Things to do in New York this Friday

Broadway review by Adam Feldman  [Note: Maya Rudolph plays the role of Mary Todd Lincoln through June 20, joined by Phillip James Brannon, Cheyenne Jackson and original cast members Bianca Leigh and Tony Macht.] Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary! is not just funny: It is dizzyingly, breathtakingly funny, the kind of funny that ambushes your body into uncontained laughter. Stage comedies have become an endangered species in recent decades, and when they do pop up they tend to be the kind of funny that evokes smirks, chuckles or wry smiles of recognition. Not so here: I can’t remember the last time I saw a play that made me laugh, helplessly and loudly, as much as Oh, Mary! did—and my reaction was shared by the rest of the audience, which burst into applause at the end of every scene. Fasten your seatbelts: This 80-minute show is a fast and wild joy ride. Escola has earned a cult reputation as a sly comedic genius in their dazzling solo performances (Help! I’m Stuck!) and on TV shows like At Home with Amy Sedaris, Difficult People and Search Party. But Oh, Mary!, their first full-length play, may surprise even longtime fans. In this hilariously anachronistic historical burlesque, Escola plays—who else?—Mary Todd Lincoln, in the weeks leading up to her husband’s assassination. Boozy, vicious and miserable, the unstable and outrageously contrary Mary is oblivious to the Civil War and hell-bent on achieving stardom as—what else?—a cabaret singer.      Oh, Mary! | Photograph: Courtesy...

Theater review by Sandy MacDonald Rating: Not recommended The brutish ocean-liner stoker called Yank, who propels Eugene O’Neill’s expressionistic 1922 play The Hairy Ape, is basically a two-note role: He’s aggressively boastful, then aggrieved. Jon Beavers hits both extremes with admirable vigor. Impressively built, albeit not hirsute, he morphs easily from braggadocious grunt to humiliated would-be social activist. Yank may rant at great length about what a powerhouse he is—“I’m parta de engines!”—but at length he’s forced to see his status as that of a born patsy: the unschooled, unskilled flotsam of a tiered society that views him only as cheap labor. The Hairy Ape | Photograph: Courtesy Carol Rosegg All it takes to trigger Yank’s rage is a passing glimpse of an elegant phantasm descended from the privileged promenade deck. Rebel debutante Mildred (Elizabeth Teeter) arranges a slumming expedition to the boiler room, scandalizing her snappish chaperone (Joanna Glushak). The dialogue is actually quite shocking—this proto-flapper has a mixed agenda and attitude to spare—so we’re not adequately set up for Mildred's reaction upon penetrating the lower depths, where the crew shovels coal in choreographed lockstep like pistons in a machine. “Oh, the filthy beast!” she whimpers before swooning. The Hairy Ape | Photograph: Courtesy Carol Rosegg Vowing revenge on the ruling class in general and this entitled princess in particular, Yank joins a socialist shipmate (Ariyan...

Frigid New York gives you the chills in its fourth annual festival inspired by Mexico's dead-lifting Día de los Muertos. The lineup features spooky variety nights, horror plays and other macabre diversions, including a cabaret with a traditional ofrenda. Among the offerings are Scott Robinson's solo Edgar Allan Poe's Last Call, the neoclown shows Hex Appeal and 3Pigs+Wolf, the original musical I'm That Witch and the return of The Witching Hour, a triple feature hosted Andrew Agress. Visit the festival's website for a schedule and a full roster of partipating shows.

The always compelling Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under) returns to the stage in a new play by Nick Payne (Constellations) that premiered at London's Royal Court Theatre last year. Ambrose plays the increasingly unhinged mother of a teenage boy who has disappeared; the supporting cast includes Tom Riley and Hadi Tabbal as her two ex-husbands and Nina Ross and Elizabeth Yeoman as her daughters. Knud Adams (English) directs the American premiere for Manhattan Theatre Club.

Can you handle the truth? Film and TV auteur Aaron Sorkin launched his writing career with this 1989 courtroom thriller about a murder trial that implicates two Marines in a wider conspiracy plot. Michael Arden, who has quickly become one of Broadway's preeminent directors of musicals, ventures into straight-play terrority to helm the play's revival for Lincoln Center Theater. The cast includes Bradley Whitford—an alum of Sorkin's The West Wing—and the rising English actor Tom Blyth (Billy the Kid). 

A 16-person choir of classically trained singers performs a first-person monologue in this unconventional musical by Mona Pirnot (I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan), in which a woman in her 30s grapples with the question of whether or not to have children. The music is by Jack D. Coen, who also colloborated with Pirnot on the lyrics. Sarah Benson (Fairview)—who demonstrated great deftness with avant-garde material during her 15-year leadership of Soho Rep—directs the world premiere for Atlantic Theater Company.

If you missed Andrew Scott's tour de force solo turn in Vanya last year, you now have another chance to get him alone—if you can afford the tickets, which start at $299 a pop. In the one-act monologue Sea Wall, written for Scott in 2008 by Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), the actor plays a catalog photographer who opens up to the audience about the great sadness he carries with him in the aftermath of a trip to southern France. (Scott reprised the role in London in 2018 and streamed it during the pandemic; Tom Sturridge essayed it beautifully on Broadway in 2019.) The play a marvel of compression and detail; it earns your trust and then gently breaks your heart. Scott's two-week run will be recorded for a future film documenting the production, its creation and its reception.

What does A stand for? That question hangs over the protagonist—referred to only as A in the script—of Marin Ireland's deeply personal play Pre-Existing Condition. Her ex-boyfriend hit her so hard that she ended up on the floor, and although she didn't seek medical attention, the incident left her with emotional and psychological scars and split her life into before and after. Everyone wants to know what A wants now: Money? Justice? Revenge on her abuser? The problem is, she’s not sure she knows. If A’s intense, halting, often uncomfortable exchanges with the people in her life—a dismissive lawyer, her no-nonsense therapist, her support-group facilitators, her dates, her friends, her self-involved mother—sound unsettlingly authentic, that's because Ireland, a highly acclaimed stage actor, is writing from firsthand experience. But Pre-Existing Condition isn’t just a memoir à clef. Delicately directed by Maria Dizzia, the play offers a deep dive into the messy aftermath of domestic violence. Unlike many stories about abuse, it’s not about escaping or standing up; it's about navigating an inadequate system while trying to process what happened. (The difficulty of doing so is reflected by the fact that Ireland has been working on this play for 14 years.) Pre-Existing Condition | Photograph: Courtesy Jessica Kourkounis In a poignant illustration of how abuse can happen to anyone—A’s group leader says that one in three women is battered in her lifetime—six different actors are...

Review by Adam Feldman  The low-key dazzling Speakeasy Magick has been nestled in the atmospheric McKittrick Hotel for more than a year, and now it has moved up to the Lodge: a small wood-framed room at Gallow Green, which functions as a rooftop bar in the summer. The show’s dark and noisy new digs suit it well. Hosted by Todd Robbins (Play Dead), who specializes in mild carnival-sideshow shocks, Speakeasy Magick is a moveable feast of legerdemain; audience members, seated at seven tables, are visited by a series of performers in turn. Robbins describes this as “magic speed dating.” One might also think of it as tricking: an illusion of intimacy, a satisfying climax, and off they go into the night. The evening is punctuated with brief performances on a makeshift stage. When I attended, the hearty Matthew Holtzclaw kicked things off with sleight of hand involving cigarettes and booze; later, the delicate-featured Alex Boyce pulled doves from thin air. But it’s the highly skilled close-up magic that really leaves you gasping with wonder. Holtzclaw’s table act comes to fruition with a highly effective variation on the classic cups-and-balls routine; the elegant, Singapore-born Prakash and the dauntingly tattooed Mark Calabrese—a razor of a card sharp—both find clever ways to integrate cell phones into their acts. Each performer has a tight 10-minute act, and most of them are excellent, but that’s the nice thing about the way the show is structured: If one of them happens to...

Theater review by Raven Snook  [Note: This is a review of the 2024 production of The Ask at the Wild Project. The show returns in 2026 for a run at Theater 555, directed again by Jessi D. Hill but now starring Marilu Henner and Shannon Purser (who played the unlucky Barb on Stranger Things).] Words are wounding in Matthew Freeman's taut two-hander The Ask, an entertaining and empathetic examination of generational and philosophical differences that divide the political left. Savvy sexagenarian Greta (a flawless Betsy Aidem) welcomes Tanner (Colleen Litchfield)—a young, nonbinary representative from the American Civil Liberties Union—to her well-appointed Upper West Side study. A longtime liberal and high-level donor, Greta is polite but peeved: Her old ACLU contact has departed without warning, and she is wary of what she sees as the organization’s mission creep beyond civil liberties. Tanner knows they're there to listen, even when the conversation stings. But they also try to gently explain the group’s expanded priorities as they steel themself to make a big-money request. Inspired by his own long tenure as an ACLU fundraiser, Freeman gives this extended power play an uncomfortable verisimilitude. Aidem and Litchfield, who costarred in Leopoldstadt on Broadway, mine the unease for laughs but also understanding. As you listen to their arguments and their anguish—when Tanner uses inclusive gender language, Greta feels erased—you lament how quickly common ground can be...