Édition de Luxe

The three leads sang with incredible skill and passion. And I do like a lot of the music in this show--I'd even go so far as to say that I LOVE some of it--even if I think the lyrics are mostly pretty awful. Like, the first few lines of "Nobody's Side" (one of my favorite songs in the show, sung very well by Lea Michele in this production) sound almost like a parody of bad musical theater. But they're real!

Still, I had fun listening, and when I let go of trying to connect with the show about half way through the first act, I started having kind of a great time. The choreography for the big dance numbers was sharp. The set design wasn't my favorite, but it grew on me. The costumes...were, uh, costumes, I guess.

That said, man they whiffed it in terms of making this production come together as a cohesive whole. I think a show about two world-class chess players who grapple with being pawns for their respective governments isn't a bad premise for a musical, but even this newly-reworked show goes nowhere, does nothing, says nothing, indeed seems afraid to say anything except the odd joke about current US politicians.

There is no real tension (no tension! in a cold war show!) and no dramatic arc, which--there doesn't have to be a traditional arc for me to like something but I would like there to be some manner of shape to the drama. This just felt like a bunch of floating fragments to me.

All of that said, I had fun. I am having trouble deciding whether I liked this or Rocky Horror less, actually. I think Rocky Horror just scrapes by because I think of the two it genuinely tried to do something more interesting, it just didn't work for me. It had ambition, it had vision. It also embraced its own mess. Chess, on the other hand, feels like a big shrug in terms of ambition. It's like they were saying, we have a star cast, what more do you want!

The show is a little bit history lesson, a little bit drama, a little bit art experiment. It is told with such clear passion and emotion--sometimes rage, sometimes joy, sometimes sorrow--that even without the genuinely amazing things the performers are doing with a looper, it would still be a really great show to watch. It's the story of an enslaved man, Henry (played by Robinson) who escapes across the Rio Grande and finds a new beginning with Carlos, a Mexican medic-turned-farmer.

In some ways, the show is structured like a standard modern piece of musical theater, with scenes played out in dialogue and moments like introspection or big dramatic actions portrayed in song. But the way those songs come together was so cool to experience?

But the looping genuinely does add another dimension to everything that's going on. There is one section where they're portraying a flood that was SO cool and inventive and sonically rich!

I thought there weer a couple of moments where the script was a bit awkward, but overall it was just so much fun to listen and experience this show. And the performers had amazing energy! They got us super hyped by the end! And that's especially amazing, considering this theater's seating arrangement was really uncomfortable (it's just a bunch of normal plastic/metal stacking chairs lined up in front of the stage).

This was such a fun show. The energy was so high, it was propulsive: this production had small sets, a small(ish) cast, a small band, and it was in a smaller theater...yet the music was electric and the cast was on fire and audience was screaming, and everything felt huge. (BIG FUN.)

The cast was excellent, the choreography was tight, and I even got to see Lisa Ann Walter (Ms. Schemmenti on Abbott Elementary) as Ms. Fleming. Isabella Esler played Veronica--I understand she's fairly new to the role, but she could've fooled me into believing she'd been playing the part for years. Great vocals, and great physical comedy (and comedic timing in general), too.

Zan Berube was also excellent as Heather Chandler, which was kind of a surprise: I saw her as Anne Boleyn when Six was touring, and I didn't love her interpretation of the character. When I saw she was going to be in this production, I sort of prepared myself to be let down. But, in fact? She was amazing. No notes. Mean, hilarious, gorgeous, stage presence for days. Her ghost jumping around during The Me Inside of Me was one of my favorite moments of this whole trip.

In fact, the only negative thing I have to say about the show is that John Cardoza, who played JD, sometimes looked...a lot older than everyone else. Which, he is: he's in his mid-30s and has ten years on Isabella Esler, and it showed. His vocals were perfect for the role, though, and he gave a great performance in general, so if you just didn't look too hard, it was fine.

I don't know what to say about this show that hasn't already been said. I had a wonderful time. Maya Rudolph was great as Mary: she played her totally bratty, and she made me want to see all of the other Marys we've had so far, who I am given to understand all brought something different to the role. I really regret not seeing Tituss Burgess in the role when I was in NYC last year! THE SOUTH OF WHAT

The setup was a little darker than I expected, as were some of the jokes, and despite knowing the basic outline of the show there were a couple of bits that managed to really surprise me! (In a good way.) The big finish was perfect. The audience was having a blast, my seat was great, everything was perfect, 10/10 would see again

This is a complex play. There were things I liked about it, and things I didn't. The thing that was most stirring was John Lithgow's performance as Dahl; he was all jolly wit and old-man grumpiness, but in a flash his clever jokes would curdle into bullish cruelty, hatred, and incredible pettiness, which in turn would occasionally give a peek into a pathetic insecurity--and then we're whipped back again to jokes and sorbet. The play's tone turns on a dime, and Lithgow never lets up on the pressure, even when he seems to be acting friendly.

After the first or second time through this cycle, even light remarks or clever asides that seemed designed to break the tension actually only served to increase it. It was really masterfully done. By the end of the first act, it's clear that there's no emergency pressure release valve to be had at all, so we'd all better buckle the fuck up for act two.

The other actors were also excellent, especially Rachael Stirling as Dahl's second wife, Felicity. Eliot Levey as Tom Maschler, who worked for Dahl's UK publisher, was also a standout. Aya Cash as the staffer from Dahl's US publisher was a little weaker to me, but I think part of that was down to the writing.

Speaking of the writing, most of the things I didn't like about the show stem from some of the choices the playwright made. At times the whole show veered way too far into the didactic for my taste. So much of the show, especially the first act, was devoted to characters just basically giving impassioned speeches explaining their personal and political viewpoints, often in service of explaining how or why something could (or should, or should not) be understood as antisemitic. Like, they were arguing with each other, sure, and it's reasonable that people who have a lot to say would, well, talk a lot.

But for a play with such a naturalistic approach to depicting cruelty and bullying and hatred, the multiple minutes-long speeches from each cast member felt more like the playwright was trying to make sure every corner of every opinion was explored for the sake of the audience. Like it was trying to teach me what all the different views and stakes of this conversation are, or give me a chance to engage in some hypotheticals with the characters.

This was especially frustrating because I don't think this play was all that successful in, like, actually interrogating the larger concepts like Zionism or antisemitism; it was only when it dialed in on Dahl's specific antisemitism and his specific understanding of Zionism that I thought it really got anywhere, which made much of the speechifying from other characters feel...I don't know, almost like set dressing, or unnecessarily elaborate setups for other, more specific interactions.

The final section of the play was really excellently crafted, though. The quieter, tenser moments leading up to the phone call where Dahl makes the remarks to Coren were so unsettling, and all the hairpin-turn character work came together and you could see what was happening and how completely pathetic it was, and when the last dramatic turn comes it's all the more disturbing for it.

This production began life as a limited Encores! gala presentation in 2024, and after that it set up as a proper revival at the Lincoln Center, opening last fall.

I actually...hm. I liked this show a lot. I mean, I like the show of Ragtime itself an awful lot, so it would be hard to make me unhappy with even a competent production. And I think this production is more than competent! It's just that many of the sparse design decisions aren't my favorite, though I think I get why they did it. If nothing else, it stands in stark contrast to the original Broadway production, which was famously overwrought (fireworks!) and incredibly expensive to mount. Still, I would have liked a little more than the blank black circle of a stage.

But some of the performances in this show, especially Joshua Henry as Coalhouse, are so good that I do not even know how to write about them. Coalhouse as a role seems to me to be an incredibly difficult needle to thread: Henry plays him as patient and forcefully hopeful without being naive. His belief in justice inevitably feels tragic by the end, but there is not a hint of irony or cynicism in the portrayal, even in his last moments on stage, when there's rage burning in his voice and everything has gone wrong.

And his voice in general has such sensitivity, such a depth and richness of feeling that you don't even need to listen to the lyrics to feel the emotions the songs are carrying. I don't think this comes across in the cast recording the way it does live. It's the kind of performance that completely transports you, wraps you in the show, forces all other things from your mind.

The other two leads, Caissie Levy as Mother and Brandon Uranowitz as Tateh, are also excellent. Levy also gives a very subtle performance, imbuing many of her lines with a tension and discomfort her character seems desperate not to acknowledge. Uranowitz's Tateh spends the first act unraveling and the second soaring, and the actor was able to keep the character remarkably, recognizably consistent throughout the dramatic changes of station.

I will say that I think there are issues with the story and writing that have only become more stark with time (it is a story that hinges on violence and injustice committed against the Black characters, and its ending...reads pretty uncomfortably to me). People are calling this production "timely" and "of the moment" because of how it talks about issues like racism and anti-immigrant sentiment, but I personally prefer a "timely" "of the moment" production like Jellicle Ball, which offers a loud and defiant celebration of the beauty and power of queer Black and brown subcultures, bodies, and dance! Or a production like Mexodus, which I'll write more about later (it is a looping musical, written and performed by Black and Latino artists, about the thousands of enslaved Black people who escaped to Mexico in the 19th century).

I also think that the story is generally weaker for the inclusion of actual historical figures, though I admit I do enjoy Emma Goldman's role (and the actress playing her, Shaina Taub, gave a terrific, fiery performance). I also like that Houdini's there but I don't like how he's characterized, yearning actual supernatural experiences.

The show itself is quite touching, if a bit saccharine for me at times. There is a proshot of a 2016 production available if you'd like to see it for yourself. It makes some salient points about suicide, grief, stigma, and depression while generally maintaining a sweet and cheerful tone, and the audience participation added a few unexpected laughs. At times it could have very easily veered into motivational speaker territory due to the whole list aspect, but Radcliffe steered us true and kept the feeling more "theatrical performance" than TED Talk.

It really is a show that lives and dies by its one performer. And Radcliffe absolutely nailed it. His energy was somehow simultaneously nervous, disarming, chaotic, and infectious: at one moment, he said he was going to high-five everyone in the (large, three-storey) audience, and started running around, and for a second I thought, my god he's actually going to do it. (He didn't, of course.)

I don't think the actual content of this show will live in my mind for a very long time. It was fine, but it wasn't anything revelatory or particularly striking for me personally. I know it has long been an important show for a lot of people because of its frank treatment of its subject matter, though, and I also suspect that a lot of people in the audience who came especially to see Radcliffe might feel really touched or changed just because he's the one delivering this message.

There were pacing issues--I think the story strained a bit to fill 2.25 hours (the movie is 1 hour 45 minutes). The movie just piles one ridiculous thing on top of another, to pretty good effect--like we start in a pretty normal world with Meryl Streep having delusions of grandeur about her role in a terrible musical, and end up with her head on backwards, teaming up with her worst enemy fighting with Bruce Willis of the roof of a gothic castle. And the show follows roughly the same path (except this time it isn't made quite so clear that her "show" at the beginning is "bad" which seemed like a missed opportunity to me), but because even from the outset it's all so Big and Ridiculous, there's not the same contrast when the plot reaches its absurd apex.

The leads were neither likeable nor dislikeable in an interesting way. They are silly characters who exist as vehicles for silly comedy. The core relationship between the two leads did end up in a good place. I understand why they removed the "Goldie Hawn’s character is a hideous disgusting monster because she is fat" storyline, but they kept in the "Goldie Hawn’s character is so obsessed with vengeance that she’s committed to a ~mental institution~" storyline which isn't any better, as these things go.

There were a few good songs, but most of them were sung by Michelle Williams (who was pretty good in a much-expanded version of Isabella Rossellini's role from the movie), and they were sort of musical interludes--most of them didn't feel well-integrated into the plot, and instead seemed to serve more as a chance for exposition.

I was also really excited for the stagecraft for this one, and it was one of the reasons I chose to see it on this trip even though it'll be touring soon. I'd read a lot of praise of the big stairwell fall. But it, too, was only okay. I was in the mezzanine; maybe it's more impressive from the orchestra.

This production has performed a real magic trick. It took a show that is, famously, "about cats," pulled at the thematic through-lines of "existing on the margins of society" and "come one, come all" using rich stagecraft, costuming, and choreography, and turned what was previously a metaphorical interpretation of the show into bright and joyful text.

AND. Numbers that I hate in the original show are so good here? Bustopher Jones had me cheering. Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer have maybe the best choreography of the show. Mr. Mistoffelees made me literally gasp. There is one song in the original show that I love (Skimbleshanks) but reframed in this way it's just one of many glorious moments.

Everything about this show feels like a celebration. It feels joyful and enthusiastic. It sparkles and glows. And the choreography is SO precise and SO evocative, and the emotional payoff, somehow, somehow??? feels SO earned. When the percussion really kicks in and Grizabella starts her final chorus, it's transcendent. It's like, it's why I love theater.

I hope lots of people see this show while they can. I loved it, but I don't think it'll be staying around for too long. I think Ragtime will win the Tony (even though I think this show should) and I just think this is a harder sell for tourists, especially since a lot of the reviews online are like "you should watch this documentary before you go," which might send even curious folks off to a simpler show (I think it's helpful to know what Ballroom is but they do provide a little primer and I don't think watching Paris is Burning is actually necessary).