Things to do in New York this Friday

Theater review by Billy McEnteeRating: Not recommendedTicketing: Buy tickets here Looking at the living room onstage in The Unbelievers, you may sense that it feels off. The fireplace, wooden table and upright piano of Paul Steinberg’s set evoke a home, but there are no photographs or knickknacks, no centerpiece on the table: Something or someone seems missing. And that turns out to be true in Nick Payne’s drama, which arrives at Manhattan Theatre Club after a successful run in London. A young boy has disappeared, leaving his family desperate for answers—especially his mother, Miriam, who is played by an unflagging Lauren Ambrose. Her laserlike focus on finding the truth cuts through an otherwise stilted and overwrought play.  The Unbelievers | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy Ambrose is no stranger to stories about mourning; she spent six years on HBO’s funeral-home drama Six Feet Under, which unearthed the beautiful everyday in facing the reality of death. But Miriam’s grief is open-ended, and after seven years of fruitless hoping, everyday life becomes intolerable—especially when everyone around her seems to be moving on. Miriam’s husband (Tom Riley) takes a new partner; her eldest child (Nina Ross) begins a music career, and her youngest (Elizabeth Yeoman) gets pregnant with her new boyfriend (Jack DiFalco). Miriam says she feels like “a pool,” and Ambrose asks us to meet her in the deep end. The Unbelievers | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy To the anguished...

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  [Note: Maya Rudolph plays the role of Mary Todd Lincoln through June 20, joined by Phillip James Brannon, Cheyenne Jackson and original cast members Bianca Leigh and Tony Macht.] Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary! is not just funny: It is dizzyingly, breathtakingly funny, the kind of funny that ambushes your body into uncontained laughter. Stage comedies have become an endangered species in recent decades, and when they do pop up they tend to be the kind of funny that evokes smirks, chuckles or wry smiles of recognition. Not so here: I can’t remember the last time I saw a play that made me laugh, helplessly and loudly, as much as Oh, Mary! did—and my reaction was shared by the rest of the audience, which burst into applause at the end of every scene. Fasten your seatbelts: This 80-minute show is a fast and wild joy ride. Escola has earned a cult reputation as a sly comedic genius in their dazzling solo performances (Help! I’m Stuck!) and on TV shows like At Home with Amy Sedaris, Difficult People and Search Party. But Oh, Mary!, their first full-length play, may surprise even longtime fans. In this hilariously anachronistic historical burlesque, Escola plays—who else?—Mary Todd Lincoln, in the weeks leading up to her husband’s assassination. Boozy, vicious and miserable, the unstable and outrageously contrary Mary is oblivious to the Civil War and hell-bent on achieving stardom as—what else?—a cabaret singer.      Oh, Mary! | Photograph: Courtesy...

Theater review by Sandy MacDonald Rating: Not recommended The brutish ocean-liner stoker called Yank, who propels Eugene O’Neill’s expressionistic 1922 play The Hairy Ape, is basically a two-note role: He’s aggressively boastful, then aggrieved. Jon Beavers hits both extremes with admirable vigor. Impressively built, albeit not hirsute, he morphs easily from braggadocious grunt to humiliated would-be social activist. Yank may rant at great length about what a powerhouse he is—“I’m parta de engines!”—but at length he’s forced to see his status as that of a born patsy: the unschooled, unskilled flotsam of a tiered society that views him only as cheap labor. The Hairy Ape | Photograph: Courtesy Carol Rosegg All it takes to trigger Yank’s rage is a passing glimpse of an elegant phantasm descended from the privileged promenade deck. Rebel debutante Mildred (Elizabeth Teeter) arranges a slumming expedition to the boiler room, scandalizing her snappish chaperone (Joanna Glushak). The dialogue is actually quite shocking—this proto-flapper has a mixed agenda and attitude to spare—so we’re not adequately set up for Mildred's reaction upon penetrating the lower depths, where the crew shovels coal in choreographed lockstep like pistons in a machine. “Oh, the filthy beast!” she whimpers before swooning. The Hairy Ape | Photograph: Courtesy Carol Rosegg Vowing revenge on the ruling class in general and this entitled princess in particular, Yank joins a socialist shipmate (Ariyan...

Magic shows have been popping up like mushrooms in New York City. They tend to fall into two categories: close-up magic shows for very small audiences and, more rarely, full Broadway productions like The Illusionists or Darren Brown’s Secret. The British conjurer Jamie Allan stakes out an appealing middle ground between those scales in Amaze, his long-running show at New World Stages (directed by Jonathan Goodwin and co-created with Allan's longtime partner in illusions, Tommy Bond). The venue is big enough to accommodate a few large-scale effects, including levitation and a motorcycle, but sufficiently intimate for Allan’s personal narrative, which centers on his discovery of magic as a child.  Allan has built much of his reputation on incorporating new technology into his acts, as he sometimes does here—a particularly lovely sequence employs animation on multiple iPads—but it’s the show’s many retro 1980s references and props that provide much of its nostalgic charm: a Rubik’s Cube, a Fisher Price magic set, The Neverending Story. As one might expect from a two-act magic show that is more than two hours long, some of the routines are more impressive than others, but the skill level is consistently high and you get a lot of dazzlement for your dollar. And although the story Allan tells is tinged with loss, it is lifted by the obvious joy he takes in expertly plying his craft.

Theater review by Raven Snook  [Note: This is a review of the 2024 production of The Ask at the Wild Project. The show returns in 2026 for a run at Theater 555, directed again by Jessi D. Hill but now starring Marilu Henner and Shannon Purser (who played the unlucky Barb on Stranger Things).] Words are wounding in Matthew Freeman's taut two-hander The Ask, an entertaining and empathetic examination of generational and philosophical differences that divide the political left. Savvy sexagenarian Greta (a flawless Betsy Aidem) welcomes Tanner (Colleen Litchfield)—a young, nonbinary representative from the American Civil Liberties Union—to her well-appointed Upper West Side study. A longtime liberal and high-level donor, Greta is polite but peeved: Her old ACLU contact has departed without warning, and she is wary of what she sees as the organization’s mission creep beyond civil liberties. Tanner knows they're there to listen, even when the conversation stings. But they also try to gently explain the group’s expanded priorities as they steel themself to make a big-money request. Inspired by his own long tenure as an ACLU fundraiser, Freeman gives this extended power play an uncomfortable verisimilitude. Aidem and Litchfield, who costarred in Leopoldstadt on Broadway, mine the unease for laughs but also understanding. As you listen to their arguments and their anguish—when Tanner uses inclusive gender language, Greta feels erased—you lament how quickly common ground can be...

Review by Adam Feldman  The low-key dazzling Speakeasy Magick has been nestled in the atmospheric McKittrick Hotel for more than a year, and now it has moved up to the Lodge: a small wood-framed room at Gallow Green, which functions as a rooftop bar in the summer. The show’s dark and noisy new digs suit it well. Hosted by Todd Robbins (Play Dead), who specializes in mild carnival-sideshow shocks, Speakeasy Magick is a moveable feast of legerdemain; audience members, seated at seven tables, are visited by a series of performers in turn. Robbins describes this as “magic speed dating.” One might also think of it as tricking: an illusion of intimacy, a satisfying climax, and off they go into the night. The evening is punctuated with brief performances on a makeshift stage. When I attended, the hearty Matthew Holtzclaw kicked things off with sleight of hand involving cigarettes and booze; later, the delicate-featured Alex Boyce pulled doves from thin air. But it’s the highly skilled close-up magic that really leaves you gasping with wonder. Holtzclaw’s table act comes to fruition with a highly effective variation on the classic cups-and-balls routine; the elegant, Singapore-born Prakash and the dauntingly tattooed Mark Calabrese—a razor of a card sharp—both find clever ways to integrate cell phones into their acts. Each performer has a tight 10-minute act, and most of them are excellent, but that’s the nice thing about the way the show is structured: If one of them happens to...

What does A stand for? That question hangs over the protagonist—referred to only as A in the script—of Marin Ireland's deeply personal play Pre-Existing Condition. Her ex-boyfriend hit her so hard that she ended up on the floor, and although she didn't seek medical attention, the incident left her with emotional and psychological scars and split her life into before and after. Everyone wants to know what A wants now: Money? Justice? Revenge on her abuser? The problem is, she’s not sure she knows. If A’s intense, halting, often uncomfortable exchanges with the people in her life—a dismissive lawyer, her no-nonsense therapist, her support-group facilitators, her dates, her friends, her self-involved mother—sound unsettlingly authentic, that's because Ireland, a highly acclaimed stage actor, is writing from firsthand experience. But Pre-Existing Condition isn’t just a memoir à clef. Delicately directed by Maria Dizzia, the play offers a deep dive into the messy aftermath of domestic violence. Unlike many stories about abuse, it’s not about escaping or standing up; it's about navigating an inadequate system while trying to process what happened. (The difficulty of doing so is reflected by the fact that Ireland has been working on this play for 14 years.) Pre-Existing Condition | Photograph: Courtesy Jessica Kourkounis In a poignant illustration of how abuse can happen to anyone—A’s group leader says that one in three women is battered in her lifetime—six different actors are...

Lynn Rosen's new play is not intended to be scary, but it is set near Halloween with a serial strangler on the loose, so we think it should count. The formidable Danielle Skraastad (Hurricane Diane) plays a New England waitress who bonds with a loyal customer in this intimate one-act comedy, which also features John Alejandro Jeffords and Annie Henk. The director is Julie Kramer, and since the actor-illusionist Steve Cuiffo is credited as Magic Consultant, you can anticipate more than a few tricks to go with the treats.

Demimonde demigod Joey Arias and puppet master Basil Twist return to HERE—and to outer space, a jungle garden, the underworld and a 1930s nightclub"—in a reprise their trippy 2008 pageant, originally reviewed below. The production is as fabulously overstuffed as ever, and if Arias is a little creakier in body and in voice, that feels perfectly in tune with the show's combination of the nostalgic and the outré.—Adam Feldman  Theater review by Elisabeth Vincentelli In 1950s science-fiction paperbacks, a resourceful hero could save the galaxy by improvising a super-potent weapon with a tin can, an elastic band and an old battery. In their new collaboration Arias with a Twist, performer Joey Arias and puppeteer Basil Twist essentially pull off the same trick: They’ve hatched a completely delirious revue halfway between Busby Berkeley and Pee-wee’s Playhouse out of felt and strings, a handful of songs, and a lot of loose screws. Arias with a Twist | Photograph: Courtesy Richard Termine The narrative, if you can call it that, is as pulpy as one of the aforementioned books, starting with Arias’s grand entrance: Tightly encased in a Thierry Mugler fetish corset and strapped onto a lazy Susan–cum–gynecological table, the chanteuse belts out Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” while being probed by aliens. The show only gets more inventively nutty from there. After waking up in the jungle and crooning “Jungle of Eden,” penned by Propellerheads’ Alex Gifford —the songs are all backed by...

Theater review by Adam Feldman  [Related: An in-depth discussion of Masquerade wth director Diane Paulus on Time Out's theater podcast, Sitting Ovations.] Ever since the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical The Phantom of the Opera hung up its mask in 2023, after a record 35-year run on Broadway, the show’s ardent admirers (there are packs of them) have been wishing it were somehow here again. And now it is—with an emphasis on somehow. The revisal of Phantom now playing Off Broadway as Masquerade has been significantly altered to fit a very different form: an immersive experience, à la Sleep No More, in which audiences are led en masque through multiple locations in a midtown complex designed to evoke the 19th-century Paris Opera House where soprano Christine Daaé is tutored and stalked by the facially misshapen serial killer who lives in the basement. The very notion of this reimagining—created by Lloyd Webber and director Diane Paulus, from a concept by Randy Weiner—is surprising; perhaps even more surprising is that, somehow, they pull it off.  Masquerade | Photograph: Courtesy Oscar Ouk The complexity of the enterprise is staggering. Six groups of 60 spectators at a time enter the building at 15-minute intervals; each group gets its own Phantom and Christine, but the other actors repeat their roles multiple times a night. The spectators are guided by the stern ballet mistress Madame Giry through a multitude of discrete playing spaces on floors throughout the complex,...