Recent Theater in New York

Over Thanksgiving, I spent a few days in NYC, enjoying two films and four plays. More on the films in a later review, but here is an overview of the plays I saw, going from least to most compelling. 

Ragtime is a well known musical, especially among musical theater fans. It is based on the excellent 1975 novel by E.L. Doctorow, chronicling the lives of several characters from the early 1900s, both imagined and real (e.g. Harry Houdini, JP Morgan, the anarchist Emma Goldman). The creative thing about the novel is the way it seamlessly interweaves the famous characters with the invented ones. The book centers around a famed white socialite who bears a child with a black jazz entertainer, Coalhouse Walker, leading to numerous societal, sometimes violent consequences in a racist society. I really enjoyed the book when I read it years ago, as it had a creative mix of sex, history, drama, and intrigue. The acclaimed novel gave rise to a so-so movie in 1981, then a musical in 1996. Both the movie and the musical had to limit the numerous characters and subplots of the novel, focusing only on the main racial/courthouse drama. However, all those "minor" threads were the real point of the novel, and makes the film and musical Ragtimes much more conventional, and less interesting. The musical nicely makes use of originally composed ragtime melodies and other period music, but the music was not really memorable, and failed to excite me. No matter how extravagant the staging or good the choreography, or compelling the performances, I have trouble enjoying musicals with music that is meh or not to my taste (see Hamilton, Les Miz, Wicked, etc.) Here the production was lavish, and I see why the musical was revived given recent focus on Black equality and social change, but I fail to see why so many critics seem excited by this musical. 

Liberation is a new play by Bess Wohl, taken from the memories of her mother from the 1970s. It focuses on a women's encounter group from the prime time of women's liberation in the early-mid 1970s. Wohl defines the eight or so women pretty well, and we see their varied motivations and needs in well-drawn vignettes. Most of the main feminist issues of that day (and ours as well) are touched on, eg. abortion, role of men, employment, and racism/exclusion of minorities within the feminist movement. At the start of Act 2, all of the group members get naked, apparently a common event in such groups at that time, attempting to help them take pride in their bodies, or at least avoid shame. The mass onstage nudity had some invigorating shock value even in 2025, largely because 1. the reactions of the group members were pretty funny, and 2. it caused the theater management to take our cellphones at the start of the play and make us seal them in pouches that could only be opened on exit from the theater. Frankly, that nudity was for me the most unique thing in the play, which otherwise rehashed familiar tropes that I remember from my college days in the late 1970s. Many of the young audience seemed to love it, but the play reminded me of the days in the 1980s when gay men would scream and shout for any play that positively affirmed gay culture, no matter how un-original or mediocre the writing. While generally well written, I really saw nothing very unique about this play. Maybe its best seen by younger people who did not get overdosed with this sort of theater 40 years ago, or by those in a nostalgic mode. 

More interesting was Art, a 1994 play by French playwright Yasmina Reza. This one deals with the longstanding friendship of four thirty-something men. The dramatic driver is the purchase of a new work of art by one of the guys (played very amusingly by Neil Patrick Harris, second from left below). 

He pays a lot for this work, is very proud of it, and wants (yearns for) affirmation from his friends. However, the painting appears to the others as  just a blank white canvas, and they struggle to complement and support him. This fairly thin premise gives rise to a funny and often insightful drama about the meaning and importance of friendship. How much of our friendships are based on common taste and interests. Can we support our friends if they make mistakes that we find ridiculous? Should we uncritically support them, or try to help them correct their errors? The cast was excellent, especially Bobby Cannavale as the skeptical friend and Brit James Corden (The Late Late Show) as the needy friend too eager to mend disputes and please everyone, at the risk of his own self esteem. This should not have been particularly interesting on the face of it, but the talented actors and tight dialogue made the whole thing very entertaining, if not deep. 

Best of these plays was Archduke, a 2017 play by American Rajiv Joseph. It deals with four young, idealistic men who are part of the successful plot to assassinate the Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the precipitant of WWI. The history is really just a framework for seeing how young act as a group, and why. Anyone who has taught, raised, or been an adolescent man will be able to relate to the themes expressed here, including bonding, support, aggression, and competition. The contrast with the interaction of the women in Liberation was striking. The young men are more extroverted and violent, yet just as supportive of one another as the women were, and less inclined to scheming and backstabbing. The young actors were appealing and convincing in their roles. In wonderful contrast was the elderly, pompous ringleader played by the gloriously mustachioed Patrick Page (left, below). 

The play was consistently entertaining, yet thought provoking, especially given the recent discussions about the disgruntlement of young men, and how they feel left behind. These young men felt the same way, and sought out ways, even illegal violent ones, of making an imprint on the world. So this was a timely staging of a play by a playwright who has a real talent for dialogue and group interactions.