What: New York City Center presents Amber Ruffin, Kevin Sciretta, and David A. Schmoll's new musical about Bigfoot.
And? It's very uneven. Amber Ruffin and Kevin Sciretta's book is full of some really funny one-liners, but the pastiche of the scenes feels more like sketches rather than pieces of a larger story. By contrast, the score by Ruffin and David Schmoll is nowhere near the level of humor, nor the level of pastiche, needed to really make a show like this soar (and the music just sits there, rather than pushing forward momentum or leaning in harder to the comedy). The show owes a heavy debt to late nineties/early aught musicals Bat Boy and Urinetown, but it hasn't paid off its arrears yet. The cast, though, is excellent. I saw it in the first week of previews so they're still working out some of the kinks with line delivery and timing, but when they nail a line it's nailed. It's a treat to see Crystal Lucas-Perry onstage again, and to see Katerina McCrimmon for the first time (the voice coming out of that tiny frame!). And of course the standout is Grey Henson as Bigfoot himself. Henson has an uncanny knack for delivering any line, no matter how ridiculous or dad-joke-groan-worthy, earnestly and almost thrown-away, that will never not be hilarious to me (he was distinctly my favorite part of Shucked). He's absolutely delightful and as immediately likeable as a fluffy puppy bounding onstage. The show is worth it for him, honestly, though I'm glad it's only ninety minutes.
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| Grey Henson as Bigfoot. Photo by Marc J. Franklin. |
2/18/26: Chinese Republicans
What: Roundabout presents Alex Lin's play about four Chinese American women in the corporate world and the question whether assimilation will ever be allowed for them in that environment (and if they want it to be).
And? It's fine. The arguments are interesting, and the cast is strong, particularly Jodi Long as the groundbreaker of the group, the first Asian woman to be a Managing Director in New York, and Jully Lee as a snarky Iris, the only one among them to have actually been born in China.
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2/20/26: An Ark
What: A world premiere at The Shed of Simon Stephens and Todd Eckert's "mixed reality ... theatrical encounter." No, Ian McKellen and the other stars aren't in the room with us--they're encountered through mixed reality glasses.
And? There's a quiet ritual to entering the space. You walk a sound-dampened carpeted pathway to store your shoes in a cubby bench, then step through parted curtains into a room furnished with concentric arcs of black chairs. They're not all identical chairs, and maybe that matters and maybe that doesn't. Similar, but different. An attendant fits you with a headset for your mixed reality glasses (special lenses provided for those wearing glasses). Overhead is a large glowing ball of light, the colors of the room occasionally pulsing to different shades. It's peaceful. A waiting room. As the space around you dims, Sir Ian walks into the frame of four chairs you see through your glasses. He is joined by Golda Rosheuvel, Arinzé Kene, and Rosie Sheehy, each making intimate eye contact with you. You're an old friend. They know you and they love you. And they begin to tell you your story. It's not always your story, not all these things happened to you or will happen to you, but there's a recognition anyway, something deeply personal. Similar, but different. They know you and they love you and they'll tell you your story with neither cruelty nor kindness. They see you as you see them.
Simon Stephens's intimate script is not, as it sounds, a story of life. It's a story of death, or the moment before, or the moment after. These are the things that happened, these are the memories you take with you, this is the moment between, when we pause, we breathe, before we leave. This is who we were, when we are about to no longer be who we are. Before we step through the curtains and are gone again. It is not a story of how we are all going to die. It is a story of how we are already dying. And it doesn't have to be a bad thing. We have existed, we have loved, we have been loved. We had these moments, these fears, these feats, these weaknesses. Our little tragedies and triumphs. It's not our story and it is. We are seen, and we see.
That sounds woo-woo and I'd apologize but nah. I can see someone going to this and maybe not having as intense an experience as I did, because it certainly sounds a bit pretentious when I write it out (in fact, David Gordon's similarly second-person review--we're both imitating the show's style--is much more dismissive, and I won't fight him on his points, especially the limitations of a still-developing technology and the question of sound design). But text- and performance-wise, it was a powerful forty-five minutes for me, a grieving and a steadying, and something to sit with and then take home with me as I left The Shed for the 7 train.
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| Photo by Marc J. Franklin |
Streaming Theater
- Wilma Theater's Poor Judge.
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