Theater Revue: Winter 2025 Edition
A new series from The Book House Blog
Welcome to the inaugural Winter 2025 Theater Revue! Each season I will write about the shows I’ve seen and the performances I loved.
Before we get to the reviews, some background:
I live in New York, which means that all the shows I see are here too. I see a range of musicals and plays on Broadway and off-Broadway. Some are limited runs while others are open-ended. I’ll make sure to indicate the general details of each in the review.
The technical difference between a Broadway and off-Broadway show has to do with the size of the theater and general proximity to the eponymous street. A Broadway theater has 500 or more seats, while an off-Broadway theater can be as small as 100 seats or as large as 499. Off-off-Broadway holds 99 seats or less. Because Broadway productions are more expensive to put on and have more seats to fill, they are usually splashier, less risky, or associated with a famous name. This creates some excellent shows but in recent years has also meant a lot of jukebox musicals that formulaically sell tickets.
I am going to review shows in quarterly installments that roughly correspond with the seasons, about every three months. This inevitably means that some shows included here might not still be running by the time the review is posted. With that in mind, if you’re coming to New York soon or looking to see a show that I haven’t written about yet feel free to reach out to me for individualized recommendations!
Some thoughts on ticket prices… I refuse to pay full price to see a show. There are a number of programs offering discount tickets that make this possible depending on age, employment type, or student status. Most theaters also usually offer a rush or lottery system, normally day of, that can allow you to get tickets to even the most popular shows for cheap. If you think that any of these categories might apply to you or if you have questions about how any of it works, feel free to reach out and I can help you figure out your best option.
The rating system:
I use a rating system to evaluate each show along with a more detailed explanation of my thoughts. However, it’s important to keep in mind that my ratings are inherently subjective and reflective of my individual tastes.
I find rating shows to be harder than books because there are multiple factors to consider, all of which might be the product of a different person’s decision or contribution to the production. For example, sometimes I think the performances were phenomenal but that the writing was less than it could have been. The actors can’t help that, but it might result in a lower rating.
All of this is a long-winded way of saying that my rating is just one opinion. What might be very good to me might be average to you and vice versa; it’s all about personal preference.
My rating system is defined as follows:
5/5 - amazing. This is a show that I thought was close to perfect and will recommend to everyone. 5/5 is very rare.
4 - very good. This is a show that I thought was above average and enjoyable. Although it was missing something to make it perfect, it is definitely worth your time. If the majority of my shows are 4/5 in a year, that’s a definite success.
3 - average. Average can mean a lot of things: i.e. maybe performances were great but the writing was subpar, there were holes in the plot but the production value was high, etc.
2 - disappointing. Multiple elements were off for me. This is the type of show that I considered leaving at intermission, but decided to stick out.
1 - bad. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone. If there was an intermission, I took the opportunity to leave.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider spreading the word about The Book House Blog by sharing this newsletter with anyone you know who might enjoy.
And, if you haven’t already, subscribe for free to receive new posts, including my monthly reading round-ups, quarterly theater reviews, seasonal publishing previews, and themed reading guides.
Urinetown
Musical, NY City Center Encores!, limited run (February 5-16)
Every year, New York City Center revisits the archives of American musical theater and puts on three concert stagings. The orchestra is placed on the stage, usually on a type of platform, and there are minimal sets. The Encores! productions usually only last for about two weeks, which allow for the inclusion of big Broadway names who are drawn by the limited time commitment. Particularly successful shows will transfer to Broadway, like Into the Woods with Sara Bareilles and Once Upon a Mattress with Sutton Foster. Most, however, run for two sold-out weeks and then everyone goes on their way.
This is the case for Urinetown, a satirical musical about a dystopian world where water is scarce and all citizens must pay to pee at public facilities controlled by a powerful corporation. Those who disobey are sent to the mysterious and foreboding Urinetown. After price hikes are pushed through the legislature, members of one of the poorest facilities revolt, which lead to storylines of love, chaos, politics, and corruption.
This cast featured Jordan Fisher (fresh off his run as Orpheus in Hadestown) as Bobby Strong, Keala Settle (The Greatest Showman) as Penelope Pennywise, and Rainn Wilson (best known for playing Dwight Schrute in The Office) as the evil tycoon. In addition to its excellent talent - I could listen to Jordan Fisher sing anything - this production had the benefit of entertaining, catchy numbers and strangely relevant themes. I was surprised by how much a musical facially about public restroom access would connect to our current moment and thought the actors did a good job weaving that awareness into their work. While this production finished on February 16, I do recommend catching an Encores! performance if you can.1 They never disappoint.
Rating: 4/5
Redwood
Musical, Broadway (Nederlander Theatre), open run
Redwood is about a a middle-aged woman named Jesse who spontaneously sets out on a roadtrip to escape her grief and ends up in the Redwood Forest in Eureka, California. As a lifelong New Yorker her outdoor experience is limited, but she is immediately drawn to the awe-inspiring nature of the redwoods and the solace they promise to offer her. After befriending (or forcing friendship upon) two canopy botanist researchers, she somehow convinces them not only to let her climb a tree with them (despite zero experience climbing) but also, even less believably, to sleep on a platform hundreds of feet up. In the process she comes to terms with the tragedy she is fleeing, her crumbling marriage, and her perceived role in both.
Many of the scenes take place in the forest with a large tree as the centerpiece and actors take turns singing while “dancing vertically” along the trunk. The visual effect, including the floor-to-ceiling screens surrounding the rest of the stage, is impressive if not a little dizzying at times.
Shows with big names get a lot of attention. This is definitely true for Redwood, which stars Idina Menzel who is best known for her roles as Elphaba in the original cast of Wicked and Elsa in Frozen. Redwood is fifteen years in the making, and while Menzel did not write the show, she is credited as a “co-conceiver” and, vaguely, for “additional contributions.” Menzel and her vocal range were big draws for me, but by the end of the show, I was tired of the star I had come to see. Menzel sings in 13 of the show’s 17 songs. Seven of these songs are solos, and at least five of the seven sounded the same. This isn’t to say that Menzel’s performance of them wasn’t great, they just all seemed to require her to sing at a full belt for nearly the whole time, which erased any nuance and lessened my appreciation for her (admittedly impressive) range. The rest of the songs were mostly forgettable.
The dialogue was also often cringeworthy, unnaturally earnest, and led to unbelievable plot lines. Menzel’s Jesse was clearly written as the centerpiece for the show; the rest of the characters were two-dimensional foils meant to aid in Jesse’s development. This is a shame, because the supporting actors were all excellent performers and I suspect that this might be Khaila Wilcoxon’s breakout role.
Overall, the excellent individual performances, unique set, and novel choreography balanced out the subpar writing and scoring. I’m most disappointed because I wanted this show to be more than it turned out to be; instead of a fresh addition to Broadway it was just another show.
Rating: 3/5
Dakar 2000
Play, Off-Broadway (Manhattan Theatre Club), limited run (February 5-March 23)
Dakar 2000 takes place on the eve of Y2K when an idealistic Peace Corps volunteer lands himself in the office of a State Department operative after crashing a truck he was driving. His initial story to the woman, who has recently been transferred to Senegal after a posting in Tanzania, is that he swerved to avoid a cat and the truck flipped. But prodding reveals that he was actually drunk, upset over a recent breakup with a woman he wanted to propose to, and on his way to deliver cement allocated for home security to a community garden project. Threatened with being sent home over the misallocation of resources, the Peace Corps volunteer, nicknamed Boubs, agrees to complete a series of tasks for the officer. But what he thinks are benign actions — collecting signatures, taking fingerprints — exposes him to a darker element of government work abroad.
I wanted to see this show after seeing it was written by Rajiv Joseph, who wrote King James, another off-Broadway show staged in the same theater that I really enjoyed. This show fell a little short for me mostly because I thought he could have explored the same issues and enhanced the drama by cutting the first and last scenes where present-day Boubs essentially tells the audience explicitly what themes the audience should take away from the show: the thin lines between truth and lies, questions of morality, and fears of the unknown. These themes were already clearly present in the meat of the story and I didn’t need to be spoon-fed the message.
Other than my structural critiques, I respected the premise, felt the tension, and enjoyed the acting of Abubakr Ali and Mia Barron, the two protagonists.
Rating: 3.5/10
Sunset Boulevard
Musical, Broadway (St. James Theatre), closing July 16
Joe Gillis, a struggling screenwriter, arrives by chance at a mansion on Sunset Boulevard owned by the aging and obsolete movie star Norma Desmond. Unable to sell his work and jaded by the industry, he agrees to help the star rework an incoherent script that she hopes will herald her return to the limelight. What he thinks will be a short and well-paying gig quickly turns into an enthralling and controlling relationship with a woman whose need for relevance distorts her ability to live in reality.
I saw Sunset Boulevard twice, and agree with New York Times critic Sarah Bahr that just once wasn’t enough. The first time I saw the show, the Christmas Eve matinee, the excellent Mandy Gonzalez (In the Heights, Wicked, Hamilton) guest starred as Norma Desmond. The second time I saw the show a few weeks ago, Nicole Scherzinger (best known for being part of the Pussycat Dolls) starred and wow, yes, she lived up to the hype. I thought Scherzinger was just a bit better in her full body assumption of the role, but I’m also cognizant that I might think this because, having already seen the show, I was able to immerse myself in the details of the production. Regardless of who is playing Norma Desmond, Tom Francis always plays Joe and is fully deserving of his Olivier award that he earned for the performance on the West End in London.
Even with the phenomenal performances, it can sometimes be difficult to catch all the dialogue because the majority of the show is sung. Indeed, low-level confusion was a defining feature of my first viewing (and was validated during the intermission of my second viewing when my friend Alyssa, who I see most of these shows with, had to ask for a quick story synopsis). I suspect, however, that if you’ve seen the 1950 movie that the musical is based on or read a summary before you go you won’t experience the same momentary confusion that we did. Eventually I figured out what was going on, but that might have distracted me from the genius of the overall production, which I was in awe of the second time I went.
When I say the production is a work of genius I mean it. The director Jamie Lloyd (no relation to the show’s famed composer Andrew Lloyd Weber) has pulled off a true creative feat, the likes of which is an increasingly rare find on Broadway. The show is staged dually as a musical and an homage to old Hollywood silent films. A large screen featuring close-ups of the performers’ faces is integrated throughout the show so that audience members can watch emotive nuance like a movie. At the start of the second act, the camera work seamlessly integrates the musical with the mystique of Hollywood when a backstage tour set to the titular “Sunset Boulevard” transitions into a highly choreographed outdoor performance by Tom Francis that is as logistically complicated as it is visually striking. The orchestration is exceptional, perfectly pitched, and moving. The choreography (Fabian Aloise, making his Broadway debut), minimalist staging, and macabre lighting all accentuate the stunning performances.
Because the story itself isn’t especially poignant, I’m convinced that if I saw any other staging of the show, particularly a traditional one, I wouldn’t have liked it. I might have even been bored. But it’s a testament to the incredible production value of this staging that I can look past all of that and say that this is a stellar show, one of the best I’ve seen in a while, and absolutely worth seeing.
Rating: 4.5/10
Ghosts
Play, Off-Broadway (Lincoln Center Theater), limited run (March 10 - April 26)
Ghosts was written by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen in 1881. Ibsen, probably best known for A Doll’s House, was reportedly unhappy with the English translation of the title, preferring instead for the Norwegian title of “Revenants” to be translated to “The Ones Who Return.” This language quibble makes sense when considering the underlying themes of the play, which at its most macro level explores the legacy of a deceased patriarch on his wife, son, pastor, and servants.
The play begins with the finalization of an orphanage built in honor of the patriarch, Alving, by his widow, Helena (Lily Rabe). Her pastor (Billy Crudup) also acts as her business advisor and, evoking evangelical notes present in today’s society, advises Helena to stop reading blasphemous books like Huckleberry Finn and to put her faith in God instead of an insurance policy for the orphanage. At the same time, Helena’s son Oswald (Levon Hawke) has returned home from his life as an artist in Paris where he was sent at a young age so that he would not absorb the bad behavior of his father. His return is not a vacation, however, and the news that he shares with his mother prompts her to question how much of her late-husband’s past should be kept secret. On the periphery, the young Alving maid Regina (Ella Beatty) is adamant that she will not return to town with her estranged father Engstrand (Hamish Linklater) as she harbors an illicit crush for Oswald.
At the dramatic moment that the play would typically take an intermission, this production’s director Jack O’Brien (best known for his Tony awards for direction of Hairspray, Henry IV, and The Coast of Utopia) opts instead to ride the mounting frenetic tension and keep going. While I personally would have preferred for the play to end before a final scene that felt out of place, this can’t be blamed on O’Brien or the actors, who performed the final minutes to perfection.
There are no bad seats at Ghosts, which is staged in Lincoln Center Theater’s off-Broadway stage, situated beneath the much larger Broadway-sized stage upstairs. The limited number of seats combined with the rounded shape of the space creates an intimate viewing experience. This translates to the post-show scene as well. If you stand outside by the theater’s exit after the show you can catch the actors as they leave. On the night I saw it, other than the three devoted fans waiting for an autograph and a selfie (with a digital camera) the actors were able to leave and walk anonymously back into the city. Billy Crudup wished us goodnight before hailing a taxi. There’s something fundamentally cool about being so close to see an actor sweating under the lights of the stage while they transform into a character from 1880s Norway, and then see them twenty minutes later head towards the subway.
Rating: 4/10
Purpose
Play, Broadway (Hayes Theatre), limited run (March 17 - July 6)
Purpose is a brand-new play by the popular young playwright, Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins. Jacobs-Jenkins is a two-time Pulitzer finalist and won the Tony award for Appropriate last year. Purpose debuted at Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago and began previews on Broadway in late February. The cast includes three members of the Steppenwolf company and, when it transferred to Broadway, added the remarkable Kara Young (2024 Tony Award winner for best featured actress in Purlie Victorious), Harry Lennix (Radio Golf), and LaTanya Richardson Jackson (A Raisin in the Sun, To Kill a Mockingbird).
Purpose takes place over the course of one weekend at the Jasper family home in Chicago. The family has gathered ostensibly to celebrate the birthday of the mother, but in reality, the gathering is timed to welcome Junior, the eldest son and a politician, home from a two-year stint in prison for campaign finance fraud. His wife, a reluctant attendee at the weekend’s festivities, is scheduled to serve her own prison sentence for tax fraud in a few weeks.
The Jaspers are an influential family modeled on the family of civil rights activist Jesse Jackson (including the crimes and prison sentences of Jesse Jackson, Jr. and his wife). Solomon, the patriarch, is a pastor and civil rights leader who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. His reputation is his currency, but Junior’s crimes and his youngest son Nazareth’s decision to drop out of divinity school has dealt a blow to the family name. When Nazareth arrives with an unexpected guest, the family’s secrets and unaddressed issues bubble to the surface in dramatic and comedic form.
As it stands, Purpose runs just under three hours including an intermission. While the performances were wonderful, I do think a little trimming could be done to shorten it, such as the long monologues that the story’s narrator and protagonist, Naz, presents to the audience in order to give background on the family drama. Some of these asides were pithy and imbued the show with well-timed moments of comic relief. Others took longer or described movement that the audience could see and didn’t need to also be told about. I saw the show while it was still in previews with a week to go before it officially opened. When Appropriate was in previews it was reported that Jacobs-Jenkins would rewrite scenes or dialogue to fine-tune them. I wonder if he will do the same here in order to make the show a tad tighter.
I highly recommend catching this play while it runs on Broadway. Jacobs-Jenkins is a talented, generational playwright while Kara Young is such a delight to get to watch perform.
Rating: 4/5
Grangeville
Play, Off-Broadway (Signature Theatre), limited run (February 4 - March 23)
Two half-brothers reconnect over the phone to coordinate care and medical bills for their dying mother. They have not spoken in years and live on different continents. One brother, Arnie, harbors deep resentment against his family for their abusive behavior while he was growing up. The other, Jerry, is going through a divorce and coming to terms with how he treated his brother’s sexuality when they were kids.
Grangeville stars Paul Sparks (Boardwalk Empire, House of Cards) and Brian J. Smith (The Glass Menagerie). Paul Sparks demonstrated fantastic range and gave a powerful performance. Brian J. Smith did more yelling than modulated acting, which is hard when a two-man show requires the actors to embody more than one character. Ninety minutes was about all I needed in this powerful, but not fully polished, play.
Signature Theatre holds a unique space in the New York theater scene. Whereas many off-Broadway theaters produce shows with an eye to having them eventually transfer to Broadway, Signature is committed to the development of the artist and hosts a number of residency programs for new and established playwrights. Samuel Hunter, Grangeville’s playwright (best known for The Whale, which was adapted into a movie staring Oscar-winner Brendan Fraser) is currently an artist in residence at Signature Theater conducting a “Premiere Residency,” which is “geared towards creating new work” and supports the “development and production of several new plays,” each of which is produced at Signature. It’s a treat to see fresh plays staged in a space that appreciates them, I just wasn’t blown away by this one.
Rating: 3/5
If you like what you’re reading, please consider spreading the word about The Book House Blog by sharing this newsletter with anyone you know who might enjoy. And, if you haven’t already, subscribe for free to receive new posts, including my monthly reading round-ups, quarterly theater reviews, seasonal publishing previews, and themed reading guides.
For the rest of the Encores! 2025 season: Love Life will play from March 26 - 30 and be directed by Victoria Clark (Kimberly Akimbo). Wonderful Town (with music by Leonard Bernstein) will play from April 30 - May 11.
Congratulations on your Theater Review! I enjoyed reading it.
I love this!! Sunset Boulevard is the only one of these I’ve seen so far (really want to see Redwood) and I couldn’t agree more with your review!