Things to do in New York this Saturday

Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s gorgeous, after-dark illuminated spectacular is back through January 5, 2025. Lightscape, an illuminated trail of art from local and international artists, featuring the iconic Winter Cathedral, all set to over a million lights, color and music.  As always, a curated playlist of music brings the light art to life, and there will be food concessions along the trail that will still offer seasonal treats like hot cocoa, hot cider, and mulled wine as well as light bites, cookies and sweets. Tickets are now on sale for the event. This year’s show offers off-peak and peak pricing, ranging from $24-$45 for adults and $12 to $23 for kids.

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Welcome to the Dahl house! The living room is festooned with Christmas lights, a well-trimmed tree abuts the dining table, and stockings are hung with care by the hearth as aging parents and grown-up siblings reunite for the holidays at the family home in Connecticut. This is the scene of Leslye Headland’s stormy, compassionate, cuttingly observant new play Cult of Love—and if it seems too storybook-cozy to be true, that’s because it is.  The Dahl family is close, but less in the sense of intimate than in the sense of stifling. They come together most joyfully when they’re making music, which they do often throughout the play, drawing on a seemingly endless supply of props that are scattered around the space: upright piano, banjo, uke, melodica, harmonica, washboard, bells. But such instruments of distraction can only do so much to keep the family’s shadows at bay: illness, disappointment, anger, fear. Cult of Love | Photograph: Courtesy Joan Marcus Family matriarch Ginny (Mare Winningham) uses the rituals of Christmas festivity as a shield for her denial and defensiveness; her husband, Bill (David Rasche, the latest in Broadway’s recent succession of actors from Succession) is showing signs of dementia, which manifests in part as an abundance of affection. (“Okay. I just want to say. That I love everyone here.”) Their eldest child, Mark (Zachary Quinto), who quit divinity school to become a lawyer, now seems stalled once again at a...

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  A funny thing happens halfway through the sharply double-edged Broadway comedy Eureka Day. Early on, playwright Jonathan Spector’s rapier seems to be pointed at wokeness and its micro-passive-aggressions. The play’s five characters form the Executive Committee of an ultraprogressive private school in the Berkeley Hills, which can only make decisions by consensus; they spend the opening scene earnestly discussing whether a pulldown menu on the school’s webpage should include “Transracial Adoptee” as a category of cultural self-identification. The prevailing attitude seems to be that you can’t make an omelet without walking on eggshells.  But Eureka Day reaches peak hilarity at its midway point, when an outbreak of mumps throws the school into crisis, and the committee—deadlocked about whether to require that students be vaccinated—brings the issue before an online forum of concerned parents. The ensuing debate, projected in scrolling text on the set’s back wall, soon devolves into a flame war between vaxxers and antivaxxers: an inferno of self-righteous invective in which any hope of agreement, or even basic civility, goes up in smoke.  Eureka Day | Photograph: Courtesy Jeremy Daniel The committee members try to make their cases during this online fracas, but good luck trying to follow what they say or even hear them over the laughter. At this point, the play turns a corner; contrasted with the chaos and vitriol of online discourse, the...

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...

Perhaps one of the most conveniently located holiday markets is the Grand Central Holiday Fair. Running now through December 24, Vanderbilt Hall, the destination will highlight the work of 36 local food and craft vendors and small businesses known for their quality craftsmanship and products made within the state of New York or the U.S. Goods will range from home décor and jewelry to abstract art and perfumes. “Whether shoppers are looking for a thoughtful hostess present, a sentimental piece of jewelry for a cherished friend, or a cozy sweater for a loved one, this year’s fair promises an amazing selection of gifts, many of which cannot be found at other holiday markets across the city,” GCT officials said. This year, Uncommon Goods have a pop-up at the market on the bridge adjacent to the Main Concourse with a hand-picked selection of imaginative gifts for kids, handmade jewelry and ornaments, small batch syrups and confections, and creatively designed finds for grillmasters, sports fans, book lovers and more. There will also be Grand Central Terminal-branded gifts, from Yeti tumblers and Baggu totes to charming souvenirs such as jigsaw puzzles, luggage tags, and playing cards inside The Grand Gift Shop within the Holiday Fair. The Holiday Fair will operate seven days a week from 10am to 7pm Monday-Saturday; and 11am to 6pm on Sundays. The space will be closed for Thanksgiving. For more information regarding specific vendors and hours, click here.

Visit the Schomburg Shop Holiday Market at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture during the holiday season for its expanded market which will have artwork, clothing, jewelry, stationery, and more for all ages from small businesses owned by people of color and local Harlemites. It runs November 8 and 9 and Dec 20 and 21 from 11am to 5:30pm.

Queens Botanical Garden has a beautiful light show you’ll want to see this year called “Lektrik.” 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  In the realm of Broadway musicals, Swept Away represents a significant leap of faith. There have been plenty of musicals based on stories from the Bible, including two big hits adapted from the Gospels; there have been many shows about Christmas (including the newly revitalized Elf); and there has been no shortage of singing preachers, priests and nuns. But Swept Away employs religion in a categorically different way: Set at sea in the 1880s, it uses the songs of the Avett Brothers to tell a deeply Christian parable of guilt, temptation, sacrifice and redemption. The Avett Brothers have written one new song, “Lord Lay Your Hand on My Shoulder,” for Swept Away; four of the other 13 songs in this one-act, 90-minute show are from the folk-rock troubadours’ 2016 album True Sadness, and five are from 2004’s Mignonette. The title of the latter album refers to the infamous death of a cabin boy after the 1884 wreck of an English yacht, and that incident also informs the plot of Swept Away (as it did last year’s Life of Pi, whose fearsome tiger bore the cabin boy’s name: Richard Parker). If you know the history of the real-life Mignonette, you may have an inkling of the ghoulish sea fare this seafaring tale has in store. Swept Away | Photograph: Courtesy Emilio Madrid Swept Away is not, though, the story of Mignonette. In winding his tale around the Avett Brothers’ songs, book writer John Logan—who has previously crafted both a jukebox musical...

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...

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: How to get tickets to the Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes