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.

Margin Notes: Belly

Belly

Seen on: Friday, 7/24/26.

Plot and Background

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.

Thoughts:

"Is there a food that makes you feel safe?" Reilly asks the audience and answers for herself: while in recovery for her eating disorder, Honey Nut Cheerios felt safe to eat. Even as O'Shaughnessy's play tells three specific stories -- and a bit of her own -- it also easily opens the door for the audience to contemplate their own history with body dysmorphia, fear of weight gain, fear of failure, fatphobia in the medical field and in schools, generational diet culture, and the overwhelming sensation in society that one must make oneself as small as possible in order to be considered worthy. It's all profoundly relatable. The euphoria of seeing the number on the scale go down, of feeling proud of sticking to a diet, but always chased so quickly by intrusive thoughts of being "bad" for craving or even consuming sugar, of failure when the number on the scale goes up. Throughout the seventy-minute show I could hear people crying and sniffling, not only for the grief of the characters onstage but also for their own history. While Ellie struggles with her declining health, she remembers "I used to be able to feel my edges in the pool. Like, be able to feel where I was, where I started, where I stopped ... And now? I can't feel anything."

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, W23: Julius Caesar, Becoming Hamlet

 6/03/26: Julius Caesar

What: Smith Street Stage presents Shakespeare's play about politics, intrigue, and the slaying of Julius Caesar.

And? I was excited to see this one, as I've been meaning to get out to Brooklyn to see a show from Smith Street Stage for a while now (the co-founder is someone I went to both high school and college with). Smith Street does an excellent job of embracing its surroundings: they perform in Carroll Park, with children playing around and behind, traffic passing, and the sun slowly setting as the story continues. Indeed, for this play in particular, what begins in the seeming broad light of day -- a self-righteous plot to assassinate a ruler feared to be despotic -- descends slowly into the gloom of evening as political maneuvering and violence take hold. With the falling light comes illumination from stage lights, a refusal to let these deeds sink into darkness. I know this happens with any evening outdoor theater (heck, we see it at the Delacorte every summer), but it is especially effective with this narrative. The company tells the story well, without ornamentation or self-indulgence. Louis Butelli's Caesar is affable and diffident and surprisingly frail when not wearing his power suit. Amara James Aja's Brutus has a quiet power and dominating presence that draws the attention whenever he is onstage. His foil, Bryce Foley's Antony, has a different power, almost catlike in his spatial awareness, physicality, and strategizing. Though clearly dismissed by the senators as someone with no political power, he demonstrates first in his funerial speech and later in his battle prowess that he is not a man to be easily overpowered or outwitted. Katie Wilmmorth's Cassius is earnest and sharp, the full polish of someone who knows how to play the political game, but knows less how to win a war fought on the ground. Jonathan Minton manages to make his comparatively smaller character, Casca, highly memorable with his dry delivery and confidence demeanor.

6/04/26: Becoming Hamlet

What: The Shakespeare Forum continues its investigation of the fracturing of Shakespeare protagonists into parts, to see what different aspects emerge, having explored this theme in their past productions of Lear, Titus, and Othello[s]. In those productions the roles were shared across the company; in this workshop the role of Hamlet is shared among the audience, the Facilitators, and by the actor playing Hamlet. In this way the audience is encourage to bring their own selves and experiences to the role and the story. The rest of the roles do not rotate among performers, as in past Forum explorations.

And? I really like the concept behind the experiment they're conducting here, and they lay out the format and boundaries early on, including asking audience members individually if they are comfortable participating in this way. The experiment is most effective if you fully buy in: not knowing when they might be called upon to repeat one of Hamlet's lines to dilate the moment, or even exchange dialogue with another character, the audience must choose to be actively present rather than quietly passive. In this way, I was emotionally invested in each moment, with less of the analytical lens I usually wear to theatrical experiences. Hamlet's words become our words. Claudius's smiling condescension to Hamlet is irksome, the sight of Hamlet's dead father is heartbreaking, and the revelation of Ophelia's death is devastating. The intimate and earnest portrayals by the ensemble equally reenforce this personal experience: these are real people who love us (or don't). So when they had me speak Hamlet's confrontation with Laertes at Ophelia's grave, I was already crying at the sight of her, dead and lost forever.

One of the larger challenges with this sort of experiment is the question of pace and rhythm. These challenges can be massaged with further work (again, this is a workshop, not a full production), but as it currently stands there is often air between lines of dialogue -- or even amid soliloquies where an audience member trades lines with the actor playing Hamlet -- which dissolve the immediacy of the  moment, as well as break up thoughts into disconnected phrases. A challenge, too, is the balance Damon Horowitz (who co-directs with Sybille Bruun as well as physically embodying Hamlet onstage) must strike between performing the role and functioning -- as the program indicates -- as our Hamlet Guide. His performance then feels more like teacher than character, a curious void among so much feeling. It's especially hard if the audience member speaking meets him on that level, rather than attempting to engage with the line as their own individual self. This is why the buy-in helps: hear the words, speak the words, see the other characters, and take this personal journey. But it's an unusual sort of vulnerability to bring to a show, and not everyone is comfortable doing that. Perhaps that ready comfort was easier for me because of how well I know the text, as well as how much love I have for my memories of Forum and for its founders Tyler Moss and Sybille Bruun, who both perform in this as well.

Weekly Margin 2026, W20: American, Italian, Giant, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, MCC Miscast 2026

5/11/26: American, Italian

What: SOOP Theatre presents the world premiere of Anthony P. Pennino's new play, as part of The Chain Theatre's 2026 The Factory Series. Pennino's play follows a family of second- and third-generation Italians, as teenager Gio and his older cousin Vin attempt to navigate the expectations of their fathers and their own inner demons. As Vin descends into addiction, Gio tries to keep him from drowning.

And? full review here.

Donovan Counts as Gio and Dante Palminteri
as Vin. Photo by Grace Romanello.

5/12/26: Giant

What: Mark Rosenblatt's play exploring celebrated children's author Roald Dahl and his antisemitism, in the wake of his incendiary book review of Tony Clifton's God Cried, in which equated Jewish people with Nazis.

And? I was pretty wary going into this show, and I don't think I would have gotten a ticket without having it vetted by more than one Jewish friend. I was worried the show would somehow try to let Dahl off the hook, on the strength of his writing and how much his books mean to people. I was also worried I'd be sitting within a hostile audience ready to applaud some of his rhetoric, since antisemitism has become more and more permissible in recent years. But the audience was very well-behaved, not stopping the dialogue to applaud certain arguments, as if we were watching a debate (I really hate how often that happens at shows these days -- it happened a lot when I saw The Ally and it was distracting and disheartening). And Giant does not let Dahl off the hook. A note in the program indicates that, while aspects of the play itself are invented, both the text of his review and every word of the phone call that ends the play are verbatim. There is no hiding from what he said, in print and on the record to a reporter. And, as a great relief to me, the repudiation of his outrageous statements, delivered by a young Jewish woman representing his publisher, is clear and firm--and is everything I wish I could say to the people spouting hate-speech at every Jewish person they see. Chillingly, every cruelty spouted by Dahl is one we're still hearing today, with new rigor. Forty years after the founding of Israel as a sovereign state, Dahl was calling for its dissolution; forty years later now, people are calling for that yet again. Everything old is new again, and I wish this play wasn't as timely as it is.

John Lithgow is perfectly cast as Dahl -- not just because he bears an uncanny resemblance to the man, but because he moves so effortless, almost imperceptibly, from the avuncular if tetchy beloved children's book author to a chilling manipulator, glaring out with cold reptilian loathing and spitting insults like he's throwing darts in a pub. We knew Lithgow had that ability to turn on a dime from his run as Trinity on Dexter, but it's a treat to see him do it live in front of us. A treat, and profoundly unnerving. Aya Cash, as the main focus of his venom, is a worthy adversary, masking her iron spine with the friendly and slightly apologetic veneer women in the corporate world often adopt to smooth any ruffled feathers.

Aya Cash as Jessie Stone and John Lithgow as Roald Dahl.
Photo by Joan Marcus.

Margin Notes: American, Italian

American, Italian

Seen on: Monday, 5/11/26.

Donovan Counts as Gio and
Dante Palminteri as Vin.
Photo by Grace Romanello.

Plot and Background

SOOP Theatre presents the world premiere of Anthony P. Pennino's new play, as part of The Chain Theatre's 2026 The Factory Series. Pennino's play follows a family of second- and third-generation Italians in the 1980s, focusing on teenager cousins Gio and Vin navigating the expectations of their fathers and their own inner demons. As Vin descends into addiction, Gio tries to keep him from drowning.

Thoughts:

Pennino's play feels deeply personal: a study of an Italian family who still very much feel the invisible wall between "white" America and their relatively new status, not yet allowed past their conditional stage. This is a family afraid of failure but taking pride in the success of Italian Americans like Frank Sinatra and Mayor LaGuardia. While 17-year-old Gio is supported in his academic ambitions by his father Frank, 19-year-old Vin is regularly abused, both verbally and physically, by Frank's older brother Vincenzo. White collar Frank creates space for autistic Gio to exist safely; blue collar Vincenzo refuses to even consider the idea that Vin's academic struggles might be chalked up to dyslexia. Despite their disparate upbringings and support, Gio and Vin remain fiercely close, each thinking they're the one looking out for their "younger brother." But as the play goes on and Vin's addition to heroin worsens, he finds his support structures slip away one by one: a father who turns him out, a sister who won't--or can't--help him, an ex-girlfriend who needs distance, and an absent uncle. Gio tries to be all that Vin needs, but even Vin can see that's not enough, if he is unable to save himself.

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.

Margin Notes: The Censorship of Dreams

The Censorship of Dreams

Seen on: Thursday, 5/07/26.

Jess Dugger as Ellie and Kat Warnusz-Steckel
as Professional. Photo by Marina Levitskaya.

Plot

In a time not too far from now, society exists under an increasingly restricted vocabulary: citizens, with no memory of the time before the Restart, go to the "Post Office" to sell their dreams, and receive daily words on little slips of paper, to eat and immediately forget. The stated goal is the erasure of conflict and dissatisfaction, but the central couple, Thomas and Ellie, struggle to navigate their relationship with each other and with the world, when they have fewer and fewer words with which to do so.

Thoughts:

As the audience enters the space we see an uncanny valley display of a couple at home in spartan domesticity: two school desks face each other, and a young woman in a mint green cardigan (a sweet and nervy Jess Dugger) sits in one, sipping from a clear square glass of water. A young man in an autumn polo (an earnest and bewildered Bryce Michael Wood) paces in slow motion the inner perimeter of their white-painted floor. Encasing them both, like bars on a cage at the zoo, are plastic strips covered in lines of text, the most notable reading in large font "DON'T LET THE PRINTER EAT YOU." Further surrounding the couple's cage are low barriers, as if to prevent the audience from getting too close to an art piece in a museum. And there, against one side of the space, the stepped platforms normally used for audience seating now display pair after pair of used shoes, low-lit as if they are rare books at the Morgan Library. Scenic and lighting designer Christopher Annas-Lee has built a mysterious puzzle box, a display case of humanity preserved by a docent who doesn't quite remember the meaning behind the moment. Is this a place from which the characters can escape to a life more like the one we know now? Or is this all that's left of a dying society, struggling through the last gasps before extinction?

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.

Margin Notes: Echoes of My Silence

Echoes of My Silence

Seen on: Thursday, 4/09/26.

Azadeh Kangarani. Photo by Nathan Zhe.

Plot and Background

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.

Thoughts:

Azadeh Kangarani stands onstage in slacks and a burnt orange blouse. She is calm, warm, collected. A woman who knows who she is and loves who she is. Behind her are six vertical mirrors: some single pieces, some a column of smaller mirrors. She lifts the seventh mirror, a horizontal one leaning at her side, and walks through the audience, asking us "How often do you look at your face?" As she tells her story, a mix of memories from the most recent--an encounter with a female pilot whose sight forces Kangarani to reckon with her own internal biases--to the most distant--a memory of a man exposing himself to her when she was only nine years old. For each story she tells, she wrestles with her guilt over how many times she held her tongue as men took advantage of her. Why was she silent each time? Why didn't she let the world know about yet another violation? Silence after silence, echoing through her life. For each memory, one of the vertical mirrors behind her is assigned an identity and an initial for his name. Though each represents a man who tried to steal her autonomy, who pressured her to quash her own sense of her worth and voice, they are all still each a mirror. She has named them, but if she turns to look at them dead on, she will see only herself. Even this, the performance of her wrestling with her self-imposed guilt, has her seeing her own face as the perpetrator of her trauma. She's not being fair to herself. But it's an honest examination of how survivors of this sort of assault do not know how to be fair to themselves. Her piece brings her face to face with her own shames, but also her survival of each of them. And she invites the audience to do the same: face that in ourselves which we are most afraid to see, and discover that in ourselves that we most love to see. The silence doesn't have to echo on, once we are able to speak.

Weekly Margin 2026, W12: Monte Cristo, Our House, My Joy is Heavy, The Wild Party

3/18/26: Monte Cristo

What: The York Theatre presents a new musical adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas classic novel about revenge and love.

And? full review here.

Norm Lewis as Villefort. Photo by Shawn Salley.

3/19/26: Our House

What: The Other Side of Silence presents Barry Boehm's new play, about elder queer couple Andy and Stanley hosting their nephew Brendan and his fiancé Gene for their upcoming wedding. When smalltown bigotries of racism and homophobia rear their ugly heads, old griefs and new pains are exposed.

And? This play is very difficult to watch, not because of its quality but because of its content. Though Andy and Stanley survived the worst of the AIDS crisis, with Andy a vocal and passionate fighter with ACT UP, they've settled into the family home in a rather small town with no queer community to speak of. And while they're frustrated by the harassment of local young men pelting their yard with walnuts, the underlying awareness of the danger facing Gene, a Black gay man, is felt not just by the audience but by the family onstage. And we all hate that we're right. So it's a difficult play to watch. But it's worth watching. Christopher Borg is particularly affecting as Andy, a mix of loving joy and fiercely bitter anger and heartbreak at what he and his community have lived through, and continue to live through. His final moments, a grief and reconciliation with his husband Stanley is well-earned. Also quite powerful is Jalen Ford as Eugene: quiet and sweet, but carrying an additional burden none of the others in his almost-family can seem to understand. Ford's performance is understated and honest and lived in, which makes it all the more horrible when he's attacked. Scenic designer Evan Frank builds a lovely backyard space for the action, with a fence strung with festive lights. It's notable that this feels more real than the back facade of the house, particularly with its importance to the family: a skeletal structure, with only half its siding covering the inside. But then, what we see is that perhaps a house isn't enough protection from the outside hostility, when the walls aren't as solid as we think.

Christopher Borg as Andy, Nancy Slusser as Paula, CJ DiOrio
as Brendan, and Jalen Ford as Eugene. Photo by Mikiodo.

Weekly Margin 2026, W10: Destination, Dust of Egypt

3/05/26: Destination

What: 4 Girls Film Productions in association with Jarrott Productions present George Ayres's new play. Howard Wright, a retired architect in an assisted living facility, facing only a year left of his life, embarks on a journey to declare his love for "the one that got away" after her engagement is published in the local newspaper. Meanwhile, his daughter wrestles with the what-ifs of her own lost love amidst a struggling marriage.

And? full review here.

3/06/26: Dust of Egypt

What: The Real Artists LLC presents Karin Abarbanel's new play about legendary activist Sojourner Truth. An adult Truth looks back on her youth, when she was newly emancipated from enslavement and fighting in court to rescue and liberate her son Peter, who was illegally sold across state lines from New York to Alabama.

And? full review here.

Margin Notes: Dust of Egypt

Dust of Egypt

Seen on: Friday, 3/06/26.

Jade Cayne as Bell. Photo by Rainer DeLalio.

Plot and Background

The Real Artists LLC presents Karin Abarbanel's new play about legendary activist Sojourner Truth. An adult Truth looks back on her youth, when she was newly emancipated from enslavement and fighting in court to rescue and liberate her son Peter, who was illegally sold across state lines from New York to Alabama.

Thoughts:

Over an empty stage, a man and a woman stand on mirrored balconies running the perimeter of the space, trilling a birdsong and waving their arms, gently flying. As this prologue, a gentle dream of escape and freedom, gives way, Sojourner Truth walks onstage. Bonneted and white shawled, she tells us the story, not of how she became renowned activist and speaker, but of how she accomplished another unusual task: she was one of the first Black woman to win a case against a white man of an enslaved person being sold illegally across state lines. She introduces her younger self, a woman named Bell (played by Jade Cayne with a sweet vulnerability that transforms over the course of the story into a spine of steel and a unswerving sense of self). What follows is a mix of narration by the elder Truth (a stentorian Desi Waters) that lends itself easily into crowd-speaking as she stands behind a podium), re-enactment of Bell's struggle, and that liminal space where Truth and Bell both wrestle with her betrayal of her son, a lingering question of whether forgiveness is ever possible.

Margin Notes: Destination

Destination

Seen on: Thursday, 3/05/26.

Plot and Background

4 Girls Film Productions in association with Jarrott Productions's four-day presentation of George Ayres's new play, as part of Chain Theatre's 2026 The Factory Series. Howard Wright, a retired architect in an assisted living facility, facing only a year left of his life, embarks on a journey to declare his love for "the one that got away" after her engagement is published in the local newspaper. Meanwhile, his daughter wrestles with the what-ifs of her own lost love amidst a struggling marriage.

Thoughts:

Play: Over the course of one day, Howard Wright learns that the woman who got away--a coworker with whom he was infatuated years ago, even while both of them were married--is getting remarried, and he resolves to drive out and offer himself to her instead. His daughter spends this same day meeting with her lover--another one who got away, her high school sweetheart--and finally confronting him about why they broke up so many years ago, only to return to her life just as her father does, a little more weathered but definitely wiser. The theme overall here is missed chances and second chances: can you reclaim what you've lost, or can you at least heal an old scar before moving on? Playwright George Ayres finds a variety of ways to explore this across his band of characters: Howard and his pining for Caroline (and the reveal of her reciprocal pining); Howard's neighbor Gigi and her pining for him; Howard's daughter Jennifer and her lover Robert, each reaching back to an uncapturable past; and Howard's longtime housekeeper Alma, advising from her own experience of letting her true love die without knowing she returned his love, warning Howard not to let his chance go by too. I do feel that the pacing and structure need some reworking: Howard's reunion with Caroline is touchingly bittersweet with a killer final line to the scene, but it's such a satisfying moment that it's almost jarring to realize there are still several scenes to go before everything wraps up, and the final moments of the play don't manage to land with the same satisfy beat of a journey completed.

Weekly Margin 2026, W3: Try/Step/Trip, The Great Escape, Fiddler on the Roof

1/12/26: Try/Step/Trip

What: The Living Word Project presents Dahlak Braithwaite's non-linear interrogation of a young Black man's experience within a court-mandated rehab program, utilizing the the language of hip hop, step, and spoken word.

And? full review here.

Dahlak Brathwaite, center-ish, and the Los Angeles cast of
Try/Step/Trip. Photo by MarKing IV Photography.

1/16/26: The Great Escape

What: Ruthie Scarpino brings her clown, four-year-old Apfel Tucas, to New York with the story of her daring escape from Rosh Hashanah services to find the snack stash at her synagogue.

And? Pretty freaking adorable. Scarpino's well-gifted in the body- and gesture-isolation needed to do effective mime work, and her guileless persona as young Apfel endears her to the audience even as she continually drafts them into helping her physicalize her imaginings and enact the story of her great escape.

Ruthie Scarpino as Apfel Tucas. Photo source.

Margin Notes: Try/Step/Trip

Try/Step/Trip

Seen on: Monday, 1/12/26.

The Los Angeles cast of Try/Step/Trip.
Photo by MarKing IV Photography.

Plot and Background

The Living Word Project presents Dahlak Brathwaite's non-linear interrogation of a young Black man's experience within a court-mandated rehab program, utilizing the language of hip hop, step, and spoken word, as part of the 2026 Under the Radar Festival. As "Anonymous" navigates rehab and the systemic external expectations placed on him by society for the intersectional parts of his identity, he must also navigate his own sense of self, independent of these markers.

Thoughts:

Brathwaite's work is instantly kinetic, rhythmic, and engaging as he summons the ensemble from his place at the Conductor's station (a setup including keyboard, soundboard, and microphone). They jog out in perfect percussive synchronicity to the beat he's built, chased by the Conductor's spoken word introduction of the cyclical nature of his story and this performance, and it becomes clear to the audience that we're in the hands of a confident, polished, and virtuosic writer/composer/star. Anonymous, the younger version of the Conductor, lands himself in group rehab with the charismatic Samples, always on the verge of relapse; the self-possessed Mary, acknowledging her indulgences but committed to staying clean; Steve, a recovering cocaine addict and lone white character, whose frantic energy is maintained with a new fixation of espressos; and Pastor, the group's leader and a firm advocate of religion as salvation from addiction.

Anonymous, after delineating a series of police aggression--stop and frisks over the years that yielded nothing--finds himself in rehab after finally being stopped while in possession of mushrooms. Though apparently not an actual addict, he enters the program to avoid prison because "we been locked up since the day we arrived" anyway. But what he learns is that his inescapable identity as a Black man in America subjects him to systemic proscriptions of that very identity, regardless of his actions. As he says, he "seems to be stuck in the same role/No one wondered why [he] was there./[He] was just playing the role." And in this framework, he is volleyed from law enforcement prejudices to the criminal court with a seedy public defender, to a group rehab where he encounters two men vying for the position of his mentor: Pastor, who wields his religion like a cudgel against a young man who never felt at home in the church; and Samples, who encourages him to embrace hip hop as a liberation, to embrace the tradition of being an American Black man descended from enslaved people. The sticky part of either of these conflicting credos is that Anonymous himself is the child of immigrants and a first-generation American. So any identity offered to him--be it a Baptist church, a hip hop artist articulating his generational pain, or a criminal waiting to be caught--does not truly speak to who he is, even as he tries on different identities in search of a truer understanding of himself.

Best Theater of 2025: Another Year End, Another List

Hello hello and it's time for another year-end round up of my favorites of all the theater I saw in 2025. I've been thinking this month about what a shame it is that the Fall season brings us so many strong pieces of theater, many of which don't survive past the new year for one reason or another (if it's a star-studded play, it's often a limited run anyway), and can therefore be forgotten come awards season, even if they're remembered fondly for these end of the year Best-Of lists. But then, I wonder if the weightedness of the Spring season representation at the Tonys et al is mirrored for the year-end lists. Do Spring shows that burned brightly but briefly make the cut? (Not to brag, but it looks like my list is almost evenly divided between first half of the year and second half. Go me!)

This is just me musing. I haven't run the numbers. But hey, speaking of numbers, this year I saw 128 pieces of theater with 9 repeats, leaving 119 unique pieces of theater. Of those 119, 70 were plays, 39 were musicals, and 10 were streaming.

In order of appearance, these ones stuck around in my brain, my heart, and/or my gut.

Weekly Margin 2025, W46: André De Shields is Tartuffe, The Honey Trap, She Loves Me

11/12/25: André De Shields is Tartuffe

What: The House of the Redeemer hosts an environmental production of Tartuffe starring André De Shields, in a new translation by Ranjit Bolt.

And? Sitting inside the transcontinally-transported wood-paneled library at the House of the Redeemer is already a cool experience on its own. Getting to see an intimate Molière farce starring André De Shields makes it all the tastier. It's a fun translation, for the most part: they've tightened/edited it considerably to bring the show down to 90 minutes (leaving the title character's scenes in their fuller existence to let De Shields to do his thing). My one complaint about the translation is that the rhythm keeps falling off, so the rhymes don't always flow into each other the way I'd like. The cast has a lot of strong players: Alexandra Socha is an adorably dizzy nitwit, with Charlie Lubeck as her equally dizzy paramour, Todd Buonopane as the fast-talking castigating grande dame, and Amber Iman's final performance as the delicious Elmire. But of course the star of the show is the iconic André De Shields as Tartuffe. It would be easy for him to play everything to the vaulted ceiling, but what makes him special as the distinct performer he is, is how understated his work is. We knew this from past performances in Hadestown, Fortress of Solitude, and countless others, but it's especially apparent in such a small space. While obviously Tartuffe himself is prone to histrionics (leading to, among other things, some spry push-ups and De Shields's glorious voice filling the space with song), De Shields manages to cap all of his hammier moments with a slip in Tartuffe's mask: a subtle twitch of his smile, a side-eyed glance. He is a master of the power of a small gesture to tell a larger moment, and he owns the space the moment he enters in all his regalia.

That being said, a lot of the production around him feels a bit slapdash and half-baked. Intimate theater is great, but it's bad practice to charge Broadway prices and give us an underproduced show. The costume design feels community-theater level "what's in your closet?" -- which was confirmed in an interview with De Shields, where he revealed his red robe is from his own collection, and designed by Dede Ayite for Mankind. It's the best costume in the show, and Avite deserves the credit for it, not the billed costume designer. If this were a workshop, that would be one thing. But if this is calling itself a finished production, charging what they're charging, it feels dishonest.

Hannah Beck and André De Shields as Cleante and Tartuffe.
Photo by Joan Marcus.

11/13/25: The Honey Trap

What: Irish Rep presents Leo McGann's play exploring the aftermath of the Troubles in Ireland, through the an oral history project giving us the lens of memories of a woman who was part of a honey trap, and a British soldier whose friend was murdered by the IRA.

And? It has a bit of a slow start--deceptively, it turns out, as the tension begins to ratchet up with each new revelation, each new rewriting of history and memory. Leo McGann's excellent script is an exploration not only of how trauma and pain can dictate our actions like some toxic backseat driver, but also of how we warp the stories of our lives to fit the person we want to believe ourselves to be. No one here is honest, either with themselves or with others, but the play asks: is it better to have the full truth of a scabbed-over wound, or to try to move forward and let the scar form? What is forgivable and what is not? When is it right to seek revenge? Michael Hayden, in the lead role of Dave, charts this impeccably: equal parts repellant and heart-twistingly sympathetic. In the hands of director Matt Torney, the rest of the cast is equally excellent: everyone is messy, everyone is understandably hurt, everyone has done something horrible. The production as a whole runs very smoothly as well, scenes sliding past each other with easy transitions and overlapping memories. I'm glad this run extended so I was able to see it. The play is so well-crafted it feels like it's written from an earlier era of playwriting, but this is the premier run.

Foreground: Doireann Mac Mahon, Annabelle Zasowski,
and Daniel Marconi as Kirsty, Lisa, and Young Dave.
Rear: Michael Hayden as Dave, watching his memory.
Photo by Carol Rosegg.

Weekly Margin 2025, W45: Oh Happy Day, Bat Boy: The Musical, Broken Images, Masquerade, About Time

11/04;25: Oh Happy Day

What: The Public Theater presents Jordan E. Cooper's new play about a man granted a brief reprieve from death to try to save his estranged family from an oncoming storm of biblical proportions.

And? Cooper knows how to lull you into the complacency of thinking you know what kind of show you're watching, then wallop you by upending your expectations. While the pacing of this script doesn't yet feel tight enough to keep momentum driving forward (sometimes it's there, sometimes it lags), there's enough sense of stakes and urgency that I think it will get there. At first I was worried I'd feel too estranged by the religious element of the play (as I often do with works whose sense of Christianity overdominate the piece), but the characters end up interrogating what it means to be religious enough--and indeed what God means--that I was drawn in to the conversation. This drawing in is in large part because the actual important relationships that need healing are not between human and God, but between father and son, brother and sister. And this play makes the characters work very hard for that healing, but when it lands, it truly feels like a burden of decades has been lifted.

Jordan E. Cooper, center, as Keyshawn, with Latrice Pace, Sheléa Melody
McDonald, and Tiffany Mann as Glory Divine, Might Divine, and Holy Divine,
repsectively. Photo by Joan Marcus.

11/05/25: Bat Boy: The Musical

What: The gala presentation at Encores! this year is that cult hit musical inspired by the Weekly World News's tabloid star, about the attempt to "civilize" a half-bat/half-human boy found in a cave, and the catastrophes attached to that attempt.

And? I don't think I'd realized how much the show had been revised since its Off-Broadway premiere in 2001. Though, knowing how much O'Keefe has continued to revise his other shows since their premieres, I shouldn't have been that surprised. I do hope we get a cast album out of this, just so I have a record of the new songs (the West End album has some, but not all, of them). I have mixed feelings on the revisions. The new songs are by and large good, catchy and often improving on earlier versions (boy do I not miss "Dance With Me, Darling"), while retaining the best lyrical moments from the removed songs ("I heal real fast"). I did notice the eyebrow arch of some of the lyrics was lowered quite a bit at points, especially in the group songs, but that happened with Heathers, too, so perhaps it's done with regional play in mind. Still, it feels odd to defang a show called Bat Boy.

Regarding the rest of the revisions, I'm realizing that part of what I loved about the original was the sense of ensemble to it (yes, yes, Zelda's favorite thing: a company collaboratively telling a story): with such a small cast, everyone but the core family played many roles each, infusing group scenes with a real joy in the character switches, as well as necessitating strong choices being made for each characterization. This strategy not only allowed the whole ensemble individual moments to shine, but also made all the townspeople feel like individuals and not just a crowd of folk ready to sing, celebrate, or rampage. So I missed that element.

The flip side of that, of course, is that this revision is much more tightly focused on the family, albeit at the expense of the ensemble. Which is probably for the overall good of the show, but oh, my heart longs for "Another Dead Cow." 

The cast is top shelf. Taylor Trensch dives into the physicality of the title role with gusto, nailing the camp comedy of the show, and then belting out his songs to reach us up in the balcony. Christopher Sieber is so consistently good in all his roles over the years, it's tempting to just go "yeah as usual he's brilliant," but that's giving short shrift to the specific and hilarious work he's been doing the past twenty years. His comic timing is perfectly honed, and he's fearless when it comes to being the butt of a joke. Kerry Butler, a hilarious sparkplug Shelley in the original production, returns to play Shelley's mother Meredith, and again here we have a star with a perfectly honed comedic delivery and a honeyed voice able to knock any note out of the park, paying homage to Kaitlin Hopkins's performance while still making the role her own. Gabi Carrubba makes a strong City Center debut as Shelley, balancing angsty teen against the clowning necessary for the camp of this show. And there are a number of strong performers in smaller roles--Marissa Jaret Winokur as Mrs. Taylor, Andrew Durand as Rick, Jacob Ming-Trent as Reverent Hightower, and of course Alex Newell as The God Pan, but I'm still missing a bit of the joy of seeing the same person play Mrs. Taylor as Hightower, and other juxtaposed doublings. But that's a me-issue. Everyone onstage here is great. It's just the rest of the ensemble has less to do.

Kerry Butler, Taylor Trensch, and Christopher Sieber as Meredith, Edgar, and
Dr. Parker. Photo by Joan Marcus.

Margin Notes: Broken Images

Broken Images

Seen on: Friday, 11/07/25.

Neeraja Ramjee as Manjula Nayak. Photo by Kat DuPont Vecchio.

Plot and Background

Tea and Pickle Productions LLC presents Girish Karnad's psychological thriller about a newly bestselling novelist introducing a film adaptation of her debut novel, who then suddenly finds herself interrogated by what seems to be an alternate persona wearing her face.

Thoughts:

Play: Manjula Nayak paints a pretty if implausible picture: while up to now her writing has been non-fiction and in her native language, she has chosen for her first fiction venture to write and publish her novel, The River Has No Memories, in English. Being a bestseller, it has of course been subsequently translated, but author Manjula must now contend with the accusation that she cannot tell an authentic Indian story in another--particularly a colonizing--language. Which of her voices is the true voice? Along with this critique she's also running up against the question asked by #OwnVoices: how can she, an able-bodied woman, write the story of a disabled person? She has an answer of course: as caretaker of her disabled sister after the death of their parents, she was able to witness her own sister's struggles leading up to her death.

Having an answer for every challenge, though, does not make the story around the story true. This is what the late playwright Girish Karnad interrogates. What stories are we allowed to tell, what stories do we tell others about ourselves, and what are the stories others tell about us? Without digging too deeply into spoiler territory, as Manjula's onscreen alter-ego prods at the plot holes behind the novel's existence, all of Manjula's facades crumble, her delusion and deceit eventually fall away, leaving a gnarled pit of bitterness resentment and envy.

I don't feel that the play fully executes its intent when it comes to dismantling Manjula, or in any case I don't know that I found any of the revelations that revelatory. While it's well performed, I don't have a true sense of the purpose of the alter-ego or her objective. If she's truly trying to drive Manjula to admit the truth, I'd like to see a more aggressive hounding, such that neither the protagonist nor we can quite get our bearings enough to push back. Still, I do always have a soft spot for explorations of when protagonists and writers are unreliable narrators of what should be their own basic truths.