Theater Reviews: In Late Summer, New Yorkers Saw Some Giggle-Inducing “Paranormal Activity,” a Jealous King in “The Winter’s Tale,” a Group of Friends Facing a “Disruption” With AI, and Chekhov Through the Prism of “The Real Ivanov”

Paranormal Activity (c) Matthew Murphy

Broadway: Paranormal Activity 
At the August Wilson Theatre 

It is serendipitous that Paranormal Activity, the first Broadway play ever based on a horror film franchise, is playing at the August Wilson Theatre. First of all, Wilson’s famous 10-play cycle is full of supernatural spirits in post-slavery 20th century America, but the theater was also the host of one of the most infamous horror movie adaptations for Broadway, with 1988’s musical version of Carrie (“God has seen your sinning, just beginning…”). Since then, there have been many attempts to reinvent spookiness from the big screen to the Great White Way, including intellectual horror in the plays of Conor McPherson (Shining City still has my favorite scare moment on Broadway) and recent productions like Stranger Things: The First Shadow and Grey House. The author of the latter, Levi Holloway, wrote Paranormal Activity, which is less an adaptation than in the spirit of. Gone is the hook of showing the spooky happenings on video as the lead couple sleeps. Now we’re following a new couple, James and Lou (Travis A. Knight and Cher Alvarez), recently married, and newly transplanted to suburban England for a fresh start, mainly for Lou’s mental health. But from the beginning, Fly Davis’ beautifully dilapidated two-level, old house does the heavy lifting on the portentous scale that audience members hoping to get jump-scared are looking for. And jump-scares the play does.

Theater: A Deep Dive Into the Mind and Art of Playwright Tracy Letts

12 Hours with Tracy Letts (c) Arthur Knox

Animus Theatre Company gave theater fans a generous gift last Monday when they presented Twelve Hours with Tracy Letts, a marathon reading of five of the Pulitzer Prize-winner’s plays at Circle in the Square Theatre (currently housing the Broadway musical, “Just in Time”). The day-long presentation was advertised to start at 11 a.m. and end at 11 p.m. and I am shocked to say they surprisingly kept to that time frame, ending only a bit later at 11:15. The one-playwright concept is the dream of Animus Artistic Director Jonathan Judge-Russo, and the series is named in honor of the late, beloved Circle in the Square Theatre School teacher, Alan Langdon, with the proceeds of the evening going to the school, which is housed underneath the theater. Many of the students worked as ushers and some read the stage directions for the plays. 

The Interested Bystander’s 2026 Theater Awards Round-up

 

Schmigadoon! (c) Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman 

The 79th Tony Award Nominations 

Play 

Liberation by Bess Wohl 

Play (Revival) 

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman 

GALECA Announces Dorian Theater Award Winners Including "Schmigadoon," "The Lost Boys" and "Prince Faggot"

 

The Lost Boys (c) Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

Announcing the winners of the Dorian Theater Awards, given out by GALECA, the LGBTQ entertainment writers and critics.

Theater Reviews: “||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||” Is an Enjoyable Night of All Three, “Small” Is One Man’s Quest of Being a Horse Jockey and “Celebrity Autobiography” Is Now on Broadway, Dropping the Tea

||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| (c) Carol Rosegg

Theater: ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| 
At Vineyard Theatre 

Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Eisa Davis’ latest play with the unique title of ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| defies categorizing. It is definitely a play, but the four actresses that make up the cast all sing and/or play instruments for almost half the runtime. There is a narrative arc, but the production, as skillfully directed by Pam McKinnon, is more interested in moments rather than the whole. The play takes place at a summer music program in the San Francisco Bay Area in which we follow the ||: Girls :||:, who are all in high school focusing on their :||: Music :||. The most intense of them is singer Fax (Hillary Fisher). She loves the rules of classical music and is most lost when asked to improvise, or in the play’s lingo, allow :||: Chance :||: to take over. More adept at :||: Chance :||: is the school resident outsider and drummer, Margot (Naomi Latta), who is looking for meaning in her mostly unsupervised life, with music being her focus now. Pianist Rile (Yeena Sung) is the most typical teenager, sometimes acting like a mean girl, which may be her defense for wanting to find her tribe. Rounding out the cast is Clementine (Gianna DiGregorio Rivera), who plays a lot of instruments and doesn’t seem too bothered by the teenage angst around her. There are a lot of themes swirling around Davis’ play (lost and found parents, earth-shaking life changes, sexuality, eating disorders, suicidal thoughts), but they take a back seat to when the three elements of the title finally find its harmony in the play’s most satisfying scene. But this happens halfway through and nothing in its second half matches the synergy of that moment. All the actors feel natural and vulnerable, but how newcomer Latta exudes Margot’s open wound personality is astonishing and heartbreaking. Davis, whose next project is a musical with Lin-Manuel Miranda, throws a lot at us during the play’s runtime, giving the audience the choice of what is important to us in these character’s stories (with only a late play “father” subplot being the least earned and far-fetched). Still, this is a very special evening of story, song and humanity. 

The 79th Tony Award Predictions – May 2026

Ragtime (c) Matthew Murphy

The 79th Tony Awards will be handed out on Sunday, June 7. I will post my final predictions the Friday before the awards. But here are my thoughts of who are the front-runners of the major categories as of two weeks before the ceremony. 

Enjoy! 

‘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

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. 

The Interested Bystander: Final 2025-26 Tony Award Nomination Predictions

The Lost Boys (c) Matthew Murphy

Most of the precursors have been announced. The Tony committee made their final rulings on category eligibility. It’s time for my final predictions for the 79th Tony Award Nominations, which will announced on Tuesday, May 5. There are questions in some categories as to how many nominees will be allowed, but I will make my best educated guess. 

Enjoy. 

Broadway Reviews: August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” Gets a Respectable Revival, While “The Balusters” and “Fallen Angels” Are Both Funny Shows Focusing on Bad Behavior

Joe Turner's Come and Gone (c) Julieta Cervantes

Broadway: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone 
At the Barrymore Theatre 

I consider August Wilson’s 1988 Joe Turner’s Come and Gone his best play in his series on the African American experience, set across each decade of the 20th century. It’s his best use of magical realism, perfectly integrated in the fabric of the post-slavery lives of these characters. The play is set in 1911 in a Pittsburgh boarding house run by Seth and Bertha Holly (Cedric “The Entertainer” and Taraji P. Henson), where people come and go paying $2 a week, and that includes meals. Currently, the tenants are a young, construction worker who wants to be a blues guitarist, Jeremy (Tripp Taylor); a jilted woman, Mattie (Nimene Sierra Wureh), lost without her boyfriend; Molly Cunningham (Maya Boyd), a more confident single woman who relishes her independence (and hysterically likes to talk about herself in the third person); and Bynum (Ruben Santiago-Hudson) who is more or less a full-time resident. Bynum is a conjuring man, who people go to when they have problems, but he also claims that when he was at his lowest he met someone he calls the Shining Man, who gave him back his spirit and song. Entering into their midst are Herald Loomis (Joshua Boone) and his young daughter Zonia (played in alternated performances by Savannah Commodore and Dominique Skye Turner), renting a room while Loomis searches for his missing wife. (Director Debbie Allen doesn’t want the audience to miss the huge symbolism that Wilson intends for a character named Herald instead of Harold by giving us ominous music as he enters the house.) Seth is suspicious of the stranger, but he agrees to let him stay as Loomis hires Selig (Bradley Stryker), a door-to-door salesman, who is known to find people. 

Broadway Review: “Beaches” Outlook Is Mostly Schmaltzy With a Good Chance of Wind (Beneath My Wings), “Becky Shaw” Is Fun and Mean (in Equal Measures), and a Noble “The Fear of 13” Muddies the True Story of a Death Row Inmate

Beaches (c) Marc J. Franklin

Broadway: Beaches 
At the Majestic Theatre 

I will always remember the 1988 film Beaches as the end of a trio of enjoyable Bette Midler female friends-centric films, starting with the comedies Outrageous Fortune with Shelley Long and Big Business with Lily Tomlin. I was a big fan of the first two, and while I certainly enjoyed Beaches, the more serious one with Barbara Hershey, its overly sincere and weepy elements weren’t to my taste. However, they were exactly what made it popular with its fans, and there was certainly no doubt the musical adaptation would embrace them. But having Iris Rainer Dart, the original author of the book the movie based on, as the writer here (with the late Thom Thomas) may have doomed the stage version as the show kept too many extraneous plot points that bog down the emotional bond between two lifelong friends. The flashier and brasher Cee Cee Bloom is played by the talented Jessica Vosk, who is fighting to find her own voice in the role, while the production won’t let the audience forget the Midler of it all. Kelli Barrett has an easier job playing the more sedate and fussy Bertie, and the two leads feel comfortable and lived in together, although they occasionally fall into a more Mary Richards-Rhoda Morgenstern rhythm instead of creating a unique vibe of their own. 

Broadway Reviews: IPs on Broadway Get Made Over With an Even More Hopeless “Death of Salesman,” an Engaging “Dog Day Afternoon,” Now Through the Lens of a Mamdani New York and “The Jellicle Ball”—a Fantastic Version of “Cats”

Death of a Salesman (c) Emilio Madrid

Broadway: Death of a Salesman 
At the Winter Garden Theatre 

Ten years ago, I saw my first stage production of O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh at BAM with Nathan Lane as Hickey, and for over four hours, Lane embodied the optimistic salesman’s decline into hopeless pipeless dreamer. Now, on Broadway, Lane has taken on another iconic American salesman, Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, director Joe Mantello’s excellent, if dour, portrayal of a man looking back on his life and seeing all the mistakes that led him to where he is now. Lane is simply astonishing as Loman, who has started to hate going on the road to make sales in the New England territory, with his mind wandering and his driving erratic. If you’ve seen the poster of the current revival at the Winter Garden, there’s a Chevy, which seems to be the centerpiece metaphor for Mantello’s production, as literally represented by Chloe Lamford’s cavernous haunted warehouse set when, as the play begins, that red car enters the stage and stays there as a reminder of Willy’s successful past and failures in the present. Like Iceman, this revival is actually my first time seeing Salesman, although I have seen plenty of TV incarnations: the 1966 version with original 1949 Broadway stars Lee J. Cobb and Mildred Dunnock, and the 1985 version with the celebrated Broadway revival cast that included Dustin Hoffman. Recent Broadway revivals delivered Philip Seymour Hoffman and Wendell Pierce. Lane certainly will be remembered in this pantheon of impressive actors. 

The Interested Bystander: Early 2025-26 Tony Award Nomination Predictions

Every Brilliant Thing (c) Matthew Murphy

It’s the last day of March, and Broadway has started to stir after a rather uneventful early 2026. But there are a dozen shows opening before the Tony Awards cut-off, most of which have started previews or will do so in the next couple of days. 

What better time to make so early (and blind) Tony predictions based on what has opened so far and making assumptions based on reputation of the creators or actors of the show we haven’t seen yet. And there’s the issue of the Tony Awards Committee to set who is eligible for what award, which doesn’t get announced until a couple of days before nominations are voted on. 

So, this is just fun. No disrespect to the shows that I left out. I probably wouldn’t have thought The Outsiders or John Proctor is the Villain was going to be the hits they turned out to be before they opened.   The cutoff date is April 28.  The nominations will be announced on May 5.

Enjoy. 

Harry Potter-Adjacent Broadway Reviews: In “Giant,” a Future Dumbledore Plays a Beloved Children’s Book Author With Troublesome Political Views (Sound Familiar?), While a Former Harry Potter Demonstrates Empathy and Grace in “Every Brilliant Thing”

Giant (c) Joan Marcus

Broadway: Giant 
At the Music Box Theatre

The first thing the audience sees when they walk into the Music Box Theatre for Giant is a broken house, and with all due respect to set designer Bob Crowley, it hits the nail on the design head, but for British playwright Mark Rosenblatt (his first play), it may be too much of an apt metaphor. This is the Gipsy House of Roald Dahl (John Lithgow), and in 1983, he and his fiancée, Liccy (Rachael Stirling), short for Felicity, are renovating it for a fresh start after Dahl’s divorce from actress Patricia Neal. As the play starts, there are construction sounds, and tarp instead of walls, which adds to Dahl’s stress, as he edits his new book, The Witches with his British publisher Tom (Elliot Levey). On top of that, a representative from Farrar Strauss Giroux, Dahl’s American publisher, is set to arrive to discuss the fallout of a book review he wrote where he disparages all Jews for supporting the death and destruction of the 1982 Lebanon War. Both publishing houses want the outspoken author to do an interview where he would apologize for the perceived antisemitic opinions, which they think will affect sales of The Witches. The American arrives (“The eaglet has landed,” Dahl notes) and it’s Jessie Stone (Aya Cash), a young woman who professes her love for Dahl’s book and even has a copy of The Twits for him to sign for her son. Once pleasantries are done with, the real meat of the meeting (and the play) occurs: What to do to smooth over the offensive language in Dahl’s review? Dahl doesn’t see why it’s so imperative, but he does acquiesce for Liccy’s safety as he has received death threats, which is why a policeman is guarding the house. Dahl is rightly suspicious of why Jessie was chosen to represent FSG, and when it’s revealed that she, like Tom, is Jewish, Rosenblatt gets to dig into the knotty geopolitical question of Israel, especially to those people who are watching all of this from outside the Middle East. 

Theater: Catching Up on Theater Filled With Cakes (“Two Strangers”), Insects (“Bug”), a Nun (“Prudence Play”) and a Con Man (“Tartuffe”)

Bug (c) Matthew Murphy

Broadway: Bug 
At the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre 

Things are getting itchy on Broadway for the new year, with one of Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts’ earlier work from 1996, Bug, now having its Broadway debut starring Letts’ wife, Carrie Coon, best known to TV audiences for The White Lotus and The Gilded Age. Coon plays Agnes, a waitress in a small midwestern town, who lives full-time in a motel. One night, she meets Peter (Namir Smallwood), a former soldier she feels a connection with, and who also defends her when her violent ex-husband, Jerry (Steve Key), fresh out of prison, returns in hopes of picking up where they left off, which usually means a lot of drinking and drugs. Peter comes with baggage of his own—he starts to see bugs in the room, which he believes are there for nefarious reasons. When the play premiered in New York in 2004, all eyes were on a then-unknown Michael Shannon as Peter, whose shifty, paranoid demeanor was scary and understandable. Not that Smallwood isn’t also formidable in the role, the focus should really be on Agnes, and here in David Cromer’s edgy and anxiety-filled production, Coon is in total command. (When Bug goes totally obsessive and delusional in the second act, its off-Broadway edginess feels incompatible with the usual Broadway audience expectations.) Indeed, the more adventurous theatergoer will totally vibe with how this play’s themes line up with society’s current obsessions with conspiracy theories, but others may feel them at odds with date night vibes. (Add to that, being on edge after a needlessly confusing and chaotic experience in the rain before the show to lock up people’s phones in pouches.) Coon, who hasn’t been on Broadway since her debut in 2012, is the real deal and will keep you on your toes, as will set design Takeshi Kata’s mind-blowing scene change late in the play. 

2025-2026 Dorian Film Award Nominations Include "Marty Supreme" "Twinless" and "One Battle After Another"

Twinless (c) Lionsgate, Roadside Attractions

GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, the second largest entertainment journalists organization in the world, today announced the group’s 2026 Dorian Film Award nominations for the best in mainstream and LGBTQ-themed productions. Leading the pack: Director Paul Thomas Anderson's resonant dystopian thriller One Battle After Another (Warner Bros.) with nine nods, Ryan Coogler's full-bodied vampire mystery Sinners (also W.B.) with eight, and Josh Safdie's brash-American satire Marty Supreme (A24) with five. 

GALECA members continue to celebrate less-hyped cinematic gems across its Dorian film categories (currently 22). For starters, A24's raunchy-sweet romance Pillion starring Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling and writer-director-star Eva Victor’s bittersweet wellness drama Sorry, Baby (also from A24) are among the titles up for LGBTQ Film of the Year. Other 2025 movie releases getting some love from the group: Director Mona Fastvold's feverish historical musical The Testament of Ann Lee, the twisted stalker comedy Twinless, and Viet and Nam, about two male Vietnamese coal miners in love that was banned in its native land.

Winners will be announced on March 6, 2026.

Theater: One Of My Favorite Plays of the 21st Century (“Majorie Prime”) and a Favorite Playwright’s Lesser Efforts (“Gruesome Playground Injuries”) Get Reassessed in Starry Revivals

Marjorie Prime (c) Joan Marcus

Broadway: Marjorie Prime 
2nd Stage Production at the Helen Hayes Theatre 

Memory is an elusive thing in Marjorie Prime, Jordan Harrison's 2015 exceptional play now making its debut on Broadway, and even when we have a portable encyclopedia and essentially our life’s timeline (via social media) in the palm of our hands, it doesn’t help. Somewhere in the near future, Majorie (Academy Award nominee June Squibb) is in a retirement home, and while the year is never specified, the eighty-something Majorie mindlessly sings Beyonce, which her daughter Tess (Cynthia Nixon) and her son-in-law Jon (Danny Burstein) don’t recognize (come on Harrison, Beyonce is timeless). One of the services that this retirement home provides is an AI avatar of someone in the resident’s life to help them with either loneliness or as a memory jog. For Marjorie, it’s her late-husband Walter (Christopher Lowell), but as he appeared in his 30s. Walter appears in what seems to be a hologram (as portrayed in the 2019 film version) and can be accessed by anyone who calls for him. Majorie knows she’s being manipulated by Walter’s Prime (as they are called), but she occasionally indulges in the nostalgia of their shared history when he recounts events uploaded to its Prime’s memory. Tess is suspicious of this service, but Jon thinks anything to help Marjorie in her final years is worth it. Where the play goes from there, I won’t spoil, but Harrison does a wonderful job giving us variations on his themes, which illuminates and beautifully humanizes the timeless sadness surrounding death and dementia. 

Reviews: Catching Up on Theater, Including an Enjoyable “Laowang,” the Emotional Nostalgia of “Gotta Dance,” Trying to Figure Out the Early Closing of “The Queen of Versailles,” an Affecting Family Drama in “Little Bear Ridge Road,” and “Oedipus” Is Quite the Motherfu--- Shut Yo Mouth!

Gotta Dance (c) Bjorn Bolinder

Theater: Gotta Dance 
At Theatre at St. Jean 

Revues are odd theater beasts. I don’t know why some are wildly successful (Ain’t Misbehavin’, Smokey Joe’s Café) and some don’t catch fire (Dancin’, Lennon). Gotta Dance, the new revue presented by The York Theatre and American Dance Machine, is a retrospective review like Jerome Robbins’ Broadway in which musical numbers from hit Broadway shows or Hollywood films are meticulously recreated and presented as close to the original as possible. As the title promises, most of the numbers, picked by directors Nikki Feirt Atkins and Randy Skinner, are dances from memorable shows/films, but they might not be the most famous. For example, Gotta Dance comes from the great 1952 film Singing in the Rain, but the directors didn’t choose that number (or the iconic title song), but “Moses Supposes” and “Broadway Melody.” Instead of “The Dance at the Gym” from West Side Story, “Magic to Do” from Pippin or “Rich Man’s Frug” from Sweet Charity, we get less splashier numbers like “Cool,” “Manson Trio” and “I’m a Brass Band,” respectively. (I wish they had chosen "The Rhythm of Life" from Sweet Charity, the movie version, which had a groovy happening vibe by Sammy Davis Jr.). But they do have some big hits, including “One” from A Chorus Line, “All I Need Is the Girl” from Gypsy and the most recent show on the roster: the Pas de Deux from Christopher Wheeldon’s An American in Paris. The biggest thrill for me was Susan Stroman’s Contact. I never thought I would ever experience her electrifying “Simply Irresistible” live again, but the minute the woman in the yellow dress appeared, I had goosebumps. Of course, all of this would not be half as enjoyable without a fantastic ensemble of singer/dancers, and each of the 14 members (a mixture of Broadway and ballet talents) get at least one number to shine. Without much introduction beyond the title of the show and the choreographer projected on the back screen, the numbers flow seamlessly. And as a holiday offering, Gotta Dance is perfect to enjoy with friends and family after a day of shopping and sightseeing. 

Theater Reviews: The 5-hour “Initiative” at the Public Theater Is Laudable and Ambitious, and We Must Thank Broadway’s “Chess” for the Music

Initiative (c) Joan Marcus

Theater: Initiative 
At the Public Theater 

Coastal Podunk, California is the title of a novel being written by a character in Else Went’s five-hour, three-act play, Initiative, at the Public Theater. So, it should be no surprise that the writer is an overachieving high school outsider named Riley (Greg Cuellar) at the start of the current millennium, with no other outlet to channel his artistic sensibility in the seaside California town he lives in. Went’s play takes place during the whole high school experience of Riley and his small “bande a part,” which gave me pause (Netflix is littered with so many subpar high school shows), but the first act put me at ease as they give us realistic, honest and, more importantly, funny interactions between them. Clara (Olivia Rose Barresi), Riley’s best friend, has been home schooled for the last three years but she has convinced her parents to let her attend high school with him. Later, they are joined by introvert Em (Christopher Dylan White) and boisterous Tony (Jamie Sanders), a pair of mismatched childhood friends, as well as Em’s homoflexible neighbor Kendall (Andrea Lopez Alvarez) and Ty (Harrison Densmore), a transfer student. Between just trying to survive and stay unnoticed in high school and the usual teenage angst (X likes Y who actually likes Z, and so on and so on), they decide to form a Dungeons and Dragons crew, with Riley, using his artistic skills, as Dungeon Master. Not unlike the teens of Stranger Things, a lot of their personal problems are paralleled in the fantasy world of action (including the titled move) and inaction. And like most adventures, there’s a shadow character. In this case, it’s Lo (Carson Higgins), a high school jock who has chaotic interactions with most of the other kids — he’s Em’s overprotective but distant older brother, has a crush on an open-hearted Clara and he’s Riley’s former best friend after things soured during a summer camp sexual experimentation goes wrong.