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A new feature “My Take On:: Short reviews of New York shows by Nunzio Michael Lupo, veteran journalist and an insightful appraiser of the arts. These pieces were first posted on his page at https://www.show-score.com/member/mrstrategery. Some of these are still running for you to see on your next trip; others have closed but remain interesting for his assessment.
Chess, Imperial Theatre, Feb. 6, 2026
If you are in the mood to see a bunch of Broadway’s big voices cut loose and belt to the rafters with near-deafening amplification, then this revival of “Chess” may be for you. Seeing pros with superhuman talent has its appeal, but for those seeking a story it may not be enough. The concert-goers can and likely will nod off during the muddle of a plot – something something something about the SALT II nuclear arms treaty, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, possible shooting war, marital infidelity, the KGB and the CIA – oh! and two chess champions playing a high-stakes game. That last item is somewhat foggy, at least in my experience, because neither board nor chess pieces appear in the entire show. Too literal, one supposes. No matter really; nobody is telling a real story anyway. The actors, led by Aaron Tveit, Lea Michele and Nicholas Christopher, play directly to the audience most of the time, even in dialogue; they seem as uninterested in one another as the audience must be in the whole lot of them. And who could blame? The fans really just want one of the three to step to the front and wow, and this they do. The music by the ABBA songwriting team of Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, much of it in an oppressive minor key, is forgettable, save for the few big pop songs to emerge from this 1986 concoction: “Nobody’s Side,” “I Know Him So Well,” “Someone Else’s Story” and the earworm, “One Night in Bangkok.”
High Spirits, City Center Encores, February 7, 2026
Pity poor “High Spirits.” On the strength of a wonderful score by Hugh Martin (“Meet Me in St. Louis”) and Timothy Gray (“Love from Judy”), it sailed onto the stage in 1964 at the tail end of the Golden Age of Broadway. The show’s misfortune was to choose a year when two of the genre’s biggest blockbusters, “Funny Girl” and “Hello, Dolly!” also debuted. Martin and Gray’s score gets the royal treatment from the glorious City Center Encores 29-piece orchestra under the direction of Mary-Mitchell Campbell. And the madcap story about séances and ghosts gets a boost from a wickedly playful cast of Broadway all-stars: first and foremost Andrea Martin as the daffy medium and Rachel Dratch as the beleaguered maid. Inviting these two onto a set is an invitation to mania, in a good way. (No one is more adept than Martin at milking a laugh from a flubbed line. The cast works with scripts in hand, providing ample opportunity for delightful screw-ups.) Rising to meet them are Steven Pasquale and Philippa Soo, a golden-voiced couple in real life playing a bickering husband and wife to great effect here. Tony-winning Katrina Lenk rounds out the key players as the glamorous ex-wife and ghost, with vocals that are uneven but deliver well enough at full belt. It all coheres into a delightful show that woulda, coulda, shoulda in another time and place. The producers in 1964 might have been wise to contact a medium before launching.
Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), Feb. 5, 2026
So few Broadway shows can cover the costs of their development and turn a profit these days that we need more shows like this to shock producers out of their collective ennui. “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)” is both modest and delightful. Like last season’s “Maybe Happy Ending,” this production passes on showy bombast. It’s confident in building something from classic musical theater building blocks: a story about likable people who grow as individuals; a well-written script that moves the story along briskly; a simple but attractive set (which remains in place throughout the show); a crack orchestra (just five in this case, and onstage); and appealing actors with vocal chops and comic timing. In this case, the cast of two consists of Sam Tutty (as Dougal) and Christiani Pitts (as Robin), drawn together in New York when his father marries her sister. Dougal is an odd duck visiting from England, and Robin is a young city woman with a hard shell. You’ve seen this pairing and character arc before. Nothing will surprise you. The relatively bland pop anthems that make up most of the songs probably won’t bowl you over, but they are good enough to work with all the other elements to create an evening that is…charming.
Data, Lucille Lortel Theatre, Jan. 30, 2026
Somewhere in the real Silicon Valley, we have to hope that there are two software engineers who struggle with the morality of algorithms like Maneesh (Karan Barr) and Riley (Sophia Lillis) do. If not, we are toast. The premise of “Data” seems so scarily rooted in current events that one imagines playwright Matthew Libby revising this taut thriller backstage before the curtain goes up. Maneesh and Riley work at a software company called Athena that is anything but wise. Led by a brilliant tech bro (Justin H. Min, delectably smooth and smarmy), the firm is working on a data-driven tool for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that – in the wrong hands and used wrongly – threatens the lives of individuals and the fabric of society itself. You read that right: federal officials using data vacuumed from the internet to decide who is – and who is not – a benefit to the United States. The story here does not seem far-fetched given that immigration forces relied on tech for their operation in Minneapolis. Barr and Lillis are excellent – tortured souls torn between the wonders that their genius can create and barely-out-of-their-teens youths struggling with what’s right and what’s wrong. Brandon Flynn is brilliantly hilarious/pathetic as the not-so-bright coder who lives for the office’s Taco Tuesday blowouts and skates along on the tech world’s hubris. “Data” shows us tech bros playing ping-pong in the office rec room on a break, but it reminds us that back at their laptops, they are playing with our very lives, too.
