Things to do near the Empire State Building

Theater review by Raven Snook Lick it up, baby: The high-school-is-hell musical Heathers is back to take another shot at being popular. In case you are unfamiliar with either the 1989 movie or its 2014 musical adaptation, the story centers on not-so-mean girl Veronica Sawyer (played here by & Juliet's Lorna Courtney), who's doing her best to survive the indignities of 1980s adolescence in Ohio. In a bid for social stature, she falls into the orbit of three beautiful bullies, all of whom are named Heather. But when Veronica meets J.D. (Casey Likes)—a mysterious rebel in a trench coat and mullet—she starts dreaming of freeing Westerburg High School from the Heathers’ well-manicured talons. What she doesn’t know, at least at first, is that J.D. is not just a bad boy, but a truly bad seed. Like the film, which developed a fervid Gen X cult following, Heathers The Musical needed time to catch on. Although its initial Off Broadway run at New World Stages lasted only a few months, it has since become a hit in the U.K., where it has had multiple West End productions; and thanks to a decade of cast recordings and TikToks, it has spawned legions of Gen Z fans, dubbed Corn Nuts after one character's dying words. The musical has even managed to win over some cynical fans of the darker-hued film, including me, who didn’t like it at first pass; I've come to appreciate its lighter, pop earworm–driven take. (Veronica and J.D.'s teenage angst still has a body count, but when the victims...

Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More gave up the ghost last fall after 14 years, but fans of that immersive theatrical experience have a new show to tide them over: a smaller-scale work by Punchdrunk founder Felix Barrett that invites audience members to move barefoot through a labyrinthine installation inspired by Barry Pain’s 1901 gothic short story “The Moon-Slave," as adapted by the acclaimed British writer Daisy Johnson. Participants wear headphones and are guided through the 50-minute experience at the Shed via narration in the voice of Helena Bonham Carter. 

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  [Note: Tituss Burgess takes over the role of Mary Todd Lincoln starting June 23, followed by Jinkx Monsoon starting August 4.] 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 Emilio Madrid  Described by the long-suffering...

Arjun Biju and Raquel Chavez play young adults chasing their techno music–crazy runaway mom across the world in an off-kilter aqdventure by rising talent Daniel Holzman, whose Middle School Play was at the Brick earlier this year. Noah Latty directs the world premiere at the Tank; the cast also features downtown stars Pete Simpson, Mike Iveson, Rita Wolf and Susannah Millonzi. 

Hundreds of items have been pulled from the New York Public Library's expansive and centuries-spanning archive to be put on display—many of them for the first time—in a permanent exhibition called "The Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library’s Treasures." Inside the NYPL's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building and its beautiful Gottesman Hall, are more than 250 unique and rare items culled from its research centers: the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, the Library for the Performing Arts and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The exhibit, which opens to the public on Friday, September 24, spans 4,000 years of history and includes a wide range of history-making pieces, including the only surviving letter from Christoper Columbus announcing his "discovery" of the Americas to King Ferdinand’s court and the first Gutenberg Bible brought over to the Americas. We visited the stunning collection this week to find the top 10 must-see items at the NYPL Treasures exhibit so when you go, you can make sure to see them for yourself: 1. Thomas Jefferson’s handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence Photograph: Max Touhey / NYPL Only six manuscript versions of the Declaration of Independence are known to survive in the hand of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson made this copy for a friend shortly after the July 4th, 1776, ratification of the Declaration, which announced to the world the American colonies’ political separation from Great Britain. He underlined...

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...

The British conjurer Jamie Allan (iMagician), a Houdini aficionado who has made his reputation by infusing newfangled technology and emotionally charged storyelling into old-school tricks, appears at New World Stages for a limited run. This latest showcase is directed by Jonathan Goodwin and co-created with Allan's longtime partner in illusions, Tommy Bond.    

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  This show is of a kind that I shall dub an operettical: A British-Broadway hybrid that is cleverly synthetical.It starts with operetta of the comical varietyThat Sullivan and Gilbert wrote to tickle high society.The Pirates of Penzance, a pageant witty and Victorian, Premiered in 1880 on our calendar Gregorian. It still is entertaining but perhaps not in a date-night way; It seems a bit too fusty for revival on the Great White Way. So Rupert Holmes has come along to pump some Broadway jazz in it:To add a little spice and put some Dixieland pizzazz in it.And thanks to these injections, neither rev’rent nor heretical,We now have Holmes’s model for a modern operettical.  Pirates! The Penzance Musical | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus Best known for Drood (and also for his hit “Piña Colada Song”), He hasn’t wrecked the story or egregiously forgot a song. But to ensure the whole endeavor’s jazzier and bluer leans, He takes the show from Cornwall and resets it down in New Orleans.The Crescent City’s sass and brass have quite rejuvenated it As Joe Joubert and Daryl Waters have reorchestrated it.(They’ve also added melodies that never here have been afore,On loan from Iolanthe, The Mikado and from Pinafore.) With silliness and energy the show is chockablock, well-set Amid the brightly colored NOLA streets of David Rockwell’s set. And now that we have looked at questions musico-aesthetical, We move on to the plot of this diverting operettical. ...

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Oliver (Darren Criss) is a Helperbot, and he can’t help himself. A shut-in at his residence for retired androids in a near-future Korea, he functions in a chipper loop of programmatic behavior; every day, he brushes his teeth and eyes, tends to his plant and listens to the retro jazz favored by his former owner, James (Marcus Choi), who he is confident will someday arrive to take him back. More than a decade goes by before his solitary routine is disrupted by Claire (Helen J Shen), a fellow Helperbot from across the hall, who is looking to literally connect and recharge. Will these two droids somehow make a Seoul connection? Can they feel their hearts beep? That is the premise of Will Aronson and Hue Park’s new musical Maybe Happy Ending, and it’s a risky one. The notion of robots discovering love—in a world where nothing lasts forever, including their own obsolescent technologies—could easily fall into preciousness or tweedom. Instead, it is utterly enchanting. As staged by Michael Arden (Parade), Maybe Happy Ending is an adorable and bittersweet exploration of what it is to be human, cleverly channeled through characters who are only just learning what that entails. Maybe Happy Ending | Photograph: Courtesy Evan Zimmerman In a Broadway landscape dominated by loud adaptations of pre-existing IP, Maybe Happy Ending stands out for both its intimacy and its originality. Arden and his actors approach the material with a delicate touch; they...

Looking for a little escapism? The Italian escape artist Lord Nil keeps you on the edge of your seat as he narrowly survives—or will he?!—such perils as boiling grease, an axe and a circular saw. Each escape is connected thematically to one of the old seven deadlies, and his battery of pulchritudinous male and female assistants seems likely to induce at least one of them.    To purchase... Code TIMEOUTNIL Link:  https://www.telecharge.com/Lord-Nil-7-Deadly-Sins-tickets?AID=OBW001466605&MC=TIMEOUTNIL&utm_source=discount&utm_campaign=LordNil7DeadlySinsSS&utm_medium=other&utm_id=OBW001466605 Save Up To $30 Valid 7/21/25 - 8/31/25 $99 Full Price + $12 fees = $111    Discounted to $69 + $12 Telecharge Fees = $81 (all in price) $69 Full Price + $12 fees = $81    Discounted to $49 + $9 Telecharge Fees = $58 (all in price)   LORD NIL: 7 DEADLY SINS The Most Dangerous Show in New York   As Seen on America's Got Talent "Amazing, Incredible... One of the maddest things I've ever seen." -Simon Cowell "I have never seen anything like this!" -Heidi Klum   SAVE UP TO $30 ON SELECT SEATS! 75 minutes of Pure Adrenaline! This year, NY becomes the stage for something darker, deeper — and more real. Lord Nil, international escape artist and master of ritual performance, presents 7 Deadly Sins — a theatrical escape experience rooted in ancient symbolism, raw physical danger, and psychological suspense. What begins as a performance quickly becomes a test of will. Of fear. Of what it means...