Theater Reviews: Lauren Yee's “King of the Yees” Is an Amusing Slice of San Francisco Chinatown Life; Duncan Sheik’s Last Musical, “Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen,” Is About Sex Workers and Sex Writers; and “Machine Learning” Is “Who’s Afraid of AI Woolf?”

King of the Yees (c) HanJie Chow

Theater: King of the Yees 
At Signature Theatre 

Lauren Yee’s plays have always had absurd and funny flights of fancy, like in her last play, Mother Russia, Russia was an actual character on stage. There are plenty of amusing asides going on in King of the Yees, an older play having its big Off-Broadway premiere, but what affected me most is the autobiographical part of her semi-autobiographical work. Like Lauren’s upbringing in San Francisco and her father’s proud involvement in the Yee Family Association, my family lived across the Bay in Oakland, where we were also part (tangentially) of the Wong Family Association (the butt of many of Yee’s jokes in the play). So, while I enjoyed the funny, the father-daughter relationship and the Chinese-ness of it all resonated more. The play starts in a very meta way in which we watch Lauren Yee (The Last Jedi’s Kelly Marie Tran) at a performance of King of the Yees, a two-hander about “Lauren Yee” (Maureen Sebastian) and her father “Larry” (David Shih) when the real Larry (Francis Jue) interrupts the play. From there, the play within the play stops while the play we’re watching is shot out of a cannon as Larry and his big personality take over the stage, taking questions from the audience, going through the history of the Yee family (including how and why the Association was created) and just making Lauren miserable as she tries to take back possession of her play. After another Yee, Leland (no relations), a real-life California state senator whom Larry supports, is arrested for corruption, Larry disappears and Lauren turns to her ancestors to help her find him. 

Theater Reviews: “Midnight” Is a Unique and Visionary Musical About Slavery; “School Girls” Is An Enjoyable Broadway Romp; “Slam Frank” Invents a Hip-Hop Anne Frank; and What Is “The Ask” Actually Asking?

Midnight (c) Valerie Terranova

Theater: Midnight 
At the Daryl Roth Theatre 

There are some shows that make so much noise before it opens that I know the show’s whole history and paper trail reviews before the first note is played. I can’t say this is the case with Midnight, the exciting, daring and unwieldy new musical by internet and reality show personality Todrick Hall, whose previous projects missed me completely. But when I hear one person wrote the book, songs, choreographed and directed his first ever musical, my first instinct is skepticism. Stephen Sondheim had Hal Prince and Michael Bennett. Lin-Manuel Miranda had Thomas Kail and Andy Blankenbuehler. But as they say, confidence is half the battle, and whoever Hall convinced to help him produced a show that is truly his vision, the gamble paid off. Midnight takes its cue from Hamilton as it takes place in America’s past and creates a contemporary, all-sung-through score with an ensemble of actors hopped up on adrenaline and sheer will, who are shot out of a cannon from minute one and don’t land until almost three hours later. The play starts with the birth of Rail (Hall), whose parents are two slaves on the plantation of Sylvester (Ciarán Mccarthy), who immediately separates them, giving his mother to another house, leaving Rail to be mostly raised by the eternal mother figure Ethel (Ayana George). Although persued by the eternally optimistic Lily Rose (Charlotte Odusanya), Rail just wants to keep his head low and survive each day. That is until he meets the charming Richard (Jeremy Beloate), the possible fiancé to Scarlet (Kennedy Caughell), the daughter of Sylvester’s scheming sister Charlotte’ (Autumn Hurlbert). Richard, who was essentially raised by his family slave, has become a closet abolitionist and hires Rail to help him build a house for him and his future bride. They also secretly meet every night at midnight so Richard can teach Rail how to read and write before an impulsive kiss sets the story on an inevitable conflict between black and white, slave and master and gay and straight. 

Theater Reviews: David Greenspan Shines in a Revival of Tom Stoppard’s “The Invention of Love”; Sarah Jones Expertly Examines “Who Hurt You, America?”; and a Fearless (and Naked) Actor Tackles the “Classic Penguin” Oeuvre of Books

The Invention of Love (c) Paul Lutvak

Theater: The Invention of Love 
At TheaterLab 

The Invention of Love is the late Tom Stoppard’s only play with a gay theme, and when it opened on Broadway in 2001, it got a respectable run as well as Tony Awards for the actors (Richard Easton and Robert Sean Leonard) playing the younger and older versions of its main character, poet A. E. Housman. When the play begins, Housman has died, and befitting a classicist scholar, he is traveling the river Styx towards Hades. Stoppard’s play lost the Tony Award that year to David Auburn’s Proof, which coincidentally was revived this year. So, having the chance to revisit both plays, I came to the same conclusion I had 25 years ago: The Invention of Love is the better written play while Proof is more emotionally resonant. Invention has Stoppard’s typical intellectually elliptical dialogue and themes, but it would have benefited from a demonstration of the love in its title and less of the theoretical, poetic analysis of it. In the new barebones, but very intimate, production at TheaterLab, enjoyably directed by Zachary Elkind, Stoppard’s witty conversations really take center stage, making the audience swim in early 19th century British discourse on classic literature with a good five-minutes spent on the placement of a comma. 

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 Review: Thirty-Years Later, in a Bizarro Political Landscape, This “American Daughter” Revival Is Strangely Nostalgic; A Footballer Play Needs Less Banter and More “Pass”-ing; Cat Cohen’s “Broad Strokes” Has Funny Thoughts, As Almost-Death Becomes Her

An American Daughter (c) Joan Marcus

Theater: An American Daughter 
At The Pershing Square Signature Center 

The downside of having a QR Code instead of a Playbill is that essential information is now not readily accessible to theatergoers. For the first New York revival of Wendy Wasserstein’s An American Daughter, which premiered on Broadway in the 1997 with the great Kate Nelligan in the title role, I was wondering if director Sarna Lapine would update the play to modern day MAGA or keep it in the 90s where the biggest scandal was Nannygate, in which President Bill Clinton had to withdraw two female nominees for attorney general because one didn’t pay social security tax for her nanny and the other had hired an illegal alien for hers. Even though set designer Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’ upscale Georgetown living room is gorgeous, its timeless design doesn’t give us any clues. The first clue actually comes from the radio that’s playing Ringo Starr’s version of “You’re Sixteen,” a now looked down-upon song about a man professing his love for an underaged girl, with Lyssa Dent Hughes (Jean Lichty) unironically singing along. We are definitely in 1997. Lyssa is the current nominee for surgeon general, where she hopes to promote women-specific health care. The two solid rocks in her life are her shaggy dog of a husband Walter (Robert Sean Leonard) and her best friend Judith (Montego Glover), who is not only a doctor, but one of the few black Jews at her synagogue. Then there are the young whippersnappers (who today would be political vlogger influencers) with typical Wasserstein Charles Dickens-type names: Quincy Quince (Carmen Zilles), a feminist essayist with aspirations of grandeur, and Timber Tucker (Chris Ghaffari), a political reporter doing a piece on Lyssa. They all end up at a brunch where the most unbelievable character of a play, Walter’s friend named (sigh!) Morrow McCarthy (Ryan Spahn), a conservative, pro-life, gay newspaper columnist willingly and with seeming malice, accuses Lyssa that she, using her busy upper-class life as an alibi, willingly ignored a jury summons. And what was just a throwaway conversation bon mot becomes the current news cycle’s hot gotcha moment that threatens to derail her nomination. 

Reviews: Teens Born With Empathy Try to Interpret Religion in “The Saviors” and Greek Mythology is On a Box Office Roll With “Hadestown: The Musical”

The Saviors (c) Ahron R. Foster

Theater: The Saviors 
At Atlantic Theater Company

The minute you walk into the Linda Gross Theater, it’s sort of a shock to see a realistic sanctuary of a church (courtesy of set designer David Zinn), since the theater used to be St. Peter’s Episcopal Church when it was built in 1854 with a huge crucifix towering over the audience, an altar in the center of the stage, a board with hymn numbers to be sung on the left and a door leading outside to the right. Thankfully, credit playwright Bubba Weiler for having most of the action of The Saviors happen on the sides and not the altar itself. Instead of focusing on the church itself, we watch the days in and days out of two altar boys after mass as they clean up and do their chores. Michael (Ivan Howe), the younger but more gregarious of the two, starts the play conflicted as to what his confirmation name should be. Paul (Julius Rinzel) doesn’t seem to have put much thought into his, so when Michael suggests they take each other’s name, it’s a clue to not only the faith of the best friends, but their relationship as well. Despite this Call Me By Your Name moment, the play is less about sexual awakening (although there is some) and more about religious faith. Paul, like a certain nun in a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, tries to explain to Michael that he has Doubts. This sort of rocks Michael’s world as he always assumed he and Paul would do everything together, including going to the nearby Catholic high school. But Paul doesn’t want to traverse the same path most of the people in this small town seem to be on and explore the outside world instead. 

Theater Reviews: Two Buzzy Women-Driven Theater Projects Open: “The Whoopi Monologues” Celebrate Goldberg (The Playwright) and There’s Only Murders in Palermo in the Entertaining “Giulia”

The Whoopi Monologues (c) Angela Marie Orellana

Theater: The Whoopi Monologues 
At Lincoln Center Theatre 

Director Whitney White has reconceived the theatrical work of Whoopi Goldberg and turned it into an enjoyable event for five black actresses to explore the diverse characters Goldberg wrote for herself and see them in a new way. Four of The Whoopi Monologues are from the comedian’s 1984 show supervised by director Mike Nichols, and the fifth is from her 2004 revival. The start of the performances is a variation on how the HBO special of her 1984 hit began in which Whoopi goes to the dressing room of each of the characters she’s going to portray to wish them good luck. We meet the five actresses as they dance their way onto the stage before entering their respective dressing rooms, with the wonderful Kara Young (Purpose) in an oversized men’s suit, kicking things up with Fontaine, a truth-telling junkie who serendipitously is transported from the mean streaks of New York to Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam. Next up is Dominique Fishback (Judas and the Black Messiah) as a little black girl with a white shirt on her head because she doesn’t like her natural hair or her brown eye color. Danielle Pinnock (TV's Ghosts) in a fun blue wig is a Jamaican curios-stand owner who talks about being hired by a rich man she calls “the old raisin” and her adventures in America. Then it’s Kerry Washington (Scandal) playing a beach-loving valley girl (but really considers herself a surfer chick, if you don’t mind) who tells about a flirtation with a cute guy at a party and the aftermath. The final monologue focuses on Lureen (Hell’s Kitchen’s Kecia Lewis), an older black woman going through menopause, fanning herself from a hot flash she describes as “Dick Cheney at a gay wedding hot.” 

Theater Review: A Walk on the Moon” Is an Old-Fashioned Musical With a Streak of 1960’s Radicalism; “Music City” Is a Good Ol’ Honky Tonk Joint; “Are You Now or Have You Ever Been” Is Today as Seen Through the Politics of Yesterday

A Walk on the Moon (c) Joan Marcus

Theater: A Walk on the Moon 
At the Laura Pels Theatre 

If you think the titular walk by Neil Armstrong on the moon in 1969 would lean heavily on the metaphor of change and breaking the status quo in the new musical, A Walk on the Moon, you don’t know the half of it. Based on the 1999 film, directed by Tony Goldwyn and starring Diane Lane and Viggo Mortensen, the musical, adapted by Pamela Gray on her film script, focuses on one Jewish family in the Catskills on that fateful summer-of-‘69 intersection between the moon landing and a certain musical festival in nearby Woodstock. The four couples who vacation together every summer are enjoying everything they always have, from the mahjong games to the knish parties. But something feels off for Pearl (Talia Suskauer), whose daughter Alison (Sophie Pollono) is turning 16, the same age she was when she got pregnant by her now husband, Marty (Max Chernin). Mother and daughter have an awakening when Pearl starts to flirt with the new blouse salesman (Sam Gravitte) making the rounds selling clothes with an unfortunate name, Walker, while Allison starts flirting with Timmy Chalamet wannabe musician Ross (Oscar Williams), as this newer generation is anti-war and pro-free love. There is a lot to enjoy about this modest Off-Broadway show, with the catchy, if slightly safe songs by AnnMarie Milazzo being quite likeable. Unfortunately, the adult love triangle never really feels dangerous or passionate, with a heavily symbolic tie-dyed tee doing all the heavy lifting for Pearl’s unfulfilled life (maybe if she chose The Feminine Mystique instead of On the Road for her summer read, she might have found her calling outside of her love life). Pollono has the better role as Alison, who starts out as a whiny teen but soon gets politically aware (thanks to her love of Joni Mitchell), gets the best of Milazzo’s songs and has real chemistry with Williams. Similar in tone to the musical version of The Bridges of Madison County, the protagonists of both make very pragmatic decisions, which here feel old-fashioned rather than of the times, which were indeed a changin’. 

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. 

Off-Broadway Reviews: Some Pride Month Theater to Consider Include a Parody of the Gay Hockey Series, “Heated Rivalry;” the Sex-Lives of Sexagenarian, “Jerome” and the All-Black Cast of “La Cage aux Folles,” While “Romeo & Juliet” in Central Park, by Cualquier Otro Nombre, Is Worth Catching

Heated Rivalry (c) Matthew Murphy

Theater: Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody
At Culture Club 

When it was announced that there was already an unauthorized musical written of Hidden Rivalry not long after the last episode aired, hopes weren’t high that it wouldn’t be just a quick cash grab on the popularity of the TV series about closeted gay hockey players. But credit writer Dylan MarcAurele for actually writing a smart and funny take on the show, which doesn’t make fun of the material as it does celebrate the silliness of the fandom of gay men, straight women and, yes, even the curious straight sports fan. With a cast of five and practical but super creative direction by Alan Kliffer, most of the series’ highlights are represented in this Unauthorized Musical Parody, although the show’s copious amount of sex scenes have been reduced to just enough to not be shut down by the city. Jay Armstrong Johnson is convincingly pouty and alpha male as the Russian Ilya Rozanov, but the show’s real stand-out is Jimin Moon as the Canadian Shane Hollander—goofy, naïve and terminally the good boy. Their first real meeting in the hotel gym is hysterically sweaty and lusty. The rest of the characters are ably played with quick-change precision, without missing a laugh. Ryan Duncan’s major role is Kip, one half of the show’s other gay couple, and while that storyline does get the brunt of the musical’s plot cut, there is a fun scene surrounding Kip and his closeted hockey player (who plays Scott Hunter is a surprise I won’t spoil here). I saw the extremely talented understudy Shelby Acosta playing most of the major female characters, including Shane’s incredibly judgy mom; Maria, Kip’s co-worker (“Gurl!”), as well as the always exotic Svetlana. The hysterical Ryann Redmond’s main role is Susan, and if you’re wondering who Susan was in the tv show, she wasn’t. She’s the musical’s (very) Canadian narrator and stand-in for the many straight women in the audience who read and made Rachel Reed’s novels the hit that they are. Redmond captured the spirit of all the Susans out there. And thanks to the stellar work of the entire cast and director Kliffer, Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody is the perfect gay pride night out. 

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. 

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

Theater Reviews: “Jesa” Uniquely Focuses on First-Generation Korean Sisters, Now Orphans; “Monte Cristo” Is a Throwback Musical That Slowly Wins the Audience Over; “The Wild Party” Brings Up Memories of its First Production While Forging its Own Identity

Jesa (c) Joan Marcus

Theater: Jesa 
At the Public Theater 

The most impressive element of Jeena Yi’s Jesa, a Public Theater and Ma-Yi Theater Company co-production, is that it takes a well-worn theatrical staple (the family drama) and makes it believably modern. Like the recent plays The Hills of California and The Blood Quilt, Jesa deals with a family of sisters, after the death of their parents, but they’re Korean American (as opposed to Irish or African American as they are in the other plays, respectively). We are at the Southern Californian house of Grace (Shannon Tyo), the second oldest, where she took care of her mother while raising her daughter with her husband. Grace and her sisters are performing a Jesa, a ceremony of remembrance and honor, in which food is placed at the altar dedicated to their parents, as their mother (referred to as Umma) recently passed. Two sisters live nearby: Elizabeth (Laura Sohn), the youngest who is a no-nonsense businesswoman, and Tina (Tina Chilip), the eldest who is a chef. Flying in from New York is third-in-line Brenda (Christine Heesun Hwang), a struggling theater director. Because the ceremony is usually performed by the male members of the family, it’s sort of a hodgepodge evening, with the sisters arguing about the order of events and how things are supposed to be laid out, but refusing to call their male cousins for help. 

Reviews: My Take on the Enjoyable Ryan Gosling Sci-Fi Film, “Project Hail Mary;” a Curious, if Oblique, “Bughouse,” a Play About the Artist Henry Darger; and the Indescribable Aussie Evening at a “Burnout Paradise”

Project Hail Mary (c) Amazon MGM Studios

Film: Project Hail Mary 
In Cinemas 

Even if you didn’t know that the new Ryan Gosling astronaut film, Project Hail Mary, was based on a book by the same author who wrote The Martian, it would become clear soon enough. Like Matt Damon’s botanist character, Mark Watney, stuck on Mars trying to survive on his own, Gosling’s Ryland Grace is a molecular biologist working as a high school science teacher who finds himself alone on a spaceship called the Hail Mary in a different solar system. And like Watney, Grace has to science the crap out his situation. It turns out that our sun is slowly dying, as are most suns in the Milky Way, except the one Grace is there to research to see why it’s immune to the solar disease. Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller have envisioned a beautiful and engaging screen adaptation, but it would not be as successful without a charismatic lead, with Gosling finally getting to shed the wordless loner persona of his characters in Drive and The Place Beyond the Pines to become the relatable charmer that was hinted at in The Nice Guys and La La Land. This is also not Gosling’s first time in space either, as he played Neil Armstrong in the underrated First Man. But here, Gosling’s is so relatable and charming as Grace that the audience I was with at an IMAX 70mm screening was on his side from the beginning. When Grace has to do a spacewalk for the first time, the doors open, the score (excellent, by Daniel Pemberton) and sound effects disappear, and it was only then that I realized how quiet the theater was: no popcorn eating, no talking, no texting. That’s how invested we all were in this poor man’s hopeless situation. 

Theater Reviews: Mint Theater Presents “Zack,” Another Amusing Harold Brighouse Play; “Spare Parts” Envisions a World With a Possible Fountain of Youth, and “Bigfoot!” Humanizes (and Musicalizes) an Outsider

Zack (c) Todd Cerveris

Theater: Zack 
The Mint Theater at Theatre Row 

The Mint Theater has resurrected another play by the British playwright Harold Brighouse, who is best known for Hobson’s Choice, produced over a century ago on Broadway and made into a popular movie in the ‘50s. Last year, they revived Brighouse’s Garside’s Career in a lovely production, and now they are producing Zack, the playwright’s follow-up to Hobson’s Choice. And I have to say, plotwise, it doesn’t have the heft or historical intrigue of the other two plays. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed the production, mainly for its title character. Zach (Jordan Matthew Brown), unlike Mr. Hobson and Mr. Garside, neither has choice nor career. He is the younger and more unpredictable brother of the upstanding Paul (David T. Patterson), who runs a wedding planning service for their much put-upon mother, Mrs. Munning (Melissa Maxwell). Times are tough, so when Virginia (Cassia Thompson), a wealthy distant cousin, comes for a visit, Mrs. Munning hopes to make a love match for Paul. She also tries to keep the kind-hearted but bumbling, overweight and heavily bearded Zack, whom she considers an embarrassment, out of all family interactions. But try as they may, it seems Virginia has more in common with Zack than Paul, and when the rest of the family gets wind of their flirtation, plans are afoot to get Zack out of their hair. This includes an odd plot moment when Zack makes a joke about marrying local girl Martha (Grace Guichard) and her over-protective father holds him to that promise. The problem with Zack is that even if it’s a fascinating time capsule, it’s not very funny for a comedy of manners. Zack is relegated to almost a supporting role for much of the play as we witness most of the other not-so-sympathetic characters try to scheme and manipulate each other for their selfish ends. But whenever Zack appears, in the hands of the talented and immensely likeable Brown, he’s always a decent and honest person, even if he sometimes believes everyone’s bad opinions of him. Britt Berke’s evenhanded production may not make Zack a compelling play to revisit, but it’s fascinating to see how a playwright from early in the last century gave voice to a compelling outsider. 

Theater Reviews: Off-Broadway Explores the “Chinese Republicans” Women of Manhattan, the Citizens of “Mother Russia” Getting a Taste of Capitalism, and How “The Monsters” Effect Two Damaged Siblings

Chinese Republicans (c) Joan Marcus

Theater: Chinese Republicans 
At the Laura Pels Theatre

Every third Thursday of the month, the “Asian Babes Changing the Game” affinity group of the Friedman Wallace investment bank meet at an upscale Chinese restaurant to check in with each other (and I guess, theoretically, to change the game). The head of the group is the firm’s managing director, Ellen (Jennifer Ikeda), who is excited that her protégé Katie (Anna Zavelson) just got promoted and is on her way up the corporate ladder. Also at the lunch are Iris (Jully Lee), a software engineer whose work visa is about to run out, and the Alpha of the group, Phyllis (Jodi Long), who was the first Asian woman to become an executive in the field. At these lunches, sharing ideas quickly devolves into bitching sessions, especially about how they feel compartmentalized and how to stand out at work. When Katie arrives at the next lunch to announce she is being tapped for another position in the APAC market (which is why she is practicing her Mandarin with Duolingo), things start to get tense within the group. Although playwright Alex Lin provocatively calls her latest play, Chinese Republicans, the focus in Chey Yew’s adept production is mostly on how women navigate the tricky male world of corporate finance. There’s a lot of talk about being othered as Chinese as well, especially from Phyllis (Long is especially good with her acid-tongued observations), but the Republican part only plays a small part until Lin shakes things up midway through.