Things to do in New York this Saturday

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...

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.

Romeo and Juliet, the earliest of Shakespeare's major tragedies, is the timeless story of teenagers who, in rebellion against their disapproving parents, have sex and then die after scoring drugs from a local priest. This version is helmed by the Public’s associate artistic director, Saheem Ali, whose credits include last year's Twelfth Night in the Park as well as Broadway's Buena Vista Social Club. Daniel Bravo Hernández and Ra’Mya Latiah Aikens play the star-crossed lovers; the supporting cast includes Deirdre O'Connell, Francis Jue, LaChanze, Glenn Fleshler and Caleb Joshua Eberhardt. Tickets are free, as always; see our complete guide to Shakespeare in the Park tickets for details.

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...

Dueling Vanyas! As Hudson Classical Theater Company presents Uncle Vanya uptown at Riverside Park, Shakespeare Downtown takes on the same play at Battery Park's Castle Clinton. (Despite its name, the company does not limit itself to Shakespearean works.)  This version of Chekhov's bittersweet masterwork, directed and translated by Geoffrey Horne, stars Evan Olson as the life-thwarted title character and Billie Andersson, Juan Pablo Toro, Scarlett Strasberg and Timothy Nolan as romantically dissatisfied members of his extended family, each in their own way stuck in place. 

This thrilling reconception of Andrew Lloyd Webber and T.S. Eliot's musical not only rescues Cats from the oversize junkyard but lifts it to unexpected heights. Directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch embrace the musical’s inherent strangeness by absorbing it into queerness: The show’s secret ball for cats is now a ballroom runway competition of the kind recently visited by TV’s Pose and Legendary. This concept—let’s call it Paris Is Purring—is ideal for the musical’s revue-like structure, and the show’s wispy plot is clearer than it has ever been; the fur truly flies. After an already-legendary run at PAC in 2024, the production moves to Broadway with most of its original cats, including André De Shields, Chasity Moore, Sydney James Harcourt, Dudney Joseph Jr., Robert “Silk” Mason, Emma Sofia and ballroom elder Junior LaBeija. Newcomers to the ensemble include vogue mistress and Legendary judge Leiomy. Click here for the full review.

By rights, Dylan MarcAurele’s raunchy musical spoof of HBO's skate-away success about gay hockey players should not be nearly as funny as it is. But as directed by Alan Kliffer, this scrappy show is an unexpected delight in the irreverent camp tradition of Silence! The Musical! and the original Asylum production of Titanique. Writer-composer MarcAurele rolls out a seemingly inexhaustible series of double entendres, and the high-spirited cast of five actors—led by grade-A cuties Jimin Moon and Jay Armstrong Johnson as the central couple—score with nearly every shot they take. Most of the show’s comedy stems from the tonal clash between the steamy subject matter and the earnestness of traditional musical theater, and it wouldn’t work if the cast (which also includes Ryann Redmond, Ryan Duncan and Cherry Torres) weren’t experts at the latter. It’s knowingly silly but also, sneakily, just a little sexy, too. It knows how to wink both ways at once. Read the full review. 

The industrious New York Classical Theatre devotes its latest summer season to the Bard's historical tragedy, in which Roman senators bloodily veto a popular general after his leadership turns toward tyranny. If you missed the Public Theater's controversial Trump-themed production in 2017, here's another chance to see the play, minus the orange Julius. Stephen Burdman directs this peripatetic staging; the cast of nine includes Oneika Phillips and Carine Montbertrand as the honorable Brutus and Cassius, Clay Storseth as the ambitious Caesar and Paul Deo Jr. as the Roman ear borrower Mark Antony. The show kicks off in Central Park (June 2–21) before moving east to Carl Schurz Park (June 23–28) and south to Battery Park (June 30–July 5). Attendance is free, but reservations are suggested and donations are welcome. 

Hudson Classical Theater Company begins its tripartate 2025 summer season at Riverside Park with a free production of Anton Chekhov's bitterly comic meditation on the wages of self-sacrifice. Company founder Nicholas Martin-Smith directs an open-air staging at the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument.

Broadway review by Adam Feldman [Related: An in-depth discussion of Ragtime with director Lear deBessonet on Time Out's theater podcast, Sitting Ovations.] 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...