Adam Feldman

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 from quirky originals like Kimberly Akimbo 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 fresh crop of Broadway musicals, plays and revivals, some of which go on to glory at the Tony Awards. Some are for only limited runs, but others stick around for years. Along with star-driven dramas and family-oriented blockbusters, you can still 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

Seeing a show on Broadway can require some planning in advance—and sometimes a leap of faith. You can wait until the shows have opened and try to see only the very best Broadway shows, but at that point, it is often harder to get tickets and good seats. So it’s a good idea to keep an eye on the shows that will be opening on Broadway down the line, be they original musicals, promising new plays or revivals of time-tested classics. Here, in order of when they start, are the productions that have been confirmed so far to open on Broadway in summer 2023 and beyond. Recommended: Current and Upcoming Off Broadway Shows

Public spaces come alive with free outdoor theater in New York City in the summer, and especially with the plays of William Shakespeare. The top destination, of course, is the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, where the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park presents excellent productions that among New York's best things to do in the summer. But you can also enjoy plays by Shakespeare and other classical masters elsewhere in the city: in Harlem,  Brooklyn, at Riverside Park, even in a Lower East Side parking lot. You might be surprised by the magic that can come from wonderful words, inventive actors and a mild summer breeze. RECOMMENDED: Full guide to things to do outside in NYC

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

The 76th annual Tony Awards ceremony, honoring the best of the 2022–23 Broadway season Broadway season, is being held on Sunday, June 11, at uptown's United Palace and broadcast live across the country on PlutoTV and then CBS. Earlier this week, we predicted that Kimberly Akimbo, Some Like It Hot, Leopoldstadt and Parade would be among the biggest winners of the night—and they were. (In the end, we got 22 predictions out of 26 right.) Here are the full results from the 2023 Tony Awards on June 11. RECOMMENDED: A full guide to the 2023 Tony Awards BEST MUSICAL & JulietKimberly AkimboNew York, New YorkShuckedSome Like It Hot BEST PLAY Ain’t No Mo’ by Jordan E. CooperBetween Riverside and Crazy by Stephen Adly GuirgisCost of Living by Martyna MajokFat Ham by James IjamesLeopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard BEST REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL  CamelotInto the WoodsParadeSweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street BEST REVIVAL OF A PLAY A Doll’s HouseThe Piano LessonThe Sign in Sidney Brustein’s WindowTopdog/Underdog BEST SCORE Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, ShuckedTom Kitt and Cameron Crowe, Almost FamousDavid Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori, Kimberly AkimboHelen Park and Max Vernon, KPOPMarc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, Some Like It Hot BEST BOOK OF A MUSICAL Robert Horn, ShuckedDavid Lindsay-Abaire, Kimberly AkimboMatthew López and Amber Ruffin, Some Like It HotDavid West Read, & JulietDavid Thompson and Sharon Washington, New York, New York BEST ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL  Annaleigh Ashfor

The Tony Awards provide a showcase and public record of Broadway performances that are otherwise local and fleeting, and the most memorable numbers from Broadway musicals on the Tonys can echo in theater history for decades to come. But which are the best of the best? We've surveyed every televised number from a nominated musical or musical revival since the very first national Tony telecast in 1967 to create this list of the all-time top Tony performances. Note that we're limiting ourselves here to numbers from Tony-nominated Broadway musicals in the years they were nominated, which means no special material, musical guests or opening medleys—but plenty of classic tunes, go-for-broke dance numbers and dazzling Broadway divas. Without further ado, and accepting the possibility that some of your favorite Broadway shows may not have made the cut, prepare to be razzle-dazzled by the greatest of the Great White Way. Note: Some of these videos have gray cover screens that make it look like they don't work. Don't worry. They do. RECOMMENDED: Complete guide to the 2023 Tony Awards 

Much of the suspense surrounding the 2023 Tony Awards is centered on the ceremony itself. With the Writers Guild of America on strike, it's unclear what the annual CBS broadcast will look like this year: How will it fill the time between musical numbers and speeches from the winners? But that's hardly the only uncertainty attached to the Tonys this year. Thanks to the season's large number of high-quality productions—especially of revivals and new plays—many of the races will be tight. But we've pored over the 2023 Tony nominations, tracked the buzz and talked to industry sources, and we're ready to make our predictions. Here’s who we think will win when Ariana DeBose returns to host Broadway’s biggest night on June 11, 2023. RECOMMENDED: How to watch the 2023 Tony Awards BEST MUSICAL & JulietKimberly AkimboNew York, New YorkShuckedSome Like It Hot The race: At this point, the battle for the Tonys' biggest prize is a duel. For the past decade, Tony voters have tended to reward critical favorites with Off Broadway roots, like Kimberly Akimbo; but in the post-shutdown era, some may be drawn to splashier fare like Some Like It Hot. The latter has late-season momentum from its larger tally of nominations, especially in the design fields, and from non-Tony awards for which Kimberly was ineligible (having won several of them last year); as a Shubert Organization production, it also has a heap of institutional power behind it. We expect the artistically superior Kimberly to eke ou

Every summer, people flock to Central Park in New York to score Shakespeare in the Park tickets. This beloved free annual tradition is produced by the Public Theater at the open-air Delacorte Theater. Sure, you could stay at home and stream Shakespeare movies, but the live outdoor theater experience is unique—and certainly one of the best free things to do in NYC. This year’s Shakespeare in the Park production is Hamlet (June 8–August 6).  As has been the case since Shakespeare in the Park began in 1962, the Public distributes free tickets, but it takes some dedication to get your hands on them. After two years in which distribution shifted largely to a digital lottery, the traditional in-person lineup in Central Park has returned as one of six different ways to get tickets. Here are the full details.RECOMMENDED: Complete guide to Shakespeare in the Park 1. In Central Park at the Delacorte Tickets are distributed in front of the Delacorte Theater on a first-come, first-served basis at 12pm on the day of the show, so you’ll have to wait in line—likely for a long time—if you want to get in. But it's worth it. Before you go, you'll need to register for a Public Theater Patron ID. Click here do that. Central Park doesn’t open until 6am, and although the Public Theater doesn’t condone it, it is legal to camp out before then by the park entrance at Central Park West and 81st Street. A line monitor from the Public will escort any early birds in when the park opens. We recommend this

June 2023: Looking for the best things to do in NYC? Our iconic museums, big attractions, and favorite restaurants have the coolest exhibits and shows on right now. This month, summer begins at last with outdoor festivals, must-see museum exhibits and buzzy Broadway shows, not to mention brand-new art exhibits! From its art museums (The Met and Frick Madison) to its attractions (The Bronx Zoo and sunrises from the Empire State Building), New York City is the best city in the world. Its dining and drinking scenes are still unbeatable and boast killer bars, restaurants and offering creative new inventions. Every day, we’re discovering something new and wonderful about our city, whether it’s one of the best beaches, some incredible views, must-see art, or hidden gem stores. Time Out editors comb through our exhaustive things to do lists, restaurant reviews and theater reporting to highlight and select the best of the best for this ultimate guide each month. So, consider below your NYC Bible. 

Broadway and Off-Broadway have roared back to life in New York. That's the good news; the bad news is that the ever-rising cost of tickets makes it hard to take full advantage of what the city's stages have to offer. But the situation is not as dire as it may seem: Discount Broadway tickets are everywhere, and modern technology makes it easier than ever to find cheap seats, even at the last minute. If you play your cards right, you can even score seats for sold-out hits like Hamilton. Here are the five best ways to get your hands on cheap Broadway tickets. RECOMMENDED: Full guide to all Broadway shows 1. Head to TKTS The classic way to find deeply discounted tickets is to wait in line, on the day of the show, at TDF’s TKTS Booth under the red steps in Duffy Square (47th Street and Broadway). All but the biggest Broadway hits are on sale there, mostly at 50 percent off. If you are not looking to see a musical, the Times Square booth has a "Play Express" window that will cut down your wait time. The Times Square TKTS Booth is open every day of the week, starting at 3pm for evening performances and 11am for matinees (on Wednesdays, Thursdays and weekends). You can buy tickets to either same-day performances or next-day matinee performances.  In addition to its flagship Times Square location, TDF operates another booth at Lincoln Center’s David Rubenstein Atrium (Broadway at 62nd Street), which opened in 2016. It’s only 15 blocks from the main booth but it’s far less crowded—an

Human beings have been creating theater for millennia, and for probably just as long they have been looking for ways to pay less for seats. There are many strategies for finding cheap Broadway tickets and Off Broadway tickets, but the easiest involves discount codes, which allow you to buy in advance and choose your seats so you don't have to scramble for last-minute tickets. We here at Time Out have partnered with a number of Off Broadway productions to set up deals to cut your costs.

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Oops! They’ve done it again. Every time I think the jukebox musical is played out, another crazy circus comes along, stuffed with pretty girls and boys; from the bottom of my broken heart, it’s enough to make me scream and shout. But sometimes, if I’m lucky, the latest show turns out to be one of the genre’s stronger efforts. I didn’t wanna go, but I admit that a piece of me had a lot of fun at Once Upon a One More Time, a bubblegum-feminist Cinderella story constructed around the pop hits of Britney Spears. For a fan of more substantial musicals, with original scores, it’s a masochistic pleasure.  Fine, Broadway, gimme more! Hit me, Broadway, one more time.  Wisely avoiding the biomusical route, book writer Jon Hartmere takes inspiration from Spears’s media moniker, the Princess of Pop, to spin a yarn about the dissatisfaction of fairy-tale princesses after their happily evers. Cinderella (Briga Heelan), in particular, has reservations about how her story keeps getting told—especially once she learns that she shares her philandering Prince Charming (a gleefully unctuous Justin Guarini) with all the other girls, including her sweet but dim friend Snow White (Aisha Jackson). After the banished Original Fairy Godmother (played with old-school gusto by Brooke Dillman) slips her a copy of Betty Friedan’s 1960s womanifesto The Feminine Mystique, Cinderella leads a rebellion against the Narrator (an ominous Adam Godley), and widespread destruction f

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  After a car crash in a blizzard, a man finds himself in a secluded mountain cabin, where his busted leg is treated by a strange woman played by Laurie Metcalf. Theatergoers may recognize this as the start of the 2015 drama Misery, one of the rare Broadway shows to venture into the realm of horror. But Misery now has some company in that genre: Levi Holloway’s Grey House—which shares the very same set-up, but also includes many other familiar fright-flick tropes, such as bizarre rituals, tortured moans and eerily self-possessed children in old-fashioned nightclothes. As the spooky twists accumulate, the play comes to resemble a Halloween haunted house in which all the rooms have been smooshed into one.  Set on a dark and stormy night in 1977, Grey House begins with a long span of quiet as the grizzled Raleigh (Metcalf) snoozes in a den she shares with five charges: four girls of different ages and one young boy. But the girls’ activities—singing, weaving a tapestry—end with the arrival of recovering alcoholic Henry (Paul Sparks) and his wife, Max (Tatiana Maslany). Questions creep up on you. Why are these kids so odd, especially the gloomy Marlow (Sophia Anne Caruso)? Who is that feral older lady? What are those noises? What the hell is in that fridge?  Grey House is built around themes of guilt, expiation and retribution, but not very solidly—and as a spectator, you’re too busy puzzling out what is happening to think much about what it means.

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  There are eight million stories in the naked city, and the new musical New York, New York seems to include about half of them. Set in the 1940s in what the iconographic title tune calls “the city that never sleeps,” this hustling, bustling show doesn’t rest for a minute. There are more than 20 songs—mostly by the legendary team of John Kander and Fred Ebb—and director-choreographer Susan Stroman fills the spaces between them with diverting vignettes of character dance, performed by a large ensemble that gives us Grand Central Terminal by way of Central Casting: pin-striped gangsters, nuns in full habit, artists, tourists, a sailor, a bride, an opera singer who moonlights cleaning floors at the museum.  These lively doodles brighten the margins of what amounts to a slender book in big type. The musical is nominally inspired by the 1977 Martin Scorsese movie New York, New York, but the show retains almost nothing from the film except three Kander and Ebb songs: the eponymous one, of course, as well as “Happy Endings” and the terrific torch anthem “But the World Goes ’Round.” The rest of the score is a quilt of selections from other old Kander and Ebb works—from Flora the Red Menace’s lovely “A Quiet Thing” to a ditty from Funny Lady and numbers that were cut from The Rink and The Act—augmented by pieces that Kander has written himself or with Lin-Manuel Miranda since Ebb’s death in 2004.  While they don’t deliver the big hits of Kander and Ebb’s

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  The anodyne, bittersweet Summer, 1976 seems designed to stir nostalgia among Manhattan Theatre Club’s subscriber base—not just for the 1970s, when most of it takes place, but for MTC itself. The production reunites director Daniel Sullivan with playwright David Auburn, who wrote the company’s 2000 hit Proof, and with the very fine actor Laura Linney, whom he has directed in four previous MTC shows on Broadway; joining them is stage treasure Jessica Hecht, of MTC’s The Assembled Parties. It’s a dramatic dream team; what’s missing is drama.  The play describes the friendship between two young mothers in Columbus, Ohio, as narrated to us by the women in question many years later. Both are connected to Ohio State University: frustrated artist Diana (Laura Linney) teaches there, and housewife Alice (Jessica Hecht) is married to an economics professor who is working toward tenure. They have daughters of the same age, and are brought together through a babysitting scheme devised by Alice’s husband. Despite their differences—Diana is as neat and sharp as a pin, while Alice is a messier free-spirit type—they form a close bond. “It made me think—I mean, this is obvious now but it seemed like a big revelation at the time, I was young—that people aren't just one thing,” says Alice.  Summer, 1976 | Photograph: Courtesy Jeremy Daniel The play has touching moments, and Auburn’s short-storyish writing convincingly evokes a time of one’s life, the late twenti

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  In the opening minutes of Prima Facie, a modern young woman dresses herself up as an old man from centuries ago. Tessa, the defense barrister played by the riveting Jodie Comer in Suzie Miller’s solo play, seems comfortable in her traditional English legal costume: a dark suit, a gray wig, a black gown, a crisp white shirt with a jabot in front. She’s playing in a court whose rules were not invented for her, and she knows how to win—including when she is defending men on trial for sex crimes. “It’s not emotional for me,” she says. “It’s the game. The game of law.”   Later in the play, the working-class Tessa tells us that she has been driven all her life by her desire to serve justice, and by her faith in the law to provide it. That’s the truth, but not the whole truth. She gets an ego rush playing cat to the witnesses’ mice, and she enjoys the rewards that come from victory. (“Respect. Power.”) And her success within a patriarchal system makes her feel sexy: At a bar, when she tipsily holds forth about the rights of the accused—”‘We believe in innocent until proven guilty. It’s not just a catchphrase, it’s the bedrock of how you keep a society civilized”—it’s partly to impress a male colleague whom she knows to be watching her. (The image that greets the audience at the start of the play is a neon illustration of blind justice that evokes the signage for a strip club.)  Prima Facie | Photograph: Courtesy Bronwen Sharp Miller’s tale has a str

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  The road to stagnation is paved with performatively good intentions in The Thanksgiving Play, a send-up of woke theater makers and their discomfort with nonwhite issues. Playwright Larissa FastHorse, a member of the Sicangu Lakota nation—she is billed as the first Native American woman to have a play on Broadway—approaches self-flagellating allyship with a skeptical eye. That the show itself is being mounted, directed and acted by white people adds, perhaps, a layer of meta icing to the satirical cake. Logan (Katie Finneran) is a stressed-out high-school drama teacher who applies her considerable sincerity toward creating a new version of the usual pilgrims-and-Indians pageant for children: Hers will be a “fully devised educational play” that respects “the justified anger of the Native people around this idea of Thanksgiving in our post-colonial society.” She is joined in this endeavor by her boyfriend, Jaxton (Scott Foley), a self-described “actor slash yoga dude”—with whom she enacts a ritualized “decoupling” before they collaborate professionally—and by Caden (Chris Sullivan), an elementary-school teacher, history nerd and amateur theater enthusiast.  All three, alas, are white. So, to satisfy the requirements of the external funding that she has received from such sources as a “Race and Gender Equity in History Grant” and the “Go! Girls! Scholastic Leadership Mentorship,” Logan has gone online to recruit a Los Angeles actor to join the pro

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  There is always a chance, in a theater production, that things will not go quite as smoothly as planned. A missed cue, a forgotten line, a malfunctioning prop: These can be forgiven by an audience, and can even provide an amusing reminder, as exceptions that prove the rule, of how impressively hard it is to carry off any live show without a hitch. It is my duty to report, however, that the recent performance I attended of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, performed by England’s visiting Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society, was plagued by a mounting series of calamities so severe that it was a miracle the production could continue at all. Frankly, I was concerned at numerous junctures for the physical and emotional safety of the actors. Yet many of my fellow audience members responded to the mishaps onstage—including potentially life-threatening accidents—with bursts of laughter.  I do not wish to add to the humiliations of this well-intentioned company—whose members larkishly assume false names in the program—by rehashing their debacle in detail, though in retrospect one wonders if it was wise to present their show under the title Peter Pan Goes Wrong. Like Bad Cinderella, the name proved all too apt. An air of amateurishness set in from the start in pre-show announcements by stage manager Chris Leask, who was later obliged by circumstances to step into the production, and co-directors Henry Shields and Henry Lewis, who also starred in the play. (Shields

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Lincoln Center Theater’s revival of Camelot has an air of last respects. Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s 1960 musical about King Arthur, inspired by T. H. White’s 1958 story collection The Once and Future King, suffered in comparison with the team’s previous show, My Fair Lady. But through its association with John F. Kennedy after his assassination, the show was imbued with sentimental value from whose interest it has lived off since. Director Bartlett Sher does not treat Camelot with blind reverence—its weakest element, Lerner’s original book, has been significantly revised by Aaron Sorkin—but the production projects the overarching sense of a beloved old property being propped up beyond its strength.  A fantasy about a mythical past, Camelot is built on nostalgia, and its previous Broadway revivals relied on that: Their Arthurs were played by Richard Burton (who had created the role), Richard Harris (who had played it in the film) and Robert Goulet (who had played Sir Lancelot in the original opposite Burton). This one tries a different approach. In keeping with the medieval-royals-are-just-like-us dimension of Lerner’s writing—exemplified in such songs as “I Wonder What the King Is Doing Tonight” and "What Do the Simple Folk Do?"—Andrew Burnap’s youthful king is floppy-haired, self-deprecating and ironical. Though he tries to change the world for the better by assembling a collective of justice-minded peers, he is tongue-tied around

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  The jokes pop like corn on a cast-iron stove in the musical Shucked. They pour out in a ceaseless succession of happy little bursts, one after another—pop! pop!—to be buttered and salted by a game and endearing cast. Are those cobs in the actors’ pockets, or are they happy to see you? Both. And if a few kernels fail to inflate, they’re forgotten amid the bounty: Before you know it, you’re gorged to satisfaction on a big, tasty bag of Broadway puff.   Shucked was originally conceived as an adaptation of the long-running TV variety show Hee Haw, and although it is no longer connected to that property, it embraces its roots in tele-vaudeville. Set mostly in the ultra-rural enclave of Cob County—whose cheerfully inbred residents, fenced off from the rest of America by a wall of corn stalks, have not left its confines in generations—the show tells a “farm to fable” tale that pits the slickness of the city against the hickery of the sticks. A pair of narrators, played by Grey Henson and Ashley D. Kelley, help guide us through the maize maze of the story. But the plot is essentially a framework, as sturdy but hole-ridden as Scott Pask’s tumbledown set, for Shucked’s primary selling point: laughs, and plenty of 'em. The country-fried score, by the accomplished Nashville songwriters Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, includes rollicking comedic numbers and a sprinkling of sincere character songs. The latter fall to the central romantic couple, Maizy (Car

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Some plays offer a slice of life; Life of Pi is a wedge of fantasy. Adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti from Yann Martel’s bestselling 2001 novel, which also inspired a 2012 film by Ang Lee, this British import has been mounted to spectacular effect. Its sea-tossed story—about a shipwrecked Indian teenager named Pi (Hiran Abeysekera) who spends hundreds of days afloat in the Pacific in the company of a Bengal tiger—demands imagination, and director Max Webster provides it in abundance. Animal puppetry, lights, action, music and sound flood the theater, especially in the show’s second half; stage magic crashes out then gently recedes, tugging us into its currents.  The glory of this creation is the tiger, of course, whose comical name, Richard Parker—the result of a bureaucratic mix-up with its hunter—represents one of Life of Pi’s running themes: the thinness of the line between man from beast, especially when survival is at stake. It takes a team of eight human puppeteers, alternating duties, to bring Richard Parker to theatrical life as the great cat prowls, shudders, leaps and purrs. But Finn Caldwell and Nick Barnes’s sensitively articulated puppet designs do not end there: The production’s menagerie also includes a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a turtle; for larger groups of animals, swarms of actors wave butterfly poles and fish sticks.  Life of Pi | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman The result is something like childr

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  Ladies and gentlemen, dinner is served. Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s 1979 Sweeney Todd may well be the greatest of all Broadway musicals: an epic combination of disparate ingredients—horror and humor, cynicism and sentiment, melodrama and sophisticated wit—with a central core of grounded, meaty humanity. But while the show’s quality is baked into the writing, portion sizes in recent years have varied. Sweeney Todd’s scope makes it expensive to stage; its 1989 and 2005 Broadway revivals (and the immersive 2017 Off Broadway incarnation) presented the show with greatly reduced casts and orchestrations. Not so for the thrilling version now playing at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, directed by Hamilton’s Thomas Kail: This production features a 26-piece orchestra and a cast of 25 led by Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford. It’s a feast for the ears.  Groban plays the title role: a Victorian barber, né Benjamin Barker, who returns to London after serving 15 years of hard labor for a crime he didn’t commit, hoping to reunite with his beloved wife, Lucy, and their young daughter, Johanna. But as he learns from his practical neighbor Mrs. Lovett (Ashford)—who operates the squalid meat-pie shop below his old tonsorial parlor—Lucy poisoned herself after being assaulted by the same lecherous judge (Jamie Jackson) who sent him away, who is now the guardian of the teenage Johanna (Maria Bilbao). With help from Mrs. Lovett and his friend Anthony (Jordan Fish

Broadway review by Adam Feldman   Musical theater loves a Cinderella story, and in 2023 that affection has been unusually literal. The archetypal rags-to-riches heroine figures prominently in two Broadway fairy-tale mashups, the recent Into the Woods and the upcoming Once Upon a One More Time; last month, Off Broadway’s Hip Hop Cinderella sent her to outer space. And now there is Bad Cinderella, a 2021 Andrew Lloyd Webber bauble that ran for a year in the West End as Cinderella but has tacked the word Bad in front of its title to make its U.S. debut. That’s a minor victory for truth in marketing, at least. As the old expression goes: If the shoe fits… In fairness, this Cinderella is only half-bad, but its virtues are in all the wrong places. Ostensibly, the show presents itself as a critique of superficiality. The script by Emerald Fennell, retouched for Broadway by Alexis Scheer, is set in a monarchic French city-state called Belleville whose fit, brightly attired, Instagram-ready denizens cheerfully sing that “beauty is our duty”; the orphaned Cinderella (Linedy Genao), reduced to household chores by her mean stepfamily, defines herself against the prevailing aesthetic regime. (When we first meet her, she is set upon by a pitchfork-wielding mob for spray-painting BEAUTY SUCKS on a statue of the city’s missing hero, Prince Charming.)  This promising conceit, though, turns out to be in vain. Bad Cinderella is a box of costume jewels: flashy but short on value. Gabriela Tyleso

"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 publish each Tuesday so you’re hearing from us each week.  What if I were to tell you that there’s a free app that allows you, every day, to buy some of your city’s most delicious food for a third of the price, or even less?  This is not a hypothetical scenario: If you have met me at some point in the past year and a half, there’s a strong chance that I have told you about this app. I use it all the time, and I have been proselytizing it to more or less everyone I know. But I have been reluctant to tell you, dear reader, about it—until now—for selfish reasons: I didn’t want too many people to find out about it, for fear that they would poach the deals that have become so dear to me. But I am ready to come clean. The app is called Too Good to Go, and it is too good to go on hiding from you.  RECOMMENDED: The 21 best cheap eats in NYC Too Good to Go was launched in Europe in 2015, and arrived in North America in late 2020. Its official raison d’être is the reduction of food waste, which has major detrimental effects on the environment. To that end, the app has devised a system to connect sellers that might otherwise throw away perfectly good products—such as bakeries, pizza places, specialty shops and grocery stores—with customers who will take them for a fraction of the normal cost. A surprise bag of fo

The nominations for the 2023 Tony Awards were announced this morning, honoring productions from the 2022–23 Broadway season. The awards are given out annually by the Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing to salute outstanding achievements in 26 categories of Broadway artistry. Actors Lea Michele and Myles Frost revealed the full list of nominees live on YouTube at 9am. Among the 2022-23 Broadway productions earning the most nominations were the new musicals Some Like It Hot (13), Shucked (9), & Juliet (9), New York, New York (9) and Kimberly Akimbo (8); the new plays Leopoldstadt (6), Ain't No Mo' (6), Fat Ham (5) and Cost of Living (5); and the revivals Sweeney Todd (8), Parade (6), Into the Woods (6) and A Doll's House (6).   RECOMMENDED: A full guide to the 2023 Tony Awards The Tony Awards ceremony, hosted this year by Ariana DeBose, will be held at the historic United Palace in Washington Heights on Sunday, June 11, 2023, and the main part will be televised on CBS in a three-hour broadcast starting at 8pm ET. (The event can also be watched live throughout the country by premium subscribers to the streaming service Paramount+.) Some awards will be given out during in an earlier portion of the ceremony that can be viewed on the free streaming service Pluto TV starting at 6:30pm ET.  A Special Tony will be awarded to Broadway Bares creator Jerry Mitchell. As previously announced, the Tonys will also award three Honors for Excellence in the Theatre (to production stag

The Broadway show The Phantom of the Opera will soon close after 35 years, but the curtain will stay open a bit longer than expected. The closure date was originally set for Valentine's Week 2023, but now the theater plans to delay the closing until April 16, 2023 because ticket sales are booming, the New York Times reported today. As Broadway’s longest-running show, Phantom has delighted audiences with more than 13,500 performances since it opened on January 26, 1988. Before it closes, it’ll celebrate its 35th anniversary. The show has played at the resplendent Majestic Theater since the beginning of its run. 'As much a part of the city landscape as the Empire State Building' "As much a part of the city landscape as the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, the blockbuster phenomenon has long been a New York City landmark," the show wrote in its closure news release. "Widely considered one of the most beautiful and spectacular productions in history, the musical set the bar with its lavish sets and costumes, large cast and Broadway’s largest orchestra—a perfect match for its sumptuous score and classic love story." The closure announcement says that leaders decided the right time to close Phantom would be after its 35th birthday; the New York Post, which broke news of the closing on Friday, said the show has struggled since the pandemic and is losing "some $1 million a month." But now, as the Times reported, Phantom's ticket sales are once again thriving: Last wee

After a record-smashing 35 years on Broadway, The Phantom of the Opera will give up the ghost for good on April 16. Until now, tickets to its final performance have only been available by invitation. But this week, the production is offering a chance to the show's many Phans to see the final curtain—and the final chandelier—come down.  If you want to attend this historic performance, you'll have to act fast. From today through noon on Friday, March 31, fans of the show can enter a digital lottery to buy seats for the Phantom finale. A lucky few winners will get a chance to buy one or two tickets each in the rear mezzanine of the Majestic Theatre at 5pm on April 16.  To enter the lottery, visit Telecharge's lottery and rush tickets page this week. If you’ve never used the page before, you’ll need to register with a social media account. Then scroll down to the bottom for the box that says “The Phantom of the Opera Final Performance.” You only need to click it to enter the lottery, but you’ll have to stay alert next week: Four rounds of winners will be chosen each day from April 3 through April 6, and winners must buy their tickets within 24 hours of the drawing. The seats cost $99 apiece, including fees. Phantom, of course, is composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's greatest hit of them all: a timeless tale of candlelit romance between a pretty young singer and the masked serial killer who has been stalking her from his subterranean lair beneath a 19th-century Parisian opera house. The

“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 publish each Wednesday so you’re hearing from us each week. As you may have heard, Lea Michele is currently starring in Funny Girl on Broadway. A lot of people have, in fact, heard about this. The drama surrounding Funny Girl this year escaped the tightly knit circles to which replacement-casting-in-musicals debates are usually confined. It became that rare modern phenomenon: a Broadway news story that regular people cared about.  In case you somehow missed it, the short version is this. Funny Girl, a biomusical about Ziegfeld Follies comedian Fanny Brice, had never been revived on Broadway since its original 1964 production, which helped propel Barbra Streisand to megastardom. For years, people floated the idea of a production headlined by Glee star Lea Michele—which seemed an obvious fit, since she had already performed many of the show’s songs on Glee and elsewhere. But when Funny Girl did return to Broadway last March, it did not star Lea Michele. Instead, Fanny was played by Beanie Feldstein, the comedically gifted young star of the movies Lady Bird and Booksmart. Alas: Feldstein turned out to be a poor match for her demanding role. The reviews were harsh (including mine), and the production was nearly shut out of the Tony Award nominations; a final curtain seemed imminent. That’s when things g

“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 publish each Wednesday so you’re hearing from us each week. As a theater critic, I try not to have expectations when I go into a show that I’ll be reviewing. That's my official position, at least, and to some degree it's true: I do try. Expectations can mess with your judgment. Perfectly good shows are disappointing if they aren’t as great as you hoped they would be, and mediocre ones can benefit from seeming like total disasters in advance.  But critics are human beings—no matter what you may have heard!—and I can’t pretend there aren’t a few upcoming Broadway shows that, for one reason or other, I’m especially eager to see. When the time comes to review them, we’ll all find out if my enthusiasm was misplaced. But meanwhile, it seems fair to tell you which, of all the Broadway productions opening this spring, hold special promise to me this spring.  Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (starts February 26) Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s slash-and-burn horror tale is one of my favorite musicals of all time. Knowing a show too well can make it hard to appreciate new versions, but at this point, I’ve seen so many Sweeneys that I’m no longer protective of the original in my head. I love that this revival will include a large orchestra and chorus to do justice to Sondheim’s masterpiece of a

Yes, awards shows are about honoring excellence and saluting the achievements of top artists in their fields and all the rest of that nice-sounding stuff. But for many fans of the genre, the most memorable award-show moments come when the stars step up to accept their accolades—especially when they veer from the usual dull decorum. The series You Like Me: An Evening of Classic Acceptance Speeches spins these memories into comic gold by inviting some of the city's funniest downtown performers to re-create them live onstage. The show will return to Joe's Pub at the Public Theater this month for one night only, and Time Out has exclusively learned who will be on the lineup for this sometimes savage, always hilarious send-up of Tinseltown glitter. You Like Me is the bratty brainchild of entertainment journalist and Meryl Streep biographer Michael Schulman (The New Yorker) and Smash blogger turned Hollywood show-runner Rachel Shukert (The Baby-Sitters Club). The February 21 performance—the series's first in several years—celebrates the publication of Schulman's latest book: the dishy backstage chronicle Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears.  Among the highlights: alt-comedian and Los Espookys co-creator Julio Torres will take on Angelina Jolie's 2000 Oscar speech for Girl, Interrupted, in which the gothed-out star seemed discomfitingly intimate with her brother; Pulitzer Prize winner Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop) will bite into Fiona Apple's badass "T

More than 25 years after its release, the Disney animated musical Hercules is flexing its muscle once again. Although the Greek-myth movie was only a modest success in 1997, it has built up reserves of affection since. When the Public Theater presented a free stage adaptation of it in 2019, as an addendum to its Shakespeare in the Park season, Hercules showed unexpected strength: Hundreds of thousands of people competed via lottery for the few seats available. Inspired by that response, Disney Theatrical Productions has now committed itself to developing a full-scale stage-musical version of the story, with a Broadway run very possibly in view. This new Hercules will premiere in a monthlong run at New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse—within easy traveling distance from New York City—from February 18 through March 19, 2023. The Paper Mill version will feature new songs by Alan Menken and David Zippel alongside the ones they wrote for the film, including “Go the Distance” and “Zero to Hero.” Although it is being directed by the Lear deBessonet (Into the Woods), who also staged the 2019 version, this will be a very different show from the one in Central Park. The 2019 Hercules, with a book by Kristoffer Diaz, was tailored to the Public's civic-minded Public Works wing, which folds hundreds of locals into the cast alongside a core of professional actors. The Paper Mill one has a new script by Robert Horn, who won a Tony for Tootsie, and Kwame Kwei-Armah, the artistic director of Lon

New York City's beloved institution Shakespeare in the Park will return this summer with a new production of Hamlet, the Public Theater announced today. The series has offered free outdoor stagings of Shakespeare plays at Central Park's open-air Delacorte Theater since 1962.  Usually, Shakespeare in the Park presents two productions each summer. Its 61th season contains only one, but it's a doozy: Shakespeare's talky tragedy of revenge deferred, where a ghost and a prince meet and everyone ends in mincemeat. Ato Blankson-Wood (Slave Play) will play the Melancholy Dane in a modern-dress staging directed by Kenny Leon, whose long and distinguished résumé includes Shakespeare in the Park's terrific 2019 version of Much Ado About Nothing. The production is scheduled to run for nine weeks, from June 8 through August 6, with an official press opening on June 28.  “Hamlet is arguably the greatest play in the Western canon, and I am thrilled that Kenny Leon will be helming this summer's production," says the Public's Artistic Director, Oskar Eustis. "Kenny has an expert way of making Shakespeare come alive in a contemporary American context, illuminating these great works while also reimagining them for our times and our country.”   “A 500-year-old play exploring the need for a strong foundation of family, with music and words, Shakespeare’s Hamlet has much to say about humanity and the importance of our connectedness to each other," says Leon. "We set this production in 2021, filled

Here Lies Love is rising again. The dance-club musical, which premiered at the Public Theater back in 2013, explores the rise and fall of Imelda Marcos, the former Filipino first lady, serial plunderer and notorious footwear enthusiast (who is still alive and kicking at 93). A kind of disco Evita, the sung-through show was a major event in its initial run. And this June, more than a decade later, it will return to New York City in a production that promises to test the boundaries of musical theater on Broadway.  Conceived by David Byrne—the brain-expanding songwriter, musical magpie and erstwhile Talking Head—Here Lies Love features a groovy, rhythm-heavy score by Byrne and big beat pioneer Fatboy Slim. But that's just one of the things that will set this show apart from the usual Broadway fare. In a bold move, director Alex Timbers (Moulin Rouge!) and choreographer Annie-B Parson aim to re-create the immersive nature of their original staging at the Public, placing much of the audience in the middle of the action.  That would be a challenge even if the show were at Circle in the Square, Broadway's only non-proscenium house. Instead, Here Lies Love will be at the massive Broadway Theatre, which will need to be extensively reconfigured to accommodate the concept. "Here Lies Love’s staging at the Broadway Theatre will transform the venue’s traditional proscenium floor space into a dance club environment, where audiences will stand and move with the actors," the production's pre

The early months of every year are tough on the box offices of even the best Broadway shows. Years ago, to deal with this challenge, the theater industry came up with Broadway Week, a twice-annual half-price sale for tickets to nearly every Broadway production. The name may be a little confusing: The first 2023 edition of Broadway Week actually lasts for four weeks, from January 17 through February 12—and the twofer tickets go on sale today.  This year's list of participating shows is the most comprehensive yet; it includes every Broadway production except The Phantom of the Opera, which is currently set to close in April after 35 years on the Great White Way. If you act fast, you might even be able to snag seats for such perpetual hot tickets as Hamilton, Six and Funny Girl. Go to the Broadway Week website to peruse the list of participating shows and grab the ones you want most.   RECOMMENDED: A full guide to Broadway Week in NYC Bear in mind that the tickets sold through Broadway Week tend to be ones that producers are most eager to sell: in balconies, mezzanines and side areas. But this year, the Broadway Week program offers a new option: If you want to splurge on some of the best seats in the house, you can "upgrade" your ticket order to pay $125 for tickets that would otherwise often cost a good deal more. Here is a full list of all 22 shows that are participating in Broadway Week this month: Aladdin& JulietA Beautiful NoiseBetween Riverside and CrazyThe Book of MormonC

New York theater, both on Broadway and Off, yielded a bumper crop in its first full year since the fallow time of the pandemic shutdown. Creating this top-ten list gave me the chance to look back at the 130 shows I saw this year. Some of the best productions were welcome returns from past seasons (A Strange Loop and Kimberly Akimbo, for instance, were top-tenners in 2019 and 2021), but I was happily surprised at how many really good options there were to choose from—even if that made the selection process tougher.  Here are my choices for the best new theater of 2022. RECOMMENDED: The best Broadway shows right now 1. Downstate (Playwrights Horizons, through January 7)Bruce Norris's provocative, needle-sharp look at a home for sex offenders uses the tools of theater—imagination, nuance, empathy, irony—to make space for a conversation that seems hardly possible anywhere else. 2. Oratorio for Living Things (Ars Nova, closed May 15)Immaculate in its conception and execution, Heather Christian's unique immersive musical creation blended the cosmic and the quotidian, the scientific and the holy, and left you suspended in awe of its mysteries. Photograph: Courtesy Ben AronsOratorio for Living Things 3. Topdog/Underdog (John Golden Theatre, through January 15)The superb Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II give the full three-card monte as dueling brothers and small-time crooks in this deeply absorbing revival of Suzan-Lori Parks’s 2001 two-hander. 4. English (Atlantic Theatre