Things to do in New York this Friday

Theater review by Raven SnookTypically, a theater director lets the work speak for itself. But when the endearing Alexander Molochnikov stands on stage to introduce Seagull: True Story, playwright Eli Rarey's loopy expansion of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, the gesture is appropriately meta. After all, this work is effectively speaking for him: It's inspired by Molochnikov's own experiences. Seagull: True Story | Photograph: Courtesy Kir Simakov A second introduction, this one by an oily MC (Andrey Burkovskiy, in Brechtian mode), sets the scene. Wunderkind Kon (Eric Tabach, idealistic yet high-strung) is directing an outré interpretation of Chekhov's breakthrough play for the venerable Moscow Art Theatre in February 2022. But when Russia launches its invasion of Ukraine, political chaos ensues. Kon and his poet pal Anton (a zen Elan Zafir) want to speak out; others, like producer Yuri (Burkovskiy again) and Kon's mother, Olga (Zuzanna Szadkowski, oozing tough love), the celebrated actress playing Arkadina, urge everyone to pledge their support—and to tone down the production. Kon refuses to comply, and one viral social media video later, he's fleeing to New York, where he hopes to find freedom as an artist and an individual. But he soon learns that commercial theatre in America comes with oppressive demands and restrictions of its own. Seagull: True Story | Photograph: Courtesy Kir Simakov Produced by the internationally minded MART Foundation and first seen at La MaMa...

Theater review by Raven Snook If you feel stressed and overworked, the members of the Australian performance collective Pony Cam can relate. Burnout Paradise is their way of transforming the Sisyphean hamster wheel of modern life into exhilarating entertainment. As an onstage clock ticks down, four athletic actors—some of them noticeably injured—attempt to complete a series of tasks while running on treadmills. Their assignments range from the everyday (shaving, waxing, shampooing) to the much more ambitious (performing Shakespeare, filling out a grant application, cooking a three-course meal). Straining to do it all, they depend on audience volunteers to help out by retrieving stray tomatoes, playing bingo, shooting hoops, even dancing at an impromptu rave. Burnout Paradise | Photograph: Courtesy Austin Ruffer On paper, Burnout Paradise may seem like a show that, as though on a treadmill itself, is fated to go nowhere. But in practice, it is both an amusing indictment of our soul-crushing go-go-go ethos and a gleeful conjuring of community. Those who choose to take part in the challenges seem to have a blast; even just watching, you find yourself surprisingly invested in the ever-mounting chaos. Organized into four 12-minute rounds, the show has the electric suspense of a sporting event: Will the performers complete their assignments and beat their record mileage before the buzzer sounds? If they don't, you can ask for a full refund, though it’s hard to imagine you’ll...

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,...

The New Group's Scott Elliott directs a revival of Elmer Rice’s 1923 gimlet-eyed expressionist classic about the soul rot of conventionality, newly revised by the willfully perverse playwright-provocateur Thomas Bradshaw (Burning). Its antihero, Mr. Zero, is a craven, bigoted, sexually repressed number cruncher who is incapable of creative thought—a willing cog in the same social machinery that is grinding him to paste. The announced cast so far includes Jennifer Tilly, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Only Murders in the Building's Michael Cyril Creighton and And Just Like That… survivor Sarita Choudhury. 

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Mark Rosenblatt’s Giant hits the current historical moment like a targeted strike. The play unfolds on a single afternoon, interrupted only by intermission, at the English country home of Roald Dahl. It is the summer of 1983, and the beloved children’s author has come under fire for his review of a book about Israel’s siege of West Beirut, in which Dahl opined of the Jews that “never before has a race of people generated so much sympathy around the world and then, in the space of a lifetime, succeeded in turning that sympathy into hatred and revulsion.” Rosenblatt began writing his play in 2018, five years before the October 7 attacks that would prompt both a wave of Israeli military action and a spike in anti-Zionism that has often blurred with—or overtly embraced—antisemitism. Giant couldn’t be timelier: It arrives on Broadway in the same month as a new Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon.  The play’s topicality is only partially anesthetized by the historical distance that separates us from its story. Back at the Dahl house, the creator of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach—played superbly by master thespian John Lithgow—is examining the proofs of his latest project, The Witches, as those in his orbit try to convince him to apologize for his comments about the Jews or at least walk them back a bit. These include his flinty but gracious fiancée, Liccy (Rachael Stirling), and his accommodating British publisher,...

Manhattan Theatre Club continues its long and very fruitful relationship with the excellent playwright David Lindsay-Abaire (Kimberly Akimbo) by mounting the world premiere of his latest play: a comedy about a neighborhood association thrown into internecine turmoil when a newcomer suggests adding a stop sign to one of the local corners. The killer emsemble cast—directed by Kenny Leon (Purlie Victorious)—comprises Richard Thomas, Anika Noni Rose, Margaret Colin, Ricardo Chavira, Michael Esper, Maria-Christina Oliveras, Carl Clemons-Hopkins, Jeena Yi, Kayli Carter and the priceless Marylouise Burke. 

Classic dance numbers from Broadway history return to life in a revue conceived by American Dance Machine's Nikki Feirt Atkins, who co-directs the show with Randy Skinner (who also contributes text and additional choreography). The lineup includes showstopppers from West Side Story, A Chorus Line, Pippin, Singin’ in the Rain, White Christmas, Contact, Gypsy, An American in Paris, The Act, Bubbling Brown Sugar and more, by dance makers including Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Michael Bennett, Susan Stroman, Stanley Donen, Christopher Wheeldon and Gene Kelly.    TIME OUT DISCOUNT TICKET OFFER:GOTTA DANCE!Celebrating the best of Broadway and Hollywood dance Save up to 35% on select tickets Promotional description: Riki Kane Larimer presents Gotta Dance!—the first dance production to capture the original choreography of classic musicals including West Side Story, Singin’ in the Rain, A Chorus Line, Pippin and others, all on one stage. This extraordinary musical, conceived by Nikki Feirt Atkins of American Dance Machine and originally produced at the York Theatre Company, pays tribute to the brilliant work of Jerome Robbins, Gene Kelly, Billy Wilson and others. Experience the movement, music and magic that has defined generations of Broadway and Hollywood dance and continues to inspire audiences today by preserving the work of some of our greatest choreographers. Gotta Dance! embodies true Broadway history. THREE WAYS TO BUY  TICKETS:1. Online: Click here (or visit Telecharge and...

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  The story of Chess dates back to the 1980s, and so do the efforts to fix it. This overheated Cold War musical, by lyricist Tim Rice and ABBA songsmiths Benny Anderson and Björn Ulvaeus, began as a 1984 concept album (which yielded the unlikely radio hit “One Night in Bangkok”). But its original London production was a mess, and its 1988 Broadway incarnation, which framed the songs in a completely new book, closed in under two months. The script has been reworked countless times since then, as different writers keep moving its pieces around, trying to solve the large set of Chess problems. None have cracked it yet, and the show’s latest revisal, with yet another completely new book, inspires little hope that anyone will.  Chess | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy “No one’s way of life is threatened by a flop,” sings the chorus in what is now the show’s opening number, and while that sentiment has a ring of wishful thinking here, it does speak to a certain strain of showtune culture. Many musicals that are not initially successful attract passionate fandoms—perhaps all the more passionate for their underdog spirit—and subsequent versions of such shows are sometimes markedly better (like the recent revival of Merrily We Roll Along or the charming current production of The Baker’s Wife). That is not the case with Chess. The production at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre, directed by Michael Mayer, has plenty of good moves. Memorable and tuneful...

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,...

Theater review by Adam Feldman  The titular heroine of Petite Rouge dances with wolves aplenty in Company XIV’s latest neoburlesque spectacle, but don’t worry for her safety: She’s as voracious a predator as any of them. Director-choreographer Austin McCormick and his Brooklyn company have a penchant for twisting classic children’s stories into naughty ones for adults, fashioning baroque extravaganzas out of such tales as the Nutcracker, Cinderella, Snow White and Alice in Wonderland. This latest pageant gives a decadent spin to the adventures of Little Red Riding Hood through a decadent mélange of slinky dance, explosive live singing and suggestive circus acts. This little lady knows her way around a basket. Petite Rouge | Photograph: Courtesy Deneka Peniston Like all Company XIV shows, Petite Rouge unfolds as a series of vignettes performed by a troupe of versatile performers in outrageous costumes by Zane Pihlström, who has also designed the louche, ruched set in a panhistorically rococo spirit. The aesthetic is femme-forward and playfully queer-flavored; the men may have lupine masks on their heads, but they are also often dolled out in corsets and heels (and, in one case, tasseled pasties on each buttock). Among the attractions provided by the men are a triple aerial act, a toe dance and a comical turn by PhillVonAwesome, in mask, as Petite Rouge’s grandma.  Related: See more photos from Petite Rouge. Petite Rouge | Photograph: Courtesy Deneka Peniston But...