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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.
Oedipus, Jan. 10, 2026
In this modern adaptation of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, a politician (Mark Strong) is the same kind of overconfident truth-seeker he is in the Ancient Greek telling. He’s a man who says what’s on his mind and is a stickler for holding all those around him to the same high moral standards. That turns out to be a virtue that — taken to the extreme — ensures his downfall. In a way, a hero who is too morally rigid seems a bad fit for these times when politicians twist so easily when stature and power are at stake. You’d like to see the guy get elected and fix the rot he exposes in a slick video interview that opens the show. But hubris is hubris in this Greek tragedy and thus cannot be ignored. It seals his fate. Fortunately, this updated version has a commanding Oedipus in Strong and a painfully tragic foil in Jocasta (a riveting Lesley Manville). They morph this classic tale into a taut political thriller whose ending seems shocking even if you already know the story.
Marjorie Prime, The Hayes Theater, Jan. 21
In a world where we struggle to talk to one another, does a comforting, agreeable artificial intelligence bot offer solace? In Second Stage’s production of Marjorie Prime, the answer seems decidedly mixed. On one hand, aging mom (a bluntly endearing June Squibb as Marjorie) relives memories, many of them joyful, with the artificial intelligence bot trained to stand in for her dead husband, Walter (an appropriately likeable Christopher Lowell). Her tightly wound daughter Tess (Cynthia Nixon) finds the idea absurd, until her grief at Marjorie’s passing causes her to experiment with a mom-based AI. Nixon’s emotional range here is exceptional; effortlessly she delivers a Tess of rigid cynicism, then tentativeness and finally devastation. Danny Burstein is excellent as the husband and son-in-law who just wants to help, but ultimately cannot. When the bots finally get to talking among themselves at the end, it’s a rather bland conversation. Their connection to the family’s lived experiences is as superficial as the training the humans gave them. They can’t confront the trauma of this family any more than the members themselves could.
Ragtime, Vivian Beaumont Theater, Jan. 7, 2026
Late in the second act of Ragtime, Joshua Henry is about to unleash the most powerful baritone on Broadway. As the aggrieved Coalhouse Walker Jr., he will send us out the door with hope and determination that our country too often does not earn. “Make Them Hear You” is an urgent demand that we all keep trying. As he nears what you think will be the end of that last thundering note, the audience begins to applaud as if to give the guy a break and end the note early. And yet he persists another few bars at least, driving the crowd wild. This perfect marriage of message and raw talent feels too-rare these days. And yet, in this wonderful production, Henry is not alone. Ragtime, based on the novel of the same name, chronicles a turbulent period in U.S. history. It was a time when ragtime music poured from the hands of black composers and the country had so much progress and promise – for some. Left out were racial minorities, women and immigrants. Giving voice to their triumphs and defeats are Caissie Levy as the cosseted wife and mother who finds inner strength; Nichelle Lewis as Sarah, whose plight drives the story; and Brandon Uranowitz as the immigrant shrewd and lucky enough to make it in a new world. They are all superb, but the show’s talent goes even deeper. When a character billed only as Sarah’s Friend (Allison Blackwell) delivers her vocally powerful indictment of injustice, we can’t help but listen. It’s the story of America – one grounded in truth, indeed with all America’s wonders and warts.
Richard II, Red Bull Theater at Astor Place Theatre, Dec. 18, 2025
Mapping Shakespeare’s tale of King Richard II onto the big-hair-and-shoulder-pads 1980s works. Shakespeare’s Richard is an isolated narcissist – absorbed by image and power and content to fritter life away cosseted by friends, toadies and hangers-on. In this adaptation by Craig Baldwin and set in those go-go days, he’s a gay party boy. Michael Urie channels Richard beautifully; he brings Shakespeare’s text to life with line readings that cross a stentorian Sir Laurence Olivier with a whiny Carrie Bradshaw. Oh sure, there are matters of state to attend to, but they are soooooo boring. Let’s go to the club! Richard’s entourage for these capers includes both his queen (openly trans actor Lux Pascal) and Aumerle (David Mattar Merten), a hunky boy-toy and – ahem, “friend” as one character pointedly puts it. In different ways, Baldwin allows both enough space to lend new dimensions to Shakespeare’s familiar tale. Finally, when Richard’s inattention to governing opens the way for banished cousin Bolingbroke (an imposing Grantham Coleman) to return and claim his throne, it’s no surprise. What is surprising is that you wind up feeling bad for the guy. Yeah, he was a screwup, but who isn’t sometimes?
Weer, Cherry Lane Theatre, Dec. 13
In the hand of playwright and performance artist Natalie Palamides, a meet-cute like the one involving Mark and Christina has only one place to go: off the rails. A hint of how far off starts when you realize that Palamides plays both Mark and Christina – at the same time no less. This is no ordinary one-actor show, where different vocal choices and mannerisms delineate one character from the other. With the assistance of makeup and inventive costuming by Ashley Dudek, Palamides switches from commitment-phobic Mark to clingy Christina in a blink of an eye. Facing stage left, she’s stubble-faced Mark. Facing right, she’s caked-makeup Christina. Their warped courtship ritual – including graphic sex – would be funny enough on its own. But Palamides is so fearless that she draws the audience into Mark and Christina’s twisted relationship and rides the chaos into bonkers territory. One audience member daring to match her provocation was invited to lick her nipple. Egged on by a roaring crowd, he did. This is a show that makes no bones about nudity, sex, masturbation, bodily fluid swaps and bloody violence. And just when you think the mayhem has gone pretty far, it goes further. A New York stage isn’t often the site of a car crash, a deer, and an impalement.
Little Bear Ridge Road, Booth Theatre, Dec. 11
Some years back, I was in a book club. We focused on contemporary fiction that might top a bunch of best lists, or even the pinnacle: Oprah’s Book Club. At some point, someone in the group finally pleaded: “Can we choose something besides another sensitive tale of sad people living lives of quiet desperation?” That nailed it; there seemed to be a whole cottage industry for producing works that captured that corner of the human condition. When the curtain rang down on Samuel D. Hunter’s “Little Bear Ridge Road,” my husband (also in that book club) and I confessed we were thinking the same thing: “sad lives of quiet desperation.” This happened before the announcement that the show wasn’t selling and would close months early, but it helps explain a lot. It’s a tough sell. In this case, the emotionally disconnected people are an aunt and her nephew, brought together by the death of her brother/his father. In a metaphor for their lives, they circle a set that consists of a dingy double-wide La-Z-Boy. They don’t really get anywhere, but they do inch forward in life a little. All this could be a total downer, and clearly some patrons found it so. But the fact that the aunt and nephew are played by two of the finest actors – Laurie Metcalf and Micah Stock – is probably what gave this story an outing at all. They bring to these stunted characters a master class in acting, and that can be a joy to watch. But only if you’re up for that sort of thing.
Are the Bennet Girls OK? Bedlam at West End Theater, Dec. 10, 2025
It’s time for the Bennet women of “Pride and Prejudice” to get real – as in “no filter” and “keeping it real.” Whatever the current phrase, these Bennets cast off the British accents (though not the Regency dresses) and throw down like the housewives on the reality television show. They chuck the polite mein of Jane Austen’s romantic novel, bicker, talk loudly over one another, and even get physical. One reason they can do so is that playwright Emily Breeze downsized all the men – Darcy included – to a single actor (Edoardo Benzoni, a deft chameleon). This gives the women room to roam, and they make a wonderful feast of it. Mrs. Bennet in most adaptations is ditsy, superficial and a joke. Here, in the hands of a masterful Zuzanna Szadkowski, she’s a volcanic force fighting for the futures of her girls in a world that treats women like a silver cup from a fox hunt. When the smarmy and odd Mr. Collins is rebuffed by Lizzie (a spirited Elyse Steingold) and takes up with her best friend, Charlotte Lucas (Deychen Volino-Gyetsa), Austen’s polite confrontation gives way to this production’s pointed accusations, truth-telling and – gasp! – bellowing. When Wickham is unmasked for the creep he is, the Bennet girls dispense a kind of justice that Austen couldn’t have imagined. Even poor, sad Mary gets a real interior life – and she’s a delight in the hands of Masha Breeze. In this feminist retelling, the Bennet girls aren’t merely OK. They seem to be thriving.
Archduke, the Roundabout a Laura Pels Theatre, Dec. 6, 2025
You think you are going to see a play about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, which led to World War I. But what you get is so much more — and, unfortunately, in a way that is so much less. Archduke certainly delivers the basic bones of that historical event. In this telling, Dragutin “Apis” Dimitrijevic (a very fine Patrick Page) manipulates three young men destined to die of tuberculosis into doing the deed in the name of freedom for Serbia and glory for themselves. This includes Gavrilo Princip (Jake Berne), who ultimately shot the pair at point-blank range. But in playwright Rajiv Joseph’s vision, this operation — on some level a comedy of errors in real life — takes on an annoyingly absurdist tone. Although the three young men were genuine political radicals, the playwright turns them into none-too-bright losers who obsess about the women they’ve never had and the sandwiches they crave. (Truth: It ends with them sitting at the foot of the stage, just inches from the front-row seats, eating a sandwich.) This leaves the actors little to do in the meantime but rant and rave — often too loudly — on the journey from juvenile delinquents to significant names in history. The only benefit: it sets up the strong performance by Page as the puppetmaster who sets the plot in motion. Where the others shout, Page channels his energy quietly and devastatingly. But to get to that, the audience must endure nearly two hours of loud nonsense dialogue.
The Queen of Versailles, St. James Theatre, Dec. 5, 2025
Ladies and gentlemen, Kristin Chenoweth has left the building. Literally. A cast change announced at the last minute had her alternate, Sherie Rene Scott in the title role, and maybe that was a good thing. Chenoweth’s warmth and likeability are not easily hidden. She seems a bad fit for the true story of Jackie Siegel, a clueless and crass former pageant queen who, with her equally detestable husband (F. Murray Abraham), decides to build the largest and most Versailles-like house in the United States in Orlando. Scott is a more brittle presence – even with the show’s attempts to generate some empathy for Jackie – and that is desirable. (Note that Jackie Siegel invested in and blessed the show, and collaborated with its producers and marketers.) This seesaw between “we think she’s awful” and “we can empathize with her because she’s just like the rest of us” makes for head-spinning changes in tone. One reason is that Jackie Siegel is not like the rest of us, or at least most of the rest of us. On that score, the musical is certainly not faithful to the source material, the 2012 documentary, “The Queen of Versailles.” The bite from that film is mostly airbrushed out; the maid (Melody Butiu) who raises Jackie’s kids and lives in their playhouse so she can have a space of her own gets a few lines and half a song. And that song is tone-deaf; she and Jackie sing the praises of small, homey houses – together, no less! Just when you fear that this lopsided character study is going to end with a plucky Jackie beating the odds and heading for better days, it mercifully does not. Jackie’s last song and scene are of a self-absorbed and deluded striver, suffering the consequences. It’s what we’ve waited for all night.
Meet the Cartozians, Second Stage at The Pershing Square Signature Center, Dec. 3, 2025
This mashup of history and reality television sounds bizarre, but it totally works. In the first act, we get the basically true story of an Armenian family named Cartozian. In 1925, they won a court case that classified those of Armenian descent as “white” and therefore eligible for naturalization. The second act focuses on the modern day, with a group of Armenian Americans preparing for a reality TV episode featuring a world-famous woman who happens to be a descendant of those 1925 Cartozians. (The character is named Cartozian, but the intended modern-day parallel is clearly Kim Kardashian of that famous Armenian-American family.) Both acts provide ample room to explore questions of race and identity, and what it means to blend into the nation’s melting pot vs. what it means to disappear as a distinct people. The debate sharpens as it concerns Kardashian, whom cultural commentators credit with reshaping mainstream beauty ideals beyond traditional white beauty norms. But the play is so well written that what could come off as didactic sermonizing glides in on a soft carpet of humor. It’s aided by a cast that is uniformly good, most notably Andrea Martin in the dual role of the immigrant matriarch (hilarious accent and all) and the affluent charity maven and Will Brill as the beleaguered lawyer/reality TV production assistant.
Prince Faggot, Studio Seaview
In a long introduction, the seven-member cast of this fantasia breaks the fourth wall to ask a wonderfully provocative question: What would it mean if the heir to the British throne was LGBTQ? Although it’s pretty well assumed we’ve had a gay British king already – James VI and I – the notion caught fire in 2017, when a photo of a fey four-year-old Prince George surfaced. Although Prince Faggot features that photo center stage, the play takes pains to establish that it is not by any means inappropriately suggesting this minor child is gay. But what if? Fair enough; art takes liberties in the service of considering interesting questions. All this is fine and good if the show actually answered the question, but it doesn’t. Instead, we get a cheap and salacious pageant designed to elicit a knowing smirk from any gay man who’s watched porn, been to a leather bar or bathhouse or gone to a circuit party. Our future king parties too much, likes S&M sex with his South Asian boyfriend and thus provides catnip for a voracious news media. So what’s different about that? It’s basically a familiar playbook that has played out between royals and Fleet Street since Princess Margaret at least, not to mention Diana and Harry/Meghan. It’s a shame that this play just casts the thoughtful premise. What would it be like to have a gay king? How might it inspire and support a generation of LGBTQ kids? How would it go down in the 29 British Commonwealth countries that currently criminalize homosexuality? A play that answers questions like that would be something to see. Unless you just want to be amused and titillated, this play is not. There are some fine performances by the all-LGBTQ cast, but they don’t save what is a seriously disappointing show.
