What: Exactly what it says on the tin. An unauthorized musical parody of the hit Canadian TV series about rival hockey players who fall in love.
And? So very stupid and so very fun. The songs were, by and large, enjoyable. As with Titanique, some fatigue did set in for me as things went on, but I still had a good time. It was fantastic to see Ryann Redmond and Jay Armstrong Johnson again, and standby Shelby Acosta was fan-flipping-tastic as Shane's Mom and others.
And now I have to go off-topic because I had no idea that "The Culture Club" is in the McKittrick's old space (home for over a decade to Sleep No More). So imagine my surprise when I climbed the stairs to the second floor lobby and found myself in what every cell in my body remembers as the hotel lobby floor. My memory filled in the blanks: there were the phone booths; there was the piano where Boy Witch sang "If That's All There Is;" there's the lobby desk where the Boy Witch cried on my shoulder; down that curtained-off hallway is the dressing room where the Bald Witch put on her wig, or where the Porter put on lipstick while staring at me through a mirror. Here I saw so many encounters, here I was swept away, again and again. Of course, the phone booths and piano are gone. The lobby counter remains but it is now a bar for patrons. There are more places to sit: squashy velvet chairs and couches. Periodically a host will approach guests in the lobby and invite them upstairs. We ride the elevator up to the sixth floor (!) but there is no old-fashioned wicker wheelchair, no upside-down model of the Manderley estate. The actual performance space is the old Club Car, which hosted the wonderful chamber production of The Woman in Black both before and after the pandemic lockdown; I saw that production four times, so even this brought back memories. Parts of the space have been redressed; parts have not -- I grabbed a quick photo of a wall covered in chalk tally marks, which confused the other patrons as we left the sixth floor via the long set of stairs. And one last remnant of the Sleep No More experience: a staff member at each open door as we took the stairs down, to make sure we did not wander away.
Sorry, I did enjoy the show, but the sense memory of being in that space again was a lot. Sleep No More meant so much to me in 2011 and 2012, when I kept going back again and again.
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| Jay Armstrong Johnson as Ilya and Jimin Moon as Shane. Photo by Matthew Murphy. |
8/19/26: The Winter's Tale
What: Shakespeare in the Park presents one of the weird ones: the first half of Winter's Tale plays like a tragedy, where (spoilers) King Leontes's tragic flaw of overwhelming jealousy leads to the estrangement from his lifelong friend Polixenes, the banishment of his newborn infant Perdita, and the death of both wife Hermione and son Mamillius. The second half jumps forward sixteen years and plays like a light romance: Perdita is a sweet young shepherdess in love with Florizel, son of Polixenes; Leontes has been mourning faithfully the past sixteen years for his wronged wife. Also, this play features the famous stage direction "Exit, pursued by a bear."
And? The tonal reversal between the first half and the second is not managed as smoothly as I would like. By which I mean: the tragedy of the first half is performed heartbreakingly by Lily Rabe (Hermione), my beloved Raúl Esparza (Leontes), and Marsha Stephanie Blake (Paulina, the wisest character in the play). It's powerful and devastating and delicately crafted by director Daniel Sullivan, a SitP regular. The second half of the play is too bogged down in the clowns (no doubt meant to alleviate the heaviness of the first half) and I found all three of them profoundly tiresome. Perhaps in stronger comedic hands it would be less so (I recall Jesse Tyler Ferguson making a delicious feast out of the Young Shepherd's first monologue). So I did get impatient for things to wrap up, as we ventured into hour three, but I still consider the show worth seeing, if only for Lily Rabe's incredible performance in the trial scene.
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| Marsha Stephanie Blake as Paulina, Lily Rabe as Hermione, and Raúl Esparza as Leontes. Photo by Joan Marcus. |
8/21/26: A Walk on the Moon
What: Roundabout presents a new musical by Annmarie Milazzo and Pamela Cray, an adaptation of Cray's autobiographical 1999 film about a restless housewife in the Catskills who finds herself attracted to a vendor at the campground -- set against the background of the moon landing in 1969.
And? It's not particularly stimulating as a show, though the cast boasts some very strong voices. The scenic design is a bit embarrassing for an Off-Broadway show, especially from an established company like Roundabout. The cardboard tree proscenium is actually a clever touch that I enjoy, but the rest of it reads as well-funded community theater with very few choices (if you're going to have a cabin dead center onstage with a clear seam down the middle, how do you not split it in half as Pearl destroys her family unit? How is this seam a practical choice only, to facilitate easy slide-out during transitions?). But I'll say this -- the costume design by Ricky Lurie is absolutely fantastic: bright colors, perfect fits across a variety of body types, and tidily evocative of an era of transition.
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| The company of A Walk on the Moon. Photo by Joan Marcus. |
8/23/26: Paranormal Activity
What: Another entry in the Paranormal Activity universe, this one a standalone story about a troubled couple, Lou and James, who move from Chicago to London in hopes of making a new start. But Lou's past and possibly literal demons still haunt the couple, and follow them across the ocean.
And? Knowing the playwright is Levi Holloway, the author of Grey House (one of Broadway's rare scary plays), makes the reveal of the house not terribly surprising, though scenic designer Fly Davis's work is excellent. But here we are in a house with secrets and revelations behind every door. Chris Fisher, who did the illusion design for both Cursed Child and Stranger Things: The First Shadow, continues in fine form here with suitably spooky and astonishing moments that have the whole audience gasping and yelling. Felix Barrett, founder and AD for Punchdrunk, draws an excellent eeriness from the performances of the intimately small cast, recalling from his past work on Sleep No More and Viola's Room how much can be effected with seemingly so little: the delicacy of a slow turn of the head, of a shifting vocal tone. The story itself is fine, though the ending turn is a bit left-field in origin. A good adventure out into scary town, all in all.
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| Cher Álvarez as Lou and Travis A. Knight as James. Photo by Teresa Castracane Photography. |
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