Things to do in New York this Saturday

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.

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...

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.

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. 

Theater review by Raven Snook Is there anything more dispiriting than a séance where the ghosts don't show up? That's how I felt watching the Signature Theatre Company resurrection of Heather Christian's breakthrough opus, Animal Wisdom, a musical-memoir-requiem that introduced audiences to this sui generis composer-performer-pianist. The piece's 2017 world premiere at the Bushwick Starr heralded the arrival of a bold and ambitious artist descended from a "matrilineal line [of] New Orleans Catholics who are also musicians who suffer migraines and talk to dead people." Thankfully, Christian's conjuring of her own origin story was filmed in 2021. (You can watch excerpts from it on PBS.) Animal Wisdom | Photograph: Courtesy Ben Arons The Signature’s version of Animal Wisdom marks the first time that someone other than Christian has performed the work, which is delivered directly to the audience with no fourth wall in sight. Kenita R. Miller acknowledges from the outset that these are Christian's stories, not hers, but that she'll be "stepping into them." With her warm, welcoming presence and powerful, throaty vocals, Miller seems well-chosen to make the material sing in a different voice. But instead of transcending into the divine, much of the evening remains stubbornly earthbound. Animal Wisdom | Photograph: Courtesy Ben Arons That isn't for lack of vision. Director Keenan Tyler Oliphant has gathered impressive collaborators: Emmie Finckel's in-the-round scenic design...

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...

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.

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...

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,...

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...