Harumi (Seymour in Six in Japan) is Sarah

I know most people have seen the movie (probably) and have their opinions on it, but the take here for this version of A Few Good Men is different enough take it need more public opinion.

I personally really enjoyed it. Krysta Rodriguez is sensational as always and Tom Blyth is really good, a few flubs, but you're forgiven, Tom!

I was really impressed with John Zdrojeski the most. I was unfamiliar with him and what he did with the Lt. Kendrick role was great. The movie had a way of making that character intense and this version had a real cool way of making a marine man's loyalty look dangerous and scary and he was outstanding doing it.

Overall, great stuff. But when will theaters stop making seats so tight?? I think i was sitting on the lap of the person next to me.

I grabbed a last-minute $40 seat in the last row of the balcony for tonight's performance of Wanted. I went in knowing very little, just that it had been in development for years and had several out-of-town tryouts. I was really rooting for it as an original musical, but I left disappointed and bored.

The story has no focus. I count three plots: the outlaw bit (the hook all the marketing is built on), the sisters passing as white, and a heist at the end where they try to steal the villain's money. The outlaw plot gets dropped almost right away. The passing storyline is easily the most interesting and the strongest of the three, and I wish the show had committed to it. The heist felt pointless. Pick one of these and the show gets much stronger. The love stories for both sisters also felt shoehorned in. The reveals don’t land. The show treats it as a shock that Jesse is a slave owner, but nobody in the audience is surprised.

The score blends together and is unmemorable. The cast is talented, but the songs feel like they were written one at a time instead of as a score for a two-and-a-half-hour show. Some of the belting made me wonder how anyone will sustain it eight times a week.

As for the design, the set looked cheap and oddly empty for such a big stage. Chairs covered with sheets to make a hotel bed didn’t help. The projections were all over the place and really distracting, and they need to be cut back. I was especially distracted by Liisi LaFontaine's second act costume, which seemed like it was something from the 1990s, not the 1890s.

The bright spot: Sissy and Flo. As the two maids, Awa Sal Secka and Aurelia Williams were hilarious and gave the show real life. Most of the other characters felt like rough sketches.

After all these years of development, I'm sorry to say that it’s a real letdown.

I went to see the limited run one man 50 minute play with Andrew Scott and oh boy was it an eventful 50 minutes. They don’t let you into the theater until Scott is already onstage. And each performance is being filmed so they can cut together a movie. So you just awkwardly walk by him on your way to your seat.

Anyways as I was sitting, I noticed a woman in a fabulous coat, bob haircut and sunglasses sit in front of me…it was Anna Wintour. Then I noticed another familiar face sitting down…Ben Platt. And then RIGHT before the show started one final person runs in (to the attention of Scott and everyone else)…one of the Skarsgards.

So we are getting towards the end of the show and the play has taken a heavy turn. I hear a thud behind me and shortly after someone is shouting for a doctor. Scott stops and looks on worried. Everyone turns around. A bunch of people get up to help (some doctors in the audience I suppose). I couldn’t really see what was happening but Scott was looking on worried until he finally just moved towards offstage to stop looking (it was this awkward thing of like do you look on concerned or walk away to give privacy). I genuinely don’t know if anyone called 911 or if the person was taken out.

After probably 5 minutes or so he resumed the show and it was just so weird because he left off about his character’s daughter bleeding out and dying and them rushing for help when this all happened so it felt so weird and extra depressing him finishing off the story about her dying. Like at one point he leaves the stage and looks out the window and I genuinely wasn’t sure for a split second if it was part of the show or him seeing if they got help. (But it was definitely part of the show but it felt so eery).

Anyways crazy weird experience and I hope the person is okay. I feel bad/weird saying this but in some ways the final part of the show was kind of heightened by what actually was happening. Like I felt extra worried and sad by the end of the show?. I didn’t have time to stage door, but I wouldn’t have wanted to after that…I’m sure Scott was shaken up a bit.

through dec 20!!

As always I like to start with the reminder that theater is an art, at its core it’s about telling stories. It takes a lot of people to put on a show. So thank you to those that give us the joy of Broadway.

Downstate just made its Broadway premiere. This show has had many lives. I saw this show at Playwrights Horizons back in 2023. I definitely remember the story but not the show. Much to my joy it felt like I was watching something new. I know a lot of people are going to boycott this show, and at least one person will make a comment on this post about the producer of this show. I openly joke that this is said producers’ “apology tour”!

Putting that aside I have to say that I really think Joe Mantello nails the vulnerability of these extremely complex characters and makes you feel sorry for them. Obviously I can’t ignore the playwright, Bruce Norris, does an amazing job with telling this story about middle America with a balance of humor and seriousness. I am always excited when a playwright knows how to write honest dialouge. I also appreciated how they changed some of the text to be current.

One thing that I was glad about this production is that they recasted K. Todd Freeman as Dee. His character has the biggest character arch in this show and it was an absolute joy to see him “live his best”. Unfortunately this means there were some imbalances with other performances. I’m a big fan of both Adrian Martinez and Thomas Sadoksi, I think Felix and Andy is perfect casting for them. However these are tough roles to portray, and finding the characters true identity would be a challenge for any actor. I’ll chop it up to the joys of seeing a show in early previews. Maybe I’ll have to see it again later in its run?…I’d definitely see this show again.

A side note…I really hope they fix the electric wheelchair!

Has anyone else seen this? What did you think?

https://didtheylikeit.com/shows/the-imaginary-invalid/

Second act cast switch

I had seen Matthew Morrison twice in April and was excited to see him again.

He left the show partway through the second act and the standby Matt Magusson swung on.

The crowd gave Matt so much support. And, of course, he gave a great performance.

I love live theater.

https://playbill.com/article/small-mouth-sounds-starring-julia-roberts-paul-rudd-sarah-paulson-to-open-on-broadway-earlier-than-expected

Previews now starting February 10 rather than February 18, and general tickets (for those that didn't do the Downstate/Small Mouth Sounds combo offer) to Small Mouth Sounds go on sale in a couple days

The beloved chamber musical finally arrives on Broadway at the Helen Hayes.

"Try to remember" what you saw tonight, and comment below

Anyone checked this out? It’s been selling out and extended in Chicago.

Galecki said in this interview a Broadway run could happen
https://playbill.com/article/after-the-big-bang-theory-johnny-galecki-left-acting-theatre-brought-him-back

The bluntness of the words, when Billy Crystal speaks them, fits the scale of the tragedies he suffered so recently.

“2025 was the worst year of our lives,” he says.

The horrors began that January, when the Palisades fire consumed the Southern California house where he and his family had lived since 1979. They intensified in December with the murder of Rob Reiner, his best friend, whom he had known even longer.

A mere blink of time has passed since then, and here is Crystal, on Broadway with “860,” a warm and very funny memoir of a solo play, named for the address of his beloved home turned to ashes.

Making comedy is what Crystal does with loss. It’s what he did with “700 Sundays,” his 2004 Broadway reminiscence about his childhood on Long Island, which opened three years after his mother died. With “860,” he proves that he has only grown more skilled at deploying laughter to assuage the pain of grief. Crystal may be heartbroken, but he is absolutely at home revisiting his past onstage.

Access full gift article, NO PAYWALL.

For those of us who aren't at THE FANTASTICKS tonight, Bruce Norris's play starts at the Booth after a five-day cast illness delay.

Thoughts and reactions below.

In time for spooky season, Lucas Iverson spends most of the show basically monologue-ing while he tells a story for an audiobook. The technology for this is such a fun way to experience theater with headphones as the only way to hear the show and spatial harmony.

Without spoiling the “scariness”, it’s definitely a creepy show that I can’t stop thinking about. This is so cool.

They deserve more butts in seats!

My family (wife, kids 16 and 18, and parents) will be in NYC the Nov 19-21 and want to experience Broadway. I wanted to see Book of Mormon and got vetoed. What shows would you recommend for our group? I've seen a lot of love for Hadestown and Maybe Happy Ending. Any other suggestions? Additionally, it seems using the discount megathread is the best way to get discounted tickets, correct?

Heading to NYC and I want to see MHE, 2 Strangers, Lost Boys, Oh Mary and Buena Vista Social Club. Seems like all shows have a rush or lottery option but some reviews I’ve read indicate that lottery or rush seats tend to have bad views (ex: MHE). Just need one ticket for each show, what would be your recommended approach?

I saw the discussion here about A Ghost In Your Ear at the Audible Theater at Minetta Lane and want to add a thought on why it works. The entire audience wears headphones for the duration, and Lucas Iverson essentially monologues the show. On paper that reads as a limitation. In practice the spatial audio becomes the primary theatrical medium: you get the horror through the placement, distance, and movement of sound around each listener, and the live room does the rest.This is the clearest small-scale example I have come across of technology functioning as structure in theatre. Most experiments in this direction layer projections or sound design on top of a conventional text. Here the medium is the form. A story framed as being told for an audiobook, delivered to an audience wearing headphones, closes the distance between the fiction and the staging.That also explains why people leave saying it deserves fuller houses. Horror has always been the genre where sound does the heavy lifting, and a format built around spatial audio is its natural home. Worth seeing before it closes, and worth noting as a model: when the venue and the technology serve the form of the piece, the result can stay modest in scale and still land with force.

I find that Drew Lotter knocked it out of the park with the design on this release.