A Guggenheim opening promises access, play, and connection. Outside, protesting workers tell a different story. Inside, Carol Bove’s steel-heavy survey strains under repetition, leaving the museum’s message of openness feeling more performative than real.
At The Surrealist Winter Ball, New York remembered how to be strange in public. Between mimes, corpse poetry, surrealist costumes, and performances that blurred the line between art and spectacle, the night felt less like a party and more like a collective decision to stop being embarrassed about wanting to be all in.
At Japan Society, Kawai Kanjirō: House to House unfolds less like a museum exhibition and more like entering a life. What begins as a study of ceramics opens into something larger—an exploration of use, beauty, and what it means to live with intention.
At Estonian House, Shanghai Mermaid transformed a Lunar New Year party into something rare for NYC: an event that was as culturally grounded as it was visually stunning.
The New York Belly Dance Festival offers a multi-day look into belly dance through workshops, performances, and community-driven events, highlighting both the technical precision and cultural depth of the form.
Daffodils may be New York’s official flower, but the Orchid Show at the New York Botanical Garden makes a compelling case for a new symbol, one that feels far more like the city itself.
We threw on fringe, slipped behind a Coca-Cola machine, and landed in a candlelit jungle filled with live jazz, burlesque, and cocktails that literally catch fire. Adélaïde’s Salon delivers the kind of NYC night that feels rare now, a little decadent, a little secret, and very easy to get lost in.
In eighteenth-century England, a portrait wasn’t decoration—it was proof. Silk, jewels, posture, and pose all signaled rank. But when Thomas Gainsborough hung a courtesan beside a duchess, critics panicked. Because if status is just silk and posture… who exactly gets to look important?
Critics say this year’s Whitney Biennial is too sentimental, too loose, too eager to please. Maybe. But what it actually does is something rarer. It pulls the everyday realities of American life into the same frame and asks us to recognize ourselves in it.
I’ve been to Broadway shows, rooftop parties, and ball-adjacent spectacles that promised magic and delivered… content. The Burns Night Reeling Ball in NYC actually delivered—kilts, whiskey, live music, strangers spinning into friends, and the kind of joy New York rarely allows itself.
Neil’s dubbing the biannual event “Manhattanhenge” was an homage to Hawkins, but also a reference to the fact that future civilizations might think the phenomenon was deliberate. What will our descendants think when they dig up this meticulously-numbered grid, designed to glow on the most random of spring nights?
A dramedy about friendship and longing, a scrappy cultural sketch show, and a heartfelt solo musical. Three Fringe picks, three completely different outcomes, and a reminder that the risk is the point.
A deeply immersive novel about NYC in your 20s and the quiet, disorienting shift into adulthood. So Old, So Young captures the friendships, choices, and creeping realization that life does not unfold the same way for everyone, and that you may not even notice it happening.
A one-woman show about shopping addiction and spiraling debt promises a redemption arc but delivers uneven pacing, forgotten lines, and a performance that never quite finds its footing. A few celebrity impressions land, but they’re not enough to save a production that feels more forced than fully realized.
At the Frigid New York Fringe Festival, one play turns a wine-soaked girls’ night into simmering chaos, while another follows a single good deed that spirals wildly out of control. Two very different shows, one shared strength: raw, unpredictable storytelling that reminds you why Fringe still matters.
A revival of Spider Rabbit at La MaMa turns a playful, childlike rhythm into something far more unsettling, tracing how violence is absorbed, normalized, and made into something you can live with.
Frigid’s New York City Fringe Festival is one of the best parts of the year for discovering new theater in New York. It’s where artists take big swings, follow their instincts, and put work on stage that feels fresh, specific, and alive. This is your greatest chance to see the type of theater that we’re all worried about disappearing. We’ve pulled together a few shows we’re especially excited to see and spoke with the creatives behind them.
Two NHL rivals turn a locker room moment into a years-long secret relationship that slowly becomes something more. Heated Rivalry flips the script on romance, trading meet-cutes for hookups and delivering a story that’s as comforting as it is hot, with two men who feel real, not like a stereotype.
A first encounter with Soviet cinema leads to a packed screening of Secret Agent at Metrograph, where stunning visuals, quiet paranoia, and a room full of regulars remind one writer why movie theaters still matter.
Part two of our NYC Fringe Festival coverage leans into the personal. From a solo show about learning to drive at 40 to save a marriage, to a darkly funny spiral through alcohol and memory, to a glittering, high-energy love letter to New York and the artists who survive it—these are stories about risk, reinvention, and what it costs to keep going. Meet the creators bringing it all to the stage.
Frigid’s NYC Fringe Festival is where new theater still feels risky, alive, and worth showing up for. We’ve rounded up a few shows we can’t wait to see, and talked to the artists behind them. This is Part One.
An obsessive, cutthroat ice dancer who refuses to apologize for her ambition, The Favorites by Layne Fargo is messy, toxic, and surprisingly compelling, even when it completely exhausts you.
Body Count at SoHo Playhouse offers a sharp, often humorous look at sex work, challenging familiar narratives while exploring the emotional labor and power dynamics at its core.
A haunting, deeply human performance, Modern Warrior: Behind The Lines brings two men face to face with the events of 9/11 and the war that followed. Told in their own words, their stories linger long after the stage goes dark.
I didn’t think much about Daniel Radcliffe, until I saw him in Every Brilliant Thing and, within minutes, became an unlikely fan. What follows is a Broadway experience built on intimacy, audience connection, and one very strange moment that I’m still trying to make sense of.
The SoHo Playhouse’s Fringe Encore series brings standout acts from international festivals to New York for a limited Off-Broadway run. Among them is a wave of Australian comedians, including Elouise Eftos, whose provocative show Australia’s First Attractive Comedian challenges the expectations placed on women in comedy.
A rising band, a dead sister, and the strange theater of the music industry collide in The Future Saints. The novel offers cinematic scenes and California glamour, even if its emotional depth sometimes feels imagined rather than lived.
In Windfall, Tarell Alvin McCraney asks a devastating question: what happens when a city budgets for your child’s death? Set in a near-future America that feels uncomfortably present, the play follows a father offered a government settlement after state violence takes his child. The money could save his home—but at what moral cost? In this preview, we explore how Windfall turns policy into heartbreak and forces audiences to confront the true price of “blood money.”
At Becco, the pasta keeps coming, the tables keep closing in, and somehow it all works. A pre-theater staple where unlimited pasta meets a dining room full of strangers who may or may not become part of your night.
A Scandinavian cabin in the middle of SoHo. Kabin, Alexandra Tangen’s cocktail bar, brings Nordic design, inventive drinks, and a surprisingly cozy energy to downtown NYC.
At La Pecora Bianca, the food is balanced, the crowd is chaotic, and the sourdough toast might take a tooth. A reliably good Upper West Side spot with just enough edge to keep it interesting.
Let's hear it for Le Dive who decided not to have a menu full of 45 different obscure wines that no one gives a shit about! Five categories...one to three choices in each. Boom. We're more than grateful.
A Guggenheim opening promises access, play, and connection. Outside, protesting workers tell a different story. Inside, Carol Bove’s steel-heavy survey strains under repetition, leaving the museum’s message of openness feeling more performative than real.