Things to do in New York this Friday

Sam Shepard's 1978 dysfunctional-family play Curse of the Starving Class, a dark satire of the American Dream set on a crumbling California farm, was revived at the Signature just six years ago, and the New Group's current revival of it in the same theater complex provides no good reason to see it anew. Christian Slater and Calista Flockhart are deeply miscast as the screwy Tate parents—each trying to sell the place out from under the other—as is the gentle-miened Cooper Hoffman as their violent son. (The scenes between Slater and Hoffman should be ticking time bombs; instead, they just tick.) Stella Marcus fares better as the outlaw Lisa Simpson of the factious clan, and Jeb Kreager adds a jolt of real energy in his brief turn as a local barman. But the star of this version is unquestionably a fluffy live sheep named Lois, who provides moments of authenticity that are otherwise rare in Scott Elliott's torpid, disjointed production. When Lois takes a poop onstage, at least she does it literally.

Queens Botanical Garden has a beautiful light show you’ll want to see this year called “Luminosa: A Festival of Lights.” With over 1 million LED lights, this illuminated trail imitates a lush garden with giant lanterns—including 40 stunning lamp scenes crafted by 150 artisans using 120 tons of steel and 150,000 feet of silk—and brings it to life with acrobatic performers, stone-carving, an artisan market and ambient music.

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary! is not just funny: It is dizzyingly, breathtakingly funny, the kind of funny that ambushes your body into uncontained laughter. Stage comedies have become an endangered species in recent decades, and when they do pop up they tend to be the kind of funny that evokes smirks, chuckles or wry smiles of recognition. Not so here: I can’t remember the last time I saw a play that made me laugh, helplessly and loudly, as much as Oh, Mary! did—and my reaction was shared by the rest of the audience, which burst into applause at the end of every scene. Fasten your seatbelts: This 80-minute show is a fast and wild joy ride. Escola has earned a cult reputation as a sly comedic genius in their dazzling solo performances (Help! I’m Stuck!) and on TV shows like At Home with Amy Sedaris, Difficult People and Search Party. But Oh, Mary!, their first full-length play, may surprise even longtime fans. In this hilariously anachronistic historical burlesque, Escola plays—who else?—Mary Todd Lincoln, in the weeks leading up to her husband’s assassination. Boozy, vicious and miserable, the unstable and outrageously contrary Mary is oblivious to the Civil War and hell-bent on achieving stardom as—what else?—a cabaret singer.      Oh, Mary! | Photograph: Courtesy Emilio Madrid  Described by the long-suffering President Lincoln as “my foul and hateful wife,” this virago makes her entrance snarling and hunched with fury, desperate to find a...

Theater review by Adam Feldman  What makes Samuel D. Hunter's work so consistently beautiful is his ability to capture big things in small forms without being reductive. His plays—which have included The Whale, The Harvest and Greater Clements—are like ships in a bottle: exquisitely crafted and detailed depictions of life in rural Idaho that explore recurring themes (physical and financial limitations, queer identity, crises of family and faith) with endless variety and sympathy. His latest work, Grangeville, is very much in that tradition, and Hunter gatherers won't want to miss it. Hunter's last drama at the Signature Theatre, A Case for the Existence of God, won the 2022 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play. Like that show, Grangeville—whose world premiere at the Signature is sensitively directed by Jack Serio—has only two actors. Brian J. Smith is Arnold, a gay visual artist who has fled Idaho to live in the Netherlands, and Paul Sparks is Jerry, his older half-brother and former bully, who reaches out when their mother is on her deathbed. For most of the play, their interactions are long-distance, via phone or computer, and their mutual estrangement intially finds them completely in the dark. But as their lines of communication open, the production's lighting (by Stacy Derosier) gradually reveals more of its set (by the design collective dots): brutalist black walls that evoke volcanic rock, the hardened vestige of former heat. Sparks is superb as Jerry,...

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Oliver (Darren Criss) is a Helperbot, and he can’t help himself. A shut-in at his residence for retired androids in a near-future Korea, he functions in a chipper loop of programmatic behavior; every day, he brushes his teeth and eyes, tends to his plant and listens to the retro jazz favored by his former owner, James (Marcus Choi), who he is confident will someday arrive to take him back. More than a decade goes by before his solitary routine is disrupted by Claire (Helen J Shen), a fellow Helperbot from across the hall, who is looking to literally connect and recharge. Will these two droids somehow make a Seoul connection? Can they feel their hearts beep? That is the premise of Will Aronson and Hue Park’s new musical Maybe Happy Ending, and it’s a risky one. The notion of robots discovering love—in a world where nothing lasts forever, including their own obsolescent technologies—could easily fall into preciousness or tweedom. Instead, it is utterly enchanting. As staged by Michael Arden (Parade), Maybe Happy Ending is an adorable and bittersweet exploration of what it is to be human, cleverly channeled through characters who are only just learning what that entails. Maybe Happy Ending | Photograph: Courtesy Evan Zimmerman In a Broadway landscape dominated by loud adaptations of pre-existing IP, Maybe Happy Ending stands out for both its intimacy and its originality. Arden and his actors approach the material with a delicate touch; they...

If you were alive in the late 1990s, you probably remember the ubiquitous 1997 album Buena Vista Social Club, which reunited elderly musicians to recreate the atmosphere and songs of a Havana nightspot before the Cuban Revolution. This original musical by Marco Ramirez—directed by Saheem Ali and choreographed gorgeously by Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck—brings their story to Broadway, in slightly fictionalized form, after a highly enjoyable debut at the Atlantic last year. As winter pokes its frigid fingers into New York City, this lively celebration of Cuban music offers an irresistable tropical getaway.

[Note: Queen of Hearts returns in February for an encore run, with Lindsay Rose in the title role.] Lewis Carroll's trippy Alice in Wonderland books have inspired many theatrical spectacles, but Company XIV's seductive Queen of Hearts is a singular sexcess: a transporting fusion of haute burlesque, circus, dance and song. Your fall down the glamorous rabbit hole begins upon entering the troupe's louche Bushwick lair, where scantily clad server-performers slink about in flattering red lighting. A cursory knowledge of the source material will help you make sense of the show’s three-act cavalcade of Alice-inspired routines, as our blue-haired heroine embarks on an NC-17 coming-of-age journey under the guidance of the White Rabbit. As usual, Company XIV impresario Austin McCormick has assembled an array of alluring and highly skilled artists, who look smashing in Zane Pihlstrom's lace-and-crystal-encrusted costumes. A contortionist emerges in an S/M-vinyl cocoon and transforms into a beauteous butterfly; mustachioed twins, as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, perform a cheeky spin on the Marx Brothers' mirror trick. As the title royal, voluptuous vocalist Storm Marrero rules over all in her stunning 11-o'clock number. With its soundtrack of pop songs, attractive ensemble cast and immersive aesthetics—plus chocolate and specialty cocktails—Queen of Hearts feels like Moulin Rouge! for actual bohemians. Hell, it even has a cancan. Like Alice, you may resist returning to reality when...

Review by Adam Feldman  The low-key dazzling Speakeasy Magick has been nestled in the atmospheric McKittrick Hotel for more than a year, and now it has moved up to the Lodge: a small wood-framed room at Gallow Green, which functions as a rooftop bar in the summer. The show’s dark and noisy new digs suit it well. Hosted by Todd Robbins (Play Dead), who specializes in mild carnival-sideshow shocks, Speakeasy Magick is a moveable feast of legerdemain; audience members, seated at seven tables, are visited by a series of performers in turn. Robbins describes this as “magic speed dating.” One might also think of it as tricking: an illusion of intimacy, a satisfying climax, and off they go into the night. The evening is punctuated with brief performances on a makeshift stage. When I attended, the hearty Matthew Holtzclaw kicked things off with sleight of hand involving cigarettes and booze; later, the delicate-featured Alex Boyce pulled doves from thin air. But it’s the highly skilled close-up magic that really leaves you gasping with wonder. Holtzclaw’s table act comes to fruition with a highly effective variation on the classic cups-and-balls routine; the elegant, Singapore-born Prakash and the dauntingly tattooed Mark Calabrese—a razor of a card sharp—both find clever ways to integrate cell phones into their acts. Each performer has a tight 10-minute act, and most of them are excellent, but that’s the nice thing about the way the show is structured: If one of them happens to...

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Halfway through Redwood, a new musical conceived by Idina Menzel and director Tina Landau, Menzel—playing Jesse, a woman on the run from her own grief—is suspended on a platform midair, belting a personal-breakthrough song about clarity and new possibilities. Unavoidably, this recalls her performance of the Act I finale of Wicked, in which Menzel’s original Elphaba was also midair and belting a personal-breakthrough song about clarity and new possibilities. This time, however, gravity wins. Even as Menzel's Jesse climbs to new physical heights, the lumbering Redwood brings her down.  Jesse is a capable, cosmopolitan Jewish woman paralyzed by sadness about the recent death of her college-age son (Zachary Noah Piser). Her desperation literally drives her up a tree: She leaves New York City—where, of course, she owns an art gallery—and motors to California, where she persuades a pair of environmentalists, Finn (Michael Park) and Becca (Khaila Wilcoxon), to let her join them in scaling an enormous redwood for science. Can “nature’s remedy” help this neurotic city gal find her bearings? Naturally, it can. Redwood | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy The arc of Jesse’s healing is long—nearly two hours without intermission—and it bends toward banality. The subject matter cries out for inventive nuance, but Landau’s book charts a familiar route to exactly where you know it’s going, with rest stops for mostly blah songs (music by Kate Diaz, lyrics...

A young wrestler begins physical and spiritual training at a Tokyo sumo facility in this weighty new drama by Lisa Sanaye Dring, whose New York premiere is directed by Ralph B. Peña for Ma-Yi Theater Company and the Public Theater. The cast includes Scott Keiji Takeda, Red Concepción, Michael Hisamoto, Ahmad Kamal, Earl T. Kim and David Shih.