Last week was full of theater news, and politics. Hell’s Kitchen is closing; Darren Criss is leaving; Adrien Brody is making his Broadway debut. Dylvan Mulvaney is joining the cast of “Six.”; Broadway Week begins today. Today also marks the anniversary of the presidential inauguration (“One Year of Trump. The Time to Act Is Now While We Still Can.“) Theater can’t always escape politics — see below for the story about a canceled show in the Under the Radar festival. Given what’s happening in America, should theatergoers even try to?
A couple of commentators recently tried to explain what’s happening by referring to an 80-year-old book about the Nazi dictatorship entitled “The Dual State.” Aziz Huq in The Atlantic: “The book explains how the Nazi regime managed to keep on track a capitalist economy governed by stable laws—and maintain a day-to-day normalcy for many of its citizens—while at the same time establishing a domain of lawlessness and state violence in order to realize its terrible vision of ethno-nationalism.” David French in the New York Times: “While we’re thankfully not yet close to the Nazi reality, you can see the emerging dual state in action in Minneapolis right now….”
The Week in New York Theater Previews and Reviews
Spring 2026 New York Theater Preview: 10 Shows to See*
Under the Radar: Try/Step/Trip
“Try/Step/Trip,” a terrifically rhythmic, unconventional musical that merges rap with step-dancing, was inspired by the court-ordered stay in drug rehab by poet, composer and performer Dahlah Brathwaite after he was arrested when police pulled over his car and found a couple of hallucinogenic mushrooms in his pocket.
Dorothy Parker hated the theater, especially the “wretched downtown plays. The actors represent characters like ‘truth’ or ‘poverty’ while the audience is content to represent ‘sleeping’ or ‘leaving.’”
Or so says Jackie Hoffman, one of the four funny ladies in “Finding Dorothy Parker,” eighty minutes that are largely verbatim excerpts from the varied and abundant output by the witty writer known best for her quips (“Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses” and “What fresh hell is this?” — which is how, we’re told, she answered her phone.) The show is “fashioned” and directed by playwright Douglas Carter Beane in an encore presentation at the Laurie Beechman Theater through January 22.
Prototype Festival: What To Wear.
Why do the four opera singers repeat “This is Mad’line X” forty-one times? What’s with the big ducks and why are they playing golf? Is the ensemble a group of courtiers or a deck of cards? Why are these bedazzling and bewildering sixty minutes entitled “What To Wear”?
For answers, I turned to Richard Foreman, the revered and bonkers theater artist who wrote the libretto for this 20-year-old work being billed as a comedic post-rock opera, [that ran at] the Brooklyn Academy of Music…
Audition: Three Insights about Theater in Katie Kitamura’s novel
The Week in New York Theater News
Hell’s Kitchen will close on Broadway on February 22, 2026, having opened there on April 20, 2024 after an Off-Broadway run.
Darren Criss will play his final performance in his Tony-winning role as Oliver in Maybe Happy Ending on Sunday, May 17, 2026. Helen J Shen will leave three months earlier as Claire, on February 15. Replacements for the roles of Oliver and Claire after May 17 have not been announced.
Adrien Brody and Tessa Thompson are both making their Broadway debuts as a man in death row and his visitor in “The Fear of 13,” written by Lindsey Ferrentino, based on a true story. Opening April 15, James Earl Jones Theater. This is the 17th show scheduled for the Broadway Spring 2026 season.
Married couple and former Hadestown co-stars Reeve Carney and Eve Noblezada will take over as Jay and Daisy in The Great Gatsby, she on Feb 5, he on March 30. (Aisha Jackson exits Feb 1 Jeremy Jordan March 7)
Beginning February 16, “Six”will feature two newcomers making their Broadway debuts: Dylan Mulvaney, who starred in the solo show The Least Problematic Woman in the World, will be Anne Boleyn and Grammy Award winner Abigail Barlow, of The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical Album,” will portray Katherine Howard.
Wicked on Broadway: Beginning March 3: Keri René Fuller will assume the role of Elphaba full time, and Emma Flynn will be making her Broadway debut in the role of Glinda
Rafael Espinal, the current executive director of the Freelancers Union, has been appointed the Commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (known as MOME), succeeding Pat Kaufman. The agency is probably best known for managing location filming in the city through its Film Office, but it also oversees several theater-related initiatives.
A former member of the New York State Assembly and then New York City Council, Espinal authored the bills to repeal the New York City Cabaret Law and to establish the Office of Nightlife.
As the head of the national Freelancers Union, he pushed for the passage of New York State’s Freelance Isn’t Free Act as well as similar legislation in California, Illinois, Minneapolis, Seattle and Columbus, and the union’s Legal Clinic.
“You cannot tell the story of New York without the artists who have shaped it,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at a press conference at Samson Stages, a film and television production studio in Brooklyn, where he announced Espinal’s appointment. “Yet, the cost-of-living crisis is driving creatives out of our city. That is a loss we cannot afford. As Commissioner, Rafael Espinal will support our city’s artists and help ensure New York City remains a place that every artist can call home.”
Espinal added: “If New York is unaffordable, we don’t just lose residents, we lose our culture,”
This is the second week in a row that Mayor Mamdani, who has been in office less than three weeks, has given a press conference at which he talked about making New York affordable specifically for artists and the arts.
The War on Culture
“12 Last Songs,” a piece that was to unfold over 12 hours involving New York City workers as part of the Under the Radar festival on Jan 17, was canceled, because 10 of the 13-member company haven’t been able to get visas to the U.S.. Richard Gregory, director of 12 Last Songs and artistic director of Quarantine, a company based in Manchester, England, writes:
“We still don’t factually know why – the US Citizenship and Immigration Services won’t tell us or anybody else why our petition for entry has been paused, perhaps indefinitely. It might well be because 2 of our party were born in Nigeria and that, despite their British passports, that fact alone is enough to put a red flag on the application since President Trump added Nigeria to the “restricted entry” list of 39 countries before Christmas. Or maybe it’s still sat on an impossibly large pile of applications that a USCIS worker is struggling to get through. Who knows. Nobody will tell us. That’s the way it works. We’re incredibly frustrated and properly sad to not be able to present the work in New York. It’s a piece we love to make and we feel like it belongs in that city.”
In Memoriam
John Cunningham, 93, 18-time Broadway veteran actor who originated roles in “Company,” “The Sisters Rosensweig” and “Six Degrees of Separation,”
Roger Allers, 76, animated film director best known for the animated movie “The Lion King,” which he adapted for Broadway with Irene Mecchi, earning both a Tony nomination.
The Week’s Theater Video
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