Weekly Margin 2026, W43: The Ask, Bitcoin Bad Boy, Fish

10/20/26: The Ask

What: A new two-hander from Matthew Freeman about a meeting between a fundraiser for the ACLU and a wealthy donor who has been reconsidering her contributions based on what she perceives as shifting priorities incompatible with the organization's core mission.

And? The main crux here is the generational (and ultimately cultural) divide between a Boomer liberal and a Gen Z leftie, both believing passionately in the mission of the organization but at odds for the priorities of advocacy within that. And it's not that it's an uninteresting topic--the question of past fights won or lost weighed against current battles still in the trenches is one worth exploring. But it's not explored in the most interesting manner here. There's not a tremendous amount of insight offered for the full lives of either character outside the broad sketches of their demographic. There's tension in how fundraiser Tanner has to shape their responses to donor Greta, cognizant the entire time that hundreds of thousands of dollars are on the line for how this conversation concludes. But it's not really enough when I'm not invested in the characters, and neither side of the argument is going to effectively win over an audience member on the other side of the debate. There's some empathy to be gained, in understanding how each character believes what they believe (and very fine performances from Marilu Henner and especially Shannon Purser), but it's not enough and ultimately just feels like I'm reading a well-structured (and respectful) comments section.

Marilu Henner as Greta and Shannon Purser as Tanner.
Photo by Joan Marcus.

10/21/26: Bitcoin Bad Boy

What: As part of Chain Theatre's Factory Series, Inferno presents Ben Schiller's sequel to the 2024 Happenstance. Newly released crypto-coder Charlie must decide between embracing the more lucrative and corrupt side of cryptocurrency or insist on transparency and freedom.

And? full review here

Foreground: Gianna Hoffman as Sallie.
Background: Jack Orrico as Dan and Gloria
Sangirardi Jung as Barbara. Photo courtesy
of the production.

10/22/26: Fish

What: Melis Aker's play about a teenage girl who, trying to bypass her mother's efforts to see if her brother was recruited into a terrorist organization, begins catfishing ISIS members into sending her money.

And? The unfolding narrative is interesting, even if the performances are, by and large, not subtle (and the accent work unfortunately inconsistent). Emma Finckel's scenic design, the shiny tile panels of a swimming pool that turn strikingly modular depending on scene location, is excellent, simple, and smart.

Yasmin Ranz-Lind as Karya. Photo by Joan Marcus.

Weekly Margin 2026, W42: Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library

10/13/26: Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library

What: Luna Stage and Richard Jordan Productions with Traverse Theatre present Jenny Lynn Bader's play covering Hannah Arendt's arrest and interrogation that immediately preceded her escape from Germany and the rise of the Nazi party.

And? There are some elements here of environmental tension and threat, but not enough. Hannah is kept in isolation in a basement prison cell for several days, not knowing if her mother (also arrested) is safe. She doesn't know if she will be released. She has no contact with the outside world. It isn't until a lawyer lies his way into her cell that she even knows she's being charged with treason. And yet this woman seems never unsure, never unsafe. It's never once clear that she's deliberately manipulating her interrogator and obfuscating her motives. She has no emotional journey because she starts where she ends, never really fearing she could be tortured or killed at any moment. Her interrogator Karl, then, is the character with an actual arc and journey: that of a green and insecure officer putting on bravado but eventually being won over enough to assist her in escaping punishment. And as it's not clear if he's making this exception for just her or if she really has turned him around on "the Jewish question," I therefore don't know why I should care much about the journey of a Jew-hater.

Ella Kaille as Hannah. Photo by Valerie Terranova.

Weekly Margin 2026, W40: Anon, Burning Leaves, Degenerates, Slam Frank

9/30/26: Anon: A Tempest at Our Kitchen Table

What: MCC presents Anne Washburn's newest play. In a suburb of San Antonio, a middle aged gay couple moves into a neighborhood across  the street from a family whose matriarch is knee-deep in the QAnon conspiracy swamp. As paranoia grows in both households, a violent confrontation feels more and more inevitable under the flashing lightning and booming thunder of a gathering storm.

And? This is pretty great. The overlay of the teenage daughter's work with King Lear is perhaps not subtle, but it is consistently satisfying; and her discussion of the difference between a monologue and a soliloquy sheds a perspective on how broken down online discourse has become that I hadn't actually considered before. A soliloquy isn't a conversation, like a monologue can be. Neither is a screed on X or a conspiracy-laden TikTok. They're bellowing into a void or at an imagined audience. As act two opened, I did one of those knowing chuckles of "ah right, this is an Anne Washburn play," but don't want to spoil more than that. At the end of the play, well ... I didn't realize we were at the end of the play. But otherwise I thought it was pretty great theater.

dots's scenic design is an interestingly spare and liminal space: a long wooden kitchen table in a room bare of other furniture or any art on the wall. To either side of the room, half-behind a scrim are cardboard boxes, but the question remains if the families are moving in or moving out, or--in the case of Jeanie's family--never quite finished moving in a year later. The concept for Cha See's lighting design is less clear to me. The general illumination of the space is fine, but I was continually distracted by the columns of round lights framing the space, and the significance of which lights were lit at different times. I didn't manage to resolve this by the end of the production, but I'm assuming it didn't distract anyone who isn't the kind of nerd I am. Good cast all around, especially Crystal Finn as the strident Jeanie and Izabel Mar as her outspoken daughter.

Izabel Mar as Delia and Crystal Finn as Jeanie.
Photo by Monique Carboni.

10/01/26: Burning Leaves

What: TOSOS presents the world premiere of Tom Rowan's play about Matt, a former New York actor, seeks a new start as a high school drama teacher in a small town in Illinois. As he attempts to engage the children on local events by encouraging them to craft a devised docuplay about the question of a nuclear power plant being built in their dying factory town, he encounters Jesse, a troubled young student with acting potential but a strong resistance to engagement as he wrestles with his sexuality. 

And? full review here.

Foreground: Campbell Idol as Jesse. Background: Sophie
Tanabaum as Hallie, Becky Rusch as Alicia, and Brady Dalton
Richards as Matt. Photo by Mikiodo.

Margin Notes: Slam Frank

Slam Frank

Olivia Bernábe as Anita and Walker Stovall as
ASM. Photo by Shawn Salley Photography.

Seen on: Saturday, 10/03/26.

Plot and Background

Inspired by a viral tweet asking if Anne Frank ever acknowledged her white privilege, Joel Sinensky and Andrew Fox conceived Slam Frank: The Anne-Frank Afro-Latin Hip-Hop Musical. Following a hit run with Asylum NYC, the encore production comes to the Orpheum Theatre. The premise of this production is a progressive theater attempts to retell Anne Frank's story while including as many diverse identities as possible, from ethnicity to gender to sexuality to neurodiversity.

Thoughts:

Play: We open with the "Artistic Director" of a progressive theater company standing onstage to introduce the show, beginning with a land acknowledgment which stutters to a stop when he can't remember the name of the indigenous people who originally lived here. He then goes on to explain his attempt as a cis white male to make space for other identities to express themselves, and the audience is chuckling along, knowingly acknowledging the performative wokeness and over-correcting we are about to witness in longform. And then we're in it, with Anita--not Anne--rapping into a hand-held mic about writing in her diary.

As the show goes on, the various characters emerge as one marginalized identity or another--or many intersectional ones. Anita is a Latina teen told to repress her ethnic identity to be more commercial (even as the ghost of her Abuela encourages her to remember who she is). Edith, Anne's mother, is a proud Black woman in a bold African print dress, who continually breaks the fourth wall to remind us that this is happening "today"--both the today of 1944 but also the today of 2026. Otto, her husband, is every neurodiverse identity the writers can throw at the wall, while also a closeted homosexual. The family Van Daan, hiding in the attic with the Franks, consist of Mr. Van Daan, the cis white villain; Mrs. Van Daan, a repressed woman on a journey of self-actualization; and Peter, their child who comes out as nonbinary (this of course leads to Anita discovering this must mean she's pansexual). Peter's number, the enjoyable tuneful "Non-Binary," is a showstopper coming-out for all characters (except Mr. Van Daan and Margot--hang on, we'll get to her in a moment), featuring each ripping off their yellow stars in favor of stars with the flag colors for their respective identities, complete with pronouns. The show-within-a-show and its characters are so enamored of exploring these identities that the actual circumstances of the Franks and Van Daans hiding in an attic are forgotten: at one point a character brings up the Nazis, and Anita, bewildered, replies, "the what?" That's the point, though: the writers takes the deliberate approach of appropriating a story without addressing the real circumstances, à la Cole Escola's conscious decision to not do any research when writing O, Mary! (reinforced especially in Slam Frank by the mispronunciation of character names: the t in Margot shouldn't be silent, for example). The extent of that appropriation--taking a story explicitly about the attempted annihilation of the Jewish people and making it explicitly about anyone else (reducing Jewish people, as unfortunately is happening a lot right now, to "white Europeans")--reaches full expression with Anita's sister Margot. Margot is the only character remotely coded as Jewish: lighting Shabbat candles and wearing a scarf over her hair. She's also the only character who doesn't speak.

Margin Notes 2026, W38: The Cherry Orchard

9/16/26: The Cherry Orchard

What: Park Avenue Armory hosts the North American premiere of Chekhov's classic, as adapted by Simon Stone. This production moves the story from Russia  to Seoul, South Korea.

And? It's very visually striking (props to scenic designer Saul Kim), and I really appreciate the pared-down adaptation. I don't often have much patience for Chekhov, but this version worked well for me. It's a compelling study of nostalgia versus naked ambition, of stubborn denial versus practicality and cynicism, and of course of the changing mentalities around class structure. The cast is very strong, particularly Jeon Do-yeon as the dreamy and brittle Song Do-young (Madame Lyubov Andreievna Ranevskaya) and Park Hae-soo as her foil, the practical and passionate Hwang Doo-sik (Yermolai Alexeievitch Lopakhin). As with Simon Stone's production of Yerma, this show faces a few aural challenges by placing its cast behind glass walls for so much of the show. They're all clearly miked, but the sound mix offers no assistance in locational listening: many times I wouldn't realize the primary dialogue scene had moved to a different room, because the sound was all coming from the same place. This, coupled with the need to read the supertitles, made following some scenes a particular challenge, especially early on and with overlapping scenes. I'm still very glad I saw it--some excellent work here.

The cast of The Cherry Orchard.
Photo by Studio AL, LG Arts Center.

Margin Notes 2026, W34: Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody, The Winter's Tale, A Walk on the Moon, Paranormal Activity

8/17/26: Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody

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.

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. 

Marsha Stephanie Blake as Paulina, Lily Rabe as Hermione,
and Raúl Esparza as Leontes. Photo by Joan Marcus.

Weekly Margin 2026, W33: An American Daughter

8/15/26: An American Daughter

What: La Femme Theatre Productions presents Wendy Wasserstein's play about the maelstrom incited by some candid remarks by Dr. Lyssa Dent Hughes, the 1997 nominee for Attorney General. Inspired in part by Hillary Clinton's comments about not just being a homemaker, the play is an examination of acceptable female roles and the toxic and proscriptive discourse surrounding them.

And? Not your perfect play, but it's still worthwhile to see a Wasserstein play onstage. The cast is generally great, especially Mary Beth Peil and Dakin Matthews, who remain superb in everything they do. Unfortunately the weakest link is Jean Lichty in the lead role, who doesn't know how to throw away her lines or allow for a variety of flavors and levels in her delivery. Around her, Robert Sean Leonard and Montego Glover try their best as her husband and lifelong best friend, but they can do only so much.

Dakin Matthews as Alan Hughes, Jean Lichty as Lyssa Dent
Hughes, and Robert Sean Leonard as Walter Abrahmson.
Photo by Joan Marcus.

Weekly Margin 2026, W30: Birthright, Belly

7/23/26: Birthright

What: MCC presents Jonathan Spector's new play spanning eighteen years in the lives of six friends in the aftermath of their Birthright trip to Israel (2006, 2006, and 2024). Over the years the characters go through changes big and small: marriage, divorce, children, career reevaluations, substance abuse, and an ever-widening gulf among perspectives on the Jewish state.

And? I love Spector's writing -- he has a real ear for dialogue and conversational rhythm, including and especially how quickly things can spiral out of control -- but this play is weaker story-wise than Eureka Day and This Much I Know, both of which I saw last season. Though each act features a time jump from the previous, it thankfully doesn't take too much of a lift to catch the audience up on what we missed, especially if we managed to catch key details from the projected montage of emails, texts, and social media posts that starts both Acts Two and Three. That out of the way, the individual arc of each act feels a bit thin -- more a drop-in than a story -- and Act Two especially feels more like the audience is being talked at than hearing true interaction between lifelong friends. What can be amazing with works that discuss big ideas and complicated questions is bringing the audience (or reader, when it comes to fiction and poetry) into a place of active listening and empathy, to put a human behind whom we've told ourselves is a monster. And while the characters are well-sketched, there's not quite a story here. I think this play wants to be Heroes of the Fourth Turning but doesn't quite achieve it (interestingly one of the performers here, Zoë Winters, starred in that as well).

This goal is eventually achieved, to a degree, in the third act. Though the audience is yet again subjected to an extended sequence of being talked at, at least in this case it's to a deliberate point. The two women at the extreme ends of the divide among Jewish people in the wake of October 7, 2023, Chaya and Izzy, reach critical mass without fully listening to each other, instead turning to their phones to quickly google other people's essays or Wikipedia articles to prove their point. Both women are talking at each other, not to each other, and both have lost the ability to listen. No longer a conversation, it is now a spoken version of the online screeds yelling into the void at strawman enemies. Mercifully, this explosion finally breaks as we see the very real damage and fallout both Izzy and Chaya have experienced in the wake of the pogrom. To be fully honest, I don't believe that this play will change anyone's mind about the conflict or the talking point "conversation" happening online, but perhaps some will sit with what's said and consider that we're dealing with people who are not trying to be enemies.

Act Three does also bring us an arc we didn't realize was happening, perhaps too subtle to be the A plot, but there all the same: five of the six friends are gathered after shiva for their sixth friend, and as the scene progresses each character speaks of the last time they saw their friend in the months before. Each memory reveals a profound level of connection that showed this person had such a deep well of empathy that none of them saw their friend as the enemy, but someone to whom they could speak openly. This slow reveal is powerful and heartbreaking, and much-needed as a salve after so much anger and bitter hurt. And as they all stand together in a minyan to speak the Kaddish for their friend, their deep connection to this part of themselves is shown, too: deep in their bodies, no matter how nonpracticing they may be, these words are known, are said, without hesitation.

From a design perspective, absolutely genius choices by director Teddy Bergman and the collaboration between projection designer David Bengali and sound designer Lee Kinney. During the climactic argument, as the two women keep diving into their phones to find "evidence," the sound turns unintelligible as if the characters are speaking through water, and the walls behind them are filled with their phone screen searching: an artistic illustration that no one is actually listening to each other. It is only when they are told to put down their phones that they begin to hear.

Final thoughts: great cast, great pacing. Each act runs an hour or a little less, and for all that the evening is three and a half hours, the play never drags, and the show seems to go by fairly quickly: it's a little like A Prayer for the French Republic in that regard, though as mentioned above, not as compelling a narrative as one could wish.

Molly Ranson as Alona, Nate Mann as Emerson, Liz Larsen
as Deborah, Eli Gelb as Noah, Molly Bernard as Izzy, Zoë
Winters as Chaya, and Hale Appleman as Lev.
Photo by Emilio Madrid.

7/24/26: Belly

What: In advance of its run in Edinburgh, Reilly O'Shaughnessy's one woman show Belly runs briefly at 59E59. Belly tells the interwoven narratives of Ellie, a teenager on the swim team whose coach advises her to follow a strict (starvation) diet and exercise routine in order to win a scholarship; Katie, Ellie's aunt, currently expecting her first child and worried she will somehow ruin her fetus's health by eating the wrong food or gaining too much weight; and Susan, Katie's mother and Ellie's grandmother, a grieving widow who keeps to a very strict diet and unconsciously reinforces unhealthy attitudes toward body size and dieting on her descendants. Playwright/performer O'Shaughnessy periodically breaks the fourth wall as herself throughout the narrative of these three women as they struggle with body image issues, grief, and eating disorders, to discuss her own personal experience with them herself.

And? full review here.

Weekly Margin 2026, W29: The Scarlet Pimpernel

7/14/26: The Scarlet Pimpernel

What: In honor of Bastille Day, 54 Below presents a concert of the score from the cult hit/commercial flop (and the first show I saw on Broadway), The Scarlet Pimpernel: a tale of derring-do, disguise, and romance set against the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.

And? Our host of the evening began with "This show opened on Broadway in 1997. And 1998. And 1999." The crowd laughed knowingly, for many of us were members of The League: the fandom for the show during its initial run, and a big reason why the producers kept trying to rescue the show with new director/choreographer and updated script. The feat of a Broadway show closing and reopening twice, each time in a slightly different version, is, I believe, unprecedented and unrepeated. It really was a wild moment to be a part of. Anyway, the evening was fun, with strong voices. The score really holds up. "Into the Fire" will always be one of my favorite musical theater songs; "Prayer" really is an excellent soliloquy; "Falcon in the Dive" is thrilling and feral. The big excitement for me was getting to see William Michals reprise his performance as Chauvelin -- he originally played the role in the first national tour, which I saw twice in LA. His voice is even better now, and it was a real treat to hear him sing the score in such an intimate setting. Afterwards, I got a chance to speak to him briefly, to tell him that I'd seen him in the tour 26 years ago, and how much it meant to hear him tonight. He correctly identified me as a member of The League and offered to take a photo. It was a great night, and I was so happy to share it with my friend Beth, a fellow longtime fan of the show.

Zelda Knapp and William Michals. 2000 photo by Raymond
Knapp. 2026 photo by William Michals.

Weekly Margin 2026, W26: KENREX

6/23/26: KENREX

What: The Lucille Lortel Theatre hosts the true crime thriller by Jack Holden, Ed Stambollouian, and John Patrick Elliott, starring both Holden and Elliott, and directed by Stamboullouian. D.A. David Baird is questioned on the events leading up to the murder of Skidmore terror Kenrex McElroy. Holden plays all roles, including Baird, McElroy, McElroy's attorney Richard Gene McFadin, and the townsfolk of Skidmore, Missouri.

And? Truly excellent stagecraft all around. Holden and Stambollouian's writing is tight and tense, condensing the timeline of events somewhat and rarely letting the audience breathe. Holden's Olivier-winning performance is outstanding as well: thirty-five distinct characters with specific physicality and vocal timbres, among which he shifts so seamlessly that the tension never has a moment to break. His execution of the titular villain Kenrex is particularly terrifying: one shoulder always lifted in a predatory hunch, his hand only a twitch away from his holstered pistol (not seen, just verbally indicated). Stambollouian's vision manages an extraordinary feat: while utilizing one of my favorite theatrical tropes (letting us see how the sausage is made, rather than going for cinematic realism), he also shapes the physicality of the space and Holden's performance with such specific muscularity that you start to forget you're watching one man play an entire town, that this is all just a very visible illusion. But with the combination of John Patrick Elliott's onstage music and Giles Thomas's Olivier-winning sound design simmering beneath every moment, you can't help but feel the danger in the stillness of of Kenrex standing there with hooded eyes and a voice so low and graveled it feels like walking barefoot on an unpaved road at two in the morning. It's a grim story, a dark story, so it's good to know that going in: Kenrex McElroy terrorized his small town for years with theft, arson, sexual assault, and violence by blade and gun. But arming you with that bracer, I cannot recommend this show highly enough.

Jack Holden. Photo by Manuel Harlan.

Weekly Margin 2026, W25: Dame Granny Smith, Beyond Encounters, La Cage aux Folles

 6/18/26: Dame Granny Smith

What: Soho Playhouse hosts ventriloquist David Salter's interview with renowned actress and singer Dame Granny Smith (yes, the apple).

And? A damn delight. Very silly, very funny, and just absolutely wild that he's puppetting a Granny Smith apple.

6/19/26: Beyond Encounters: An Evening of Three One-Act Plays by Hannah Benitez, Miriam Kulick and Lanford Wilson

What: A Betrothal by Lanford Wilson, and two new plays: Bound by Miriam Kulick and The Call by Hannah Benitez.

And? Because this is a new endeavor, they've requested no write-ups, but I still wanted to document it.

6/20/26: La Cage aux Folles

What: New York City Center's Encores! series presents Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein's adaptation of the French film about a gay couple who run a nightclub, whose son is engaged to the daughter of a homophobic politician.

And? It's never been my favorite show, but it's performed joyously here with full orchestra, which is what we want from an Encores! production. Billy Porter is unfortunately struggling with his vocals, especially on shared songs (when he's solo he has the freedom to riff as desired). Wayne Brady is everything smooth and debonair with a wonderful voice. Tonya Pinkins waltzes in to steal any scene she's in, but she has healthy competition from James Jackson, Jr. as the maid Jacob.

Billy Porter, center, as Albin/Zaza with the Cagelles.
Photo by Joan Marcus.

Weekly Margin 2026, W24: The Maids

6/10/26: The Maids

What: St. Ann's Warehouse hosts the Donmar Warehouse's revival of Jean Genet's classic, as adapted by Kip Williams. Two sisters work as maids for a high-maintenance narcissist, but spend their time when she is away playacting as her while they rehearse ways to kill her.

And? I'm glad I finally got to see this play, and Kip Williams certainly knows how to deliver a kinetic and engaging interpretation of it. It's probably a play I'll never actually like, but it's one I can appreciate. Williams's liberal use of iPhone filming with different filters flavors well the contemporary nature of wealth and celebrity enjoyed by Solange and Claire's Madame. Rosanna Vize's scenic design is striking: a room of soft white carpeting, bed, sunken nook sofa, and ceiling-high mirrors, the space is both minimalist and bloated with decadence. Video Designer Zakk Hein enables the mirrored walls to serve double-duty, as a giant screen on which to project the camera feeds of iPhones and iPad: the funhouse mirror writ large over the more literal mirrors. Reflection on reflection on filtered reflection, performative histrionics from both the sisters impersonating their Madame and from Madame herself, an ecstasy of materialism and perception, of envy and love and loathing. All three actors do excellent work, but of particular note for me is Yerin Ha's work as Madame: one moment all tragedy and vulnerability, the next love bombing her two employees, the next her eagle eye catching any perceived liberty taken by them and zeroing in with the coldness of a criminal prosecutor.

Lydia Wilson as Claire (playacting as Madame) and Phia Saban
as Solange. Photo by Julieta Cervantes.

Weekly Margin 2026, W21: Well, I'll Let You Go, Proof, Cable Street, Fallen Angels, Titaníque, Cats: The Jellicle Ball

5/18/26: Well, I'll Let You Go

What: Studio Seaview hosts an encore presentation of Bubba Weiler's play about a newly-widowed woman receiving visitors one by one in the immediate aftermath of her husband's death.

And? This play owes a large debt to Thornton Wilder's Our Town, but it's more than able to pay it back: a narrator explains the layout of the main room in a farmhouse, pointing to a piano we can't see, a sectional couch that for us is just five folding chairs. He sets both the space and the mood in this way, bringing us gently into Maggie's suddenly small world. With each visit from a friend or relative, new detritus is brought into the house: used bowls and coffee mugs, a surfeit of white floral arrangements, an incongruous bouquet of purple balloons, a case of Coors beer, a wheelbarrow full of mulch, a stack of half-opened storage boxes. With each visit, more is unveiled about the man with whom Maggie spent most of her life, the man whom she may not have known as intimately as she thought. Surrounded by a mess as chaotic as the turmoil in her head, Maggie wonders when the last time was she had known real ease.

I really loved this one. It's so delicately and deftly crafted, treating Maggie with the gentle compassion she deserves while simultaneously brutally pulling out the rug from beneath her feet. Jack Serio's direction fully grounds the performances even in this ungrounded space, and earning the transformations revealed later on in the work. Weiler's play is a beautiful study in the stages of grief, and the mess of life we accumulate over time. The play could have been leading to an ending of devastation and emptiness, but instead -- it's still devastating because he's still gone, but it's not empty, what he left behind. The walls that were closing in on Maggie are fading away, leaving her air to breathe and a horizon to see. This play isn't sentimental in the way that Our Town, is -- it won't wallow in that -- but it still knows how to give space to loss. Quincy Tyler Bernstine is remarkable as Maggie, messy and frank and wounded and still here. Matthew Maher's narrator is warm and matter of fact, allowing the actor to stretch muscles I don't often get to see him stretch. Emily Davis, as the mysterious Angela, perfectly balances the tightrope of revelations and tensions her arrival brings.

Danny McCarthy as Jeff, Matthew Maher as Narrator,
and Quincy Tyler Berstine as Maggie. Photo by Emilio Madrid.

5/19/26: Proof

What: Thomas Kail directs the Broadway revival of David Auburn's Pulitzer-winning play about the daughter of a math prodigy, who may be either a math prodigy herself, or as mentally unwell as her father was at the end of his life.

And? It's really hard to get out from under certain shadows. I still have vivid memories from seeing the original Broadway run of Proof with Jennifer Jason Leigh. The hard cut to black after the final line of Act One. The dryness of Catherine's delivery, originated by Mary-Louise Parker, continued by JJL. The too-quick-to-seem-possible scene and costume changes. The sweetness and eagerness of Cathereine's romance with Hal. The genuinely worrying ambiguity regarding the validity of her story, and her quiet monotone voice as she reads aloud her father's proof. All of this remains crystalline clear in my memory, 25 years later. So it's not really fair. If this were my first experience of the play, I'd probably appreciate it a lot more -- it's an amazing play, perfectly constructed. This production is fine, Ayo Edebiri is continuously vibrating as Catherine (simultaneously compelling and exhausting to watch), and Teresa L. Williams's scenic design is striking even if it never lives up to its original promise. The production is fine but it is unable to eclipse my memories of the original run.

Ayo Edebiri as Catherine, Don Cheadle as Robert, and Jin Ha
as Hal. Photo by Matthew Murphy.

Weekly Margin 2026, W19: The Emporium, The Fear of 13, The Censorship of Dreams, The Totality of All Things

5/05/26: The Emporium

What: Classic Stage Company presents Thornton Wilder's unfinished final play about a young orphaned man who dreams of working at an enigmatic department store called The Emporium. Everything is profoundly metatheatrical and self-aware.

And? It's pretty slow, and requires patience for the way in which the story is told. A number of people left at intermission, so it's definitely not for everyone, but I was interested enough to stick around for the whole show. Some of the self-awareness gets a bit twee, and I do wish we could have had Wilder's full intended version of the play, rather than this combination of his drafts and notes and Kirk Lynn's completion of the script. It's a bittersweet exploration of idealism and compromise, and the eternal promise of trying again, and maybe getting it right next time. It lands a bit unsatisfactorily at the end, but I'm still glad I saw the show.

Eva Kaminsky, Derek Smith, Candy Buckley, 
and Mahira Kakkar. Photo by Marc J. Franklin.

5/06/26: The Fear of 13

What: Based on David Sington's documentary, Lindsey Ferrentino's play traces volunteer Jacki Miles's series of visits to Nick Yarris, a man on death row for a murder he claims he didn't commit. Through their conversations, both in person and later over the phone, the play offers a non-linear lookback on the tumultuous youth of Yarris and the poor decisions that led him to spending two decades in prison.

And? David Cromer truly is an excellent director, consistently crafting ensembles into one beautifully cohesive entity, all telling the same story and in the same world (this may sound like a "duh Zelda, that's what directing is," but the last time I saw Tessa Thompson on stage, she and her costars were all awful and because they were all awful in the same way, I blame that director). Adrien Brody and Tessa Thompson do excellent work leading the cast, both performers offering quietly understated but deeply felt portrayals of Nick and Jacki. There's one scene in particular, as they're both struggling to keep that stiff upper lip in the face of a new devastation, that just broke my heart. It's also always a treat to see Ephraim Sykes and Eddie Cooper onstage, albeit in small roles, especially when they're able to let their voices fly. Arnulfo Maldonado's scenic design, especially under Heather Gilbert's precise lighting, is evocating and haunting without overwhelming the story being told (but goddamn, that one stool ... the final moment with that stool kind of wrecked me). The play itself inside these strong storytelling elements is fine, though some moments feel shoehorned in to achieve faithful adherence to the narrative of the documentary, rather than taking narrative liberties that come with any adaptation, to tell a coherent story.

The  cast of The Fear of 13. Photo by Emilio Madrid.

Weekly Margin 2026, W18: The Lost Boys, You & Me, Bat Out of Hell, Merrily We Roll Along

4/28/26: The Lost Boys

What: A new musical adaptation of the classic 80s film about vampires.

And? Honestly? I had a great time. Is it a great show for the ages? Debatable. Did I stop listening to lyrics half the time? Maybe. Are the central couple strong actors or can they just sing really well? Very much the second option. Did the final moment annoy me deeply, only to be chased by a post-bow moment that annoyed me even more? Yeah you betcha yeah.

But really, I had a great time. Fantastic stagecraft, especially as it takes advantage of how damn tall the Palace is, both from an audience perspective and the stage itself. We were midway up the mezzanine and still had a great view, with the staging and design utilizing to great advantage three different levels of their scaffolded set. The flying looked fantastic and not even silly. David (the blond Kiefer Sutherland vampire) was properly threatening and charismatic--Ali Louis Bourzgui can do no wrong, as far as I can tell. The show leans into the campier aspects unapologetically, especially in the ridiculous Act Two opener (no spoilers). The Frog Brothers (Jennifer Duka and Miguel Gil) are delightful, younger brother Sam (Benjamin Pajak) is adorakable, Paul Alexander Nolan perfectly walks the subtle line of video store owner Max, and the always-excellent Shoshana Bean belts to the ceiling and back again. I don't remember the film well enough to speak to the musical's faithfulness to the source material, but Sax Guy is there, and they successfully translate a film's three-act structure into a musical's two-act structure.

So, a few nits to pick, mentioned above, but still fun theater.

LJ Benet as Michael and Ali Louis Bourzgui as David, with
the cast of The Lost Boys. Photo by Matthew Murphy.

4/29/26: You & Me

What: A year after college student Delilah opened fire on campus, killing eleven people before killing herself, friends of both the murderer and the deceased gather for a memorial at their local diner. Attendees include Delilah's twin sister Chloe, her ex-girlfriend Mac, and a movie star in town to research an upcoming role. Over the course of one day, Chloe continues her pursuit to uncover why her sister did what she did, and friends and enemies alike reveal damning truths along the way.

And? full review here.

Courtnie Keaton as Mac and Brianne Buishas as Chloe.
Photo by Filip Rucewicz.

Margin Notes: You & Me

You & Me

Courtnie Keaton as Mac and Brianne
Buishas as Chloe. Photo by Filip Rucewicz.

Seen on: Wednesday, 4/29/26.

Plot Summary

A year after college student Delilah opened fire on campus, killing eleven people before killing herself, friends of both the murderer and the deceased gather for a memorial at their local diner. Attendees include Delilah's twin sister Chloe, her ex-girlfriend Mac, and a movie star in town to research an upcoming role. Over the course of one day, Chloe continues her pursuit to uncover why her sister did what she did, and friends and enemies alike reveal damning truths along the way.

Thoughts:

I'll be honest, I wish I didn't have a visceral sense memory of watching the news about a mass shooting in my hometown, frantically calling my mom and friends to see if they were alive. I wish I didn't have a more recent memory of the same trauma with coworkers at my office last year. Horribly, I'm sure I'm not the only audience member reliving a memory like that while watching the characters onstage live through it, too. What's awful about an incident like this is not just that your world changes completely, irrevocably -- the solid ground you thought you knew now an unsteady raft in a churning ocean -- but how the world keeps going anyway. Life keeps going. You keep going. You may be frozen inside, but you're still breathing and eating and your eyes blink and your feet move you from place to place. Playwright and director Anthony M. Laura's work wrestles with that internal division: Chloe is unable to move on from the moment her sister destroyed the world, thinking if she can only pause that moment, or even rewind, she could find a way to, if not undo, at least understand what happened. But she's surrounded by people attempting to move forward with their lives, to find new paths and meaning beyond the worst thing that ever happened to them. Mac is leaving town, Leighton wants to go into politics, Paris is selling her family diner, Ellie is going to RADA, and Aurora has already left town and gotten engaged. And Theo, the man who gave Delilah the guns, is nowhere to be found. They're not all in the acceptance stage of their grief by any means, but Chloe is the only one perpetually lost in the bargaining stage.

Weekly Margin 2026, W17: What Happened Was ..., Every Brilliant Thing, Becky Shaw, The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington

4/21/26: What Happened Was ...

What: Audible's Minetta Lane Theatre presents a revival of Tom Noonan's two-hander about an awkward first date between two coworkers who both feel a bit at sea in a life that hasn't turned out how they thought it would.

And? Great performances from both Corey Stoll and Cecily Strong, particularly Strong's reading of her character's grim and explicit "children's story." I appreciate that the play doesn't attempt to land on a sweet button that has not been earned by the preceding moments. Instead, it chooses to highlight the persisting loneliness of both characters, whether or not they will ultimately be able to cross their divide to find companionship in each other.

Corey Stoll as Michael and Cecily Strong as Jackie.
Photo by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade.

4/22/26: Every Brilliant Thing

What: Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe's one-person interactive show, currently starring Daniel Radcliffe (but soon to be starring Mariska Hargitay), about a young man's attempt to reckon with his mother's recurring uncompleted suicides and his own depression, by making a list of "every brilliant thing" that makes life better. A number of audience members are drafted, to either read out individually numbered brilliant things (number one is ice cream), or to play characters in the young man's life, including father, spouse, and a nice couple in a hospital who give him a juice box (which he promptly returns because he doesn't like it).

And? Radcliffe is everything charming, a ball of energy whose battery never seems to peter out, even when getting into the heavier parts of the story. But in all honesty, even with its purportedly heavy topic, the play itself never feels that heavy. The concept/conceit of the show is exciting, but suffers in execution (it's often hard to hear the brilliant things being called out by audience members, and the audience-character-stand ins are, of course, inconsistent). And the whole thing just lacks a certain heft for it to really follow me home. I'm not saying I needed the gut punch of Macmillan's other work, People, Places and Things, but PPT knew how to land satisfyingly. EBT has a lighter heart than PPT, but it should still be able to land satisfyingly. It was a fine time, but not a great time.

Daniel Radcliffe. Photo by Matthew Murphy.

Weekly Margin 2026, W16: The Receptionist

4/16/26: The Receptionist

What: 2nd Stage presents Adam Bock's play about a gossiping receptionist in a suburban three-person office -- the northeast branch of an unnamed company. The seemingly innocuous office comedy takes a dark turn when Mr. Raymond, the senior employee who's been running inexplicably late, finally arrives to report on his client meeting from the day before.

And? I'm being deliberately coy because this show is still so early in previews and it's so much better to go in cold on this one. The play lands itself in a much more disturbing place than it started, and Bock achieves that journey deftly, imperceptibly, the red flags masquerading themselves until we examine them retroactively. The play becomes an exploration of the pretty sheen that can mask brutal fascism, as well as the dangers of complicity: the devil will always come for his due. All four cast members are great, led by the inimitable Katie Finneran, who can mine any line for humor or pathos in a way that no one else can.

Weekly Margin 2026, W15: Echoes of My Silence, Scorched Earth

4/09/26: Echoes of My Silence

What: As part of the Frigid/New York City Fringe Festival, Azadeh Kangarini's autobiographical one-woman show plays at the Chain Theatre. Her piece follows the path of her silence in the face of externalized and internalized misogyny through the various men whose molestations through the years of her life have made her question herself and her own relationship with her body.

And? full review here.

Azadeh Kangarani. Photo by Nathan Zhe.

4/11/26: Scorched Earth

What: St. Ann's Warehouse presents Attic Projects' production of Luke Murphy's choreographic play about a cold case over a death ruled accidental at the center of a land dispute in Ireland.

And? Absolutely stunning choreography: fluid and athletic and almost weightless, bodies seeming to be falling up from the ground, a collapse in reverse. The dance often separates itself from literal storytelling, dilating emotional moments and crises, fixations and mysteries. So while the ostensible frame is the 24 hours a man is held for questioning as a cold case is reopened in which he is the prime suspect for a murder, there are diversions to the late night walker who found the body, the damage to the body itself, the missing donkey, and the farmer's affection for the land he's losing that volleys between love and desire: a distinction noted in the work of giving versus taking. The final sequence, as the walls fall away to reveal the tract of land, a steep hill with a deep loam, is a gorgeous expansion of space and bodies in motion.

The company of Scorched Earth. Photo by Teddy Wolff.

Weekly Margin 2026, W13: The Unknown, Trash

3/25/26: The Unknown

What: Studio Seaview presents David Cale's new one-man show starring Sean Hayes, about playwright Elliott struggling with writer's block who finds himself the object of fixation by an actor rejected from the casting of his last play. As the details surrounding this actor become more convoluted, Elliott finds himself equally fixated on his stalker.

And? David Cale is truly adept at writing a showcase monologue (he also wrote the wonderful Harry Clarke, played with seedy charm by Billy Crudup), and this one showcases Sean Hayes very well. Deliberately murky while luring the audience further into the mire with every twist, Cale's play is excellently set off by the subtle but chilling design work of director Leigh Silverman's team. Under Cha See's stark, tight lighting, set pieces by Studio Bent appear and disappear as if conjured from Elliott's imagination. Elliott's hand drifts into shadow and reemerges holding a glass of whiskey. What was the brick backwall of the space now has a looming apartment door. And Caroline Eng's sound design, chilling and subtle, delicately cinches the audience in closer to Elliott's increasingly fractured sense of reality. Is he imagining Joey? Is Joey imagining him? What is true and what is hallucination and what is just hopeful dreaming? Though the play deliberately leaves the ending ambiguous as to whose story we've been watching, it's enough to hear the audience slowly filing out, eagerly debating what the truth could be.

Sean Hayes. Photo by Emilio Madrid.

3/27/26: Trash

What: Perelman Performing Arts Center hosts Out of the Box Theatrics's new play by and starring James Caverly and Andrew Morrill. Two Deaf roommates, at odds with each other and with the hearing world, argue over whose responsibility it is to take out the trash, as well as unpacking the reasons for why things have become such a mess: the trash of their own lives and baggage, and the literal stinking trash can in the kitchen.

And? The storytelling conceits here are fascinating. I was talking to a friend about the challenge of presenting Deaf theater to a largely hearing audience: the need to always accommodate the hearing audience, all the while mainstream theater often offering very limited means of accommodating a Deaf audience. This, then, is reclaiming the narrative by nature of who is telling it: a play written by and starring two Deaf men, and presented by Out of the Box, whose mission is to center stories about marginalized identities, with a focus on people with disabilities. At the performance I attended, at least half of the audience was either Deaf or fluent in ASL. And a huge chunk of the play is communicated only in ASL or the occasional handwritten message on a dry erase board.  I could say that this means I am not the primary audience, and I'm probably not; but the truth is, while I don't always grasp the nuance of a particular moment in the way the Deaf audience members do, I am still able to follow the characters' conflicts and emotional journeys. And then there's the slightly fantastical device: a jukebox rescued from an arcade. While outsiders observe that it's odd for two Deaf men to keep blasting music, for the audience, every dollar fed to the jukebox (here embodied by Chris Ogren in a smart black suit) awakens an English-speaking interpreter for the characters signing onstage. For the hearing audience, we are temporarily admitted into the conversation. For the Deaf audience, not much has changed. The show isn't for me, but it is letting me visit. In this way, it's a very generous invitation to the hearing world into what is often a very isolated community, as Deaf people are largely excluded from a mainstream society unwilling or unable to learn their language. One of the questions of the play is if it's worth the bigger lift on the part of ostracized Deaf to try to assimilate as much as possible into an audist world, or if it's better to live where they won't be treated as children or second-class citizens, as people not worth hearing. That's the macro. The micro is how Tim and Jake can bridge their own communication divide, as well as trying to wrangle a lifetime of baggage weighing them down.

Andrew Morrill as Tim, James Caverly as Jake, and Chris
Ogren as Jukebox. Photo by Rebecca J. Michelson.