Ludi's Travels: March 2026

New York, Je t’aime! Ode to Broadway!

The best part of living part time in New York is easy access to topnotch plays and shows, perhaps among the foremost in the world! Here are a few of those I consider to be the most iconic Broadway shows seen over the past several months! When there’s so much choice and such a plethora of options, it’s easy to pick a few duds! Check out my non-scientific and highly subjective classification and let me know if you agree!

Oedipus

Oedipus at Studio 54 — based on the quintessential Greek tragedy by Sophocles that has influenced and imbued Western literature for more than two millennia with themes of hubris, fate, justice, and free will — is the story of a king who tries in vain to escape his destiny and yet, unwittingly, fulfills a prophecy to kill his father and marry his mother!

An Olivier-winning U.K. production that transferred to Broadway, Oedipus is adapted and directed by Robert Icke and set in the modern world of an election campaign with references to the present — but remains faithful to the dramatic plot points of the original. It is a powerful and explicit production with Mark Strong, Lesley Manville, and 90 year old Anne Reid as Merope, the king’s adoptive mother.

The story opens with a press briefing in which Oedipus (Strong), once an outsider now poised for a landslide victory, promises full transparency: he will release his birth certificate to the public after facing criticism of his right to run for office. He will also reopen the investigation into the death of Laius, his predecessor. When a homeless man named Teiresias makes a disturbing prophecy about Oedipus’ father, mother, and the results of the election, the king’s brittle calm starts to unravel and long-buried secrets being to surface.

While Manville precisely charts her character’s descent into terror, Strong is equally compelling as a man convinced he can manage any crisis until he discovers the one truth he cannot escape. The notion that a leader’s image rests on a story told about themselves — and that truth, once uncovered, can collapse the façade — resonates deeply. The final moments reflect a grim and relentless inevitability: when Oedipus sees that Jocasta has hanged herself, he gouges out his own eyes! You know it’s coming but the violence of the scene still shocks and dismays!

Operation Mincemeat

Another award-winning but very different London import now at Broadway’s John Golden Theatre, “Operation Mincemeat,” tells the unbelievable but true World War 2 story of British spies dressing a cadaver as a pilot and depositing it off the coast of Spain with fake plans to convince German high command that the Allied invasion of Europe would be through Greece and Sardinia, rather than the actual target, Sicily. The plans were recovered by German intelligence and believed to be authentic, leading Hitler to move reinforcements to Greece, thus enabling the Allies to invade Sicily with less resistance.

This incredible military scheme really did happen and was called Operation Mincemeat. The Broadway musical of the same name is marked by creativity and chutzpah, the ingenuity of the storytelling matching the wackiness of the plot! The five person show, which is fresh and intelligent, is performed at a high level with obvious nods and sly references to Mel Brooks’ The Producers and to Hamilton.

The show has grown from quirky fringe comedy into a smash hit and received rave reviews both in the West End and on Broadway. One “Mincefluencer,” as superfans are called, has seen it more than 200 times! The story is also the subject of a 2010 nonfiction book and a 2021 film by John Madden with Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen.

Piaf! The Show

More than 100 years after her birth, Edith Piaf — France’s best known national chanteuse — lives on with Piaf! The Show, a tribute concert that seeks to preserve her musical heritage and memory worldwide. Fronted by French singer Nathalie Lermitte, we saw the concert on a freezing cold afternoon in New York City’s Town Hall auditorium.

For those who do not know Piaf, she is not just a singer but also a lyricist, actress, and international star. Her music was often autobiographical; she specialized in chanson réaliste (a dramatic genre that portrayed poverty, crime, harsh reality, and tragic love) and haunting ballads about grief and despair. Her best known songs include “La Vie en rose,” “Non, je ne regrette rien,” “Hymne à l’amour,” “Milord,” “La Foule,” and “Padam, padam” delivered in her signature 1940s-50s traditional postwar Parisian style with rolled “r” sounds and a vibrato that was commanding for such a small person: less than 5 feet tall and known as the “Little Sparrow!”

I was surprised at the number of young people in the audience (who knew the lyrics and were singing along), although the demographic hewed much older! When I mentioned to two persons that I went to a Piaf tribute show, they didn’t know who she was; after adding that Celine Dion sang her song (“Hymne à l’amour”) at the Paris Olympics, I still drew a a blank! Niche territory, I guess!

Marjorie Prime

In Jordan Harrison’s thought provoking play, Marjorie Prime at the Helen Hayes Theatre, the role of artificial intelligence is cleverly explored. In the not-so-distant future, 85-year-old Marjorie (June Squibb) is losing her memory. Her family buy her a “Prime,” a holographic companion modeled on her late husband, Walter, when he was 30.

Walter Prime (Christopher Lowell) is built from happy memories supplied by her daughter Tess (Cynthia Nixon) and son-in-law Jon (Danny Burstein). As Marjorie bonds with Walter Prime, she begins reshaping their past, tweaking truth and invention. Other Primes eventually appear, the cycle repeats, and memories evolve.

Squibb — 96 years old and last seen on Broadway in Waitress — infuses Marjorie with sass and gives a captivating performance as a confused, indignant, embarrassed, and wise person. Nixon, a two-time Tony winner with over four decades of Broadway experience, is conflicted and vulnerable as Tess, struggling to connect with the real Marjorie. In the end, hers is the performance that stays with you!

Cabaret at the KitKat Club!

If you are familiar with “Cabaret!” — the excellent 1972 Bob Fosse film starring Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey and featuring the unforgettable music of John Kander and Fred Ebb set in a 1931 Berlin nightclub — check out its stage revival at the August Wilson Theatre on Broadway — again a transfer of an Olivier-winning U.K. production — with Adam Lambert as the Emcee, Auli’i Cravalho as Sally Bowles, and Bebe Neuwirth as Fraulein Schneider.

For those unfamiliar with the story, American cabaret singer Sally Bowles meets British academic Cliff Bradshaw in Berlin. Most of the action takes place in the seedy KitKat Club, known for the outrageous flamboyance and gender fluidity of its performers. The relationship of Sally and Cliff plays out against the collapse of the Weimar Republic and rise of the Nazi party. It is based on Christopher Isherwood’s 1939 collection of short stories, Goodbye to Berlin and his Berlin Stories (1945) about his life in Weimar Berlin and the rise of fascism.

The musical features classic showstoppers: “Willkommen," "Mein Herr," the poignant "Maybe This Time," “Money, Money,” "If You Could See Her” and the pièce de résistance, “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” — a seemingly innocuous number with sentimental lyrics (“the branch of the linden is leafy and green, the Rhine gives its gold to the sea, but somewhere a glory awaits unseen, tomorrow belongs to me”) that becomes the anthem for Hitler’s Brownshirts!

By invoking an idyllic image and using the linden and Rhine as symbols of German nationalism, the song transitions into dark ideology: the purity of the land mirroring the (racial) purity of the people — and reminding audiences how nostalgia can be weaponized, a familiar theme today where the “Make America Great Again” slogan becomes a longing for an imaginary mythologized past.

The show is more overtly political than the 1972 film. It deals with public apathy to the rise of anti-Semitism and loops the audience into the inaction where they are seemingly complicit in the unfolding of history: at one point a mirror forces the audience to reflect on themselves; at another, the Emcee is revealed in a concentration camp uniform.

I also saw an earlier 1998 revival of Cabaret with Alan Cumming and Natasha Richardson directed by Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall. It was gritty and politically charged and won four Tony Awards! Again, the Emcee ends up in a concentration camp uniform with a pink triangle (identifying him as gay) and a yellow star (identifying him as a Jew).

Buena Vista Social Club

Another brilliant Broadway musical — again based on a successful film — is the Buena Vista Social Club, a paean to 1950s Cuban culture, music, and dance — perhaps incongruous at this point of time with Trump threatening regime change in Havana!

The show — at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre — is an electrifying concert of rhythmic Cuban music (featuring son, bolero, and danzon) and a plot with two alternating timelines: the making of the album in 1996 featuring top musicians, and the lives of the same musicians forty years earlier, centering around singer Omara Portuondo.

In 1956, 19-year-old Omara and her sister Haydee are the singing Portuondo Sisters at Havana’s Tropicana Nightclub that caters to rich tourists. Haydee hopes the gig will lead to an American recording contract that will let them tour the world and get them out of Cuba, which is on the brink of revolution. Omara is less eager to go and more drawn to old Cuban music. They meet new accompanists, guitarist Compay Segundo and pianist Ruben Gonzalez who invite Omara to the Buena Vista Social Club where she falls in love with another musician, Ibrahim Ferrer. But politics and family keep the lovers apart.

Forty years later, Omara is reluctant to be involved in the making of the album but is finally persuaded. The show’s music and dancing are exceptional, particularly the mix of street, ballet, jazz, modern, and Cuban choreography, the call and response between guitarists and percussionists, outstanding vocals by Natalie Belcon as the mature Omara, Julio Monge as older Compay Segundo, Wesley Wray as young Ibrahim Ferrer, and Mel Semé as the older Ferrer.

A Streetcar Named Desire

Not on Broadway but at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (the BAM), I was initially reluctant to see Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire — an iconic American play by a U.K. production — but not to worry! It was powerful and engaging with Paul Mescal (yes, him of Gladiator sequel and Aftersun fame) as Stanley Kowalski, Patsy Ferran as Blanche DuBois, and Anjana Vasan as Stella. Directed by Rebecca Frecknall, Streetcar follows Blanche who arrives in New Orleans to live with her sister Stella and Stanley (Stella’s husband) after losing her job. The production features a minimalist set and intense live drumming!

The action centers on the antagonism between Blanche and Stanley — one a genteel, Southern belle, prone to fantasizing and the other a coarse, blue-collar brute — as they battle it out in a cramped flat amidst a New Orleans heatwave! Blanche emasculates Stanley, reducing him to “Polack” and “pig” while he bullies her, aware she has nowhere to go.

Mescal is convincing: violent, crawling on all fours, smashing chairs. To Blanche, Stanley is a symbol of cultural decline: a humiliated man dragging civilization into ignorance to compensate for his powerlessness! Following her Olivier-winning performance as Alma in Williams’ “Summer and Smoke,” Ferran, a Spanish British actress, never loses sight of a character who is both fragile and formidable.

Ferran was recently In the Public Broadcasting (PBS) series Miss Austen, based on Gill Hornby’s bestselling novel, in which she plays Jane Austen, the strong-willed author of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility opposite Keeley Hawes as Cassandra, Jane’s older sister. The story examines sisterhood and grief in a Regency setting.

The Hills of California

Written by Jez Butterworth and directed by Sam Mendes, The Hills of California, another U.K. import at the Broadhurst Theatre, tells the story of the four Webb sisters who return to their childhood home, a rundown seaside guesthouse in Blackpool, England, as their mother lies dying in an upstairs bedroom. A mix of comedy and tragedy, the story explores sibling bonds, parental ambition, regret, the power of music, and abuse. The title comes from a Johnny Mercer song, “The hills of California are waiting for you.”

In the mid-1950s, Veronica Webb (Laura Donnelly) drills her young daughters to become a song-and-dance quartet in the style of The Andrew’s Sisters, a 1940s girl group. Two decades later, the emotionally damaged siblings gather at their childhood home to stand vigil for their dying mother. Alternating between two time periods, the play opens in the late 1970s with unmarried Jill — who remained at home with their mother — awaiting the arrival of siblings, Ruby and Gloria who have families of their own. A fourth sister, Joan (also played by Donnelly) — the best singer of the four and the mother’s favorite — left home for a recording career in the U.S. and has been estranged for 20 years. The disappointed siblings exchange memories and frustrations while the question of what led to the family split remains unanswered.

Donnelly’s dual roles as mother and daughter ground the play and give it heft. She finally makes an appearance as Joan — and explains why she left 20 years ago — a denouement that is cathartic and provides her siblings and the audience with a sense of emotional release for the abuse and trauma she suffered as a teenager from one of the record producers hired by her mother.

As the sisters confront their shared past and disillusionment, they let go of two decades of grudges and grievances. The play was acclaimed for its direction and performances, particularly Donnelly’s acting.

Honorable Mentions:

Just in Time

About the life and early death of pop singer Bobby Darin, Just in Time at the Circle in the Square Theatre stars Jonathan Groff and features hits like Mack the Knife, Beyond the Sea, Dream Lover, and This Could be the Start of Something Big/Just in Time. The show covers Darin’s relationships with Connie Francis and Sandra Dee and is acclaimed for its intimate nightclub atmosphere and strong performances. Atlantic Records’ “Just in Time” cast recording was nominated for the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album.

Hadestown

Winning eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Hadestown at the Walter Kerr Theatre tells two love stories from Greek myth: about young lovers Orpheus and Eurydice, and power couple Hades and Persephone. The narrator is Hermes. When Hades lures Eurydice to the industrial underworld of Hadestown, Orpheus goes to rescue her but is put to the ultimate test when he must lead her out without looking back. The musical score blends folk, jazz and blues.

Stereophonic

Written by David Adjmi and Daniel Aukin and featuring original music by Will Butler of Arcade Fire, Stereophonic at the Golden Theatre is about a fictional up-and-coming rock band on the cusp of superstardom. They are recording their new album and are inviting the audience to immerse themselves in the process of observing a band on the brink of either breaking through or breaking up! It was the most Tony Award winning show of 2024 and the most Tony Award nominated play of all time!

The Great Gatsby

Ludi Joseph

New York

March 4, 2026

(Pics from my iPad)