Things to do in New York this Friday

Broadway review by Adam Feldman A little-known fact about the anarchist firebrand Emma Goldman is that she dabbled in theater criticism. In a series of 1914 lectures, collected in book form as The Social Significance of Modern Drama, she assessed such writers as Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov and Shaw through the lens of their revolutionary potential. Modern drama, she opined, “mirrors every phase of life and embraces every strata of society, showing each and all caught in the throes of the tremendous changes going on, and forced either to become part of the process or be left behind.” That is a good description, as it happens, of the 1998 musical Ragtime, which is being revived on Broadway by Lincoln Center Theater in a first-class production directed by Lear deBessonet and anchored by the superb actor-singer Joshua Henry. The show is a vast panorama of American life in the turbulent early years of the 20th century, as illustrated by the intersecting stories of three fictional families—those of a moneyed white businessman, a Jewish immigrant and a successful Black pianist—as well as a clutch of real-life figures from the period, including Goldman herself. It is hard to know what she would make of this grand musical pageant. Perhaps she would admire the production’s epic sweep, stirring score and excellent cast; perhaps she might shudder at the lavish scale of its 28-piece orchestra and even larger ensemble of actors. Either way, this Ragtime is an embarrassment of riches. ...

Theater review by Adam Feldman  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 revised 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, including the roof. To help sustain the atmosphere and the sense of event, audience members must wear black, white or silver...

Frigid New York gives you the chills in its fourth annual festival inspired by Mexico's dead-lifting Día de los Muertos. The lineup features spooky variety shows, short horror plays, Edgar Allan Poe works, a traditional ofrenda, psychic mediums, a tiny interactive matchbox theatre, a murder ballad musical, necromancer burlesque, and other tales of the macabre. Among them are Stephen Smith's One Man Poe, Andrew Agress's The Witching Hour and Maeve Aurora Chapman and Liam Corley's Death Owns an Ice Cream Parlor. Visit the festival's website for a schedule and a full list of offerings for shows.

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  [Note: Jinkx Monsoon plays the role of Mary Todd Lincoln through September 30, joined by new cast members Kumail Nanjiani, Michael Urie and Jenn Harris. Jane Krakowski assumes the central role on October 14.] 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,...

Theater review by Raven SnookA modernized, female-forward reinvention of a 200-year-old protofeminist classic may sound like a bonnet on a bonnet. But Emily Breeze's Are the Bennet Girls Ok?, an irreverent riff on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, is a delight. Many of Austen’s plot points are more or less preserved, but the novel’s sense and sensibility are reframed: Using period dress and patriarchal rules but contemporary, profanity-laden dialogue, Breeze’s perceptive version celebrates sisterly, not romantic, love.The play kicks off with a blazing monologue by Mrs. Bennet (a hilariously high-strung Zuzanna Szadkowski), who is desperate to marry off at least some of her five daughters to save the family from financial ruin. The nubile and obedient Jane (Shayvawn Webster) seems like her best bet, but the blunt and headstrong Lizzie (Elyse Steingold) racks up unexpected proposals. Underage flirt Lydia (Caroline Grogan) is the likeliest to get in trouble; sensitive, botany-loving wallflower Mary (standout Masha Breeze, the playwright's sister) and horse girl Kitty (Violeta Picayo) seem like spinsters in waiting. Are the Bennet Girls Ok? | Photograph: Courtesy Ari Espay Though much of the girls’ alternately empathetic and uproarious chatter is sparked by the men in their lives, we encounter those men only rarely. All are played by a single actor, Edoardo Benzoni, who brilliantly delineates each character: four suitors—deer-in-headlights Darcy, awkward Collins, douchey...

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Playing a British hooligan who doesn’t know his own strength in the new drama Punch, Will Harrison is a knockout. James Graham’s play is inspired by the real story of Jacob Dunne, as laid out in his 2022 memoir, Right from Wrong: How he fell into drug use and gang culture as a youth; how, while spoiling for a fight with some mates after a cricket match, he took a single jab at a stranger named James that wound up killing the man; and how he found redemption and got his life on a new, better track. It’s a demanding journey, and Harrison meets it every step of the way. Punch | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy The actor comes out swinging in a super-energetic opening monologue that situates the teenage Jacob in 2011, rough and unready for the pain he is about to inflict. “A fight’s coming tonight,” he promises on what will prove to be the fatal night. “Gonna be throwing some hands, tonight… And I can’t wait.” Harrison spends much of the first act narrating Jacob’s experience directly to the audience in sequences that double as confessions to his group-therapy circle; this device could easily prove static, but he sustains a sense of urgency throughout. And he’s thoroughly convincing as a Nottingham tough: His accent work is excellent, and his milky features can harden into menace when he’s fronting or soften into blankness when he’s troubled or confused.   Punch | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy “I’m just kind of hyper, you know,”...

And Then We Were No More, a new play set in a future that feels a bit too near, includes a scene in which a Lawyer (Elizabeth Marvel) attempts to persuade a large jury to spare her client’s life. The Official (Scott Shepherd) in charge protests: The only purpose of this proceeding is to determine the method by which the condemned woman, known as the Inmate (Elizabeth Yeoman), will eventually be put to death. The Lawyer perseveres, questioning the court’s logic and the state’s motives, but when she requests permission to refer to the Inmate by her actual name, she is sharply rebuked for trying to sway the jury with irrelevant emotions like empathy and compassion. As stand-ins for the jury, the audience is likewise barred from knowing not only the convict’s name, but also those of the Lawyer, the Official or anyone else. And Then We Were No More | Photograph: Courtesy Bronwen Sharp Playwright Tim Blake Nelson—who is also a novelist, a filmmaker and one of the Coen brothers’ favorite actors—has synthesized more than a century’s worth of ideas from dystopian fiction into a chilly, talky two hours of nameless people in a soulless system. Directed by Mark Wing-Davey, it wears its influences on its sleeve: Kafka, Orwell, Philip K. Dick (Nelson appeared in the film Minority Report, which was based on one of Dick’s stories) and Caryl Churchill, whose work Wing-Davey has directed on several occasions. Marvel’s Lawyer has grudgingly come to terms with her irrelevance in this world,...

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  In the 1989 movie Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter played a pair of dim teenage rockers who traveled through centuries and around the world and even—in the film’s 1991 sequel, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey—beyond this mortal coil. So there’s a satisfying snap to the joke of casting them, in Jamie Lloyd’s revival of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, as the long-suffering tramps Estragon and Vladimir, two of the most immobile characters in world drama. Eternally, it seems, they await a mystery man who never appears, and yet they never learn; they are locked in a cycle of forgetting and resetting. “Well, shall we go?” says Reeves’s Estragon. “Yes, let’s go,” replies Winter’s Vladimir. But Beckett’s famous stage direction keeps them in their place: “They do not move.”  This casting is more than just a stunt, though; the nostalgic affection that the audience holds for Reeves and Winter has certain salutary effects. “Together again at last! We have to celebrate this,” says Vladimir at the top of the play; the audience is there for the reunion party, and it arrives with the gift of a prior sense of these two men as friends. When they mention having known each other “a million years ago, in the nineties,” the line hits differently than it did when the play made its Broadway debut in 1956; when they embrace, it has an extra level of sweetness. They have history with each other, and with us.  Waiting for Godot |...

As half of the Coen Brothers, Ethan Coen has been one of the cinematic auteurs behind such classics as Fargo, The Big Lebowski and No Country for Old Men—but in his spare time, he likes to write short comedies for the stage. Neil Pepe has already directed two collections of them for his Atlantic Theater Company (2008's Almost an Evening and 2011's Happy Hour) and was set to bring in another in 2020, A Play Is a Poem, before Covid interfered. The company has been mum about the contents of this latest trio of playlets, except to say that their subject is love. Aubrey Plaza headlines a promising cast that also includes Nellie McKay, Noah Robbins, Mary Wiseman, CJ Wilson, Dylan Gelula and Atlantic regulars Chris Bauer and Mary McCann.