Five hot prospects for the weekend
***** Gypsy Broadway To 6/29/25
Joy Woods and Audra McDonald. Photo by Julieta Cervantes
Unlike many a Broadway revival, this classic has not been contemporized in the least – and it doesn't need to be. The gold-standard creative team – book by Arthur Laurents, music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim – was top-notch: they nailed it the first time around, in 1959. Director George C. Wolfe honors the originators' vision, with no unnecessary recalibrating beyond "nontraditional" casting (isn't it time we cast off that dated notion?). The show's central theme – the excesses to which rabid stage mothers will go – still holds. If anything, the affliction has gained an even greater hold in recent decades, given the proliferation of promotional opportunities.
From the moment Audra McDonald grimly barks "Sing out, Louise!" from an orchestra aisle, we're on alert that this will not be an ingratiating, semi-lovable Rose, even in the presence of a potential employer. She's a martinet from the get-go, a tightly wound control-freak who may have her fond, playful moments (especially in the presence of Chinese food) but never loses sight of her core mission: success at all costs, and the elusive financial stability that ought to come with it. Rose is on constant high alert for the slightest hint that her "dream" might actually pay off – but she's also dead-tired. A compulsive cheerleader, she must constantly suppress any doubts that bubble up.
In truth, the early snippets showcasing Rose's daughters (shiny wind-up doll June; plain, shy Louise) serve their purpose in establishing her cluelessness as an impresario. The kids are dreadful, as intended, and quickly wear out their welcome. The shtick can be a bit tiresome if you've seen prior iterations, even on lesser stages. (This is the first Broadway revival in fifteen years.) Choreographer Camille A. Brown pulls off some nifty staging for the transitional "Let Me Entertain You," when an older cast steps in for the pint-sized originals, but it's hard sledding until the little tykes age up a notch.
The stage directions describe teen June as "screeching coyly," and Jordan Tyson delivers. Pickle-faced, with the voice of a banshee (presumably not her natural bent), Tyson narrows her timbre to an almost torturous degree. So no great loss – on our end, at least – when no-longer-baby June elopes with one of the chorus boys. Before absconding, Tulsa (Kevin Csolak) executes a dance soliloquy so energetic and enticing, adolescent Louise has no choice but to set aside her shyness and join in.
Ah, Louise, that slowly budding flower – very slowly, and perfectly calibrated by Joy Woods, who sings like a dream, starting with the subdued solo "Little Lamb," murmured in a quiet corner – an unlikely prelude to Louise's ultimate triumph in an adultified reprise of "Let Me." Wolfe allows himself a bit of latitude here, expanding a passing reference to a strip act heralded as a "salute to the Garden of Eden." With costumes by Toni-Leslie James and a jungle-motif setting designed by Santo Loquasto, this lagniappe is clearly a tribute to Josephine Baker, and Woods dazzles.
The show is a class act from start to finish. As Rose's ardent suitor Herbie, Danny Burstein gives off such warmth and patience, he's borderline saintly, yet viscerally sincere. As Rose, McDonald does the minimum to ingratiate herself to Herbie or to the audience – holding back, perhaps, for the finale. Her rendition of "Rose's Turn" – Mamma's torturous self-reckoning – is pretty much guaranteed to evoke every last regret, every worthy but failed dream, experienced by any sentient being privileged to look on.
***** Eureka Day
Broadway
To 2/2/25
Bill Irwin, Thomas Middleditch, Amber Gray, Jessica Hecht,
Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz. Photo: Jeremy Daniel
I would love to tag along if the producers of this hot-button cautionary comedy ever decide to try their luck at the Kentucky Derby. Who could have predicted, even a few weeks ago, that the anti-vax movement would soon be hogging the headlines?
Making his Broadway debut with this sparkling work set in 2018, playwright Jonathan Spector proves to have been prescient. His clever five-hander – not counting a cadre of off-the-wall chatroom kibbitzers – debuted in Berkeley, enjoyed an excellent small run off off-Broadway in 2019, and after a sobering pause under Covid got a prestige production at the Old Vic in '22.
The work has now come into its own. It's hard to imagine a more effective, provocative rendering than the one helmed by director Anna D. Shapiro. Designer Todd Rosenthal has painstakingly captured a prototypal SoCal progressive private-school classroom, with sunny lighting by Jen Schriever which deepens into cerulean as the school's five-member "Executive Committee" nitpick and dither into the night.
Jessica Hecht plays the politely dominant topdog, 50ish Suzanne, a classic rich liberal now monitoring the schooldays of a third generation. Hecht makes optimal use of her ditsy mannerisms to give us a self-styled saint with a will of steel.
Bill Irwin, who usually plays the smartest person in the room, quails here in Suzanne's shadow, blathering "inclusive" jargon and platitudes as anodyne as any Mr. Rogers monologue (whose legacy, by the way, may now be on the Republican chopping block as well).
Filling out the roster: Amber Gray as Carina, a savvy East Coast transplant (Gray gets to show her simmering intelligence), Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz as Meiko (a rare under-written role), and Thomas Middleditch (reprising the tech-bro combo of nerdiness and egotism exhibited in HBO's Silicon Valley).
All is relatively calm, if hyper-PC (the buzzwords plop like ripe avocados), until the Berkeley Board of Health announces an outbreak of mumps, warning that "Although complications from mumps are rare, they can lead to sterility in males, deafness, brain damage and death."
This is when the parent Zoomers at large are invited to comment, creating a high-pitched though voiceless (texted and projected) play within a play.
It's a brave actor who can hold their own against a growingly vituperative pack of jackals: talk about "stealing focus"! These fine actors are up to the task, and you're in for a riotous, hilarious, sobering experience
*****
Maybe Happy Ending
Broadway
To 9/7/25
Helen J. Shen and Darren Criss. Photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
One false move and this fanciful futuristic romance between two outmoded and discarded Helperbots (personal-assistant robots) could quickly descend into pathos and kitsch. Smartly, the performers and framers – authors Will Aronson and Hue Park, director Michael Arden, scenic and video designer Dane Laffrey – play it dry.
Darren Criss portrays Oliver, the "elder" of a pair of cast-offs assigned singleton rooms in a warehouse outside Seoul. An early model, Oliver retains some mild robotic tics: e.g., jerky movements and a tendency to parrot pat responses. He survives as an easily gratified if fussy bachelor thoroughly occupied attending to his pet plant (scruffy HwaBoon, mute but eloquent) and a stash of jazz LPs – the legacy of James (Marcus Choi), the pianist who shelved him a decade ago for reasons unknown. A smoothie crooner named "Gil Brentley" – Dez Duron, acing the genre – pops up from time to time to link the scenes and set the vibe.
Helen J Shen, playing Claire, a later, more advanced model, could pass for a chill contemporary young adult. They even sing chill, in the best sense: clearly, movingly, but well shy of showy over-emoting.
If the two "meet cute," it's for purely practical reasons: Claire's battery is running low. Bored though recharged, and empathizing with Oliver's abandonment trauma, she suggests that they try to pass as humans and embark on a road-and-ferry trip to Jeju Island, in search of James (last known address) and also to look for endangered fireflies – creatures that naturally speak to her own condition.
The robots' adventures en route – including a stopover at Motel Sexx (child-safe beyond the subtext: take your tweens!) – are at once poignant and hilarious. Are we due for a memento mori wake-up call? Inevitably, but the ride is sweet and not necessarily over.
****
Death Becomes Her
Broadway
To 9/7/25
Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard. Photo: Matthew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman
Who doesn't get a kick out of dueling divas? Narcissists are such fun to watch – from a safe distance.
Fans of the 1992 movie (which pitted Meryl Street against Goldie Hawn) can anticipate that the feud between actress Madeline Ashton – here, Megan Hilty (purring with feline entitlement) and aspiring novelist Helen Sharp (Jennifer Simard, who can stew like nobody's business) – will ultimately turn physical.
Lyricist/composers Julia Mattison and Noel Carey keep the verbal skirmishes lively (venturing into PG-13 territory), and director/choreographer Christopher Gatelli has some Act Two stunners up his sleeve: e.g., a gasp-inducing stairway stumble aced by uncredited corps member Warren Yang (surely, the ability to play a human Slinky counts as a special skill and deserves special billing).
Marco Pennette's book is unfortunately a bit front-loaded. The feud loses fuel as the frenemies' retaliations skew increasingly slapstick. The opening – Helen's hijacked wedding – is swift and piercing. One of the most effective (though simplest) scenes in the whole shebang soon follows: Helen plotting revenge from solitary lock-down in a loony bin.
Cut to a couple of decades later, when both rivals are feeling the ravages of encroaching age and, Hollywood-style, seek a nostrum. Michelle Wiliams seems borderline bored in her role as elixir-pusher Viola Van Horn, consigned to an eternity of playing dungeon-mistress to a slew of writhing undead (minimally clad by costumer Paul Tazewell in skin-tight, pinto-pattern bodysuits), Who wouldn't get restive, stuck for all time amid a slurry of leftovers from Studio 54?
The death-proofed Madeline and Helen get to go on with their lives, in joint pursuit of the seemingly ideal spouse, Ernest Menville (that name!), elevated in this version to a plastic surgeon famed for donating his skills to the indigent. Christopher Sieber modestly fills the bill, with a slight wink as this model male experiences a growing ambivalence toward the viragos vying to claim him for all eternity..
It's all wicked fun, and wickedly funny.
*****
Sunset Blvd.
Broadway
Through 7/6/25
Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond. Photo: Mark Brenner
Finally, an Andrew Lloyd Webber revival that even a hater can love! It's the voices — although in director Jamie Lloyd's hyper-stylized rendition, the faces (not to mention bodies) are looking awfully good as well.
The show opens with a tasteful interpretive dance choreographed by Fabian Aloise and sinuously performed by Hannah Yun Chamberlain as Young Norma. "Old" Norma Desmond (Nicole Scherzinger, famed for having fronted the Pussycat Dolls in the Aughts) is not exactly over the hill. At 46, the power-soprano looks lithe as a panther, all the more so as minimally clad in a skimpy black-satin slip (costumes by Soutra Gilmour, who also designed the barely-there all-black set). Playful, impishly distanced, Scherzinger delivers like the diva she is, and near-constant close-ups serve to pull us into the vortex that is Norma's vulnerable narcissism.
Projected against the stage's back wall, tracking videos (designed and executed onsite by Nathan Amzi and Joe Ransom) speed the action along, while providing democratic access. Cleverly countering the natural resentment of onlookers consigned to the cheap seats, Lloyd and his team have amplified the stage space by means of a magnifying glass, while rendering it in period-appropriate black-and-white with dramatic, angular shadowing (think M). We get faces all right — often over 20 feet tall – as the hand-held cameras hover within spitting distance.
This propinquity might prove annoying were the three principals not such superb singers. Sound designer Adam Fisher seems to have amped up the Auto-Tune (or whatever the tech kids are calling it these days), but the voices he has to work with are impressive to start. It's impossible to begrudge the pre-select audience's automatic standing O after Scherzinger's sustained closing note in the cri de coeur "One Look": she earns it.
Playing the semi-consensual gigolo Joe Gillis (William Holden's role), the young Tom Francis – only 24! – manages to convey a lot of early-onset baggage. He's got that Robert Mitchum-y bruised look about the eyes, hinting at past trauma and pending payback; a physique seemingly made for exploitation; and vocal expressivity in spades.
Perhaps the most impressive singer of all in this production – though his character tends to lurk in the shadows – is David Thaxton as Norma's devoted guardian Max Von Mayerling. Thaxton's voice is of a timber so rich, so well trained and resonant, I wouldn't be surprised to spot him onstage at the Met.
This is a show you'll want to see — for the pure pleasure of it, and for the purpose of kibbitzing. The experience as a whole is so engaging, it's easy to yield to its shameless over-the-top-ness.