Category: Capsule Reviews

By Robyn Roberts

A hilarious, side-splitting lesson on the power of subjectivity and personal conviction between friends.

Performing for only 17 weeks at The Music Box Theatre, ART on Broadway delivers laughs as big as the A-list cast. Set in Paris, present day, you can easily expect to be tickled by the dry quips shared between three best friends, as early as the opening act.

Bobby Cannavale’s character, Marc, finds himself utterly confused by the six-figure purchase of a painting acquired by his friend, Serge, played by Neil Patrick Harris. The tug of war between two strong opinions, where Marc sees a silly, expensive mistake while Serge sees a modern masterpiece, can only be won with a third player playing both sides. Enter their friend, Yvan, played by the delightfully dizzying James Corden, who’s too consumed with his own potentially expensive predicament to care about another’s art choice.

Corden is the angsty, high strung, high octane compliment to Cannavale’s confident swagger and Harris’ steady matter-of-factness. The chemistry and playful dynamics between the three friends are most convincing. The battle of differing opinions or the inability to commit to one at all, tests the loyalty between the friends, revealing the sneaky ways in which subjectivity can crack even long held bonds.

Will one painting ruin the friendships of three grown men? See ART on Broadway by December 21, 2025 at New York’s storied Music Box Theatre to find out. Playwright Yasmina Reza and Director Scott Ellis have executed a very fun and funny feat that’s only 100 minutes long.

It’s easy to expect critiques of fine art to be dramatic. But if you can make it hilarious as well, then why not go ahead and call it a masterpiece. Depending on who you ask, of course.

Tickets at: https://artonbroadway.com/

By Ben Lerner

Ragtime has risen at Lincoln Center. The musical revival, based on E.L. Doctorow’s 1975 historical fiction novel, opened October 16 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater as a transfer of New York City Center’s hit Encores! production from last fall. The cast and direction are largely the same, but unlike City Center, with its huge capacity and sky-high balconies, this Ragtime feels intimate, performed in the round with stadium seating — so everyone can see the performers’ faces. The result is transcendent: a glorious revival of a musical masterpiece that is always timely, but remarkably so in 2025.

Set in NYC suburb New Rochelle during the early twentieth century in the years leading up to World War I, Ragtime blends the stories of real life personalities like Evelyn Nesbit, Emma Goldman, and Harry Houdini with the fictional tales of a wealthy white family, a poor immigrant family, and Coalhouse Walker Jr. and Sarah, a Black pianist and his lover. The stories intertwine over a decade, at times comically and often tragically, tackling racism, classism, xenophobia, and the unrealized American dream. 

Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s score is breathtaking, spanning genres and gorgeously performed by a 28-piece orchestra. It’s elevated to new heights by the lead performances and large ensemble cast. As Coalhouse, Joshua Henry is a vocal and dramatic tour de force. The sheer power and range of his instrument is otherworldly, and the Tony for Best Actor should be locked. Nichelle Lewis devastates as Sarah, with a wholly different vocal performance from role originator Audra McDonald — Lewis and Henry’s “Wheels of a Dream” is sensational. Caissie Levy, Brandon Uranowitz, and Ben Levi Ross are in top form, giving nuanced and moving performances as Mother, Tateh, and Younger Brother, respectively. 

Ragtime opens with a lone child actor on an empty stage. When the full ensemble rises from the back of the stage, it’s a chills-inducing moment — the first of many. And when Sarah’s Friend (the spectacular Allison Blackwell) belts “Till We Reach That Day” at the end of the first act, praying through grief for an America that is truly antiracist and finally free of discrimination, it’s palpable that day has still not been reached. Don’t miss the opportunity to witness this story, with this score, sung by this cast  — at the Vivian Beaumont Theater until January 4, 2026. Tickets at: https://www.lct.org/shows/ragtime/

By Robyn Roberts

Based on the book, Right from Wrong, by Jacob Dunne, Punch on Broadway tells the story of a young man battling himself and everyone else in Nottingham, England. Adapted for the stage by British playwright, James Graham, and directed by Adam Penford, Punch hits every reservoir of emotion between the opening and final act.

Jacob, played flawlessly by Will Harrison as the lead antagonist turned protagonist, takes the audience along with him as he grapples with cause and effect of his environment versus his life choices. Jacob found understanding and community in the Nottingham streets while his single mother worked long hours to build a respectable life for her son. Jacob is also plagued with a spectrum of disabilities which only add fuel to his internal fire to snuff out a modicum of meaning or purpose to his life. Punching back at everyone and thing that have taunted or dismissed, Jacob becomes a habit that ultimately knocks him onto his most painful, but inspired trajectory yet.

The Punch cast is small and mighty, with many actors playing multiple characters within Jacob’s scarred reality. Costumes and set changes are minimal too, because in this story, it’s the characters’ rollercoaster of raw emotions that need no filler or color. As an audience member, you’ll revisit loss and grief, the anxiety of self-doubt, the rush of a new flirty crush, the weight of societal and familial pressures. You may laugh at times or cry at others, but you’ll easily leave humbled by your own life choices, and the idea of real second chances.

Harrison lends buckets of dialed-in energy to his portrayal of Jacob, amongst many other standout performances. Lucy Taylor as Jacob’s “mum” will leave you breathless as she reckons with the fate of the boy she raised. And then you meet another mum, played by Judith Lightfoot Clarke, whose grief is most palpable after the one punch that would change all.

Open now and running until November 2, 2025, go to the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre and experience Punch on Broadway before it ends. https://www.manhattantheatreclub.com/shows/2025-26-season/punch/

Adam Guettel and Tina Landau’s Floyd Collins—based on the true story of the Kentucky cave explorer—receives its long-awaited Broadway premiere in a new Lincoln Center Theater production, directed by Landau herself. While exploring a cave in a Kentucky mountainside, Floyd Collins, played by the incomparable Jeremy Jordan, becomes stuck between a rock and a hard place… literally. His rescue proves treacherous and soon captures national attention, drawing throngs of onlookers and reporters to the remote countryside. In the cavernous Vivian Beaumont Theater, Jordan’s physicality and emotional volatility create a palpable sense of claustrophobia… in the best possible way. Other notable performances include Taylor Trensch as the skittish reporter Skeets Miller, and Broadway newcomer Lizzy McAlpine, whose voice feels tailor-made for Guettel’s folk-infused score. Known for The Light in the Piazza, Guettel here crafts a soundscape that blends Americana, folk, and yodeling into something as unexpected as it is refreshing. Floyd Collins runs through June 22 on Broadway.

A wild western true story gets the folk rock treatment from composer David Yazbek, bookwriter Itamar Moses, and director David Cromer in Dead Outlaw at the Longacre Theatre. Andrew Durand, as the titular deceased fugitive, gives an outrageously dynamic performance, made all the more impressive considering how much of the show he spends completely idle. Julia Knitel is another cast standout, showcasing range and rhythm in her multiple roles with varying interactions with the corpse, before and after his untimely end. The material asks the audience to lean in and ponder its larger themes of mortality, living the life we’ve got, and the legacy that we leave behind after it. Overall, the onstage band and their interplay with the storytelling around them give this show a unique and quirky quality that surprises and delights those searching for weirdness in their Broadway diet.

Kimberly Belflower’s new play gives a 21st-century take on Arthur Miller’s The Crucible through the lens of a Georgia high school classroom’s study of the classic. Directed with riveting pacing and youthful energy by Danya Taymor, the play packs punches that are at once jarring and sobering, elevated by the twitching set and lighting design from AMP and Natasha Katz, respectively. The strong ensemble cast includes standouts Sadie Sink and Fina Strazza, surrounded by a bevy of character actors breathing freshness into the unfortunately ever-timely themes of women’s rights and agency. By the play’s emotionally enthralling climax, the audience has been on quite a thought-provoking and endlessly expressive journey of rage, tenderness, and revelation.

Idina Menzel swings and sings from the treetops in Broadway’s new tree-centric musical, Redwood. With a soaring pop-infused score by Kate Diaz, Menzel stuns in this emotionally charged production. She’s joined by standouts Zachary Noah Piser as her late son and Khaila Wilcoxon as a Redwood botanist and fellow tree lover, both delivering powerhouse performances that match Menzel’s formidable belt. Under Tina Landau’s direction, this tale of grief, growth, and connection is as sweeping as the towering trees it celebrates.

Audra McDonald is turning in another masterclass performance on the Broadway stage, this time filling the shoes of Gypsy’s iconic stage mom Mama Rose at the Majestic Theatre. In George C. Wolfe’s new revival, Joy Woods and Jordan Tyson play Louise and June, respectively, shining as blindingly brightly as their showbiz characters, alongside Danny Burstein’s charmingly nervous Herbie. From the first blare of the horns in the overture through to Audra’s 11 o’clock delivery of “Rose’s Turn,” the momentum sweeps the audience up and takes them along for the ride.

The costumes by Toni-Leslie James take us convincingly from ragged hand-me-downs to opulent gowns, with a particularly stunning showing for Louise’s strip sequence. While Gypsy has long been a mainstay of musical theatre, Wolfe’s revival finds new layers of intimacy and immediacy with this casting, layering in new elements with a fresh focus on Black performers in the Vaudevillian era. One should not pass up the opportunity to witness Broadway royalty take on this beloved material in a new and exciting way.

by Ben Togut

Across several decades, a relentless matriarch struggles to navigate her relationship with her two children in Mother Play, now playing at The Hayes Theater. 

As Phyllis, Jessica Lange is mesmerizing. Lange commands the stage in each of her character’s iterations—as an emotionally abusive mother living in poverty, a woman grappling with her children’s queer identities, and a patient at a nursing home trying to cope with her surroundings. As Martha and Carl, Celia Keenan-Bolger and Jim Parsons deliver performances that are moving in their own right, Keenan Bolger as a tomboy struggling with her mother’s expectations and Parsons as a free thinker who remains steadfast in his principles and identity.

Under the direction of Tina Landau, the actors deftly navigate the production’s emotional terrain, finding genuine comedy amid the play’s bleak subject matter. Mother Play gets its biggest laughs through physical comedy, such as when Carl teaches Martha how to “walk like man,” parodying a masculine gait and having her imitate him. Projection design by Shawn Duan, which features a dancing chorus of roaches, provides a welcome moment of campiness while illuminating the family’s experience of poverty.

With layered performances that amplify Paula Vogel’s tragicomedy, Mother Play is an exacting portrait of family dynamics gone awry.