Theater review: Men on Boats at Playwrights Horizons by David Cote

Bad-history plays are a thing now. By “bad” I don’t mean poorly researched, but ones incongruously reframed for comic or deconstructive effect (Drunk History, but arty). Out with perio…

Broadway review: Cats at the Neil Simon Theatre by David Cote

My gateway show was not Cats—nor was it Les Miz or Phantom. I grew up, like any self-respecting theater snob, disdaining such tourist trash from afar. Lacking youthful nostalgia for Andrew…

Privacy: Theater review by David Cote

When Mark Zuckerberg was recently photographed with his laptop camera and microphone jack covered in tape, complacent technophiles began to sweat. If the head of Facebook worries about perso…

The 10 great Broadway songs that made me love musicals by David Cote

Growing up a straight white boy in small-town New Hampshire, I wasn’t exactly destined to care about Broadway musicals, much less love them and write essays about how we may be living in a…

Small Mouth Sounds: Theater review by David Cote

Silence is golden in Bess Wohl’s exquisite play set at an upstate meditation retreat where six strangers take (and mostly break) a vow not to speak. But baser metals also emerge from the v…

The 10 best NYMF shows to see at 2016’s New York Musical Festival by Adam Feldman

The New York Musical Festival officially begins today, which means that thousands of NYMFomaniacs with soon be swarming into Midtown theaters in the hope of discovering the next big musical-…

Shining City: Theater review by David Cote

Anyone who attends Conor McPherson’s Shining City a second time won’t be surprised by a certain coup de théâtre at the very end. Those who saw it at Manhattan Theatre Club in 2006 know…

Dancers of color from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's new engagement by Adam Feldman

To help whet your whistle for the Ailey engagement, one of New York’s premiere dance shows, here are twelve of the beautiful dancers (including Yannick Lebrun) who will be performing in th…

David Cote & Adam Feldman's 2016 Tony Award predictions by David Cote and Adam Feldman

The 70th annual Tony Awards will be broadcast on CBS on June 12 from the Beacon Theatre. So now it’s time for our annual tradition, dear reader, of bestowing our can’t-lose predictions a…

The Purple Lights of Joppa Illinois: Theater review by David Cote

Drama cannot happen without a controlled release of information that keeps the characters in the room and the audience wanting more. It helps to have vivid dialogue, an unpredictable plot an…

30 best Tony Awards performances from Broadway shows by Adam Feldman

Divas and dancers stop the show on our definitive ranking of the best musical Tony Awards performances of all time

British pop star Leona Lewis will star in Cats because apparently no Americans can sing by Adam Feldman

British pop star Leona Lewis will play faded-glamour puss Grizabella in the upcoming Broadway revival of Cats, the production confirmed today. This is good news for theater fans who had worr…

Paramour: Theater review by David Cote

The global neocircus giant Cirque du Soleil does things no else on Broadway can. Its acrobats execute quadruple backflips off a teeterboard, their heels seeming to brush the rigging high abo…

Hadestown: Theater review by Jenna Scherer

In the myth, Eurydice didn’t have much of a choice. She died, woke up in the underworld and waited around for Orpheus to save her. Not so in Hadestown, singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell’…

Incognito: Theater review by David Cote

British playwright Nick Payne excels at a subgenre let’s call the Science Weepie. He deploys facts to frame or metaphorize the problems of his protagonists, and the collision of data and h…

Daphne's Dive: Theater review by David Cote

Bars are outstanding factories for human suffering—and deliverance. Everywhere from Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh to Louis C.K.’s hauntingly great web series Horace and Pete, wa…

Audra McDonald has a presumptive 2035 Tony winner in the oven by Adam Feldman

Audra McDonald has always been full of surprises, and her latest is a lulu. The national treasure and Tony Award hoarder, currently starring in Broadway's Shuffle Along, announced today that…

A Streetcar Named Desire: Theater review by David Cote

There’s a fiery revival of Tennessee Williams’s great drama buried under the truckload of 1990s regietheater clichés that Benedict Andrews dumps all over St. Ann’s Warehouse’s playi…

Shuffle Along: Theater review by David Cote

The full title of this extraordinary showbiz excavation-renovation masterminded by George C. Wolfe—Shuffle Along or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed—is v…

Tuck Everlasting: Theater review by David Cote

At the dramatic crux of Tuck Everlasting, a 102-year-old man trapped in a 17-year-old body asks an 11-year-old girl to wait six years until she’s legal, at which point she will drink from …

Waitress: Theater review by David Cote

One’s sorely tempted to praise the delightful new musical Waitress using lots of bakery metaphors. After all, its hero is a pastry genius with relationship woes named Jenna (Jessie Mueller…

Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again: Theater review by David Cote

The Best Arthur Miller Plays by David Cote

From Death of a Salesman to his first show on Broadway, Time Out New York's David Cote ranks Arthur Miller's 10 best plays

The Crucible: Theater review by David Cote

There are two types of audience members attending Ivo van Hove’s The Crucible: those who take their seats and, when the curtain rises, wonder, Why’s it set in a classroom? and the other …

The Effect: Theater review by David Cote

For a play about test subjects going through extremes of sadness, lust, joy and despair, The Effect leaves you slightly cold.

She Loves Me: Theater review by David Cote

Desire is chemical, or so the scientists say. When that special someone draws near, their scent can cause a fuss in the hypothalamus, prompting a rush of dopamine, adrenaline and oxytocin. P…

Her Requiem: Theater review by David Cote

Contrived and gently pretentious, Greg Pierce’s Her Requiem is the Off Broadway equivalent of a New Yorker short story (an improvement, I suppose, on all the new plays that seem like Netfl…

Best Things to Do Today in New York City by Adam Feldman

RUTHLESS! The Musical: Evil little blond girls never get old. When Tina Denmark, a precocious song-and-dance sociopath who garrotes a rival for the lead in her grade-school play, made her de…

Noises Off: Theater review by David Cote

Explaining why a thing is funny is hard enough. Trying to account for something you know is hilarious—but then isn’t—is tougher still. Case in point: The Roundabout Theatre Company has…

Fiddler on the Roof: Theater review by David Cote

Although the titans Zero Mostel, Jerome Robbins and Harold Prince are reflexively linked to this 1964 classic, there’s another, uncredited, father of Fiddler on the Roof. It’s Marc Chaga…

A rare chance to see theater in Broadway's most gorgeous lost house by Adam Feldman

Yesterday, we wrote about the rich history of the 112-year-old Hudson Theatre, which will soon be restored to its former glory as a Broadway house. But the Hudson is not the only jewel-box v…