Adam Feldman

Whether your Christmas queen is Mariah or Sabrina, it's time to begin celebrating the holiday season! We've gathered the best things to do for Christmas and the holidays in NYC. From uptown to downtown, the city boasts holiday offerings like the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, light festivals, and the best holiday markets NYC has to offer. Whether you channel your inner grinch or cheery elf during NYC's most wonderful season, we've got you covered with memorable activities. As locals, we've been to many of these events and are including some of our favorites right here. Check back for updates as we'll continue adding to the list as the holidays approach.  RECOMMENDED: Full guide to Christmas in NYCRECOMMENDED: The best Christmas hotels in NYC Stay in the Loop: Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest in New York City news, culture and dining.  Check out our Winter Village video: 

It’s been a fantastic year for new music. We’ve had long-running artists finally break through (hello, Chappell Roan), what felt like the longest and most carefully calculated album roll-out of all time (Charli, we’re looking at you), as well as niche new finds and epic comebacks from old faves (The Cure).  As the year draws to a close, it’s time to share our favourite albums of 2024. From intergalactic post-punk to gritty, lyrical hip hop, dance floor-ready pop and everything in between, grab your best headphones or line up the speakers: these are the albums Time Out had on repeat this year. RECOMMENDED:The best movies of 2024The best TV shows of 2024 you need to streamThe best songs of 2024

In the winter doldrums of February in NYC, after a money-sucking December and a resolution-filled January, it’s time to double down and really enjoy the winter with the best NYC events in February. Our event calendar includes some of the best things to do in winter as well as some epic Valentine’s Day events. This month is also a good excuse to take advantage of our winter getaways list, so plan your escape from the city and keep your fingers crossed for a little bit of snow to add to the winter wonderland aesthetic. RECOMMENDED: Full NYC events calendar

Christmas shows are an essential part of the New York holiday experience. How can you make a yuletide gay without a generous array of Nutcrackers and A Christmas Carols? With that in mind, we've found the best holiday-themed theater and dance shows to help you stay in high spirits in 2024, from shows aimed at kids to a few that are definitely not. Check out our chronological list of holiday shows and find the ones that are right for you. We'll be updating and filling out this page as show dates become available. RECOMMENDED: Full guide to Christmas in NYC

This year started off strong as New York City started winning its war against rats, was named as the best city in the world and had an extremely packed spring season on Broadway. But then as 2024 unfolded, we experienced some pretty radical moments, like an incredible solar eclipse and an earthquake—and when Jennifer Lopez declared “if you know, you know” about her mystifying Bronx bodega order. From there, we ditched the dating apps and confoundedly found love at live dating shows and running clubs, and suffered heartache when we lost a few greats—RIP to the Rubin Museum‘s physical space (it’s still in operation), the Fotografiska museum of photography (temporarily at least), our beloved Flaco the owl, pandemic-era dining sheds and $15 congestion pricing (oh no!). But New York City is nothing if not resilient. We celebrated the Paris Olympics from afar, turned out to the U.S. Open, saw top-notch theater, welcomed back Kellogg’s Diner, Papaya King and Pioneer Works, and even held a Timothée Chalamet look-alike contest.  But so much more is worth celebrating this year, which is why Time Out New York editors—all of whom experienced these crazy NYC moments—are unveiling their top picks in the food and drink sphere, the world of theater, art and culture, nightlife circles and more. RECOMMENDED: Time Out New York’s 2023 Best of the City award winners

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 scrappy originals like Suffs 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

The best Broadway shows attract millions of people to enjoy the pinnacle of live entertainment in New York City. Every season brings a new crop of Broadway musicals, plays and revivals, some of which go on to glory at the Tony Awards. Some are only limited runs; others stick around for years and you can find cheap tickets for. And the choices are varied: Alongside star-driven dramas and family-oriented blockbusters, you may 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

Broadway shows are practically synonymous with New York City, and the word Broadway is often used as shorthand for theater itself. Visiting the Great White Way means attending one of 41 large theaters concentrated in the vicinity of Times Square, many of which seat more than 1,000 people. The most popular Broadway shows tend to be musicals, from long-running favorites like The Lion King and Hamilton to more recent hits like Hadestown and Moulin Rouge!—but new plays and revivals also represent an important part of the Broadway experience. There’s a wide variety of Broadway shows out there, as our complete A–Z listing attests. And for a full list of shows that are coming soon, check out our list of upcoming Broadway shows. RECOMMENDED: Find the best Broadway shows

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 Six, & Juliet and Back to the Future, which may appeal to older kids—plus, for the holiday season, a Christmas-cheery revival of Elf The Musical. 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. And as always, keep abreast of the what is on Broadway with our A-Z list.

There's more than one way to crack a nut! December in New York abounds with opportunities to see The Nutcracker ballet, which for dance fans is always among the best Christmas shows around. The most famous Nutcracker options are all returning in 2024, including New York City Ballet’s iconic Balanchine production and the the Radio City Christmas Spectacular (which includes a number devoted to the Nutcracker story). Some are aimed predominantly at kids; some others are very much not. Here are this year's ways to get your sugarplum fix. RECOMMENDED: Full guide to Christmas in NYC

No film genre is more polarising than the musical. Even if you love both music and movies, combining the two into a storytelling device can drive certain cinephiles insane. Why would you sing dialogue rather than speak it? Why the hell are all the extras suddenly dancing? One person’s heart-swelling song-and-dance number is another’s nails on a chalkboard. But the truth is, lavish musical performances have been an integral part of movie culture ever since the first major talkie, 1927’s The Jazz Singer. So if you’re going to consider yourself a true film fan, learning to love the musical is a crucial part of your education. Here are 40 great places to start. Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time✍️ The 100 best animated films of all-time🎶 The 30 best film-to-musical adaptations

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  How is she? Ever since May, when it was confirmed that Audra McDonald would star in the latest revival of Gypsy, Broadway fans have speculated about how Audra would be as Mama Rose—or, more nervously, whether Audra could be Mama Rose, the implacable stage mother who sacrifices everything to make her two daughters into stars, including those two daughters themselves. The casting seemed inevitable: the pinnacle role for a woman in musical theater, essayed by the most accomplished musical-theater actress of her generation. It’s Audra’s turn. Yet to some, the casting also seemed unlikely: Rose has traditionally been played by big belters, from Ethel Merman in 1959 through Patti LuPone in 2008, not dramatic sopranos like McDonald. So let’s get that question out of the way up front. How is Audra as Rose? She’s a revelation.  So, too, is the rest of George C. Wolfe’s deeply intelligent and beautifully mounted production, which comes as a happy surprise. Gypsy is a model musical in every regard, from Arthur Laurents’s airtight book, inspired by the memoirs of striptease queen Gypsy Rose Lee, to Jule Styne’s thrilling music, which grabs you at the overture and doesn’t let go, to Stephen Sondheim’s dazzlingly witty and insightful lyrics. But this is the show’s fifth Broadway revival, and its third in the 21st century alone. One might reasonably wonder what is left to reveal in a show as well-known as this one. But like the monster some people believe he

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 ideal

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 crossroad

Make the yuletide bright at the final iteration of Sleep No More's cast cabaret, the McKittrick Follies, at the atmospheric Manderley Bar of the soon-to-be-shuttered McKittrick Hotel. Kit Flowers—the alter ego of erstwhile Sleep No More cast member Ginger Kearns—hosts an evening of music, games and Christmas surprises. Festive attire is encoutraged for this December 17 show.

This hour-long original musical adaptation of Dickens's yuletide fable, created by composer Michael Sgouros and librettist-director Brenda Bell, returns for its 16th year at the West Village's Players Theatre. The updated set is inspired by traditional British panto.

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  There’s a big twist at the end of the first act of Death Becomes Her; the plot of the second includes a giant hole. And those are just two of the injuries that the vain actress Madeline Ashton (Megan Hilty) and the bitter writer Helen Sharp (Jennifer Simard) inflict on each other in this new Broadway musical, a savagely funny dark comedy about how the quest for beauty—in a misogynist world where the “F” word is fifty—can bring out the beasts in women. Its two central characters are old frenemies whose shared rage at age is understandable: They’re Mad and Hel, and they’re not going to take it anymore. The problem is how and on whom they take it out. Adapted from the hit 1992 movie, Death Becomes Her introduces Madeline in a delicious show-within-a-show production number that sets up the musical’s themes with a giant wink. As the star of a Broadway musical called Me! Me! Me!, she wonders why she stays in “the chase to stay young and beautiful”—“Is it the fact that I’m attracted / To each kernel of external validation?” she sings, with nifty internal rhymes—before launching into a punning answer: “Everything I do is for the gaze.” The song then morphs into a pull-the-stops-out campfest, staged by director-choreographer Christopher Gattelli and costumed by Paul Tazewell as a spoofy tribute to Liza Minnelli in The Act. As colorful streamers fly into the audience, you might worry that Death Becomes Her is peaking too soon. It’s not: Having popped it

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 (Moulin

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Christmas has come early to Broadway this year. Previous productions of the family-friendly comedic yuletide fable Elf The Musical, though pleasant enough, have seemed short on the very Christmas spirit—an ineffable sense of animating joy—that the musical is about. Its current revival, however, is another story entirely. To be honest, I wasn’t eager to see Elf get taken down from the shelf yet again. But my grinchiness soon vanished, to be replaced with a big wide grin. For the first time in my experience, this show is really elfin’ good.  Elf is based on the 2003 movie that starred Will Ferrell as a grown man named Buddy, raised in holly as one of Santa’s helpers at the North Pole, who belatedly learns that he’s human and travels to New York in search of his father. Adapted by the late Thomas Meehan and the same team that would later create The Prom—book writer Bob Martin, composer Matthew Sklar and lyricist Chad Beguelin—the script is faithful to David Berenbaum’s screenplay (including many of its most famous lines). But the miscast production that premiered on Broadway in 2010 seemed somehow both shiny and old; in my review, I described it as “a brightly wrapped and beribboned box with a hand-me-down sweater inside.” It had a better Buddy when it returned to Broadway in 2012, but it still didn’t jingle my bells.  Elf The Musical | Photograph: Courtesy Evan Zimmerman Elf’s third time is the charm. The most obvious change is the bright new s

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  In real life, Tammy Faye Messner was a character: a televangelist whose outlandish makeup and hyperemotional exuberance at the side of her then-husband, the Pentecostal preacher Jim Bakker, made her a star and then a laughingstock in the emerging “electric church” of Christian broadcasting in the 1970s and 1980s. She poked fun at her own history as a scandal queen in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, a campy 2000 documentary narrated by RuPaul (which inspired the 2021 biopic for which Jessican Chastain won an Oscar). “I’ve often thought I should probably be on Broadway,” Tammy Faye told the camera with a laugh. “All my drama!”  The new musical Tammy Faye takes her up on that musing. As portrayed by the English actress Katie Brayben, who originated the role two years ago in London, this Tammy Faye gets to be the heroine of her own story about love and acceptance, not just a sidekick who got kicked off the air (and then kicked when she was down). She gets a romance arc with Jim, played by Christian Borle as a dorky underdog who outgrows his collar. She gets to sing several big solos with catchy 70s-tinged music by Elton John and mostly serviceable lyrics by Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears; she gets to wear a few amusingly outré outfits designed by Katrina Lindsay. Yet she doesn’t pop as vividly as she did onscreen. She’s smaller than life.  Tammy Faye | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy Tammy Faye’s book is by the prolific British playwright James

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 trus

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Cue the fanfare! The king has arrived on Broadway, and there will be trumpets—especially since the man in question is Louis Armstrong, the musical icon sometimes known as the King of Jazz. ”I don’t even like that title,” he demurs. “That’s just something my manager came up with.” Luckily, he has plenty of other monikers to go by: Louis, Louie, Satchmo, Pops. At the start of the new biomusical A Wonderful World, each of Armstrong’s four wives calls him by a different name, as though to suggest the interior multitudes of a performer who, in public, always wore a famously broad smile—partly as an invitation to joy but partly as a mask of comedy. The musical offers a pleasing depiction of that joy and that mask, if not of those multitudes. The outstanding James Monroe Iglehart, who plays Armstrong, has that smile down: a grin so wide and bright that, when the lights go out, you half expect it to linger behind like the Cheshire Cat’s. Iglehart has mastered Armstong’s mannerisms, too, and the churning gravel of Armstrong’s unmistakable voice (to an extent that makes you fear for his long-term vocal health); in Toni-Leslie James’s snazzy costumes and a series of first-class wigs, he summons Armstrong to life like the Genie he once played in Aladdin. But the performance goes beyond expert impersonation. Whether Armstrong is on stage or off, Iglehart infuses him with bluff, buoyant charm. “There’s been some good and some bad,” says Armstrong of his lif

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  There’s a comic-relief scene at the end of Act IV in Romeo and Juliet that is nearly always cut. Juliet’s family has just discovered what they believe to be her dead body; as the musicians hired for her wedding prepare to leave, a household servant asks them for a paradoxically happy dirge: “O play me some merry dump to comfort me." Sam Gold’s new Broadway production of the play not only keeps this scene but makes it a kind of thesis statement. Breaking temporarily for a moment, the servant demands to hear “We Are Young,” a melancholic 2011 party anthem by the band Fun. “If you don’t play it,” he warns, “I will fuckin’ fight you.”  That last line is one of the show's rare departures from its 16th-century text, but it captures the spirit of Gold’s aggressively Gen Z conception of Shakespeare’s family-feud tragedy. It’s not just that “We Are Young” is modern (like this production’s costumes, sets and attitudes), or that the choice of this particular song—which was co-written by pop hitmaker Jack Antonoff, who has also composed three new songs for this production—is emblematic of the show’s referential postmodernity: As in the 1996 Baz Luhrmann film, the title is styled as Romeo + Juliet, like graffiti on a bathroom stall; its Juliet, Rachel Zegler, is best known for playing a character inspired by Juliet in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story; its Romeo, Kit Connor, has navigated a forbidden-love narrative in his Netflix series Heartstopper. It’s

The world may be in tumult, but at least one thing remains constant: Sandra Bernhard is returning to Joe's Pub for her annual cabaret show at the end of December. The Divine Sandra has been a pop-culture fixture for more than four decades, ever since playing the deranged fan who kidnaps a talk-show host in Martin Scorsese’s prescient 1981 satire The King of Comedy. She's always been one of a kind, with a persona that blends ironic detachment and sincere sentiment. Her latest set, titled Shapes & Forms, begins its 11-show run on the day after Christmas and builds to a pair of special performances on New Year’s Eve; alongside comedic monologues and observations, she will sing hits by Lionel Richie, Cat Stevens, Lana Del Rey and more. We chatted with her in late November, as the results of the Presidential election were just sinking in.  RECOMMENDED: Off Broadway shows, reviews, tickets and listings Hello, Sandra!  Hello. How are you? I'm doing fine. I guess. We all are. Yeah. Oh, Lord have mercy. I know, I know. Well, we'll have a lot of opportunity to sample the Lord's mercy in the next four years. Exactly. Well said.  So you're doing another New Year's show at Joe’s Pub. Yes, I'm doing yet another new show. It's called Shapes & Forms, which was the name of my mother’s art studio. We drove across the country when I was 10 years old, and my mom was an abstract artist, so she was always taking in the terrain. As we drove through New Mexico, and it was all these red rocks and can

Friday the 13th could be your lucky day. The side-splitting comedy Oh, Mary! is not just the year's top new play—as crowned today in Time Out's 2024 Best of the City Awards—but also a runaway box-office success. Cole Escola's highly irreverent and historically insouciant farce, a theatrical character assassination of first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, has been selling out for months and has broken box-office records at Broadway's Lyceum Theatre ten successive times; last week, it grossed more than $1.2 million, and high demand has driven the show's average ticket price to $174. That's terrific for Escola and the show's producers, but less felicitous for non-rich people who want to see the year's buzziest production.  But there's hope yet for the huddled masses yearning to see theater cheap. This Friday, to mark this 206th anniversary of Mary Todd Lincoln's birth, the production is holding a lottery to distribute 206 balcony seats to that night's 7:30pm performance for just $5 a pop. (Real cash fivers, with Honest Abe's likeness on the front, are "strongly preferred.") Here are the deets: Lottery entrants should arrive at the Lyceum between 3:30pm and 4:15pm on Friday, December 13th to submit their names for the lottery. Don't bother lining up very far ahead of time; arriving early won't increase your chance of winning. But you'll need to hand in your entry before 4:30pm, when the drawing will be held, and you'll need to be present at the time of the drawing to claim your seats. On

In May of 2020, Lear deBessonet was supposed to begin her tenure as the artistic director of City Center’s beloved Encores! series, which offers concert stagings of musicals from Broadway’s past. The pandemic changed everyone’s plans, and when Encores! returned two years later with The Tap Dance Kid (1983) and The Life (1997), some perceived a bit of a wobble in its stride. Since then, however, deBessonet has presided over many successes: two Encores! shows that she directed herself, Into the Woods and Once Upon a Mattress, wound up transferring to Broadway, and others (like Jelly’s Last Jam and Titanic) earned rave reviews from critics and audiences alike. But this will be her last season at the Encores! helm; next year, she will take over as the artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater.  DeBessonet has come a long way from Baton Rouge, Louisiana—her name is pronounced the French way (de-bess-o-NAY)—and her Lincoln Center appointment is the culmination of a steady rise through the New York theater world. In 2013, deBessonet created the Public Theater’s Public Works program, which partners with organizations around the city to mount enormous productions that redefine community theater; she has also directed memorable revivals of Good Person of Szechwan, Venus and, for Shakespeare in the Park, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She has an expansive view of what theater can do, and her final Encores! lineup for 2025 is typically eclectic: Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner’s 1948 concep

New Yorkers don’t gate keep good spots. This month, we featured Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis on our October digital cover to celebrate the debut of their concept album, WARRIORS. These New Yorkers know a thing or two about the city—you can hear it in their work! In between the photoshoot and our interview with them about the massive undertaking that features Lauryn Hill, Marc Anthony, Colman Domingo, Billy Porter, Busta Rhymes, Ghostface Killah, Chris Rivers, Cam’ron, Nas and other artists, we asked them about their favorite spots around the five boroughs, including where to eat and drink. RECOMMENDED: Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis bring The Warriors to musical life What are your favorite spots in each borough? The Bronx: Miranda: Woodlawn Cemetery during the day. It’s much scarier at night, but during the day it’s incredible. You can see everyone from Celia Cruz to Duke Ellington. When we went to the Bronx we spent most of our day there because we couldn’t just stop seeing all these incredible artists and their final resting places. We were by ourselves—just trolling Woodlawn Cemetery alone. It’s an incredible cultural site.   Photograph: Shutterstock/Daniel M. Silva Manhattan: Miranda: I’m going to stick up for my neighborhood and say the United Palace Theatre, which is just this hidden jewel. The Broadway house in Season 3 of Only Murders in the Building was really the United Palace Theater. It was one of the Wonder Theatres—there was one per borough, and the K

Just two years ago, Under the Radar was about to go under. The annual showcase for experimental theater from across the country and around the world had been a staple at the Public Theater every January since 2006. But budget cuts for the Public’s 2023–24 season brought the axe down on that tradition. Theater fans decried what seemed like the end of an era, and another sign that New York was becoming inhospitable to noncommercial work.  But then something wonderful happened: Instead of going under, the festival went wide. A number of theater spaces—including La MaMa, Lincoln Center, New York Live Arts, NYU's Skirball Center and St. Ann's Warehouse (where the festival started in 2005)—joined forces to present Under the Radar's 2024 programming in venues throughout the city. And the good news continues this year. During a time when downtown theater has been contracting in New York, the 2025 Under the Radar festival, which runs from January 4 through January 19, is actually expanding.  Not only does this year's season, produced by ArkType's Thomas O. Kriegsmann and Sami Pyne, feature more productions and more institutional partners (such as BAM, New York Theatre Workshop and the Apollo), but it is also broadening its leadership and its mandate. Founder and artistic director Mark Russell is now flanked by co–creative directors Meropi Peponides and Kaneza Schaal, and the festival is commissioning and producing new work for the first time. “This festival looks reflects the vitality

Stage and screen megastar Hugh Jackman will perform a dozen concerts at Radio City Music Hall in 2025, the venue announced today. His new show, titled "From New York, with Love," will kick off with a weekend in January, then return for one weekend a month in April through August.  Before he was Wolverine, Jackman was Curly, the open-hearted hero of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! The 1998 London revival of that show put Jackman on the map as a leading man, and the strapping Aussie has never abandoned his musical-theater roots. He won a 2004 Tony Award for playing his countryman Peter Allen in the biomusical The Boy from Oz, and hit the Broadway boards again as con man Harold Hill in 2022's The Music Man. I; in between, he starred in the concert show Hugh Jackman, Back on Broadway. On screen, he has sung his heart out in Les Misérables and The Greatest Showman; on TV, he has plied his song-and-dance talents as a four-time host of the Tony Awards.   Jackman is an old-school entertainer, and his new show is to be a major event. A retrospective survey of his career to date, "From New York, with Love" will include favorites from The Boy From Oz, The Greatest Showman and The Music Man, as well as other selections from his career. The debut weekend on January 24 and 25 will be followed by shows on April 18–19, May 23–24, June 20–21, July 18–19 and August 15–16.  For a first crack at tickets, register at the From New York, with Love website for a presale that begins on Tuesday,

“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.  This past Sunday, I went to the Broadway Flea Market, as I do every year, in search of cast recordings on CD to add to my already disquietingly large collection. (Yes, on CD. I know. I have a problem.) The ebullient actor Todd Buonopane, who was hosting a charity auction, spied me in the crowd and invited me to join him on the small stage that had been set up in Shubert Alley. Noting my bag of CDs—I know!—he observed that I was a Broadway fan as well as a Broadway critic. And then he asked what seemed like a simple question: What shows was I most looking forward to this fall? It's a question I get pretty often around this time of year, and I should have had an answer at the ready. But I realized, in that moment, that I did not. The best I could do was summon the names of the first three shows that came to my head. (It was an odd assortment; people looked puzzled.) I had spent most of the previous two weeks putting together fall previews: a complete guide to the shows coming to Broadway this fall, and a second assemblage of 30 promising shows in the Off Broadway world. But I'd been so busy getting the information in our system that I hadn't stopped to process my expectations.   RELATED: Full A–Z listings of current Broadway shows As a critic, expectations aren't great. They

John Mulaney will return to Broadway for the first five weeks of All In: Comedy About Love, the production announced today. The strictly limited 10-week run is set to begin at the Hudson Theatre on December 11. One of the country's foremost comedians, Mulaney made his Great White White debut in 2016's Oh, Hello on Broadway, an expansion of sketch characters he had created with Nick Kroll. This time, he will lead a rotating cast of stars in a collection of stories by his fellow Saturday Night Live writing alumnus Simon Rich, based on material that Rich created for The New Yorker. The show will be directed by Mulaney's longtime collaborator Alex Timbers (Moulin Rouge!), who also oversaw Oh, Hello. Mulaney will appear in All In for the first five weeks of the run only, joined by Fred Armisen, Richard Kind, Renée Elise Goldsberry (through December 30) and Chloe Fineman (January 2–12). Casting for the second half of the run has not yet been announced. This will be Rich's first show on Broadway, but he is no stranger to the Street; his father is Frank Rich, the New York Times's much-respected and much-feared chief theater critic in the 1980s.  "All In: Comedy About Love by Simon Rich is a series of hilarious stories about dating, heartbreak, marriage and that sort of thing, adapted from the short stories of Simon Rich, and performed by a rotating cast of some of the funniest people on the planet," says the production's cheeky press release. "Sometimes they will play pirates, some

Earlier this year, we reported that Stranger Things: The First Shadow, a monster hit in London, was planning to turn Broadway Upside Down. Today, the show's producers made it official: The play will begin previews at the Marquis Theatre on March 28, 2025, and open on April 22. Like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Stranger Things: The First Shadow expands the universe of the popular Netflix series with an original story set in a different decade—in this case, the late 1950s. The play depicts the early years of central series characters including Joyce Maldonaldo, Jim Hopper, Bob Newby and Dr. Martin Brenner; playwright Kate Trefry, a longtime staff writer for the TV version, has devised the story with series creators Matt and Ross Duffer and Cursed Child playwright Jack Thorne.  Photograph: Courtesy Manuel HarlanStranger Things: The First Shadow The West End production of Stranger Things: First Shadow, directed by Billy's Elliot Stephen Daldry, has earned many glowing notices. "Stranger Things: The First Shadow is a sprawling maximalist monolith, a gargantuan entertainment that goes beyond being a mere 'play,’" wrote Time Out's Andrzej Lukowski in his review of the London version last year. "As overwhelming in scale as as the show’s monstrous Mindflayer, it’s a seethingly ambitious three-hour extravaganza of groundbreaking special effects, gratuitous easter eggs and a wild, irreverent theatricality that feels totally in love with the source material while being appreciabl

New York City's premier immersive theatrical experience, Punchdrunk's Sleep No More, will close this fall after 13 lucky years in Chelsea. But a new show is rising to take its place: Life and Trust, all-new offering set in the Gilded Age. As in Sleep No More, masked and silent audience members choose their own paths through a specially designed multifloor complex—this time, a bank building in the Financial District. Life and Trust doesn't officially open until tonight, but the production is giving Time Out readers an exclusive glimpse inside the vault of this one-of-a-kind adventure.  Dozens of performers perform narratives loosely inspired by real New York City history as well as literary sources like the Faust legend and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. Teddy Bergman directs the show, which is written by Jon Ronson and features scenic design Gabriel Hainer Evansohn and costumes by Emilio Sosa. Enjoy this quick peek at the elaborate world Life and Trust. You can buy tickets here.

After taking this summer off for renovations to the open-air Delacorte Theater in Central Park, the Public Theater's cherished annual series Shakespeare in the Park will return in 2025 with Twelfth Night, one of the Bard's most popular plays. And no shortage of stars will shine their light on this free outdoor production: The cast will be led by Lupita Nyong’o, Sandra Oh, Peter Dinklage and Jesse Tyler Ferguson. Saheem Ali, who holds the title of Associate Artistic Director/Resident Director at the Public and who directed the 2021 show Merry Wives at Shakespeare in the Park, will helm the production. Nyong'o will play Viola, a shipwrecked maiden who disguises herself as a boy to serve the man she loves, Orsino, who dispatches her to court the wealthy and beautiful noblewoman Olivia (Oh) on his behalf, only for Olivia to fall for the boy that Viola is pretending to be—who is not to be confused, but inevitably is confused, with Viola's twin brother, whom she closely resembles and whom she falsely believes to be dead. Comedic hijinx ensue, along with lovely verse. Dinklage will costar as Olivia's pompous major domo, Malvolio, who harbors secret romantic designs on his mistress; Ferguson will be Sir Andrew Aguecheek, a hapless fop who also fancies the well-favored Olivia.  The Public's summer series has offered free stagings of Shakespeare plays since 1962, except for this summer and the pandemic summer of 2020. If you don't want to wait a year to see alfresco accounts of Elizabe

“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. Let me tell you about some terrific shows that didn’t change my life.  We can start with Cole Escola’s riotous comedy Oh, Mary!, the surprise hit of the year, in which Escola plays Mary Todd Lincoln as a boozy, raunchy, idiotic egomaniac. After a sold-out run at Greenwich Village’s Lucille Lortel Theatre, the show has moved to Broadway, where it opened this month to rapturous reviews. Last week, Oh, Mary! grossed $1,054,998—an all-time record for the Lyceum Theatre, which has been operating since 1903. The run was originally scheduled to end in September; it has just extended through November. Out of nowhere, it seemed, Escola has suddenly been everywhere, bringing their estimable spark to late-night talk shows, The View and even the Met Gala. Like most overnight successes, this one has been a long time coming: Fans of downtown comedy and alt-cabaret have known for years that Escola is a special talent. (“Blending boyish mischief with dizzy charm and the ruthless twinkle of a starlet bent on fame, Escola's comic persona suggests a street urchin raised by the gang from The Match Game,” we wrote more than a decade ago.) It was just a matter of time until the world caught on, and it finally has.  Photograph: Courtesy Emilio MadridOh, Mary! But why now? Oh, Mary! doesn’t follow