Off-Broadway Reviews: The Past Is Not Full of Rosy Memories in a Rediscovered “Thornton Wilder’s The Emporium,” A British Real Crime Import, “Kenrex” or “Broken Snow,” a Play About a Family Without Pity

Thornton Wilder's The Emporium (c) Marc J. Franklin

Theater: Thornton Wilder’s The Emporium 
At Classic Stage Company 

Some plays need to be seen for the novelty of it all, and that is certainly the case for Thornton Wilder’s The Emporium, the never-performed (in his lifetime) full-length play by Thornton Wilder (1897-1975), whose two most well-known plays, Our Town (1938) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1942) won Pulitzer Prizes and are still widely produced (the former was on Broadway last season and the latter was just adapted into a musical). Even the prologue to its New York premiere at CSC, written by Kirk Lynn, who was the one who pieced together the hundreds of pages of Wilder’s many drafts into what we’re seeing now, seems mostly to play into the audience’s curiosity of what this play could be about and whether it should have stayed in the proverbial desk drawer. The answer to the last question is unfortunately more yes than no. Like Stephen Sondheim’s underwhelming Here We Are, sometimes the writer knows the quality of their work better than their admirers who understandably are hungry for any morsel of artistic output (this theme is explored in Steven Soderburgh’s recent film, The Christophers). Unlike posthumous masterpieces like Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night or E.M. Forester’s Maurice, The Emporium was never finished, and although there are plenty of interesting ideas floating around the story of an orphan whose American dream is to work for the nebulous and mysterious titled, big city department store, it never coalesces into a workable metaphor. The Emporium is the almost unattainable dream of the few willing to achieve it, while everyone else with no such ambitions, can be sated by the other department store, the popular but less refined Craigie’s, the name of which is uttered more times in the play than the name Antrobus in The Skin of Our Teeth.

‘Schmigadoon!’ and “Prince Faggot” Lead LGBTQ Critics’ Dorian Theater Award Nominations for 2026

Schmigadoon! (c) Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

Here are the nominees of the 2025-2026 Broadway and Off-Broadway season for GALECA's Dorian Theater Awards. A note on eligibility: Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Liberation, and Titaníque were recognized by the Dorian Theater awards for their original Off-Broadway productions. As such, only “new elements” of their Broadway transfers were eligible for consideration this year. 

Winners of the 2026 Dorian Theater Awards will be announced on Monday, June 1, 2026. 

Theater: Recipients of The 80th Theatre World Awards

(c) Theatre World Awards

The 80th Theatre World Award Honorees for Outstanding Broadway or Off-Broadway Debut Performance have been announced for the 2025-2026 season.   The Awards witll be presented at a ceremony on Tuesday, June 2 at the Longacre Theatre.

Again, I am honored to be on the selection committee, and this is a great Class of 2026

Film Reviews: “Blue Film” Is a Sweet, Gay Drama With a Vibe of Salaciousness; “The Sheep Detective” Is a Pretty Good Benoit Baaaaa Mystery; “The Wizard of the Kremlin” Is a Dry Tale of Putin’s Ascent in Russia

Blue Film (c) Strand Releasing

Review: Blue Film 
In Cinemas 

Ever since Elliot Tuttle’s Blue Film opened at the Edinburgh Film Festival last summer, it has carried an aura of naughty gay sexual content, sharing the same trajectory as the BDSM-themed “Pillion” during the same time frame. Pillion opened earlier this year and got decent reviews—now it’s time to see if Blue Film will get a similar reception or better. Aaron Eagle (Kieron Moore, from Boots) is an L.A. sex worker who, at the start of the film, is livestreaming (a la OnlyFans) to his many followers, receiving their adulation while verbally degrading them for it. He boasts that he is seeing one of them tonight for a date for a crazy amount of money. That date/hookup turns out to be with Hank (Reed Birney, of The Humans), an older man who insists on keeping a ski mask on. But as the evening proceeds, the two wear each other’s defenses down, and when the masks are (literally and metaphorically) finally taken off, they soon realize that both are using fake names and they actually know each other from a long-ago chapter in their lives. While the promised blueness of sex and sexual acts are indeed peppered throughout the movie, I was more disturbed by the excessive amount of a casual vaping (which, unlike gay sex, is totally unhealthy). If you’ve seen any episode of Heated Rivalry, you’ve seen more than what’s shown here. But what’s dangerous is the circumstances that the two men find themselves in, making the sex a bit more taboo or psychologically fraught. That the story becomes an understanding (maybe even love) between the two men is thanks to the two actors, the only people in the film. Moore is very charismatic once the rent boy persona is done away with (although there is a moment of Aaron metaphorically shedding his past that is unnecessarily on-the-nose) as his swagger turns to empathy. Birney has the harder role as Hank is (whether self-admitted or not) a sexual predator whose shame has led him to this odd redemption arc; the veteran stage actor is able to find shades of grace in this broken man. Blue Film is a more modest film than Pillion, but its sexual nature, when it arrives, is not sugar-coated for straight audience members, and rather par-for-the-course for gay ones. Ultimately, it is a nicely told character study that will be remembered more than just the physical acts depicted. 

The 79th Tony Award Nominations

Schmigadoon (c) Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

Here are the nominations for the 79th Tony Award, which will be handed out on Sunday, June 7, 2026. The host is P!nk.