Adam Feldman

We're throwing the spookiness into high gear with events for Halloween in NYC. October is filled with costume parties, haunted houses, corn mazes, parades (even for dogs)—and we're so ready! Don't bother breaking out your sewing kit, New York's greatest Halloween stores have plenty of options to make you look really spooky. Make sure to check out our NYC events in October, too, for even more activities to finish off the month in killer spirits.  Bookmark this link because we'll be updating this guide all autumn long. RECOMMENDED: Full guide to Halloween in NYCThe 40 best Halloween songs of all timeThe best Halloween movies of all timeThe best Halloween events in the U.S.The best Halloween theater in 2026

New York theater ranges far beyond the 41 large midtown houses that we call Broadway. Many of the city's most innovative and engaging new plays and musicals can be found Off Broadway, usually in venues that seat between 100 and 499 people. These more intimate spaces present work in a wide range of styles, from new pieces by major artists at the Public Theater or Playwrights Horizons to crowd-pleasing commercial fare at New World Stages. And even the top Off Broadway shows usually cost less than the best Broadway shows (even if you score cheap tickets to them). Use our comprehensive listings—current shows are at the top, upcoming shows are farther down the page—to find reviews, prices, ticket links, curtain times and more for current and upcoming Off Broadway shows. RECOMMENDED: Off-Off Broadway shows in NYC

Halloween is the most theatrical of American holidays. Every year, people of all ages put on costumes and makeup to bring make-believe to the streets—and the theater world joins the fun with Halloween shows to celebrate the season. We’ve scared up a list of 26 horror-themed theater events for Halloween 2026 to help you get in the spooky spirit, including five full-on Broadway productions (like the shockingly effective Paranormal Activity) as well as smaller-scale musicals, plays and concerts. Here they all are, in alphabetical order. Prepare for stage frights galore. RELATED: The Scariest Haunted Houses in NYC

The best Broadway shows represent the pinnacle of live entertainment in New York City. Every year, millions of people flock to the Times Square district to see large-scale theater at its finest, and every season brings a crop of new productions, from glitzy musicals to provocative plays. Some Broadway shows are strictly limited runs, which others might stick around for years or even decades. Choosing among them can be dizzying. You can't see them all, and you probably shouldn't anyhow: For every Tony Award–worthy hit, there's a swing and a miss. But we have seen them all, and we're happy to help guide you to the ones we think are more deserving of your money and your time. (Cheap tickets can be hard to find.) Here are our theater critic's top choices among the shows that are currently on Broadway.   RECOMMENDED: Complete A–Z listings of all Broadway Shows in NYCRECOMMENDED: Current and upcoming Off Broadway shows

What do Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Rosamund Pike, Tom Hiddleston, Billy Crystal, Raúl Esparza, Ed Harris, Alison Janney and Hayley Atwell have in common? They're just some of the many stars that will be coming to Broadway in the closing months of 2026. Recommended: Complete list of current Broadway Shows Seeing a Broadway show can require quite a lot of planning—and sometimes a leap of faith. You can try to see only the very best Broadway shows by waiting until everything opens and gets reviewed, but by then it is harder to get tickets and good seats. So it's smart to keep an eye on upcoming productions—whether they're original musicals and plays or revivals of time-tested classics—and pick out some promising options in advance. Here, in order of their first performances, are all the productions that are set to begin their Broadway runs in the final few months of 2026. (Other shows will be added when they are announced.) Planning your trip? Bookmark our guide on How to Get Cheap Broadway Tickets to learn the best strategies for saving money. Starting dates at a glance:  September 8: School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls PlaySeptember 25: The Imaginary InvalidSeptember 29: Other Desert CitiesOctober 1: 860October 8: A Few Good MenOctober 15: WantedOctober 17: DownstateOctober 22: The FantasticksOctober 29: Much Ado About NothingNovember 2: Here There Are BlueberriesNovember 10: Galileo and Inter AliaNovember 11: Now You See MeDecember 7: Dolly: A True Original MusicalDecember 15

Broadway and Off Broadway productions get most of the attention, but to get a true sense of the range and diversity of New York theater, you need to look to the smaller productions collectively known as Off-Off Broadway. There are dozens of Off-Off Broadway spaces in New York, mostly with fewer than 99 seats. Experimental plays thrive in New York's best Off-Off Broadway venues; that's where you'll find many of the city's most challenging and original works. But Off-Off is more than just the weird stuff: It also includes everything from original dramas to revivals of rarely seen classics, and it's a good place to get early looks at rising talents. What's more, it tends to be affordable; while cheap Broadway tickets can be hard to find, most Off-Off Broadway shows are in the $15–$35 range. Here are some of the current shows that hold the most promise. RECOMMENDED: Full guide to Off Broadway shows in NYC 

In an age of globalism, cabaret is a fundamentally local art: a private concert in an intimate nightclub, where music and storytelling merge at close range. And no city offers as wide a range of thrilling cabaret artists as New York City, from Broadway and pop legends like Patti LuPone and Debbie Harry to outrageous downtown provocateurs like Bridget Everett and Taylor Mac, drag stars like Alaska and Dina Martina and world-class interpreters like Alan Cumming and Meow Meow. Here's where to find the best of them this month.

We all need magic in our lives, and New York offers an awful lot of it—and we don't just mean Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Some of the city's best magic shows are proudly in the old presentational tradition of men in tuxedos with tricks up their sleeves; others are more like Off Broadway shows or immersive theater experiences. Performed by some of the world's top magic artists, they welcome you to suspend disbelief in a special zone where astonishing skill meets showmanship and wonder. Sure, it's all a bunch of tricks. But why not allow yourself a few illusions?

For dance lovers, New York City always offers good reasons to get moving. If your taste runs to classical ballet, you can get your fill from New York City Ballet or American Ballet Theatre at Lincoln Center. For more modern fare, visit the Joyce Theatre, New York Live Arts, New York City Center, BAM or the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Looking for avant-garde work? You'll find it at the Skirball Center, the Chocolate Factory or Abrons Arts Center—and that's not to mention hip hop, international pageants, dance theater, Broadway musicals, experimental performance art and much more. Here are some of the best dance shows to check out in the next few weeks. RECOMMENDED: The top New York attractions

The downtown arts complex HERE is still under construction. Rows of lights hang like bats from the ceiling, and set pieces from its inaugural music-theater production, Arias with a Twist, litter the playing space: a foam-board skyline, a gynecological exam table, a kickline of nude puppets with articulated knees. Joey Arias, dressed in black sweats, easily navigates the chaos. The notorious singer and drag artiste—a fixture of Gotham’s demimonde for the past three decades—has been away since 2002. But now he’s back, and HERE is where he belongs. Leaving town to join the circus is not, as a general rule, considered a move toward respectability. But when the corporate megalith Cirque du Soleil lured Arias to Las Vegas to host its x-rated extravaganza, Zumanity, the decision raised painted eyebrows all over town. “People didn’t think I was going to be able to make it,” Arias recalls with pride. “They knew about my past, in bathrooms all over the world. But I blew their minds.” Performing ten shows a week for five years at the New York–New York Hotel & Casino, however, eventually lost its appeal. “I started losing my grip on what I was doing,” he says. “And my art clock started ticking.”  Hence the return to New York, and hence, too, the ambitious Arias with a Twist: a collaboration with the brilliant puppeteer Basil Twist, in which Arias will sing roughly a dozen numbers in a wild variety of settings, from an alien spaceship to the depths of hell. The show is the latest chapter

The ever-rising cost of Broadway and Off Broadway tickets can make it hard to take full advantage of what the city's stages have to offer. Who could forget when good tickets to see Denzel Washington in Othello or George Clooney in Good Night and Good Luck went for as much as $900 a seat!? The situation is not as dire as it may seem, however: Discount Broadway tickets are everywhere, and modern technology makes it easier than ever to find cheap seats, even at the last minute. If you play your cards right, and with a little luck, you can even score affordable tickets to sold-out hits like Hamilton and Oh, Mary! or new productions like Downstate and Much Ado About Nothing.  Adam's Pick of the Month: The $45 rush tickets for The Lost Boys are the best value on Broadway right now. The seats are usually partial view, but you don't miss any of the major action. If you’re ready to dive in, click through our guide to getting cheap Broadway tickets. TLDR: Download the TKTS app, enter digital lotteries at 9am, rush the box office or check our exclusive discount links below.  Looking for the cheap broadway tickets last minute? Browse verified seats and discount offers via our booking partner, Broadway.com. RECOMMENDED: Full guide to all Broadway showsRECOMMENDED: Check Today's Ticket Prices 

The most popular Broadway shows tend to be musicals, from long-running favorites like The Lion King and Hamilton to more recent hits like Hadestown and Moulin Rouge!—but new plays and revivals also represent an important part of the Broadway experience. Right now, there are so many incredible shows to see, from musicals and plays to new stories and revivals. On a budget? Read our guide on How to Get Cheap Broadway Tickets for rush, lottery, and discount tips. RECOMMENDED: Find the best Broadway showsRECOMMENDED: Current and upcoming Off Broadway shows The 5 Best Broadway Shows Right Now (Critic's Picks) Death of a Salesman, Hamilton, Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Maybe Happy Ending and Oh, Mary! top our critic's list. But don't just take our word for it—go see them for yourself! For a full roster of shows that are coming soon, check out our list of upcoming Broadway shows.

Actor Ned Van Zandt performs a candid and sometimes graphic autobiographical solo show about his years as a heroin addict, directed by Amir Arison and accompanied by Mike Moore on electric guitar. It's a tale of junk and two kinds of punk: the subservient prisoner and the rebellious rocker. Most of the story unfolds in a Texas correctional facility in the 2000s, where a discomfittingly handsome white supremacist gave him protection in exchange for acting lessons and sexual favors. But he also tells of a misspent youth that landed him at the Chelsea Hotel in the late 1978s, where he interacted with Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen on the night of her murder. (He's convinced that Vicious was innocent, and believes he knows who actual killed her.) The show's two halves don't quite fit together, and Van Zandt tends toward broadness when playing people other than himself. But his lurid history is undeniably compelling, and you leave grateful that he's still alive to tell it.—Adam Feldman  

The superb Quincy Tyler Bernstine stars as a Midwestern woman navigating the ruins of her life in Bubba Weiler's elegantly gorgeous play, which combines suburban marital mystery with elements of Our Town and classical tragedy. The very sharp director Jack Serio (Grangeville) has assembled a knockout ensemble cast to support her: Emily Davis, Constance Shulman, Amelia Workman, Will Dagger, Danny McCarthy, Cricket Brown and—for this run—the distinctive Matthew Maher. Go. Read the full review here.

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  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, To

Theater review by Adam Feldman  In Anna Ziegler’s Antigone (this play i read in high school), the Chorus has an uncanny encounter with a teenage girl on an airplane. This Chorus is nicknamed Dicey, and is played with perforated steeliness by Celia Keenan-Bolger; the girl, a student played by Susannah Perkins, is reading Antigone, Sophocles’s tragedy of protest and punishment in ancient Thebes. Antigone’s behavior in the face of punishment has haunted Dicey throughout her life: an implicit spirit of reproach to her own lack of courage. She finds herself explaining, she says, “how literary characters can stalk you sometimes.”  Antigone (this play i read in high school) | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus The sense of being shadowed by Antigone may feel familiar to New York theatergoers. Variations on her story are everywhere now. She was a side character in Robert Icke’s Oedipus on Broadway; Alexander Zeldin's modern British take on her, The Other Place, just closed at the Shed, but Jean Anouilh’s 1944 version is at the Flea and Barbara Barclay’s Antigone in Analysis begins next week at La MaMa. The challenge resides in finding ways to adapt a 2,500–year-old tragedy—in which Antigone’s cause relates to the burial of her disgraced brother—to modern purposes. The girl on the plane, for one, is unimpressed with the Sophocles original. “Is it even about her?” she complains with with insouciant directness. “It seems like it’s all about her brother’s body. A man’s body.” Dicey, who i

Theater review by Adam Feldman  Christmas is just around the corner, and Meek (Alana Raquel Bowers), a 10-year-old Black girl in 1987, has a modest wish list for Santa: “I want a Pound Puppy, a Speak + Spell, and a nuclear radiation detector.” None of these is likely to be provided by her financially strapped single father, Smooch (Will Cobbs), a former Black Panther who owns a roller rink in the south side of Syracuse, New York. But through her participation in a children’s choir called the Seedlings of Peace, Meek has started writing to a Soviet stranger. (“War is imminent. How are you today? Did you know the voice of a child has the power to stop a nuclear attack?”) And her pen pal in the Urals soon sends Meek a very special Speak + Spell: one that not only teaches her the Russian translations of useful terms like “revolution” and “armageddon” and “government official,” but also recruits her into a scheme that may affect upcoming disarmament talks between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Spasibo, comrade!  Cold War Choir Practice | Photograph: Courtesy Maria Baranova That’s just a taste of the mayhem wrought by the playwright and composer Ro Reddick in Cold War Choir Practice, an offbeat dark comedy that may be set in the 1980s but whose genre-fluid blend of surrealist humor, satirical songs and looming menace recalls the 1970s plays of John Guare. Reddick’s brand of ridiculous, though, adds a current of racial conflict, as reflected in the tense relationship between

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 while most

Theater review by Adam Feldman  When people talk about physical theater, they usually mean the kind of shows that prioritize movement over text, with elements of mime and dance. The Monsters is physical in a different way. Its two characters are mixed up in the world of mixed martial arts: Big (Okieriete Onaodowan) is a champion MMA combatant who, pushing 40, is nearing his professional expiration date; Lil (Aigner Mizzelle) is his estranged half-sister, a decade or so younger, whom he finds himself training for a career of her own. When they work out together or act out matches, the actors throw their whole bodies into action, and in the intimate confines of Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage II, everyone gets a cageside seat. The Monsters| Photograph: Courtesy T. Charles Erickson Writer-director Ngozi Anyanwu stages these sequences with thrilling immediacy, aided by choreographer Rickey Tripp and fight director Gerry Rodriguez. (Veteran bantamweight competitor Sijara Eubanks is the production’s MMA consultant.) But Big and Lil’s sparring outside the ring is, in a quieter way, just as compelling. He is stoic and intensely guarded, but she keeps jabbing at him until she can get through his defenses. In flashbacks, they play younger versions of themselves: The adolescent Lil is spoiling for battle, but gives up high-school wrestling because boys keep trying to pin her in the wrong ways; obversely, Big is gentler than he will become, but people pick fights with him so often—he has

Theater review by Adam Feldman  Putting the word shitshow in the title of your play seems almost like a dare to the writer of an unenthusiastic review. I will resist the easy jab, though, because writer-director Aya Ogawa’s carnivalesque pageant—which explores and explodes different facets of motherhood through satirical vignettes, musical numbers and bouffon body horror—is audacious in more than its name. The show is intent on airing ugly and troubling aspects of maternity, and Ogawa delivers them cesarean style: with a few deep cuts and a lot of mess.  Meat Suit, or the shitshow of motherhood | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus Meat Suit is being produced by Second Stage, and it has aptly created a secondary space for itself at the Signature Center’s Irene Diamond Stage. The venue’s usual seats are cordoned off, and the audience is guided instead to a womblike playing area that scenic designer Jian Jung has festooned with lumpy, pendulous blobs that suggest internal organs as drawn by Dr. Seuss. In a similar spirit, Jung attires the cast’s five actresses—Marina Celander, Cindy Cheung, Robyn Kerr, Maureen Sebastian and Liz Wisan, proven talents all—in bodysuits bursting with grotesque stuffed appendages that evoke internal and sexual organs. (They also recall Jill Keys’s fetus costumes in Lightning Rod Special’s The Appointment.)  Meat Suit, or the shitshow of motherhood | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus Unfortunately, the show’s goop is not just of the visceral variety. A

Theater review by Adam Feldman  The talk in Clare Barron’s icky, tender, gorgeous You Got Older is sometimes so small it nearly vanishes completely. Alia Shawkat plays Mae, a youngish lawyer whose life is in ruins—she has lost her job, her apartment and her boyfriend in one fell swoop—and who has moved back to rural Washington to spend time with her father (Peter Friedman). Between awkward pauses in the play’s opening scene, they discuss gardening, toothbrushes, sleeping arrangements; what they don’t discuss is his recent cancer diagnosis. You Got Older is less about disease than about the unease that surrounds it, and it beautifully captures elusive things about avoidance: It’s about the denial of death, but also the denial of living. You Got Older | Photograph: Courtesy Marc J. Franklin You Got Older mostly unfolds as well-observed comedy that often ventures into morbid territory. When Mae and her siblings—blunt older sister Hannah (a hilarious Nadine Malouf), amorphous middle brother Matthew (Misha Brooks) and excitable youngest sister Jenny (Nina White)—gather around their dad’s hospital bed, they spend their visit bickering, teasing and commiserating about the off-putting family odor they share: “Mold. Mildew. Musty. BO. And egg.” A similar sense of bodily dysfunction informs the flirtation between Mae and Mac (Caleb Joshua Eberhardt), a former schoolmate she encounters at a local bar; she shares details of her painful rash, and he reveals that he is into that sort of t

Theater review by Adam Feldman  An interesting fact: In the early 1940s, before he became the world’s most celebrated mime, a young Marcel Marceau was part of the clandestine French Jewish Resistance, which helped smuggle kids out of Nazi-dominated France. ''Marceau started miming to keep children quiet as they were escaping,” a fellow FJR member would later say. “It had nothing to do with show business. He was miming for his life.'' That certainly sounds dramatic, but—as illustrated by Marcel on the Train, a fictionalized biodrama by actor Ethan Slater and director Marshall Pailet—what makes a great footnote does not always make a great play.  Marcel on the Train | Photograph: Courtesy Emilio Madrid As he proved in SpongeBob SquarePants and more recently in the Wicked movies, Slater has a real gift for movement. Marcel on the Train gives him ample opportunity to showcase it as Marceau tries with varying success to entertain his 12-year-old charges, Life Is Beautifully, and distract them from the dangers outside. The adolescents, all played by adult actors, include the virtuous Adolphe (Max Gordon Moore), the mischievous Henri (an amusing Alex Wyse), the sour and pessimistic Berthe (Tedra Millan) and the cowering Etiennette (Maddie Corman), who—perhaps in response to unspeakable trauma—never says a word.  Marcel on the Train | Photograph: Courtesy Emilio Madrid Most of the play unfolds in a single train car, but director Pailet makes the most of a claustrophobic situation w

In the years since it opened its gates in May 2021, Little Island has become one of New York's primo warm-weather destinations. Open from 6am daily, the “floating” greenspace is an elevated oasis of trees and knolls and winding paths that rises—as though suspended on a bed of coupe cocktail glasses—above Pier 55 in the Hudson, just west of the Meatpacking District. In the same brief period, it has established itself as one of the city's most vital sources of low-cost high culture in the summer. Concerts, plays, dance shows, operas: These and more can be found on Little Island all summer long, whether at its 687-seat open-air amphitheater (the Amph), its smaller performance stage (the Glade) or at pop-up locations throughout the space.

Theater review by Adam FeldmanRating: Not recommendedTicketing: Buy tickets here “I mean, do people actually laugh when they pay their good money and go to those plays of his?” says Argan, the rich hypochondriac of The Imaginary Invalid, in a swipe at the play’s own author, Molière. “I hear it is often very quiet in his theaters…” This metatheatrical dig proves all too apt in the context of the classic French comedy’s sweaty Broadway revival, at which pained silence often greets the actors’ strained exertions. The original text does include a passage in which Argan attacks Molière, but not because his shows aren’t funny. That line of faux self-deprecation has been added by Bill Irwin, who has adapted and squeezed The Imaginary Invalid (in a translation by Doug Skinner) into the 85-minute version now playing at the Roundabout’s Todd Haimes Theatre. Irwin also plays the title role, as did Molière—who, as irony would have it, was fatally ill and died shortly after his play’s fourth performance in 1673. (“If I were a doctor, I'd get my revenge for his impertinence,” he’d said of Molière when onstage as Argan. “And when he's sick, I'd let him die without help.” Perhaps his physicians took up that threat.) Photograph: Courtesy Joan MarcusThe Imaginary Invalid If this production fails to amuse, except in spurts, it isn’t the fault of Molière in general or even this play in particular: Off Broadway’s Red Bull Theater mounted an excellent account of it just last year, adapted by Jef

Theater review by Adam FeldmanRating: ★★★★ (firmly recommended)Ticketing: Buy tickets here In his introduction to the HBO film of his 2004 Broadway solo show, the family memoir 700 Sundays, Billy Crystal revisits his childhood abode on Long Island and muses about the sadness that drove him to write it. “2001 was a tough year for me,” he recalls. “The only performing I did was give eulogies for people that I loved. When a funny person doesn’t feel like being funny anymore, that’s a tough place to be.” But in revisiting the now-vacant living room where he got his first laughs, he says, “I started to think, ‘If only I could hear those laughs again…’” The laughter is back in 860, Crystal’s warm and bittersweet new monologue, and so is the blueness in its background. This time, his inspiration isn’t an empty but still-standing residence; it’s a full one that has vanished. In 1979, Crystal and his wife, Janice, bought a three-bedroom stucco ranch house at 860 Chautauqua Blvd. in the Pacific Palisades, propped above a canyon by stilts. It’s where they raised their two daughters, and where Crystal kept a trove of irreplaceable memorabilia: photographs, autographs, a seat from Yankee stadium that Mickey Mantle sent him. And when a wildfire swept through the Palisades in early 2025, it all returned to ashes and dust.  Those flames cast a retrospective light on Billy and Janice’s love affair with their domicile, with which they have shared what might be called a long-term domestic partn

Theater review by Adam FeldmanRating: ★★★★ (firmly recommended)Ticketing: Buy tickets here The late gay writer and activist Larry Kramer was, at his best, an incredible pain in the ass. The character who represents him in The Normal Heart, Kramer’s own 1985 play about the early years of AIDS, is so abrasive and inflexible that he is banished from the group he’d helped assemble to combat the growing plague; in real life, that group was the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, and Kramer would go on to found the more aggressive protest outfit ACT UP. He was the right man for that time, because his fathomless reserves of righteous fury—as reflected, say, in his 1978 novel Faggots, a takedown of gay promiscuity in the disco era—were finally proportional to their target: the murderous inadequacy of the response to AIDS by the government, the public and the medical establishment.  Kramer’s rage was initially directed at, among many others, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a wing of the National Institutes of Health. “I Call You Murderers” was the headline of his 1988 op-ed in The San Francisco Examiner, which he called “an open letter to an incompetent idiot, Dr. Anthony Fauci.” Over the years, Kramer’s temper was tempered by respect, and the two men grew much closer, as Fauci described in a touching memorial to Kramer in 2023. The tensions and affections that characterized their bond are brought to theatrical life in direct

Theater review by Adam Feldman Rating: Not recommendedTicketing: Buy tickets here “Families get terrorized by their weakest member,” observes Polly Wyeth, the tough and acidulous mother played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus in the uneven Broadway revival of Other Desert Cities. In most cases, of course, that family member isn’t literally a terrorist, but that’s just one of the ways in which the Wyeths are exceptional.  Polly and her husband, Lyman, played by Ed Harris, are wealthy former Hollywood insiders: He starred in B-level war films and westerns; she collaborated with her sister, Silda (Alison Janney), to write a series of Gidget-y teenager flicks. Thanks in part to their friendship with the Reagans—Nancy was “like a big sister to me,” Polly says—they have transitioned into prominent members of California’s Republican establishment, despite one terrible personal scandal: In the early 1970s, their 20-year-old son, Henry, got mixed up with a radical antiwar group that bombed a recruitment center, killing a man. They rarely speak of Henry now, in 2004. But when their daughter, Brooke (Lily Rabe), reveals that she has written a memoir about her late brother, silence may no longer be enough. Photograph: Courtesy Emilio MadridOther Desert Cities Jon Robin Baitz’s 2011 family drama was a hit at Lincoln Center before transferring to Broadway, and its critique of the recent Bush administration has an Upper West Side sensibility; it largely assumes that its audience shares a Democratic

Theater review by Adam Feldman Rating: ★★★ (three stars)Ticketing: How to get tickets to Shakespeare in the Park “¿O Romeo, Romeo, por qué eres Romeo?” asks Juliet in Shakespeare in the Park’s new production of Romeo & Juliet, and some in the audience may wonder the same. Why, in director Saheem Ali’s adaptation of this quintessential lover’s tragedy, is the hero’s name often rendered in Spanish—as Romeo, that is (as in Alfa Romeo), instead of plain old regular Romeo? And not just his name: In this telling, Romeo (Daniel Bravo Hernández) delivers many of his lines in Spanish, and in the scenes he shares with Juliet (the gorgeous Ra’Mya Latiah Aikens), so does she. No English translations are provided in those moments; the show entrusts their meaning to the international language of love.  Photograph: Courtesy Joan MarcusRomeo & Juliet Ali’s choice reflects his overarching concept for the production, which he sets in a modern American-Mexican border town called Nueva Verona. Shakespeare’s feuding families, “both alike in dignity,” now represent two sides of a political and cultural divide. Juliet’s relatives, the Capulets, are rich and brutal, in border-patrol black uniforms; Romeo’s people, the Montagues, mostly wear bulky, identity-hiding togs and scrawl slogans urging the end of ICE and the destruction of the tall, angled metal wall that dominates Maruti Evans’s set. (Behind it are two giant statues: one of a beautiful young woman, the other of a skeleton.) Romeo’s Spanis

If you’re looking to buy cheap Broadway tickets, the first question you should be asking is: What’s the rush?  True Broadway devotees know the answer. Almost all Broadway shows, including most of the very best ones, offer same-day seats for considerably less than their average ticket prices. These are called rush tickets; generally priced at $30–$49, they’re available to anyone willing to wait in line for a box office to open. But other questions soon arise: Which productions offer rush seats, and how much do they cost? What are your chances of scoring rush seats for a given show, and how early should you plan to arrive if you want to be sure of doing so? How does the line look on any given morning?  That’s where BroadwayCheapSeats.com can help. This new, free and user-friendly website has an up-to-date list of rush, lottery and standing-room policies for every show on Broadway. More importantly, it uses data submitted directly by fans to tell you your rush-ticket odds at each show, as well as when to show up and what to expect. Since the site rolled out its beta version in July, it has attracted more than 11,000 visitors and culled more than 2,500 reports, based largely on word of mouth. But now, Time Out can let the secret out: BroadwayCheapSeats is officially launching today, and it should be the first stop for anyone who wants to see Broadway on a budget. Photograph: ShutterstockYoung theater fan looking at Broadway ads The website is the brainchild and pet project of

This fall's iteration of Broadway Week has ended, but its little sibling was waiting in the wings: Tickets are on sale as of today for Off-Broadway Week, which offers half-price tickets to Off Broadway shows through October 18, 2026.  Two dozen productions are participating in the newest version of this biannual sale, including long-running favorites like The Play That Goes Wrong and Gazillion Bubble Show (which will close in January after nearly 20 years). The important thing is to act fast: Time is of the essence is grabbing the best deals. What are your best bets? Two musicals that I can highly recommend are the hilarious Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody and delightful The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and young kids will be enchanted by The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Although I haven't seen them yet, I have high hopes for four new works—The Unbelievers, I Became We, The Heart and A Ghost in Your Ear—that have not yet opened. If you're looking for something a little different, consider the high-quality magic shows Amaze and The Hope Theory or the Great American Songbook revues Our Sinatra and Going Bacharach; for more adventurous fare, consider a pair of intense solo shows: Ned Van Zandt's Lost in Del Valle and Jena Friedman's Motherf*cker. A full list of participating shows is below. Visit the Off-Broadway Week page to grab seats for the ones you want most.   Photograph: Courtesy Matthew MurphyHeated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody Off-Br

Every bubble, no matter how grand, eventually bursts. And so it goes for the Off Broadway phenomenon Gazillion Bubble Show, which has delighted countless families and tourists for nearly two decades. Here's the soap dish: Time Out has learned that the show, created and initially performed by self-described "bubble scientist" Fan Yang, will end its run at New World Stages on September 7, 2026.   [Update: In August, the production extended its run through January 18, 2027.] "Fan Yang's blissfully disarming act consists mainly of generating a dazzling succession of bubbles in mind-blowing configurations, filling them with smoke or linking them into long chains," wrote David Cote in his laudatory 2007 Time Out review. "Lasers and flashing colored lights add to the trippy visuals."  TICKETS: Buy tickets to Gazillion Bubble Show  Photograph: Courtesy Kyle FromanGazillion Bubble Show Gazillion Bubble Show's focus on creative wonder has made it especially popular with young audiences. But it has been a family show in another way, too: Over the years, as Bubble Show's remarkable run continued, Fang entrusted its performance to other members of his clan: his wife, Ana; their children Deni and Melody; and his brother Jano. Together, the Yangs have set 18 Guinness World Records, including for the most people inside a single bubble (181) and the largest land mammal placed inside a bubble (an elephant). “For 19 years, New York has dreamed in bubbles,” say Fan Yang. “What began as a uni

Theater review by Adam Feldman Rating: (★★★★) four starsTicketing: Buy tickets here The summer is over and the fall Broadway season has begun, which means one thing for theater critics and fans alike: Back to school! And back, as it happens, to Jocelyn Bioh’s vibrant School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play, which was such a hit in its original 2017 run at Off Broadway’s Lucille Lortel Theatre that it returned for an encore engagement the following year. Since then, the show has become a regional-theater favorite; now, Manhattan Theatre Club, or MTC—not to be confused with MCC Theater, which mounted the show in 2017—has brought this Black comedy to the Great White Way in an all-new version directed by Whitney White, who also worked with Bioh on MTC’s 2023 production of Jaja’s African Hair Braiding. It’s a pleasure to be reunited with the flawed, fractious but ultimately endearing classmates of this crowd-pleasing play. Photograph: Courtesy Matthew MurphySchool Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play School Girls takes place in the volatile world of adolescent socialization, like many other popular shows of late (such as Wicked, Heathers, The Outsiders, Dear Evan Hansen, John Proctor Is the Villain and, of course, Mean Girls itself). The setting is a girls’ boarding school in Ghana in 1986, where the gorgeous and vicious Paulina (The Gilded Age’s Denée Benton) leads a clique of popular girls that also includes the even-keeled Ama (Lucia Aremu) and the chubby and insecure

Autumn in New York: a time of brisk air, colored leaves and, best of all, the start of the fall theater season. And if you're looking for cheap Broadway tickets and Off Broadway tickets, you'll definitely want to check out TodayTix's latest New York Theater Sale, which begins today and runs though October 4. More than 50 productions are taking part in this bonanza, including nearly two dozen Broadway shows along with many Off Broadway faves. You can find those big New York Theater Sale discounts right here. Discounts vary from show to show, but the New York Theater Sale give you a chance to snag Broadway tickets for under $69 (or $89 in the orchestra section). There are some real doozies among the deals. For example, the hit Bobby Darin biomusical Just in Time, now starring Jeremy Jordan—which we just re-reviewed and found in great shape—offers cuts of up to $143, and you can save as much as  $105 on the gorgeous Maybe Happy Ending. If Off Broadway is more your speed, you can slice up to $82 from the price of the long-running Little Shop of Horrors (currently featuring Ethan Slater and Betsy Wolfe); the upcoming Irish musical Parcel from America is delivering a whopping 58% discount.  Photograph: Courtesy Matthew MurphyHeated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody The roster includes many proven hits, such as like The Rocky Horror Show, The Book of Mormon, Hadestown, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and the aforementioned Just in Time and Maybe Happy Ending. But it als

Broadway review by Adam FeldmanRating: ★★★★ (four stars)Ticketing: Buy tickets to Just in Time “This can only happen in this room, right now, with you, and it’ll never happen quite the same way again,” says the actor playing pop singer Bobby Darin at the end of the hit biomusical Just in Time. When the show premiered last spring, the actor in question was Jonathan Groff; now, Darin is being portrayed by Jeremy Jordan, another of Broadway’s most appealing leading men. I recently revisited the Circle in the Square Theatre to see Jordan in the role and, true to the show’s word, it is not happening quite the same way as it did with Groff. But that, in a sense, is the point—and Just in Time, happily, still happens to be great fun.  Photograph: Courtesy Evan ZimmermanJust in Time Of the 14 new musicals that opened in the overcrowded 2024–25 season, Just in Time is one of just four that remain open. Long runs mean new casts, and that can be complicated. In some productions, the change is not hugely consequential. Sometimes that’s because the production itself is the star; individual actors in The Lion King, say, will always be overshadowed by that show’s gorgeous design. Or sometimes it’s because the material doesn’t permit much variation. I returned to the futuristic romantic fable Maybe Happy Ending a few weeks ago and found it more or less exactly the same as when it opened; its two new lead actors, Zachary Noah Piser and Hannah Kevitt—joining original supporting players Marcus

Hello, Dolly! It's been two years since Dolly Parton announced that she would be bringing the story of her life to the stage in the form of a Broadway musical. The time and place for that show have now officially been set: Dolly: A True Original Musical will begin previews at Broadway's St. James Theatre on December 7 and open on January 19, the much-beloved country star's 81st birthday. The first batch of tickets for Dolly goes on sale at 10am tomorrow, July 8, for fans who sign up at the musical's website, dollymusical.com or who hold credit or debit cards from Capital One. (The promo code for the latter is the first six digits of the card.) The general public can start buying tickets at 10am on Friday, July 10.  “My whole life has been a musical," Parton says. "A grand ole opera really and I can’t wait to present it to you on Broadway. I hope you enjoy watching as much as I’ve enjoyed livin’ it.” Photograph: Courtesy of the artistDolly Parton Like Summer: The Donna Summer Musical and The Cher Show before it, Dolly divides its central role into three parts, played by actresses of different ages. But unlike those shows—or the many other jukebox musicals that have flooded Broadway in recent years—this one is autobiographical. Parton is co-writing the musical's book with TV writer-producer Maria J. Schlatter, with whom she previously partnered on the 2020 Netflix musical Christmas on the Square. She will also be writing several new songs for the project to go along with some