Adam Feldman

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, in venues that seat between 100 and 499 people. (Those that seat fewer than 100 people usually fall into the Off-Off Broadway category.) 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 revivals at the Signature Theatre and crowd-pleasing commercial fare at New World Stages. And even the best Off Broadway shows usually cost less than their cousins on the Great White Way—even if you score cheap Broadway tickets. Use our listings to find reviews, prices, ticket links, curtain times and more for current and upcoming Off Broadway shows. RECOMMENDED: Full list of Broadway and Off Broadway musicals in New York

Broadway musicals are the beating heart of New York City. These days, your options are more diverse than ever: cultural game-changers like Hamilton and raucous comedies like The Book of Mormon are just down the street from quirky originals like Kimberly Akimbo and family classics like The Lion King. Whether you're looking for classic Broadway songs, spectacular sets and costumes, star turns by Broadway divas or dance numbers performed by the hottest chorus boys and girls, there is always plenty to choose from. Here is our list of all the Broadway musicals that are currently running or on their way, followed by a list of those in smaller Off Broadway and Off-Off Broadway venues. RECOMMENDED: The best Broadway shows

There's no business like show business, and there's no place better for shows than New York City. The sheer range of Off Broadway show for kids proves just that. Each of these theater productions offers something unique, including blue men from another world, wild slapstick comedy, a man-eating plant and—much to kids' delight—more bubbles than you've probably ever seen. (Of course, there are plenty of great Broadway shows for kids as well.)  RECOMMENDED: More theater for kids in NYC Have you already checked out these cool Off Broadway shows for kids? New York has plenty of other fun activities up its sleeve. Visit these family attractions, grab a bite to eat after the show at one of these fun restaurants or try to check the 101 things to do with kids in NYC off your list. 

Theater is a big part of what makes New York shine. This city is bursting with talent that even the youngest among us can appreciate, and at the best Broadway shows for kids, everyone in your crew will be captivated. The Lion King, with its dancing wildlife and catchy songs, is a perennial favorite, but Disney aficionados will also get a kick out of the magical tale of Aladdin. At Wicked, you can visit the land of Oz and its conflicted green-skinned protagonist; at Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, you can enter an entirely different world of witches and strange creatures. These long-running hits are joined by newer offerings like Some Like It Hot, Six and & Juliet, which may appeal to older kids. RECOMMENDED: More theater for kids in NYC If you've already caught these shows or are looking for something a little different, you won't have to go far: Be sure to explore our favorite Off Broadway shows for kids, too, where the stories can be just as memorable as their Broadway counterparts and the talent equally impressive. Make the day more memorable by hitting up one of our favorite fun restaurants for kids before or after the show.

Picture this: your cat-eye contacts are turning you half blind, you’re trying not to accidentally spit out your fake fangs, and you’re on your third double vodka and coke of the night. It’s Halloween, baby, and that means it’s time for a serious party. A spooky party. A Halloween party to remember.  And d'you know what you’ll need for that (other than the fake fangs, the witch hats and the vodka, that is)? It’s a properly banging Halloween playlist. And fear not, friends, we’ve got the playlist for you. From The Cramps (of ‘Wednesday’ fame) to Olivia Rodrigo’s ex-boyfriend bleeding her dry, we’ve got the ultimate Halloween soundtrack right here. Time to get freaky, people.  Written by Brent DiCrescenzo, Christopher Tarantino, Andy Kryza, Adam Feldman, Kate Wertheimer, Andrew Frisicano, Sophie Harris, Carla Sosenko, Nick Leftly, Ella Doyle, India Lawrence, Chiara Wilkinson and Georgia Evans. RECOMMENDED:🎉 The best party songs ever made🎸 The best classic rock songs🎤 The best karaoke songs🎶 The best ’80s songs

Halloween is always the most theatrical of American holidays. Every year, people of all ages put on costumes and makeup and bring the world of make-believe to the streets, and the theater world is happy to join the fun with a range of Halloween shows to celebrate the season. We’ve scared up this list of horror-themed theater events—including plays, musicals, concerts, festivals and even a couple of Broadway shows—to help you get in the spooky spirit. Here they are, in alphabetical order. RECOMMENDED: The Scariest Haunted Houses in NYC

Radio City Christmas Spectacular 202e tickets will get you the full experience of Christmas in New York. This show has it all: a flying Santa, an incredibly ornate nativity scene and a new finale that uses drone technology. And don’t forget about the Rockettes in Wooden Soldier costumes and kick lines! It's one of the can't-miss NYC events in November and December, so here’s everything you need to know about snagging tickets to the most festive show of the season. (And don’t forget to take a photo under the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree afterward.) RECOMMENDED: Full guide to the Radio City Christmas Spectacular When is the Radio City Christmas Spectacular 2023? This year's Radio City Christmas Spectacular, officially known as Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes, runs from November 17, 2023 through January 1, 2024. The show is performed from two to five times a day, with rotating companies of performers. When is the Radio City Christmas Spectacular 2023? The Radio City Christmas Spectacular is at Radio City Music Hall at Rockefeller Center. Take the B, D, F or M to 47th-50th Sts–Rockefeller Center or the 1 to 50th St. How do you get Radio City Christmas Spectacular tickets in 2023? Tickets are available for purchase on the Rockettes website. You can also buy tickets directly at the box office of Radio City Music Hall. How much are Radio City Christmas Spectacular tickets in 2023? Ticket prices vary widely depending on date, time and location. The curren

The best Broadway shows attract millions of people to enjoy the pinnacle of live entertainment in New York City. Every season brings a fresh crop of Broadway musicals, plays and revivals, some of which go on to glory at the Tony Awards. Some are for only limited runs, but others stick around for years. Along with star-driven dramas and family-oriented blockbusters, you can still find the kind of artistically ambitious offerings that are more common to the smaller venues of Off Broadway. Here are our theater critics' top choices among the shows that are currently playing on the Great White Way.  RECOMMENDED: Complete A–Z Listings of All Broadway Shows in NYC

タイムアウト東京 > 映画 > 東京、10月に劇場で観るべきアニメ映画 少しずつ涼しくなり、秋らしい季節を感じられる日も増えてきた10月。これまでは暑さを避けて外出せずにいたという人も比較的外に出やすくなってきたこのタイミングで、アニメーション映画では注目作が続々と公開をスタートする。 漫画原作の映画化企画や人気テレビシリーズの続編作、夏の公開から話題となりロングラン上映を果たしている映画など、一口にアニメーションと言ってもジャンルもスケールもさまざまなバラエティー豊かなものとなっている。今年の「芸術の秋」をアニメーション映画で味わってみては。 関連記事『人生で観ておくべき、日本映画ベスト50』

Eleven shows make up the fall Broadway season in 2023, which is slightly less than usual. But as all theater fans know, there's more to New York City's stage scene than the bright lights of Broadway. Many of the city's most thrilling productions happen beyond Times Square, in the wide realm known as Off Broadway—and that's certainly looking to be the case again this year. But how can you choose what to see? We can help. We've sifted through dozens of upcoming Off Broadway shows set to open this fall and chosen 25 that strike us especially promising, from new musicals to trenchant dramas and revivals of the classics. Here, in order of when the shows start, is our 2023 Off Broadway fall preview. RECOMMENDED: Current and upcoming Off Broadway listings  

Seeing a show on Broadway can require some planning in advance—and sometimes a leap of faith. You can wait until the shows have opened and try to see only the very best Broadway shows, but at that point, it is often harder to get tickets and good seats. So it’s a good idea to keep an eye on the shows that will be opening on Broadway down the line, be they original musicals, promising new plays or revivals of time-tested classics. Here, in order of when they start, are the productions that have been confirmed so far to begin their Broadway runs in the fall of 2023. Recommended: Current and Upcoming Off Broadway Shows

We all need a bit of magic in our lives, and New York offers plenty to choose from beyond 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. When performed well, they welcome you to suspend disbelief in a special zone where skills honed over the course of years meet the element of surprise. Why not allow yourself a few illusions?

Theater review by Adam Feldman  “Here we are,” says a maîtresse d'hôtel as she seats a table of wealthy people at the fancy Café Everything. “I hope this is acceptable. Your enabler will be here momentarily.” But the plenitude promised by the restaurant’s name is soon revealed to be a grave exaggeration, and the hungry patrons are no luckier finding food at their next destination, a “post-deconstructive” French bistro where tragedy has recently struck. “It is what it is,” sings their waitress, who alternates between wailing and Gallic resignation. “Things are what they are. La vie est la vie.”   The aggrieved would-be diners wind up spending the entire first act of Here We Are in a literally fruitless quest to be fed, and some audiences at this collaboration between the playwright David Ives and the composer Stephen Sondheim may feel similarly confused and undernourished. Yet I should say up front that I enjoyed it very much. Sondheim’s final musical is not quite a full meal—not, at least, as a Sondheim musical per se—but how could it be? After working on the show sporadically for a decade or so, the irreplaceable Broadway auteur died in 2021, having written a fair amount for the first half but not very much for the second.  But if Here We Are amounts to a plate of hors d’oeuvres in the Sondheim oeuvre, it is exquisitely well served in its world premiere at the Shed; Ives, director Joe Mantello and the superb ensemble cast deliver a deluxe production. In the first act, adapte

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Doug Simon and Bud Davenport wear many hats in their enthusiastic presentation of Gutenberg! The Musical! Not only are these overeager friends from New Jersey the authors of a highly unpromising new tuner about the 15th-century inventor of the printing press, but they also narrate this show, explain their writing choices and play every part; their roles are differentiated via dozens of yellow baseball caps with the characters’ names spelled out on them, like the shirts in the doomed original production of Merrily We Roll Along. Having spent their life savings to rent Broadway’s James Earl Jones Theatre for a one-night backers’ audition, hoping to corral producers for their project, they throw everything they’ve got—and, alas, more—into songs that are very bad at the very best. “Gutenberg! Darn tootin’-berg,” they sing in their show’s big opener. “He’s the best chap around / At least in this town / Sure as shootin’-berg!” If they seem nervous, that’s because they’re taking a mighty big risk up there; after all, as Doug’s late mother once told him, “You gotta put food on the table and you can’t eat dreams!” So the open laughter that their amateurish presentation evokes from the audience might seem a bit cruel—that is, if Doug and Bud were real wanna-be writers and not the fictional heroes of Scott Brown and Anthony King’s silly-smart, sweet-natured and very funny meta-musical, and if they weren’t being played by the hilarious Andrew Rannells and

New Zealand's Catherine Waller plays multiple denizens of a sinister medical-entertainment complex—including a reptilian emcee, a strung-out stripper, a guilt-ridden blind laborer and, most oddly, a child amputee with a penchant for stand-up comedy—in this interactive solo show, which has earned her acclaim in fringe festivals around the world. Quilted together from macabre tropes, it all plays out rather like an interactive haunted house experience, with audience members regularly corraled into conversation with Waller's lineup of lost souls.

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Merrily We Roll Along is the femme fatale of Stephen Sondheim musicals, beautiful and troubled; people keep thinking they can fix it, rescue it, save it from itself and make it their own. In the decades since its disastrous 1981 premiere on Broadway, where it lasted just two weeks, the show has been revised and revived many times (including by the York in 1994, Encores! in 2012 and Fiasco in 2019). The challenges of Merrily are built into its core in a way that no production can fully overcome. But director Maria Friedman’s revival does a superb job—the best I’ve ever seen—of overlooking them, the way one might forgive the foibles of an old friend.   As a showbiz-steeped investigation of the disillusionment that may accompany adulthood, Merrily is a companion piece to Sondheim’s Follies, with which it shares a key line: “Never look back,” an imperative this show pointedly ignores. Adapted by George Furth from a play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, the musical is structured in reverse. We first meet Franklin Shepard (Jonathan Groff) in 1976, when he is a former composer now leading a hollow life as a producer of Hollywood schlock; successive scenes move backward through the twisting paths on which he has lost both his ideals and his erstwhile best pals, playwright Charley (Daniel Radcliffe) and writer Mary (Lindsay Mendez). The final scene—chronologically, the first—finds them together on a rooftop in 1957, as yet regardless of their doom,

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  An itinerant Black preacher with a burnished silver tongue and a bushel of schemes up his sleeve, Purlie Victorious Judson (Leslie Odom, Jr.) is irrepressible—not that the white folks around him don’t try. Even after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling for desegregation, Purlie’s childhood home in rural Georgia seems frozen in time: a cotton plantation owned and ruled by Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee (Jay O. Sanders), the same bullwhip-wielding Dixie tyrant who chased our hero out of town two decades earlier. When Purlie returns to Cotchipee County, plotting to collect a long-denied inheritance, a major dust-up is all but guaranteed. And since Purlie Victorious is a comedy, with the merry subtitle A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch, it is also clear who will come out on top. Victorious is, after all, his middle name.  Ossie Davis’s 1961 play—in which the actor and activist originally starred opposite Ruby Dee—may not seem a likely candidate for revival. Comedies often age badly, and comedies about race are even riskier. But Purlie Victorious doesn’t crack: Directed knowingly by Kenny Leon, the show’s new Broadway production is a joyous affair, broad in comedy and in spirit. Davis populates his play with deceptively familiar types (the simple-minded country girl, the loyal mammy, the villainous Confederate, the simpering Uncle Tom) who have more dimensions than expected; the actors who inhabit them take manifest delight in subverting stock f

For more than two decades, this proudly old-school series has offered a different lineup of professional magicians every week. It's an heir to the vaudeville tradition: Many of the acts incorporate comedic elements, and audience participation is common. (If you have children, bring them; they make especially adorable assistants.) The show has recently moved to the private upstairs dining room at Monte's Trattoria, and the ticket package includes a three-course red-sauce Italian meal. You get a lot of value and variety for your magic dollar, and in contrast to some fancier magic shows, this one feels like comfort food: an all-you-can-eat buffet to which you’re encouraged to return until you’re as stuffed as a hat full of rabbits.

You’ll get a kick out of this holiday stalwart, which still features Santa, wooden soldiers and the dazzling Rockettes. In recent years, new music, more eye-catching costumes and advanced technology have been introduced to bring audience members closer to the performance. In the signature kick line that finds its way into most of the big dance numbers, the Rockettes’ 36 pairs of legs rise and fall like the batting of an eyelash, their perfect unison a testament to the disciplined human form. This is precision dancing on a massive scale—a Busby Berkeley number come to glorious life—and it takes your breath away. RECOMMENDED: Full guide to the Radio City Christmas Spectacular

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  People come and go so quickly here! The young Spanish magician Antonio Díaz shares many grand illusions in his Broadway show, El Mago Pop, but he is especially keen on teleportation. Díaz and his assistants are in continual states of flux: Now you see them, now you don’t, now you see them again but somewhere other than where they began. A variety of inanimate objects—ranging in size from small (coins) to medium (shoes) to extra large (a helicopter)—are subject to similar vanishing acts, and the entire show will disappear from the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on August 27 so that Diáz can return to his home base in Barcelona.  If you can catch El Mago Pop during its too-brief run, you will be well entertained. Between his more spectacular setpieces, the winsome Díaz—a compact cutie who is billed as Spain’s top-selling artist of the past five years—proves his bona fides with dextrous ventures into card and ball manipulation. (Time-filling video sequences depict him in comic-book graphics, like a modern-day superhero.) A few of the tricks will be familiar to magic fans, but Díaz puts a clever spins on some of the more familiar routines: a standard torn-newspaper bit is subsumed into a larger sequence that takes you aback, and a moment of quasi-levitation is berthed in elegant shadow play. Broadway hasn’t hosted a magic show since before the pandemic shutdown, and it’s good to have some illusions again. For 75 delightful minutes, you may feel a little

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Ian Shaw was four years old in 1974, when his father, the British actor and alcoholic Robert Shaw, filmed his role as the weather-beaten hunter Quint in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. The elder Shaw died four years later; now, the junior is portraying him in the diverting The Shark Is Broken, a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Jaws on location at Martha’s Vineyard. The play, co-written with Joseph Nixon, strands Shaw at sea with his fellow lead actors—Richard Dreyfuss (Alex Brightman) and Roy Scheider (Colin Donnell)—then invites us to spy on their booze-soaked clashes, bonding and petty mutinies as they wait to be called to action. Played well by his son, who bears a striking resemblance to him, this Shaw is as tempestuous as Quint. On one hand, he is a classical thespian who threads Shakespeare into his dialogue—Hamlet, Lear, Sonnet 29 in full—and flaunts his contempt for the movie they are making: “It’s bread and circuses, chums.” But on the flip side of that same hand, he’s a dipsomaniacal terror who hides flasks of liquor all over the set and mercilessly goads the softer, thinner-skinned Dreyfuss. (If that’s his chum, is Shaw the shark?) The even-keeled Scheider, meanwhile, is caught between his co-stars’ different strains of vanity—not that he’s wholly immune to that particular sin. (When he has a moment to himself, he strips down to tan with a foil reflector.) The Shark Is Broken | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy If not for our on

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Attending Back to the Future: The Musical is a bit like watching a car crash in slow motion, except for the part about not being able to look away. The star is a vehicle: a gull-winged silver DeLorean in whose image the Winter Garden Theatre has been tricked out with gleaming circuitry, and which—re-engineered into a time machine by the wild-haired inventor Doc Brown (Roger Bart)—transports 1980s teenager Marty McFly (Casey Likes) 30 years into the past, where he must help his father woo his mother. Audience members, meanwhile, may long for a device to jump them two hours and 40 minutes into the future.   There have been solid Broadway musicals adapted from hit movies, but this heap seems to have been assembled out of parts from previous film-to-stage flops. Bart played a mad scientist in Young Frankenstein, and Likes was a music-loving teen in last season’s Almost Famous. Director John Rando tried ‘80s kitsch in The Wedding Singer; Glen Ballard, who co-wrote the score, also co-composed the ghastly Ghost. Like Pretty Woman and Bullets Over Broadway, the script is by the source’s original screenwriter, in this case Bob Gale. And as in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Bang, the main attraction is a flying car.  Back to the Future: The Musical | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman What no one has remembered to include is the engine, which may explain why the cast is pushing so hard. The ever-present underscoring—drawn from Silvestri’s

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  What’s that merry racket at the Helen Hayes Theater this summer? By George, it’s the sound of a lark! An English lark! Sandy Rustin’s The Cottage has no pretensions to seriousness: It’s a brazenly straightforward drawing-room farce, created for light amusement and delivered on a platter by a properly silly cast of six. The year is 1923, the setting is a country hideaway in the Cotswolds, and the subject is made clear on the drop curtain, which includes a rutting pair of squirrels and a brassiere suspended from the branch of a tree. “Romance, my dear, is for fairy tales,” says the suave Beau (Eric McCormack) to his mistress Sylvia (Laura Bell Bundy), who is also his sister-in-law. “This is not a romance. This is sex.” Sylvia, though, has other ideas. For some time, the couple has been conducting a steamy extramarital affair, meeting once a year at Beau’s family cottage. But Sylvia has now decided to go public with their relationship—and has rashly done so in telegrams to their respective spouses: Beau’s forbidding and very pregnant wife (Lilli Cooper) and his stuffy brother (Alex Moffat). This love rectangle is further complicated by the staggered arrivals of Beau’s doe-eyed auxiliary mistress (Dana Steingold) and her menacing ex-husband (Nehal Joshi).  The Cottage | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus The Cottage may look like a throwback to the tony sauciness of Noël Coward’s plays in the 1930s—in a nod to the Master, Beau’s secretary is named

Broadway review by Adam Feldman   The groundbreaking, floor-shaking Here Lies Love makes space for itself like no Broadway show ever has. David Byrne’s concept musical about the rise and fall of the former Philippines first lady Imelda Marcos was a hit in its 2013 run at the Public Theatre, but those who saw that immersive production may have wondered how it could possibly translate to a traditional proscenium theater. The trick, it turns out, was to remake the venue instead of the show: Director Alex Timbers and set designer David Korins have revolutionized and radicalized the capacious Broadway Theatre into a gleaming dance club, walled by dozens of video screens, where audience members—often literally standing in the middle of the action—get swept up in the shifting tides and undertows of history.  Proscenium houses have been reconfigured before; the Broadway Theatre got remade twice in the early 1970s (for the infamous Dude and the marvelous Candide), and other venues have been been reimagined more recently in productions like Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 and Timbers’s own Rocky. But Here Lies Love takes this idea to a flashy new level: With much of the audience moving throughout the 90-minute show, guided around an ever-shifting set of platforms, it barely feels like it's in a theater at all. (The rest of the crowd is mostly seated in what used to be the mezzanine, now just a few feet from the extended stage; there are also slim rows of seats on three sides

"Let Me Tell You" is a series of columns from our expert editors about NYC living, including the best things to do, where to eat and drink, and what to see at the theater. They are published every week. I’ve never been a huge fan of true crime as a literary genre; the real world is scary enough already. What I do enjoy is fake crime: puzzle mysteries in which clues are available but carefully obscured, so that readers can match wits with a detective who, in the final chapters, makes everything click into place. Naturally, then, I have always been drawn to the Queen of Crime, Dame Agatha Christie, whose mastery of the form has made her the best-selling fiction writer of all time; her novels and collections of short stories have sold more than two billion copies and have inspired countless film and TV adaptations. (She also wrote the world’s longest-running play, The Mousetrap, which was slated to finally reach Broadway this year and may still make it.) Christie's best books are quick, enormously entertaining reads that are perfectly suited to vacations or lazy days. The trouble is, she wrote so many that it's hard to know where to start. For the uninitiated, the sheer volume of Christie's output in her 55-year career is daunting, and not all of her work is equally worthwhile. How can readers find their way amid the vast Christie corpus? That's where I come in. Like many other Christiephiles, I got hooked in my childhood—Dame Agatha's straightforward writing makes her accessib

Eddie Redmayne and Gayle Rankin will headline the latest Broadway revival of the classic musical Cabaret this spring, the show's producers announced today. Redmayne will play the sinister Emcee of the Kit Kat Club, a decadent Berlin nightclub in 1930s Germany as Naziism begins its rise; Rankin will be Sally Bowles, a chanteuse at the club who is bent on stardom at any cost. Adapted by Joe Masteroff from stories by Christopher Isherwood and a play by John Van Druten, and built around songs by the Chicago team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, Cabaret is one of the great Broadway musicals of all time: an exhilarating, harrowing masterpiece. This new revival, directed by Rebecca Frecknall, originated in the West End in 2021—with Redmayne as the Emceee—and went on to win seven Olivier Awards, London's equivalent of the Tonys. (It is still playing there.) In its New York incarnation, titled Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, the production will be staged in the round at the August Wilson Theatre, which will be remodeled to allow for an immersive pre-show experience that includes dining and entertainment.  Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall's superb 1998 revival of Cabaret ran for six years and made a star of Alan Cumming, who reprised his role as the Emcee when the production returned in 2014. Frecknall's version aims to stake its own claim to the material, with help from designer Tom Scutt. "The costumes are angular, vivid, somewhat grotesque; the performers’ faces are sardonic, or sinister, not

Musicals by the master songsmith Stephen Sondheim, who died in 2021, have been in steady supply in New York City in recent years: Excellent revivals of Sweeney Todd and Merrily We Roll Along are both on Broadway right now, the all-new Here We Are is in previews at the Shed, and the Twenty-Twenties have already given us major new productions of Company, Into the Woods, West Side Story and Assassins. But a few Sondheim shows still qualify as bona fide rarities. One of them is The Frogs, which will get a rare hearing, courtesy of the concert series MasterVoices, in three performances this November. RECOMMENDED: Let me tell you—Off Broadway is the place to find the most exciting theater this fall Loosely adapted (and updated) from an ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, The Frogs was written in 1974 with Burt Shevelove, with whom Sondheim had previously written A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The show was performed by the Yale Repertory Theatre in a swimming pool on campus, for just eight performances. (Among the students in the chorus: Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver and Christopher Durang.) The plot follows the journey of the Greek god Dionysus and his slave Xanthius to the Underworld, in search of a great playwright who could rescue the world from the horrors into which it has fallen—culminating in a dramatic face-off between William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw. In 2004, Nathan Lane worked with Sondheim to adapt and expand this curio into a full-length

“Let Me Tell You” is a series of columns from our expert editors about NYC living, including the best things to do, where to eat and drink, and what to see at the theater. They publish each Wednesday so you’re hearing from us each week. Don't get me wrong: I love Broadway shows. If I have any complaint about the upcoming fall season, it's that there aren't enough of them. Last year, 20 new Broadway productions cropped up between September and the end of the year; in 2023, as our Broadway fall preview shows, there are only 11. And that batch includes just three shows that haven't been seen in New York before: the new plays Jaja's African Hair Braiding and I Need That and the autism-themed musical How to Dance in Ohio. Of the remaining shows, four are moving up from Off Broadway runs last season—Merrily We Roll Along, Harmony, Prayer for the French Republic and Melissa Etheridge: My Window—and the other four are revivals: the plays Purlie Victorious and Appropriate and the musicals Gutenberg! and Spamalot.   I'm happy to see all of these shows, or in some cases to see them again. Still, there's no denying that this year, most than ever, theater lovers like me will have to look elsewhere to satisfy our cravings—specifically, to the varied offerings of Off Broadway theater, where new shows (and revivals of classics) thrive in more intimate venues. Here are the shows I'm most excited to catch in the months ahead. RECOMMENDED: The 25 best Off Broadway shows to see this fall New mu

Late summer and early winter are tough times for the box offices of even the best Broadway shows. To confront this challenge, the theater industry has come up with Broadway Week, a twice-annual half-price sale for tickets to pretty much every Broadway production. The name is not quite accurate: The second 2023 edition of Broadway Week actually lasts two weeks, from September 4 through September 17—and the twofer tickets go on sale today.  This edition's list of participating shows is the most extensive yet; it includes every single Broadway production except the very first performances of the new productions Melissa Etheridge: My Window and Gutenberg! The Musical! If you act fast, you might even be able to snag seats for this year's Tony winner for Best Musical, Kimberly Akimbo, and such perpetual hot tickets as Hamilton, Sweeney Todd, Wicked and The Lion King. Head to to the Broadway Week website to peruse the list of participating shows and grab the ones you want most.   RECOMMENDED: A full guide to Broadway Week in NYC One thing to bear in mind is that the tickets sold through Broadway Week tend to be ones that producers are keenest to sell: in balconies, mezzanines and side areas. But as of this year, the Broadway Week program has been offering a new option: If you can afford to shell out more for some of the best seats in the house, you can "upgrade" your ticket order to pay $125 for tickets that would otherwise be much more expensive. Here is a full list of all 24 shows

"Let Me Tell You" is a series of columns from our expert editors about NYC living, including the best things to do, where to eat and drink, and what to see at the theater. They publish each Tuesday so you’re hearing from us each week.  What if I were to tell you that there’s a free app that allows you, every day, to buy some of your city’s most delicious food for a third of the price, or even less?  This is not a hypothetical scenario: If you have met me at some point in the past year and a half, there’s a strong chance that I have told you about this app. I use it all the time, and I have been proselytizing it to more or less everyone I know. But I have been reluctant to tell you, dear reader, about it—until now—for selfish reasons: I didn’t want too many people to find out about it, for fear that they would poach the deals that have become so dear to me. But I am ready to come clean. The app is called Too Good to Go, and it is too good to go on hiding from you.  RECOMMENDED: The 21 best cheap eats in NYC Too Good to Go was launched in Europe in 2015, and arrived in North America in late 2020. Its official raison d’être is the reduction of food waste, which has major detrimental effects on the environment. To that end, the app has devised a system to connect sellers that might otherwise throw away perfectly good products—such as bakeries, pizza places, specialty shops and grocery stores—with customers who will take them for a fraction of the normal cost. A surprise bag of fo

The nominations for the 2023 Tony Awards were announced this morning, honoring productions from the 2022–23 Broadway season. The awards are given out annually by the Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing to salute outstanding achievements in 26 categories of Broadway artistry. Actors Lea Michele and Myles Frost revealed the full list of nominees live on YouTube at 9am. Among the 2022-23 Broadway productions earning the most nominations were the new musicals Some Like It Hot (13), Shucked (9), & Juliet (9), New York, New York (9) and Kimberly Akimbo (8); the new plays Leopoldstadt (6), Ain't No Mo' (6), Fat Ham (5) and Cost of Living (5); and the revivals Sweeney Todd (8), Parade (6), Into the Woods (6) and A Doll's House (6).   RECOMMENDED: A full guide to the 2023 Tony Awards The Tony Awards ceremony, hosted this year by Ariana DeBose, will be held at the historic United Palace in Washington Heights on Sunday, June 11, 2023, and the main part will be televised on CBS in a three-hour broadcast starting at 8pm ET. (The event can also be watched live throughout the country by premium subscribers to the streaming service Paramount+.) Some awards will be given out during in an earlier portion of the ceremony that can be viewed on the free streaming service Pluto TV starting at 6:30pm ET.  A Special Tony will be awarded to Broadway Bares creator Jerry Mitchell. As previously announced, the Tonys will also award three Honors for Excellence in the Theatre (to production stag

The Broadway show The Phantom of the Opera will soon close after 35 years, but the curtain will stay open a bit longer than expected. The closure date was originally set for Valentine's Week 2023, but now the theater plans to delay the closing until April 16, 2023 because ticket sales are booming, the New York Times reported today. As Broadway’s longest-running show, Phantom has delighted audiences with more than 13,500 performances since it opened on January 26, 1988. Before it closes, it’ll celebrate its 35th anniversary. The show has played at the resplendent Majestic Theater since the beginning of its run. 'As much a part of the city landscape as the Empire State Building' "As much a part of the city landscape as the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, the blockbuster phenomenon has long been a New York City landmark," the show wrote in its closure news release. "Widely considered one of the most beautiful and spectacular productions in history, the musical set the bar with its lavish sets and costumes, large cast and Broadway’s largest orchestra—a perfect match for its sumptuous score and classic love story." The closure announcement says that leaders decided the right time to close Phantom would be after its 35th birthday; the New York Post, which broke news of the closing on Friday, said the show has struggled since the pandemic and is losing "some $1 million a month." But now, as the Times reported, Phantom's ticket sales are once again thriving: Last wee

After a record-smashing 35 years on Broadway, The Phantom of the Opera will give up the ghost for good on April 16. Until now, tickets to its final performance have only been available by invitation. But this week, the production is offering a chance to the show's many Phans to see the final curtain—and the final chandelier—come down.  If you want to attend this historic performance, you'll have to act fast. From today through noon on Friday, March 31, fans of the show can enter a digital lottery to buy seats for the Phantom finale. A lucky few winners will get a chance to buy one or two tickets each in the rear mezzanine of the Majestic Theatre at 5pm on April 16.  To enter the lottery, visit Telecharge's lottery and rush tickets page this week. If you’ve never used the page before, you’ll need to register with a social media account. Then scroll down to the bottom for the box that says “The Phantom of the Opera Final Performance.” You only need to click it to enter the lottery, but you’ll have to stay alert next week: Four rounds of winners will be chosen each day from April 3 through April 6, and winners must buy their tickets within 24 hours of the drawing. The seats cost $99 apiece, including fees. Phantom, of course, is composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's greatest hit of them all: a timeless tale of candlelit romance between a pretty young singer and the masked serial killer who has been stalking her from his subterranean lair beneath a 19th-century Parisian opera house. The

“Let Me Tell You” is a series of columns from our expert editors about NYC living, including the best things to do, where to eat and drink, and what to see at the theater. They publish each Wednesday so you’re hearing from us each week. As you may have heard, Lea Michele is currently starring in Funny Girl on Broadway. A lot of people have, in fact, heard about this. The drama surrounding Funny Girl this year escaped the tightly knit circles to which replacement-casting-in-musicals debates are usually confined. It became that rare modern phenomenon: a Broadway news story that regular people cared about.  In case you somehow missed it, the short version is this. Funny Girl, a biomusical about Ziegfeld Follies comedian Fanny Brice, had never been revived on Broadway since its original 1964 production, which helped propel Barbra Streisand to megastardom. For years, people floated the idea of a production headlined by Glee star Lea Michele—which seemed an obvious fit, since she had already performed many of the show’s songs on Glee and elsewhere. But when Funny Girl did return to Broadway last March, it did not star Lea Michele. Instead, Fanny was played by Beanie Feldstein, the comedically gifted young star of the movies Lady Bird and Booksmart. Alas: Feldstein turned out to be a poor match for her demanding role. The reviews were harsh (including mine), and the production was nearly shut out of the Tony Award nominations; a final curtain seemed imminent. That’s when things g

“Let Me Tell You” is a series of columns from our expert editors about NYC living, including the best things to do, where to eat and drink, and what to see at the theater. They publish each Wednesday so you’re hearing from us each week. As a theater critic, I try not to have expectations when I go into a show that I’ll be reviewing. That's my official position, at least, and to some degree it's true: I do try. Expectations can mess with your judgment. Perfectly good shows are disappointing if they aren’t as great as you hoped they would be, and mediocre ones can benefit from seeming like total disasters in advance.  But critics are human beings—no matter what you may have heard!—and I can’t pretend there aren’t a few upcoming Broadway shows that, for one reason or other, I’m especially eager to see. When the time comes to review them, we’ll all find out if my enthusiasm was misplaced. But meanwhile, it seems fair to tell you which, of all the Broadway productions opening this spring, hold special promise to me this spring.  Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (starts February 26) Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s slash-and-burn horror tale is one of my favorite musicals of all time. Knowing a show too well can make it hard to appreciate new versions, but at this point, I’ve seen so many Sweeneys that I’m no longer protective of the original in my head. I love that this revival will include a large orchestra and chorus to do justice to Sondheim’s masterpiece of a

Yes, awards shows are about honoring excellence and saluting the achievements of top artists in their fields and all the rest of that nice-sounding stuff. But for many fans of the genre, the most memorable award-show moments come when the stars step up to accept their accolades—especially when they veer from the usual dull decorum. The series You Like Me: An Evening of Classic Acceptance Speeches spins these memories into comic gold by inviting some of the city's funniest downtown performers to re-create them live onstage. The show will return to Joe's Pub at the Public Theater this month for one night only, and Time Out has exclusively learned who will be on the lineup for this sometimes savage, always hilarious send-up of Tinseltown glitter. You Like Me is the bratty brainchild of entertainment journalist and Meryl Streep biographer Michael Schulman (The New Yorker) and Smash blogger turned Hollywood show-runner Rachel Shukert (The Baby-Sitters Club). The February 21 performance—the series's first in several years—celebrates the publication of Schulman's latest book: the dishy backstage chronicle Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears.  Among the highlights: alt-comedian and Los Espookys co-creator Julio Torres will take on Angelina Jolie's 2000 Oscar speech for Girl, Interrupted, in which the gothed-out star seemed discomfitingly intimate with her brother; Pulitzer Prize winner Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop) will bite into Fiona Apple's badass "T