COLUMNS
broadway outsider
What plays like a repetitive gag on screen comes alive onstage. Schmigadoon! trades small-screen irony for full-scale theatrical joy, landing as a sharp, affectionate parody that actually works better live.
A one-man show that starts in a Texas meth lab and ends somewhere stranger, Lost in Del Valle is a gritty, funny, and unexpectedly moving memoir of a life that veered wildly off course and somehow made it back.
At The Chain Theatre, John Patrick Shanley’s Pushover sets out to deliver danger, desire, and volatility but never quite lands. Despite a compelling premise and a standout turn from Di Zhu, the production struggles to find the heightened tone that defines Shanley at his best, leaving behind a play that feels more confusing than captivating.
A cold, rain-soaked night at Irish Repertory Theatre set the stage for Ulster American, a razor-sharp, deeply uncomfortable satire starring Matthew Broderick. What begins as a rehearsal quickly spirals into a brutal, hilarious unraveling of ego, politics, and performance itself.
As America gears up for its 250th anniversary, New York City is quietly celebrating a milestone of its own: 400 years since the founding of New Amsterdam. Through Dutch Golden Age paintings and surprising historical insights, the New York Historical's Old Masters, New Amsterdam offers a fresh look at the people, culture, and ideas that helped shape the city long before it became New York.
At New York Historical, “House Made of Dawn: Art by Native Americans 1880 to Now” explores Indigenous history and identity through more than a century of paintings, photography, sculpture, and mixed media. The exhibit feels less like a traditional retrospective and more like a reclaiming of perspective.
Adelaide Herrmann spent twenty years performing beside her husband, the legendary magician Herrmann the Great, dazzling audiences across America and Europe. But after his sudden death, she did something no woman had ever done before: she took center stage herself. Known as the Queen of Magic, Herrmann became the first woman to headline her own magic act, performing death-defying illusions, touring internationally, and reshaping the Golden Age of Magic. Her extraordinary and often overlooked story is now featured in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’ exhibition Mystery and Wonder: A Legacy of Golden Age Magicians in New York City.
READ DIA GRIFFITH'S COLUMN TO LEARN WHO & WHAT CAME BEFORE US.
bygone history
BROADWAY REVIEWS, INTRIGUE, AND NEWS BY SCOTT BROOKS. OLD SCHOOL STYLE THAT TELLS IT HOW IT IS.
EMMA’S SET LIST
A subway card gets a full-blown funeral, complete with eulogies, processions, and “swipe swipe” chants, but beneath the spectacle is something real: the slow death of a New York icon. From its chaotic 90s debut to its final days in a contactless world, the MetroCard wasn’t just a way to get around, it was a personality, a ritual, a piece of the city’s pulse.
The MTA is filthy, delayed, underfunded, and somehow deeply beloved. New Yorkers spend hours trapped underground complaining about the subway while simultaneously defending it with religious fervor. This is a city that learned to romanticize infrastructural collapse.
Before smartphones, waiting in New York meant sharing space with strangers, on subway platforms, buses, benches, and sidewalks. Boredom was public, attention was communal, and unmediated time felt unavoidable. This essay reflects on growing up before constant connectivity, arriving in New York without a smartphone, and noticing how screens have quietly reshaped waiting, presence, and civic life in a city built on shared downtime.
the salmagundi
SMART, WITTY INSIGHTS INTO THE WORLD OF OUR RESIDENT STAND UP COMEDIAN, EMMA BAXTER.
NYC POLITICS WITH POLITICAL EDITOR DAVID LANSON.
Bubba Weiler’s Well, I’ll Let You Go is the kind of play that makes your chin tremble before you even realize you’re about to cry. Refusing clean structure and easy catharsis, the Studio Seaview production unfolds like overheard grief: messy, anxious, strange, and painfully human.