GRACE NOTES: Thursday, October 16, 2025

 

Today’s Highlights:

 

   A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Bradford Cover, featuring Austin Pendleton, Rachel Botchan, Anique Clements, RJ Foster, Carine Montbertrand and Andy Paterson, opens at Off-Broadway’s Sheen Center.

 

   Not Ready for Prime Time, The unauthorized, unsanitized, and slightly unhinged story of how a small group of lunatics made Saturday night unmissable, by Erik J. Rodriguez & Charles A. Sothers, directed by Conor Bagley, featuring Ryan Crout (John Belushi, Jared Grimes (Garrett Morris), Caitlin Houlahan (Jane Curtin), Nate Janis (Bill Murray), Kristian Lugo (Dan Ackroyd), Woodrow Proctor (s(Chevy Chase), and Taylor Richardson (Laraine Newman), with Gilbert L. Bailey. II (Broadway: Beetlejuice), Jacob Millman (New York: Singfield), Jake Roberson, opens at Off-Broadway’s MCC Theater.

 

   Truman vs. Israel: Abzug and the Undressing of Truman, world premiere by William Spatz, directed by Randy White, featuring , featuring Willy Falk (Truman) and Sasha Edec (Bella Abzug), with Matt Caplan and Mark Lotito, opens at Off-Broadway’s Theatre at St. Clements.

 

**********************

 

   A Midsummer Night’s Dream (as told by the Mechanicles), currently in previews,  opens  Oct. 15 at the Sheen Center, directed by Bradford Cover.

 

Austin Pendleton, Rachel Botchan, Anique Clements, RJ Foster, Carine Montbertrand, and Andy Paterson.

 

**********************

 

 La Bohème will run Nov. 22 – Dec. 14 at LA’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, conducted by Lina González-Granados.

 

 Janai Brugger (Mimì), Oreste Cosimo (Rodolfo), Erica Petrocelli (Musetta), Gihoon Kim (Marcello), emmett O’Hanlon (Scharnard), William Guanbo Su (Colline), rod Gilfry (Benoit/Alcindoro), and Nathan Bowles (Parpignol).

 

**********************

 

  Shadowlands, by Hugh Bonneville, directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, continues through Feb. 20, 2026 at the Aldwych Theatre.

 

   Hugh Bonneville C.S. Lewis)

 

  The moving true story of the Oxford academic whose life is transformed by his relationship with American poet Joy Davidman.

 

**********************

 

  Red Bull Theater‘s Richard II, world premiere adapted & directed by Craig Baldwin, will run Oct. 28  Nov. 30 (opening Nov. 9) at the  Astor Place Theatre.

 

  Michael Urie, Grantham Coleman, Ron Canada, Kathryn Meisle, David Mattar Merten, Lux Pascal, James Seol, Daniel Stewart Sherman, Ryan Spahn, Emily Swallow, and Sarin Monae West.

 

  Ambition and betrayal reign supreme in this electrifying reimagining of Shakespeare’s poetic masterpiece. Set in 1980s Manhattan, the neon skyline and shadowy backrooms become an epic battleground of identity and power, where a king’s divine right crumbles beneath the weight of human frailty. Michael Urie’s virtuosic performance and Craig Baldwin’s inventive adaptation make Richard’s tragic descent freshly immediate, staged a stone’s throw from the site of the historic Astor Place Riots, the original American cocktail of politics, insurrection, and Shakespeare.

 

**********************

 

  Operation Mincemeat has announced  that, due to popular demand, its Broadway run has been extended by four weeks at the Golden Theatre, now through March 15, 2026, directed by  Robert Hastie.

 

  David Cumming, Claire-Marie Hall, Natasha Hodgson, Jak Malone, and Zoë Roberts.

 

  It’s 1943, and the Allied Forces are on the ropes. Luckily, they’ve got a trick up their sleeve. Well, not up their sleeve, per se, but rather inside the pocket of a stolen corpse. Equal parts farce, thriller, and Ian Fleming-style spy caper (with an assist from Mr. Fleming himself), Operation Mincemeat tells the wildly improbable and hilarious true story of the covert operation that turned the tide of WWII.

 

**********************

 

  Mamma Mia will run June 23 – July 19, 2026 (opening June 24) at the Ahmanson Theatre, directed by Phyllida Lloyd.

 

 Chirstine Sherrill (Donna Sherican), Alisa Melendez (Sophie Sheridan), Carly Sakolove (Rosie), Jalynn Steele (Tanya), Victor Wallace (Sam Carmichael), Robert Marnell (Harry Bright), Jim Newman (Bill Austin), and Grat Reynolds (Sky), with Amy Weaver, Alessandra Antonelli, Blake Price, Carly Sakolove, Christine Sherrill, Collin Bradley, Patrick Dunn, Grant Reynolds, Jalynn Steele, Jim Newman, Justin Sudderth, Lena Owens, Rob Marnell, Victor Wallace, Louis Griffin, Patrick Park, L’Oréal Roaché, Haley Wright, Gabe Amato, Adia Olanethia Bell, Xavi Soto Burgos, Emily Croft, Madison Deadman, Jordan De Leon, Nico DiPrimio, Stephanie Genito, Tassy Kirbas, Danny Lopez-Alicea, Makoa, Faith Northcutt, Jasmine Overbaugh, Gray Phillips, and Dorian Quinn.

 

**********************

 

   Gingold Theatrical Group will present  Shaw’s Pygmalion Oct. 22 – Nov. 22 at  Theatre Rown, directed by David Staller.

 

 Synnøve Karlsen (Eliza Doolittle), Mark Evans (Henry Higgins), Carson Elrod (Colonel Hugh Pickering), Tersa Avia Lim (Clara Eynsford-Hill),  Lican Mitchell (Mrs. Higgines & Mrs. Pearce), and Matt Wolpe (Freddy eynsford Hill/Alfred Doolitte.

 

**********************

 

   NYC’s 92NY will present Broadway Beginnings: Celebrating 35  of New 42  (Nov. 11 at 3 PM).

 

  J.Harrison Ghee, Mandy Conzalez, Celia Keen-Bolger, and Jim Parsons, with Russell Granet.

 

**********************

 

  Labyrinth Theatre (link not yet available) will present a reading of Brett C. Leonard’s The Innumerable Ponies of Malachy Moore on Mon. Oct. 20 at 7 PM at Off-Broadway’s Public Theater, directed by Elizabeth Rodriguez & Mark Wing-Davey.

 

 TBA.

 

  A soaring, lyrical play with music following Malachy Moore – a born showman Irish-American  through time and space, work, health, family, and love. Transcending traditional form, it is a time-bending, mind-expanding ride – poignant, joyful, sad, and ultimately triumphant. A deeply American immigrant story.

 

**********************

 

  Lloyd J. Schwartz & Ben Lanzarone’s Jack and the Beanstalk will run Nov. 1, 2025- May 16, 2026 at  Theatre West, directed by Lloyd J. Schwartz & Barbara Mallory Schwartz, with choreography by Elise Walters.

 

  (double-cast) Elise Walters, Bryan Siu, Maxwell Oliver, Aidan O’Connor, Saratoga Ballantine, Meg Lin, Mark Bowen, and Briana Burnside.

 

**********************

 

Manhattan Theatre Club‘s Queens, by Martyna Majok, directed by Tripp Cullman, continues through Nov. 4 at NY City Center.

 

Brooke Bloom, Anna Chlumsky, Sharlene Cruz, Marin Ireland, Julia Lester, Nadine Malouf, Andrea Syglowski, and Nicole Villamil.

 

  An epic drama about hunting for the American Dream, finding family, and facing the ghosts you left behind. In an illegal basement apartment in Queens, multiple generations of immigrant women fight to launch a new life. But when a young Ukrainian woman comes searching for the mother who abandoned her years ago, she forces a reckoning with the impossible choices the women made to survive.

 

 


Posted

in

by

Tags: