Israel since before I was born and who has been paying attention since I was five and saw a picture of my cousin napping in the bomb shelter, his face obscured by a gas mask. It's exhausting every time one of these men sea lions in, not even to engage with me, but to engage with a straw version of me, imputing thoughts I don't have to me, words I haven't said to me. These people who haven't engaged with me in a meaningful way in a decade, either in person or online, but I'm one of the few people posting about this, so they're going to spend their anger on me.

This weekend I turned forty. Life is short, and getting shorter with every passing year. I have one life to live, and I'm standing here in this yellow wood deciding how I want to live it. I'm probably going to be posting less, we'll see. But I'm no longer going to engage with these angry men who don't actually want to have a conversation with me. They don't get to poison my days anymore. Life is short, and they're not entitled to another second of mine.

If you do want to have a conversation with me, if you have questions, I am here for that. I am here for you. It's never too late to say that there are things we've misunderstood, that we've been taken in by one of the world's most powerful propaganda machines, activating a centuries-old latent bias. It's not too late. I have always believed in our ability to change. I've seen it firsthand. But if you want that conversation with me, you have to start it, and you have to start it in good faith, with an interest in listening, with questions. Not with attacks, not with assumptions.

But please know that this is a big energy drain to me each time it happens. This isn't an academic exercise or a hunt for a dopamine hit. This is my family, my life, my blood. This is real and deeply personal to me.

This weekend I sat quietly with myself. This weekend I stood long in a yellow wood.

I hope it's made a difference.

Moon rise in Lenox, Massachusetts. Photo by Zelda Knapp.

Weekly Margin 2025, W11: We Had a World, Redwood

3/11/25: We Had a World

What: MTC presents the world premiere of Joshua Harmon's memory play about the complicated dynamics among himself, his mother, and his alcoholic grandmother.

And? Memory plays really can be a crap shoot, but this one is exquisite. It dives into the complexities not only of unreliable narrators, but the unreliability of memory itself, including the stories we tell ourselves to explain what's happened to us. It's bolstered by a profoundly powerful cast of only three (and in fact the night I went, we were treated to understudy Courtney Balan playing Jeanine Serralles's role of Ellen, and you'd never know she doesn't play it every night. The heartbreak and strength she brings to every moment, the lived-in relationships she has with characters both on- and off-stage, it's all there and rich and wonderful and awful. Similarly, Andrew Barth Feldman and Joanna Gleason as Joshua and Renee both just seem like people living and interacting on stage, not performing characters.

This is all the more remarkable for how presentational the frame of this production is. Pre-show, the furniture is draped in tarps with City Center stamped on them, as a crew member slowly prepares the space for performance. The furniture used does not match the descriptions given by the characters but seem instead to be leftovers from other productions, rehearsal hall stand-ins. And then Barth, clad in only his underwear, nods to the crew member to cue the light change that starts the play. As the piece progresses the three characters argue about which parts of the story need to be told, and when, and why. Three people, three truths. They talk to us, and to each other, about the story they're telling, even as we see the exposed bones of their storytelling tools, reminding us all this is still a play, by a playwright and about a playwright, with a family who is watching him write this new play in front of and about them. Perfectly directed by Trip Cullman, with a brilliant scenic design by John Lee Beatty (the transformation! I adored it): a gem of a production.

Jeanine Serralles, Andrew Barth Feldman, and Joanna Gleason as Ellen,
Joshua, and Renee. Photo by Jeremy Daniel.

3/13/25: Redwood

What: A new musical by Tina Landau and Kate Diaz about a woman who, unable to process the death of her son a year ago, abandons her wife in New York to drive to the redwoods of California.

And? This one is getting mixed responses, from what I can tell. It's fine, but the songs have too much same-ness to them, especially when sung by Idina Menzel: her belt is tremendous but it seems to be the only flavor she has. I wanted more variety of vocal texture to help track her emotional journey through the show. I will say, this was the finest work I've seen from Michael Park in the supporting role of Finn. And the Jewish representation was nice, too. The scenic/projection design by Jason Ardizzone-West and Hana S. Kim, respectively, while stunningly detailed from my mezzanine seat, has even more towering majesty from the angle in the orchestra.

Khaila Wilcoxon and Idina Menzel as Becca and Jesse. Photo by Matthew
Murphy and Evan Zimmerman.

Weekly Margin 2025, W10: Deep Blue Sound, Purpose, Buena Vista Social Club, SUMO

3/03/25: Deep Blue Sound

What: Clubbed Thumb's Obie-winning production of Abe Koogler's play transfers to The Public.

And? Between this and Staff Meal, Abe Koogler is now a must-watch playwright for me. I adored this strange little play: part presentational, as if we're watching a very disorganized town council meeting; part deeply intimate, as if we're seeing scenes of vulnerability not meant to be witnessed. Ostensibly about a group of islanders in the Pacific Northwest trying to solve what happened to their missing pod of orcas, it's also about what each character is willing to make part of their public witnessed self, as opposed to what they insist on holding so close to the vest almost no one sees it. So we have Ella, sick and planning for her death but refusing to warn her closest friends; we have Mayor Annie, brittle in her attempts to lead the committee and unsure how to guide her son's passion for dance; Les, who struggles and struggles to make connections both local and long-distance but who knows enough to sally forth solo when she has to; John, who wants to help but doesn't know how to break past the binds of polite behavior. And we have whimsy and heartbreak, and so many [redacted because this is a spoiler but it made me cry when it happened]. Arin Arbus ably directs a powerhouse ensemble featuring the always piercing Maryann Plunkett, the consistently surprising and wonderful Miriam Silverman, and the monologue master Mia Katigbak. Also shoutout to dots for their rabbit-in-a-hat scenic design.

Thank you, Clubbed Thumb. I needed this show.

Crystal Finn, Maryann Plunkett, Arnie Burton, and Miriam Silverman as 
Mayor Annie, Ella, John, and Mary. Photo by Maria Baranova.

3/04/25: Purpose

What: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's new play, transferred from Steppenwolf: one of those plays where a family fractures as skeletons are confronted.

And? Really truly wonderful performances, especially from Jon Michael Hill and Kara Young, and the direction is well-paced. But I don't think this play needed to be the three hours it was, and I didn't leave with as clear a sense of something to think about as I sometimes do with BJJ's plays. There are some strong moments, but it doesn't add up to as much as I wanted it to.

The cast of the Steppenwolf (pre-Broadway) run of Purpose. Photo by
Michael Brosilow.

Weekly Margin 2025, W9: The Jonathan Larson Project, Safe House

2/24/25: The Jonathan Larson Project

What: The world premiere of Jennifer Ashley Tepper's passion project: a new piece based on the unfinished/unproduced works of the late Jonathan Larson.

And? A mixed experience. It's for sure a treat to hear never-before heard songs from Larson, but they're of inconsistent quality. Similarly inconsistent is the use of screens. The pre-show is full of actual New York footage shot by a human (he was sitting behind me and I heard him discussing it), but the show itself has some clearly digitally-rendered images and the contrast with the real footage we saw earlier makes it look even worse. However, the gifts of real footage from Larson's life, and of people talking about his impact, make the presence of the screens worth it. I will admit that I'm also not sure if the show itself knows what it wants to be. Sometimes it's a straight-up revue, with a performer delivering a song sans connective thread to the other songs. Sometimes it seems like this is a group of five friends gathered to share their work and musings on art and writing. I'm not really sure which one we're dealing with.

But at the end of the day, it's a set of five very talented performers giving their all for each song, and some of the songs are worth the ticket.

Andy Mientus, Lauren Marcus, Jason Tam, Taylor Iman Jones, and Adam
Chanler-Berat. Photo by Joan Marcus.

3/01/25: Safe House

What: St. Ann's Warehouse and Abbey Theatre present Enda Walsh's new play, with song cycle by Anna Mullarkey, about ... well, that's always hard to say with an Enda Walsh play.

And? Proof that it's hard to say what the story of a piece by Enda Walsh is: after the show the group I attended with gathered to share thoughts. My read was that while I don't know literally what story was being told, I knew thematically that it was about someone searching, through both her past and present, to find a place she could be safe. The person in the group who was raised Catholic was sure that that person was dead the entire span of the play. Others thought she died at some point during it. So ... I don't know that I can tell you what this play is about. But it's engaging, if confusing, and features a great performance by Kate Gilmore.

Kate Gilmore as Grace. Photo by Teddy Wolff.

Weekly Margin 2025, W8: Dakar 2000, Truth Be Told

2/18/25: Dakar 2000

What: MTC presents a new play by Rajiv Joseph about a young man in the Peace Corps in Dakar in 2000 and his run-in with the US embassy after he reappropriates supplies to help a local community build a garden.

And? I had a hard time staying focused in the first half, but the second half is very compelling, with truly wonderful work being done by Abubakr Ali as the charismatic Boubs.

Mia Barron and Abubakr Ali as Dina and Boubs. Photo by Matthew Murphy.

2/21/25: Truth Be Told

What: The Gene Frankel Theatre and ARA Theater present William Cameron's two-hander play: a showdown between a journalist and an implicated mother in the aftermath of another mass shooting.

And? full review here

Michelle Park and Francesca Ravera as Kathleen Abedon and Jo Hunter.
Photo by Bronwen Sharp.

Margin Notes: Truth Be Told

Truth Be Told

Seen on: Friday, 2/21/25.

Michelle Park and Francesca Ravera as Kathleen Abedon
and Jo Hunter. Photo by Bronwen Sharp.

Plot and Background

The Gene Frankel Theatre and ARA Theater present William Cameron's two-hander play: a showdown between a journalist and an implicated mother in the aftermath of another mass shooting. Jo, a crime journalist with a bestselling book about a mass shooter, meets with the mother of another mass shooter to record her experience, but is surprised by the revelation that Kathleen believes her son is innocent of the crime.

What I Knew Beforehand

Just the premise.

Thoughts:

Play: I think the premise is an interesting one, but I wonder if maybe the scenes are in the wrong order. From the moment Kathleen voices her opinion that her son didn't commit the murders, the audience and Jo know that she's delusional. And the audience's conviction never really changes. I think there could be a complicated journey explored if there were a sense that Kathleen's theories have some actual grounding. If the audience's notion of truth could be questioned over the course of the play, if we begin to wonder as well if Julian was framed, it would make Kathleen's final collapse all that more shattering. Instead, the audience sits through ninety-plus minutes of someone going through the denial stage of grief with little to no ripples in her waters. There's a richness to be mined here, of these two opposing characters with their complicated relationships to their sons, to violence, and to truth, but the play isn't there yet.

Weekly Margin 2025, W7: Grangeville, Maiden Mother Crone

2/11/25: Grangeville

What: Signature presents Samuel D. Hunter's new two-hander about half-brothers, estranged both emotionally and physically, seeing if they can reconnect across all the hurt as they discuss their mother's end of life care.

And? It doesn't touch A Case for the Existence of God for me, which I adored, but it's still well-done and very well performed, especially by Paul Sparks in the showier role.

2/13/25: Maiden Mother Crone

What: The Pete at The Flea hosts two solo plays, Sugarcoated by Jen Ponton and The Longer My Mother Is Dead The More I Like Her by Deborah Unger.

And? full review here.

Margin Notes: Maiden Mother Crone

Maiden Mother Crone: a duet of solo plays

Seen on: Thursday, 2/13/25.

Plot and Background

The Pete at The Flea hosts two solo plays, Sugarcoated by Jen Ponton and The Longer My Mother Is Dead The More I Like Her by Deborah Unger. Both pieces are memoir pieces: Sugarcoated, tracking Ponton's journey toward sexual actualization while navigating a fatphobic and heteronormative world; The Longer My Mother navigating Unger's complicated relationship with her recalcitrant mother.

What I Knew Beforehand

A pair of solo plays confronting feminine archetypes.

Thoughts:

There's an unspoken contract between audience and performer/author when it comes to autobiographical solo shows: there will be trauma, and it will be processed. In Ponton's case, it's a series of men--starting with her own father--who refuse to see her worth and whose cruelty trigger a series of dissociations from her own body. With Unger, it comes in the form of a mother's refusal to communicate with or understand her child.

What's surprising in both cases, then, is the joy both performers are able to find within these harsh narratives. Ponton, who starts the show with the unfiltered joy of her seven-year-old self awash on her face, sitting in front of a beautifully frosted pink birthday cake, keeps seeking joy in every age and stage of her journey. Yes, that means her gleaming eyes and cheeks often crumple under new heartbreaks, but somehow we know that her spirit won't be permanently squashed, even if the journey to liberation takes longer than she would like.

Weekly Margin 2025, W6: Liberation, Still, Urinetown

2/04/25: Liberation

What: Roundabout presents Bess Wohl's new play, a twist on a memory play, revisiting the time in the 1970s when her mother was part of the women's liberation movement.

And? It's quite a thing, to write a memory play about a time you don't remember. But that becomes part of the play, as Bess, played with marvelous depth by Susannah Flood, becomes her mother through the memories she's had to reconstruct through interviewing the surviving members of the group. Her purpose: unpack what they did back then, to help her answer the question of why here in 2025 we are still fighting the exact same fight (a throwaway line about "we got Roe v. Wade" lands especially bitterly in today's environment). But even as she pursues this question, it becomes clear it's still the wrong question--it's not why they "failed," but why this world is still so resistant to universal freedoms across not just gender but race and ethnicity, sexuality, and other barriers from being the "default" position of a wealthy straight white able-bodied man in the United States. The play itself is unable to answer that question, but perhaps the intended message is not that these women were all archetypes, but that they were all people, complicated and flawed, and that they did fight, and advocate. And it's what we can do, too.

2/05/25: Still

What: Lila Romeo's two-hander about a successful writer and a successful lawyer reuniting after many years and a terrible breakup, only to realize the barriers between them have only grown.

And? Meh. Nothing in here was interesting to me.

Mark Moses and Melissa Gilbert as Mark and Helen. Photo by Maria Baranova.

2/06/25: Urinetown

What: NY City Center Encores! series presents Hollmann and Kotis's satirical musical about a town where it's "a privilege to pee."

And? Urinetown's always a fun night out at the theater for me. The cast here is pretty strong. Especially of note: Christopher Fitzgerald, stealing moments as Officer Barrel with his off-the-wall delivery, Rainn Wilson's surprisingly good turn as Caldwell B. Cladwell (his bio says he's never sung in front of people before), and the fantastic Tiffany Mann, stepping in to cover Penelope Pennywise the night we saw.

Kevin Cahoon, Stephanie Styles, Keala Settle, Myra Lucretia Taylor,
Pearl Scarlett Gold, and Graham Rowat as Hot Blades Harry, Hope Cladwell,
Penelope Pennywise, Josephine Strong, Little Sally, and Five-Times Johnny.
Photo by Joan Marcus.