There’s a question our theater critics are asked most often: “What should I see?” The answer is a moving target because New York theater changes so quickly; you have to be ready to leap when something exciting comes to the stage. In this list, we tell you about the shows we’ve already seen and loved, some of which are new, others of which are returning champs — transfers and insta-revivals of Critic’s Pick productions that had too short a run. Our writers are still talking about these shows; here they get a second chance to buttonhole you.
CRITIC’S PICK
Daniel Radcliffe is a brilliant thing.
‘Every Brilliant Thing’
Daniel Radcliffe sets out to list all the joys in life in this interactive solo play about a boy who tries to give his mother reasons to live, written by Duncan Macmillan, with Jonny Donahoe, and directed by Jeremy Herrin and Macmillan. Radcliffe is hyperactive in the role, casting, arranging and coaxing audience members with brio, all the while inviting laugh-out-loud moments. Following the “Harry Potter” star’s Tony Award-winning run in “Merrily We Roll Along,” he had wanted a break from Broadway; then he read this script.
From Helen Shaw’s review:
Radcliffe makes himself extraordinarily available to us — his fondness for the audience radiates outward from wherever he is onstage. When participants make tiny errors (say, Mrs. Patterson’s joke is a dud), he laughs with unguarded delight. He thanks those yelling out their brilliant things with a courtly nod. Radcliffe doesn’t just do away with the fourth wall, he manages to expand his magical aren’t-people-wonderful optimism to include the whole orchestra, mezzanine and balcony.
Through May 24 at the Hudson Theater, Manhattan. Read the full review.
CRITIC’S PICK
A Roaring Twenties party comes alive — again.
‘The Wild Party’
From the very first note, this show lives up to its title. Set inside a vaudeville star’s Manhattan apartment against the backdrop of the Roaring Twenties, the “bacchanalian shebang” unfurls ferociously. In this Encores! revival of Michael John LaChiusa and George C. Wolfe’s 2000 adaptation of Joseph Moncure March’s 1928 poem, “The Wild Party” becomes a fantastical night of partying and agita again.
From Helen Shaw’s review:
LaChiusa’s hot-jazz score unspools like a fabulous nightmare. He seems to have stolen from everyone: Tin Pan Alley types like Walter Donaldson, barrelhouse greats like Jelly Roll Morton and even modernists like Kurt Weill. Period-perfect hotcha numbers shimmy along until they abruptly arrest themselves; notes turn blue, and then slide past blueness into dissonance. The drums are always agitated. If this was what the 1920s sounded like, how did anyone survive?
Through March 29 at New York City Center, Manhattan. Read the full review.
CRITIC’S PICK
A searing two-hander.
‘The Monsters’
Ngozi Anyanwu’s kinetic play is ripe with emotionally-charged metaphors, following the estranged siblings Big and Lil as they spar inside and out of the boxing ring. When Big, who is known in the ring as “The Monster,” begins training Lil, the show presents what it means to live in defense of the jabs of prejudice. The tenderness of the siblings’ rekindled relationship is accompanied by the pulse of hard-driving beats that usher the audience through scene transitions, timelines and dance-fight motion.
From Brittani Samuel’s review:
We learn that it’s here, in the world outside the ring, that Big feels he is fighting for his humanity. He knows his country’s distaste for big, Black monsters. … “The Monsters” is an insistence on the softness living in even our hardest men; it’s a tenderness the world tries to extinguish that must be wrestled back.
Through March 22 at City Center Stage II, Manhattan. Read the full review.
CRITIC’S PICK
As funny as it is smart.
‘Mother Russia’
Lauren Yee’s productions have positioned Western ideas and culture under the microscope, examining how people struggle to adapt to them, or not. In “Mother Russia,” directed by Teddy Bergman, two longtime friends attempt to acculturate to the new Russian order, as communism collides with capitalism and 20th-century pop culture.
From Elisabeth Vincentelli’s review:
Mother Russia, providing a sardonic running commentary, has seen it all before so she scoffs when Evgeny exclaims they are living in “unprecedented times.” She retraces an also-ran career in theater that has always left her on the sidelines despite her aggrandizing self-image, and at one point delivers, at rat-a-tat pace, a potted history of Russia that covers centuries in bullet points.
Through March 29 at Pershing Square Signature Center, Manhattan. Read the full review.
CRITIC’S PICK
‘Mutually assured destruction is a gold mine.’
‘Cold War Choir Practice’
Set at Christmastime 1987, during the Reagan Administration, Ro Reddick’s surreal, music-infused comedy opens on the 10-year-old Meek who believes what she has learned from her choir leader: that “the voice of a child can stop a nuclear attack.” The daughter of a former Black Panther, Meek is also the niece of a deputy national security adviser, who makes an emergency visit from Washington, with his mysteriously ill wife and an intriguing briefcase in tow …
From Laura Collins-Hughes’s review of the show’s earlier incarnation:
With a heightened tone and what turns out to be a magical Speak & Spell, this is a play about power, needless destruction and how the wealth of a nation is spent. It’s also about loyalty, betrayal and the emotional appeal of belonging for people who are in some way solitary: like Meek, the only Black child in her choir, and like her uncle, surrounded by white faces at the White House.
Through April 5 at MCC Theater, Manhattan. Read the full review.
CRITIC’S PICK
Pause and Effect.
‘You Got Older’
In the revival of Clare Barron’s 2014 drama, Alia Shawkat plays an indecisive, restive young woman who returns home for an extended stay to care for her father (Peter Friedman). As life unfolds around them, the ailing father admits, “I’m always itching to go do something else even when I’m in the middle of having a nice moment.” Time feels elastic through a sequence of mostly quiet moments that mimic real life, and one electric ensemble scene in a hospital room.
From Helen Shaw’s review:
Each actor surpasses the next, silly and moving by turns. In a superb play, it’s a bravura scene, if rather frustrating — why can’t we have more time with these wonderful people? And with that echo of complaint — why not more time? — we sense the play’s emotional logic lock around us. Barron’s careful orchestration of detail (a missed birthday here, a nurse gone astray there) alerts us to how profoundly we may be missing the appointments that matter.
Through April 26 at Cherry Lane Theater, Manhattan. Read the full review.
CRITIC’S PICK
Who’s grooming whom?
‘Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes’
Hugh Jackman stars as a best-selling author and graying literature professor who engages in a dalliance with one of his 19-year-old female students. Almost entirely told through the man’s point of view, Hannah Moscovitch’s play offers a commentary on the issue of culpability and leaves audiences with much to consider.
From Jesse Green’s review:
He’s an overinflated balloon, blowing himself through life. She’s, well, 19. Beyond any other consideration — attraction, power, psychology, class — her absolute age, not the gap in their ages, is what Moscovitch wants us to consider. Annie is not yet a fully grown human; she barely has the emotional wherewithal to handle her impulses, to know which ones she can safely indulge.
Through April 30 at Minetta Lane Theater, Manhattan. Read the full review.
CRITIC’S PICK
Purgatory done right.
‘What We Did Before Our Moth Days’
For perhaps the final time, the actor-playwright Wallace Shawn and the director André Gregory have collaborated, this time to deliver a meditation on life, death and betrayal. Seated in a linear succession of chairs, a fictional family of four (John Early, Maria Dizzia, Hope Davis and Josh Hamilton) reflects through an open forum of testimonials that play with time, stitching together a patchwork existence, both shared and not.
From Helen Shaw’s review:
Shawn’s play, a set of interlinked monologues, is written for and from the bardo. Gregory’s production is monkishly simple: Four actors sit in chairs, facing a dimly lit audience, occasionally sipping from their mugs, telling us the stories of their lives and deaths. Gregory keeps them relaxed, but, as three hours sail by, they tell us so much — is this what you think about, when, say, your friends bury you in a ritual grave on Halloween night?
Through May 24 at Greenwich House Theater, Manhattan. Read the full review.
CRITIC’S PICK
Part historical fiction, part jam session.
‘Mexodus’
Nygel D. Robinson and Brian Quijada’s hip-hop musical traces the contours of the lesser-known, southern-bound Underground Railroad. When two fictional men on opposite sides of the Mexico-United States border find each other, their shared story in pursuit of freedom unfolds, and plinking percussive sounds commingle with legato vocals to compose an immersive sonic universe from scratch. The technical mastery “must be experienced live.”
From Brittani Samuel’s review of its Off Broadway run last year:
Together, these men have created something truly dynamic: a world where fire-spitting rap cozies up next to balladic bolero; English and Spanish weave freely; and cross-cultural solidarity is not simply ideal, it’s essential — a truth oft interrupted by the fallout of colonialism, colorism and other distracting forces. Quijada and Robinson become the physical embodiment of the unity they preach.
Through June 14 at the Daryl Roth Theater, Manhattan. Read the full review.
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