Off-Broadway Musical Review—“The Seat of Our Pants” at the Public Theater

The Seat of Our Pants

Adaptation, music, and lyrics by Ethan Lipton; based on the play The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder

Choreography by Sunny Min-Sook Hitt; directed by Leigh Silverman

Performances through December 7, 2025

Public Theater, New York, NY

publictheater.org

Shuler Hensley and Micaela Diamond in The Seat of Our Pants (photo: Joan Marcus)

Making Thornton Wilder’s play The Skin of Our Teeth literally sing is not an original concept: the last time it was done here, Off-Broadway in 2017, director Arin Arbus interpolated songs by César Alvarez into the high-concept structure of Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning creation, which takes a tongue-in-cheek but also deadly serious look at the Antrobus family from New Jersey (Antrobus means, not surprisingly, “human being” in Greek), whose 5,000-year existence includes a new ice age, a Biblical flood and an end-times world war in each of its three acts. (Wilder wrote it in 1942 during World War II, for context.)

The Skin of Our Teeth is a structural monstrosity—actors address the audience out of character, stagehands join in on the action, and a dinosaur and a mammoth have speaking parts, to name just a few—so adding songs would seem just another formal conceit that mirrors Wilder’s. The playwright heavily borrowed from James Joyce’s last novel, the punning classic Finnegans Wake—another formal experiment that has challenged readers and scholars for decades—to create the indestructible family that lives through both natural and man-made disasters. 

Ethan Lipton—who adapted the play and wrote the music and lyrics of this latest incarnation, retitled The Seat of Our Pants—has kept most of Wilder’s conceits, so when the Antrobus’ maid, Sabina (who becomes a beauty pageant winner stealing the father away from his family in the second act before reverting back to their maid Sabina in act three) addresses the audience at the beginning, the effect is humorous if bemusing. (Wilder shrewdly put dialogue in Sabina’s mouth that would shut down criticism about what he is trying to do with his play.)

Lipton is better at adapting than writing songs, which, with a couple exceptions, don’t deepen the play’s metaphorical, allegorical or literary conceits but instead regurgitate what Wilder’s alternately pointed and ponderous writing has already covered. The Skin of Our Teeth is a long, exhausting evening of theater—and The Seat of Our Pants, also long, is even more exhausting.

Luckily, the always resourceful director Leigh Silverman stages these seemingly random scenes of a family adrift in a world that’s at war with itself with an unerring sense of the theatrical and the metatheatrical. With choreographer Sunny Min-Sook Hitt, Silverman makes movement more telling than Lipton’s songs or even Wilder’s words. On Lee Jellinek’s cleverly pliable unit set—illuminated by Lap Chi Chu’s canny lighting design and Kaye Voyce’s colorful costumes—Silverman creates a world in which the Antrobus clan, on the precipice of extinction, manages to survive the worst of both nature and their fellow humans.

The large cast tackles these brazenly surrealistic characters with aplomb. Shuler Hensley’s Mr. Antrobus is charming in his dumbness, someone who knows men will always lead however unqualified they are. Damon Daunno, as son Henry, is remarkably adept at aping his father’s brainlessness while Amina Faye, as daughter Gladys, effectively embodies a shrewdness her father and brother will never know. Ruthie Anne Miles, as Mrs. Antrobus, sings beautifully (no surprise) and finds an uncomfortably devastating emotional core, especially in a brief scene when she screams in mortal pain over her dead infant son. 

Then there’s the Sabina of Micaela Diamond, a stage natural who, through a miraculous blend of charm, singing chops and comedic smarts, holds this unwieldy show together. 

November '25 Digital Week II

Streaming Releases of the Week 

Heaven 

(Lightyear)

With the untimely death of Diane Keaton, there was discussion about her legendary screen career, from her indelible collaborations with Woody Allen to her powerful performances in Reds and Shoot the Moon, among others. But Keaton was also an idiosyncratic filmmaker, and her first feature—this weirdly beguiling 1987 documentary—showed off her singular style in ways that were both affecting and head-shaking. This 75-minute exploration rounds up interview snippets with people who discuss their idea of an afterlife alongside dozens of carefully chosen clips from a wide array of movies including Metropolis and A Matter of Life and Death to create something uniquely, lightheartedly Keatonesque.

Sex Diva 

(Breaking Glass Pictures)

Writer-director Giulia Louise Steigerwalt smartly chronicles the fascinating career of Italian pornographer Riccardo Schicchi, who broke through in the ‘90s, helping to create celebrities of some of his female adult-film performers, including his wife Éva Henger and international superstars like Moana Pozzi, who died tragically of cancer at age 33. Steigerwalt’s film is amusing and dramatic, tongue-in-cheek and tragic, and has superb acting throughout, led by Pietro Castellito (Riccardo), Tesa Litvan (Éva) and Denise Capezza (Moana), with—as the calming influence of the Schicchi empire, Debora Attanasio—the magnificent Barbara Ronchi the emotional anchor of the story.

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

Def Leppard—Diamond Star Heroes: Live From Sheffield 

(Mercury)

For a triumphant return to its hometown of Sheffield in northern England in 2023, Def Leppard played the local soccer stadium for a 90-minute concert before tens of thousands of loyal fans that mixed the group’s biggest hits with a few deeper cuts; highlights are the early tracks “Bringing on the Heartbreak” and “Switch 625.” Singer Joe Elliott can still hit most of the high notes, impressive at his age (63 in ’23), and the band is tight and focused. A bonus concert, at a Sheffield club a few nights earlier, is a 65-minute trek through some of the same hits and a couple different true-fan faves like “Let It Go” and “Wasted.” The UHD video and surround sound are first-rate.

Him 

(Universal)

In this crudely if occasionally effective horror flick, college football player Cameron Cade—after being attacked by an unknown assailant after a game—goes to train privately before the pro combine with veteran NFL QB Isaiah White, whose unconventional methods result in sex, murder and a ridiculously risible final blood-letting. Tyriq Withers is a persuasive, even sympathetic Cam, while Marlon Wayans brings gravitas to the young quarterback’s mentor. For 95 minutes, co-writer/director Justin Tipping hammers everything home so literally that it turns what could have been an enjoyably guilty pleasure into a visually striking mess. It does look terrific on UHD; extras include an alternate ending, deleted scene, and featurettes.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

Burden of Dreams 

(Criterion)

Les Blank and Maureen Gosling’s perceptive 1982 documentary about the stupendous (and often stupid) lengths that director Werner Herzog went to making his rain forest epic Fitzcarraldo is far more focused than Herzog’s feature, another of the German filmmaker’s adventurous but stillborn studies of madness. A precursor to the making-of featurettes that populate so many home media releases, Blank and Lassiter’s chronicle catches many interesting filmmaking moments—and Herzog, always a charming figure, has himself made far more memorable documentaries than features. The film looks striking on Blu; extras comprise Blank’s, Gosling’s and Herzog’s insightful commentary, Blank’s amusing short Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980), deleted scenes and an archival Herzog interview. 

Pavarotti—The Lost Concert 

(Mercury/Universal)

In 1995, the great Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti gave a concert in Llangollen, a small town in Wales, 40 years after he won a vocal competition there, to keep a promise he made to return one day: the entire 75-minute concert, where he sang his greatest classical hits in front of tens of thousands, was recorded for posterity. His delight is evident from the start, and he’s in fine form throughout. The video looks decent and the sound is good; lone extra is a 52-minute documentary that follows Pavarotti on his journey to the concert, although some of it repeats performances we see in the actual show.

Rick and Morty—Complete 8th Season 

(Warner Bros)

The latest bonkers season begins with Morty and his sister Summer escaping the matrix into which their mad-scientist granddad Rick sent them after they took his phone charger—and that’s just the beginning of a series of dementedly witty episodes that features clones of the main characters that go off on further adventures. The superb voice cast and the offhandedly clever animation provide special comic (and cosmic) dimension to these eight episodes; lone extra is an inside the season featurette with creator Dan Harmon and others.

CD Releases of the Week

Leoš Janáček—The Makropulos Affair/The Diary of the One Who Disappeared 

(Somm)

Australian conductor Charles Mackerras (1925-2010) was an authority on the music of the Czech master Leoš Janáček (1854-1928), recording all of his major operas, especially in an unparalleled cycle for Decca Records back in the 1970s. One of Janáček’s towering masterpieces, The Makropulos Affair (better known as The Makropulos Case in America) had its London premiere in 1964 at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, under Mackerras’ meticulous direction, with Marie Collier an unforgettable-sounding heroine. Also on this two-disc set is a fine performance (from the BBC Studios in 1956) of the composer’s yearning song cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared, sung in an English translation by tenor Richard Lewis and contralto Maureen Forrester, with Ernest Lush on piano.

Kurt Weill/Alan Jay Lerner—Love Life 

(Capriccio)

This delectable 1948 time-traveling musical was the only collaboration of two musical geniuses: Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner. The amazing thing is that the finished work is so cohesive and flows so entertainingly, considering the outsized talents (and, no doubt, egos) of both men. This excellent recording of a recent production of Opera North—located in Leeds, England—features wonderful singing, especially by the leads, Quirijin de Long and Stephanie Carley, along with the large supporting cast and chorus; while the orchestra, under conductor James Holmes, sounds wonderful throughout. Too bad this is an audio recording—a video of this staging would be unbeatable.

November '25 Digital Week I

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

Nouvelle Vague 

(Netflix/Film at Lincoln Center)

I’ve never been a Richard Linklater fan—even his “serious” films like Boyhood and Last Flag Flying are better in theory than in execution—but even by those standards, his paean to Jean-Luc Godard and the French New Wave seems like a particularly desperate way to look relevant to film buffs. The result might wow film festival audiences but is too lightweight for any insight into a classic era in cinema history. And when Linklater introduces dozens of characters who have tangential or no relevance to the story being told of Godard directing his debut feature, 1959’s classic Breathless, the contrivance is eye-rolling. Some of the actors are good, like Zoey Deutsch’s charming Jean Seberg, while others are less so, like Guillaume Marbeck’s amusing but caricatured Godard and Aubry Dullin’s unmagnetic Jean-Paul Belmondo. 

Hedda 

(Amazon)

Despite a committed performance by Tessa Thompson as Henrik Ibsen’s fiery heroine, this shaky adaptation by writer-director Nia DaCosta seems content to willfully undermine Hedda Gabler, including making the pivotal character of Eilert—who was once in love with Hedda before ruining his life and their future—has become Eileen, for no good reason aside from giving Hedda a same-sex love interest. Despite her good work with Thompson, DaCosta has also directed Nina Hoss—a heretofore indestructible actress—to shamelessly overdo it as Eileen, further making a mockery of a pivotal relationship in Ibsen’s play. 

A House of Dynamite 

(Netflix)

Director Kathryn Bigelow can ratchet up tension effortlessly, as in her real-life military and political dramas The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty and Detroit. Although this drama about a missile fired from somewhere in Asia that’s headed toward a major American city and how everyone from the president to those responsible for retaliatory weapons responds is tautly made and vividly written (by Noah Oppenheim), its many moments of real-life scariness owe a great debt to past films like Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove. In fact, I couldn’t get the Kubrick classic out of my head, especially when Bigelow’s war room has a sign that reads “Big Board” and George C. Scott’s masterly comic performance in Strangelove reared its head. There’s excellent acting by Tracey Letts, Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba and Jared Harris, among others, but Bigelow and Oppenheim’s “beat the clock” precision leads to diminishing dramatic returns. 

4K/UHD Releases of the Week

Andrea Bocelli—The Celebration: 30th Anniversary 

(Mercury)

When beloved Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli wanted to commemorate three decades of his unparalleled singing career, so many celebrities and musicians came out to honor and perform with him that the celebration extended for three concerts in July 2024. This two-disc set, comprising nearly five hours of music, includes Bocelli singing not only greatest “hits” like “O Sole Mio” and “Ave Maria” but also duetting with everyone from the amazing American soprano Nadine Sierra and pianist Lang Lang to pop singers and actors Katharine McPhee, Jon Batiste, Russell Crowe and even Will Smith. The highlight, though, is the unlikely but unexpectedly emotional performance of Queen’s “Who Wants to Live Forever” with the band’s legendary guitarist Brian May. It’s captured beautifully in UHD, with first-rate surround sound.

Downton Abbey—The Grand Finale 

(Universal)

The final chapter in creator Julian Fellowes’ magnum opus about the interwoven lives of the Earl of Grantham’s family and their loyal (and occasionally disloyal) servants comes off as nothing more than a two-hour episode, but when it’s done this well by writer Fellowes, director Simon Curtis and the large cast led by Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern, Michelle Dockery and Laura Carmichael, no fan of the series will complain. Even a cameo by Noël Coward could have been a bit precious, but Arty Froushan’s understated portrayal works. There’s a sumptuous 4K transfer; extras include on-set featurettes and interviews along with a commentary by Curtis and McGovern.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 

(Warner Bros)

After 50 years, Randall P. McMurphy remains Jack Nicholson’s signature role: the intense stare, smirking line readings, energy to burn and sarcastic attitude are present and accounted for in his performance, which won him his first best actor Oscar. Milos Forman’s bittersweet tragicomedy about inmates at an Oregon insane asylum remains a touchstone film, mainly for the terrific supporting actors (Oscar winner Louis Fletcher, Brad Dourif, Will Samson, William Redfield, Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd). There’s also Forman's tenderness in presenting these people as victims of unfeeling bureaucracy, something unoriginal even in 1975 but which continues to reverberate strongly. Warners’ latest re-release includes a very good UHD transfer along with a few special features ported over from previous releases.

Blu-ray Release of the Week 

Lady Chatterley’s Lover 

(Icarus Films)

Marc Allegret’s tame 1955 adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s classic novel can only allude to Constance Chatterley’s sexual encounters with her husband’s gamekeeper Oliver, but the casting of Danielle Darrieux in one of literature’s greatest female roles at least makes this stuffy reimaging of the book watchable. Of course, Constance and Oliver have a happy ending, instead of the novel’s more uncertain denouement, and Darrieux shines throughout, outclassing her costars, Leo Genn (husband) and Erno Crisa (lover). The film looks wonderful in a new restoration, but there are no extras.

CD Releases of the Week

Pacifica Quartet—The Korngold Collection 

(Cedille)

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) was a musical prodigy, as the remarkably mature and inventive chamber works on this disc—played sensitively by the Pacifica Quartet and special guests—indisputably demonstrate. Korngold would later become famous when he moved to Hollywood and wrote some of the most memorable and rousing film scores ever, but several of these chamber-music gems (he wrote the superlative string sextet at age 17!) prove that he was a masterly composer from the start: the first quartet, piano quintet and sextet are as adventurous and confident in their musical language as quartets 2 and 3, which Korngold wrote years later. 

Schreker/Korngold/Krenek—Orchestral Works 

(BIS)

Franz Schreker (1878-1934), Erich Korngold (1897-1957) and Ernst Krenek (1900-91) were three of the most inventive composers of their time—but their wholly original, often innovative music went out of fashion after World War II, as serialism and atonality took over from their grandly ambitious Viennese sounds. But the works on this CD—performed beautifully by the Orchestre national des Pays de la Loire under conductor Sacha Goetzel—provide a glimpse into their accomplished artistry in the shimmering loveliness of Schreker’s overture to his magnificent opera Die Gezeichneten, the youthful dazzlement of the 16-year-old Korngold’s Sinfonietta, and the alternately festive and melancholy feeling of Krenek’s Potpourri. 

Off-Broadway Review—Leo McGann’s “The Honey Trap” at the Irish Rep

The Honey Trap

Written by Leo McGann

Directed by Matt Torney

Performances through November 23, 2025

Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 West 22nd Street, NY

Irishrep.org

Mathis and Hayden in The Honey Trap (photo: Carol Rosegg)

It’s rare that we see such a taut play as Leo McGann’s The Honey Trap, made even more unnervingly claustrophobic on the Irish Rep’s small stage. What begins as a memory play about Dave, a former British army corporal whose friend Bobby was killed in cloudy circumstances while both men were stationed in Northern Ireland in 1979, morphs bluntly but inevitably into a cat-and-mouse game between Dave and one of the women last seen with Bobby before his murder.

McGann shrewdly sets up The Honey Trap as a procedural of sorts: 45 years on, young American researcher Emily asks Dave questions about what happened in Belfast. Dave is initially put off because he feels that the right side (the British) has been largely ignored as Emily has spoken to mostly local witnesses. But her questions trigger his memories, which McGann reveals in illuminating flashbacks to Dave and Bobby at a local pub flirting with seemingly interested local lasses Kirsty and Lisa. But when Dave decides to leave the pub early after speaking to his wife on the phone, he convinces Bobby to stay with the women—with horrific results.

That Dave has been living with the guilt of abandoning Bobby is made manifest by his present-day behavior; he quickly snaps at and makes untoward comments about Emily, and—in the most unlikely moment in the play, but McGann needs it to happen so he can get to the second act—hires someone to ransack Emily’s hotel room to get copies of her taped interviews, from which he discovers the identities of the women from the pub. 

Dave finds out that they both went to America, where Kirsty died. But he tracks Lisa down to a café she owns and runs in Dublin, now as Sonia. Although Dave almost too easily gains her confidence, trust and willingness to go to dinner and bed with him after their first date, once they face off as mortal adversaries, McGann writes a breathless and insightful scene of memory, sorrow, forgiveness and revenge, complicating these mentally and morally exhausted individuals.

Matt Torney’s persuasive direction subtly allows the past to bleed into the present and vice versa, by way of Charlie Corcoran’s realistically mobile set, Michael Gottlieb’s authoritative lighting and James Garver’s appropriately chaotic sound design. Molly Ranson (Emily), Daniel Marconi (Young Dave), Harrison Tipping (Bobby), Doireann Mac Mahon (Kirsty) and Annabelle Zasowski (Lisa) are all quite good, while Michael Hayden, as Dave, is properly intense, exasperated or ironical as the situation requires.

But it’s Samantha Mathis, as Sonia—who was an IRA member when barely an adult and is now a soon-to-be grandmother and small business owner, living a dull working-class existence—who gives the play’s most exquisitely moving performance. Mathis owns the second act as soon as he enters, trading flirty barbs with Dave, who comes to her café posing as a dad dropping off his daughter at university. Mathis fully embodies the middle-aged divorcee who has lived a quiet life since she was in the IRA and is now desperate for any kind of excitement. The superbly staged, written and acted stand-off between Sonia and Dave is as riveting as anything I’ve seen in a theater in awhile. 

Off-Broadway Reviews—Two at the Public: John Leguizamo’s “The Other Americans” and Richard Nelson’s “When the Hurlyburly’s Done”

The Other Americans

Written by John Leguizamo; directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson

Performances through November 23, 2025

Public Theater, New York, NY

publictheater.org

Leguizamo and Velez in The Other Americans (photo: Joan Marcus)

Actor and writer John Leguizamo cut his teeth on solo shows that opened in small downtown venues and gradually moved uptown to Broadway after he became a known commodity. Those shows—including Sexaholix, Ghetto Klown and Latin History for Morons—feature his dead-on impressions, penetrating observations, juvenile humor and unabashed sentimentality.

For his debut play, The Other Americans, Leguizamo relies on sentimentality. He plays Nelson Castro, a Colombian-American who lives in Queens with his wife Patti and daughter Toni, while their son Nick is returning home from a hospital stay after a mental breakdown. Nelson has inherited the family business of laundromats along with his half-sister Norma, who has done a better job expanding her side of the business than he has. 

Since Nelson has always wanted to be upwardly mobile, he’s sweated blood and tears trying to get ahead, at work and in life. He moved his family out of Jackson Heights and into Forest Hills, which he assumed was a “better” part of Queens for his family. But Patti hated leaving her old neighborhood and friends, and Nick’s bullying began at his new school, which led to his mental fragility. Only Toni seems levelheaded; yet, although she is engaged to Eddie, who works with her dad, she’s considering leaving New York with Eddie to follow her aunt Norma to California and work at building a business out west.

The characters’ interactions and Nelson’s inability to reconcile his personal and professional lives bring to mind Death of a Salesman. He’s no Arthur Miller, but Leguizamo does write funny, even pointed dialogue. Yet, when Nelson’s desperation comes to the surface and it dawns on Patti that he won’t be able to choose his family over his work, the play bogs down in exposition, too-familiar conflicts and a surprising shallowness, culminating in a death telegraphed nearly from the start.

As Nelson, Leguizamo is always watchable, while the many women around him are enacted persuasively by Rebecca Jimenez (Toni), Sarah Nina Hayon (Patti’s friend Veronica), Rosa Evangelina Arrendono (Norma) and, most memorable of all, Luna Lauren Velez, whose Patti is a lively, antagonistic presence.

Trey Santiago-Hudson is game but one-note as Nick, while Trey’s father, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, directs smoothly on Arnulfo Maldonado’s striking apartment set, which ends up more authentic than the characters inhabiting it.

When the Hurlyburly’s Done

Written and directed by Richard Nelson

Performances through September 21, 2025

Public Theater, New York, NY

publictheater.org

A scene from When the Hurlyburly’s Done

With his cycle of plays that chronicled the Apple, Gabriel, and Michael families, Richard Nelson insightfully showed that everyday lives, relationships and conversations can be as artful and compelling as Shakespeare. Wilson’s latest, When the Hurlyburly’s Done, concerns six women who get together after a 1920 performance of Macbeth, the first production of any Shakespearean play in Ukraine. As it is now, war is in the background. 

The play comprises these women talking to one another about their families and their theater work and their  Macbeth director/lead actor, Les Furbas—a real theater eminence from Ukraine, and the (unseen) husband of one of the Macbeth actresses in Nelson’s play, but virtually unknown elsewhere—while they prepare and eat a meal and check on their (unseen) children. As usual for Nelson, two hours onstage equals two hours in these women’s lives, accentuating the feeling that we’re eavesdropping on an intelligent and humorous series of conversations while dinner is being prepared and eaten. The kitchen is filled with talk, laughter, tears, food, and even dance: in other words, real life.

  

Nelson’s writing is never didactic; his chamber dramas double as character studies, delightfully natural dialogue—a la Chekhov—demonstrating that quotidian talk provides as much character dimension as long monologues or showy confrontations. Even when the play stops, so three of the women can practice their scene as Macbeth’s Weird Sisters by performing a dance that gives a glimpse into their relationships with one another and with Shakespeare’s play, it is a wonderfully theatrical moment realized by the actresses and choreographer Charlotte Bydwell.

Too bad When the Hurlyburly’s Done ran only for a week at the Public. It must have been difficult to mount: in a post-performance talk, Nelson said he wrote the script in English and had it translated into Ukrainian, a language he does not speak. The superlative actresses—formidable individually and collectively—only arrived in New York right before the run started, so Bydwell had to plan the sisters’ choreography over Zoom calls. That we got it to see it at all, in its quietly haunting eloquence, is a tribute to the ennobling theater of Richard Nelson.

Broadway Review—James Graham’s New Play, “Punch”

Punch

Written by James Graham

Directed by Adam Penford

Through November 2, 2025

Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street, New York, NY

manhattantheatreclub.com/Livestream available

Will Harrison in James Graham’s play Punch (photo: Matthew Murphy)

Based on the true story of Jacob Dunne—who spent 14 months in prison for manslaughter after punching a stranger in a fit of anger—James Graham’s Punch is the kind of visceral, emotionally satisfying play we need more of on Broadway. 

In 2011, Jacob was a feisty 19-year-old living with his single Mum and younger brother Sam in a working-class Nottingham neighborhood. Hating school, Jacob spent time with his buddies, drinking away the afternoons. One day, after celebrating a pal’s birthday, Jacob was informed about an altercation; without thinking, he jumped into the fracas and coldcocked James, a man he didn’t know. Running away, Jacob didn’t realize that a single punch made James crumple to the ground, hit his head and never regain consciousness in the hospital, where his grieving, stunned parents, David and Joan, sadly watched him fade away.

After Jacob’s release from jail, his sympathetic probation officer Wendy is contacted by Nicola from the charity Remedi, whose goal is restorative justice, trying to give victims’ families some sense of closure. Jacob ends up corresponding and—in a tense but unforgettably realistic scene—with David and Joan, who try to understand why their beloved and only son had to die so meaninglessly. 

Jacob’s story is a rich ore for any playwright, and Graham makes few missteps dramatizing this stirring story of redemption. Although the play’s arc is familiar, as Jacob narrates his long and winding journey (he becomes a new man after prison, gaining unlikely allies in James’ parents), Graham’s savvy writing and Adam Penford’s resourceful staging turn what could have been a sentimental tale into something generous and humane. The first-rate production features Robbie Butler’s illuminating lighting design, Anna Fleische’s versatile set and evocative costumes, Leanne Pinder’s precise movement and Alexandra Faye Braithwaite’s atmospheric music/sound design.

Will Harrison is a perfectly pitched Jacob, effortlessly doing the heavy lifting of making seamless transitions as the story toggles between the hotheaded teenager and the mature adult atoning for his sin. Members of the flawless supporting cast—all of whom play multiple characters marvelously—include by the redoubtable Victoria Clark, who’s heartbreaking as Joan and hilarious as Jacob’s Nan, and Sam Robards, whose conflicted David is beautifully complex. Punch is a play that pointedly provokes.

October '25 Digital Week III

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Auction 

(Menemsha Films/Film Forum)

A painting by Austrian artist Egon Schiele turns up in the house of a young man, and André, an enterprising dealer from a famed Paris auction house, discovers that it was taken from its rightful owner by the Nazis in 1939, and the owner’s heirs are making a claim to it. Director Pascal Bonitzer’s accomplished drama unfolds like a slow-burning thriller, but it’s also a clear-eyed look at ethics and morality in a world that’s anything but black and white. Bonitzer and top actors like Alex Lutz (as André), the great Léa Drucker (as Bertina, his colleague and ex) and Louise Chevillotte (as his oddball intern) help make Auction smart and involving from the get-go. 

It Was Just an Accident 

(Neon/Film at Lincoln Center)

The latest from Iranian master Jafar Panahi—who has made ironical dramas about contemporary Iranian life for the past 30 years, since his debut, The White Balloon—is possibly his most incendiary yet, confronting defenders of the current authoritarian regime through their vicious actions against those in opposition. Vahid, who was arrested years earlier by an unapologetic pawn of the regime who’s nicknamed Peg Leg, realizes his torturer is living an ordinary family life and decides to kidnap him—but then hesitates about what to do next. Suspenseful and tense sequences abound, including a few truly stunning one-shot moments that make the flamboyant visuals of One Battle After Another look like amateurish meandering. Panahi filmed this surreptitiously—and illegally, according to incensed government officials—but every frame is filled with unparalleled urgency and artistry.

The Mastermind 

(Mubi/Film at Lincoln Center)

Kelly Reichardt’s latest stripped-down anti-comic drama is crammed with contrivances that show a filmmaker who’s run out of ideas. When James, a disaffected, unemployed father, decides to steal four Arthur Dove paintings from a Massachusetts art museum, he soon finds himself in trouble with his family, the mob and the law (duh). Although Jack O’Connor gives an appealing hangdog quality to James, a man who doesn’t quite know what his American dream but is desperate to try anything to achieve it, there’s not much else to recommend this shockingly sloppy movie. Rob Mazurek’s rhythmic score is more enervating than tense, while Alana Haim as Terri, James’ wife, is as inexpressive as she was in Paul Thomas Anderson’s worst movie, Licorice Pizza. Though set in 1970, at the height of the Vietnam, evidence of the war is scant until there’s a climactic peace demonstration in which James gets his comeuppance; it’s one of the most leaden bits of dramatic irony I’ve seen in a long time but is the perfect ending for such a lazy film.

4K/UHD Releases of the Week

Deep Crimson 

(Criterion)

Mexican master Arturo Ripstein’s take on The Honeymoon Killers is a fairly lurid, fairly sensational and fairly interesting crime melodrama—except that all those “fairly”s add up to a well-done missed opportunity. There are some very good, even memorable moments like each of the murder sequences, which are treated in a matter-of-fact fashion that’s all the more disturbing. And Ripstein’s vivid visual sense is made manifest by his subtly roving camera that moves among the criminals and their prey. But a routine atmosphere soon settles in, and by the final scenes of the couple’s capture and execution, what started dynamically ends in lurching fits and starts. Even David Mansfield’s chamber score seems out of place. There’s an exceptional 4K transfer; extras are interviews with Ripstein and cowriter Paz Alicia Garciadiego along with a post-screening Q&A they gave.

Weapons 

(Warner Bros)

In Zach Cregger’s convoluted thriller, new teacher Justine is the prime suspect when all of the young students in her classroom disappear one night, except for one—but there’s much more to the seemingly inscrutable happenings once she, Archer (father of one of the children) and policeman Paul (a married ex she’s still sleeping with) start snooping around. Cregger cheats right from the start—shots of the kids running through the streets at night have an eerily similar look to the famous photo of a Vietnamese child burned by napalm, which I hope isn’t intentional—and he ends up telling a familiar tale of a witch’s spell that destroys all in its nonsensical path. The acting by Julia Garner (Julie), Josh Brolin (Archer), Alden Ehrenreich (Paul) and an unrecognizable Amy Madigan (the witchy villain) partially elevates Cregger’s derivative script and direction. The film looks impressive on UHD; extras are short on-set featurettes and interviews.

Blu-ray Release of the Week

School in the Crosshairs 

(Cult Epics)

Japanese auteur Nobuhiko Obayashi, whose unclassifiable but classic 1977 magnum opus House is his best-known film, made this even more surreal sci-fi parody-cum-homage in 1981. It follows the exploits of a high-school student (played by Hiroko Yakushimaru, a teen heartthrob at the time) who discovers she has telekinetic powers one day at school and soon realizes that a malevolent alien invasion is imminent. Obayashi’s droll social commentary comes to the fore when several students’ minds begin to be controlled by extraterrestrials, stifling free speech; a welcome sense of playfulness in Obayashi’s directing and writing is on display, as it was in House. The restored film looks quite good on Blu; extras include a commentary and visual essay.

DVD Release of the Week 

Niki 

(Distrib Films US)

Charlotte Le Bon’s fiery performance as French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002), who overcame incestuous abuse as a young girl from her father—which led to mental health issues for which things like shock therapy were deemed appropriate treatment—to find her voice in painting, sculptures and collages, centers this conventional but well-made portrait of the artist as a young woman. Making her directorial debut, Céline Sallette imbues time-honored devices like split screens and title cards with remarkable freshness, but it’s all at the service of telling an honest account of a difficult story that ultimately shows how art can be a way to overcome trauma.

CD Release of the Week

Bacewicz—String Quartet No. 4, Piano Quintet No. 1 

(Evil Penguin)

It’s heartening that Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-69), the first 20th-century Polish female composer to earn deserved—if belated—recognition for her startlingly original scores, has in the past few had releases of several excellent discs of her music, even though they have primarily been recordings of her highly expressive orchestral works. This disc features two of her most exhilarating chamber pieces, the Piano Quintet No. 1—which begins with one of the composer’s most haunting musical themes—and the String Quartet No. 4, which was composed in 1951, amazingly just a year before the quintet. The Kinski Quartet, with marvelous accompaniment from pianist Jâms Coleman in the quintet, gives these superlative pieces vigorous workouts alongside a beating heart.

October '25 Digital Week II

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

F1—the Movie 

(Warner Bros)

Brad Pitt’s laconic charm is on display throughout this overlong commercial for Formula 1 racing: for two and a half hours, director Joseph Kosinski takes us on a relentlessly formulaic journey through several races, each of which writer Ehren Kruger tries his damnedest to make singular rather than repetitive. Kosinski and Kruger fail, for the most part, while the off-track scenes of Pitt as retired daredevil driver Sonny (who comes out of retirement), Damson Idris as young hotshot driver Joshua, Javier Bardem as team owner Ruben (who talks Sonny into returning) and Kerry Condon as Kate, the brains of the outfit (who—of course—falls for Sonny against her better judgment) are pretty ordinary. It’s shot and paced efficiently and slickly, and if you’re a fan of cars flying around a track at 200 miles an hour, then your—um—mileage may vary. The film has a sharply detailed 4K transfer; extras comprise several making-of featurettes.

Message in a Bottle 

(Mercury Studios)

Set to 27 Police and solo songs by Sting, this story of the global refugee crisis is told through the mesmerizing movement of Kate Prince’s dance company, ZooNation—and, as jukebox shows go, it’s closer to Twyla Tharp’s take on Billy Joel’s catalog, Movin’ Out, than to the Abba megahit, Mamma Mia. Prince and dramaturg Lolita Chakrabarti have fashioned a narrative of sorts from which to hang Sting’s words and music, which have mostly been extensively rearranged and rerecorded. Whatever one thinks of how Prince and music supervisor and arranger Alex Lacamoire manipulate Sting’s tunes to fit the contrived narrative—sometimes a disservice to the songs, other times a disservice to the story—the dancing of Prince’s company, which specializes in effortlessly combining contemporary and hip-hop styles, is breathtaking. The UHD video and surround-sound audio are tremendous; also included is a Blu-ray of the performance. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street—7-Film Collection 

(Warner Bros)

Wes Craven’s 1983 horror entry has gained stature over the past four decades despite being simply a crudely effective horror film about a teenage girl’s nightmares getting intruded on by the now-legendary Freddy Krueger, who enters the real world and starts a killing spree. No one expected six sequels and spinoffs over the next 11 years, but that is what we got—most are even more forgettable, but each has its moments of dream-like lunacy, whether it’s the cleverly bizarre murders or the sixth installment’s desperate use of 3-D for the finale (yes, 3-D glasses are included in this set). All seven films have an impressive hi-def look; the many extras include commentaries, interviews, featurettes, music videos and alternate endings.

In-Theater Release of the Week

Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 

(Icarus Films/Film Forum)

From the director of 2011’s The Black Power Mixtape, Sweden’s Göran Hugo Olsson, comes another imposingly thorough archival collage that, if nothing else, becomes a valuable historical document of the Israel-Palestine conflict through the unique lens of Swedish journalists in the region. Olsson has assembled footage, shown in this 3-1/2 hour film in mostly chronological order, from Sweden’s state television network SVT’s wide-ranging coverage of the always charged relationship between Israelis and Palestinians that display both the misunderstandings and missteps that have trailed that region and its people for so long. Whether Olsson agrees with what is being presented and how is not the focus; there is no editorializing (which some might perceive as a copout). Instead, it’s an absorbing chronicle of what viewers in Sweden saw on their TV sets over a period of three decades from a network whose stated mission was impartiality in news coverage. It’s a long way from “We report. You decide.”

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

The Bad Guys 2 

(Universal)

This intermittently amusing sequel to the hit 2022 animated adventure again follows a squad of reformed crooks (Wolf, Shark, Piranha, Tarantula and Snake) who have further misadventures. Director Pierre Perifel hits on some colorful visual inventiveness that mirrors the first film while Yoni Brenner and Etan Cohen’s script has ricocheting one-liners that at times hit their intended targets. What propels it all is the exuberant voice cast: Sam Rockwell, Marc Maron, Anthony Ramos, Craig Robinson and Awkwafina as the bad guys and Zazie Beetz, Danielle Brooks, Natasha Lyonne and Maria Bakalova as the bad girls. There’s a bright Blu-ray image; extras include a new short, Little Lies and Alibis; deleted scenes; making-of featurettes and interviews.

Peter Gabriel—Taking the Pulse 

(Mercury Studios)

In 2010, Peter Gabriel released an album, Scratch My Back, his cover versions of favorite songs with orchestral accompaniment—on the ensuing tour (which I saw at Radio City Music Hall), Gabriel played those covers as well as his own songs performed with the New Blood Orchestra. This concert from that tour, filmed in Verona, Italy, at the venerable outdoor amphitheater Arena di Verona, comprises only Gabriel’s songs and is all the better for it. Hearing classics “San Jacinto,” “Red Rain” and “Darkness” backed by the power of a full orchestra (led by conductor Ben Foster) is a rare privilege. The highlights are “Blood of Eden” and “Don’t Give Up,” duets with vocalist Ane Brun, who impressively takes the Sinead O’Connor and Kate Bush parts. The hi-def video looks fine, and the surround-sound audio is fantastic.

When Fall Is Coming 

(Music Box Films)

Prolific French director François Ozon’s latest follows the travails of retired grandmother Michelle, who’s been banned from seeing her grandson Lucas after he has an accident while visiting her rural home—but when her daughter Valérie is suddenly gone from the picture, she must deal with that unexpected absence from their lives. There’s a welcome matter-of-factness to Ozon’s storytelling, but it’s too one-note when a fateful twist upends everyone and everything. On the positive side, Ozon gets uncluttered performances from his cast, led by Hélène Vincent (Michelle), Ludivine Seignier (Valérie) and Josiane Balasko (Michelle’s friend and neighbor Marie-Claude).

DVD Release of the Week

Peanuts—Ultimate TV Specials Collection 

(Warner Bros)

What better way to celebrate the immortal Charlie Brown and his pals and commemorate their creator Charles Schulz’s genius than with this comprehensive collection of 40 Peanuts television specials, from A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)—still the greatest animated TV special of them all—to the most recent, Happiness Is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown (2011). If you have other favorites, they’re probably here, like It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966) and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973); along with all 40 specials on five discs, there’s also a collectible 28-page booklet.

CD Release of the Week 

Walton/Britten/Tippett—Works for Piano and Orchestra 

(BIS)

Vibrant works for piano and orchestra by three prominent 20th-century British composers make up this luminous-sounding disc with the exceptional pianist Clare Hammond as soloist. First is William Walton’s Sinfonia Concertante, a sprightly 1927 work that Walton revised in 1943; Hammond beautifully performs the revision, which makes clear this is less a concerto than a symphonic work with a prominent piano part. Benjamin Britten’s 1940 Diversions was originally written for piano left-hand for Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm in World War I. Hammond and the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by George Bass get the tricky balance between the soloist and the orchestral players exactly right. Finally, there’s Michael Tippett’s 1953 concerto, one of the composer’s most exuberant works: again Hammond and the orchestra perform with passion, alternating between power and finesse throughout.

October '25 Digital Week I

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Are We Good? 

(Utopia)

Comedian and podcaster Marc Maron finds most of his material from his own life, however personal and tragic, and Steven Feinartz’s fly-on-the-wall documentary follows Maron during the COVID lockdown and tentative steps back onstage. Informed by the biggest tragedy of his life, the sudden and unexpected death of his partner, director Lynn Shelton, at age 54 of leukemia in May 2020, Maron is shown at his most vulnerable—that is, if he can be even more vulnerable than he is onstage. This is a remarkably candid film about a remarkably candid man.

Bone Lake 

(Bleecker Street)

What begins as an unoriginal but enticing roundelay of two couples staying at a secluded B&B they apparently reserved at the same time soon devolves into a risible thriller comprising sex, jealousy, betrayal and survival after it’s revealed one couple is definitely not whom they seem. Director Mercedes Bryce Morgan and writer Joshua Friedlander rely too much on cleverness, but right from the opening—the grisly killing of two nude people in the woods in what turns out to be a visualization of a character’s novel—they pile on lazy horror-flick clichés, which hampers the otherwise able acting by Maddie Hasson, Alex Roe, Andra Nechita and Marco Pigossi.  

The Ice Tower 

(Yellow Veil Pictures)

Not much happens in Lucile Hadžihalilović’s visually luminous but dramatically opaque drama about the unusual relationship between famous actress Cristina (the enchantingly chilly Marion Cotillard) and teenage orphan Jeanne (the excellent Clara Pacini) after they meet on the set of a new adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen. As in her earlier films, Hadžihalilović psychoanalyzes her characters in symbolic surroundings; Jonathan Ricquebourg’s exquisite photography, Nassim Gordji Tehrani’s razor-sharp editing and Julia Irribarria’s alluring production design fill in the blanks in Hadžihalilović and Geoff Cox’s script. Admittedly, the final momentous shots say more in their brevity and silence than the previous 110 minutes.

Jacob’s Ladder 

(Rialto Pictures)

The combination of Bruce Joel Rubin’s script laden with Christian symbolism and director Adrian Lyne’s visuals that toggle between tantalizing and turgid makes this often soggy 1990 drama about a Vietnam vet whose postwar existence in New York City may or may not be real creepily effective. The special effects have an old-school feel, Maurice Jarre’s score worms its way into your unconscious, Tim Robbins is a properly intense hero, Elizabeth Pena (who sadly died in 2014 of alcoholism at age 55) is perfectly cast as his uncomprehending girlfriend, and there’s a solid (and surprisingly uncredited) appearance by a pre-Home Alone Macaulay Culkin as Robbins’ son. It’s basically a 105-minute Twilight Zone episode with an unsurprising but potent twist.

Ju Dou 

(Film Movement Classics)

This 1990 collaboration between Chinese master Zhang Yimou (who codirected with Yang Fengliang) and his then-muse Gong Li is an erotic, authentically grimy adaptation of a Liu Heng novel that nods to The Postman Always Rings Twice in its story of a young wife, saddled with an old and impotent husband, whose affair with one of their farm workers has moral and mortal repercussions. Shot in the square Academy ratio that provides an ideally claustrophobic atmosphere, this blunt morality tale might be too on the nose in its color symbolism, but the magnificent presence of Gong Li as the title character is prime compensation. 

The Librarians 

(8 Above)

Kim A. Snyder’s timely exposé shows how fascist organizations like Moms for Liberty are destroying our country from within: under the guise of protecting kids, these groups—funded by dark right-wing money—are taking over school boards and helping ban books about subjects they don’t like, like LGBTQ+ and slavery, from school library shelves. If there weren’t so many heroic librarians fighting back—including several who appear on camera, a couple of them anonymously—however pyrrhic some victories are, then this battle would have already been lost. But it might be too late, since Trump 2 is becoming even worse than Trump 1. 

Streaming Release of the Week 

Stella—A Life 

(Film Movement)

Stella Goldschlag’s story is sobering: a German Jew who first used forged documents to help her family escape Nazi prosecution, she soon discovered survival depended on turning in Jews herself to keep the Nazis at bay. This sordid tale, dramatically and morally complicated, needs a subtle hand to explore its terrible but all too human consequences. Yet director-cowriter Kilian Riedhof and cowriters Marc Blöbaum and Jan Braren only skim the surface of this rich ore; there’s a complexity and richness that’s missing, which makes the admittedly striking final image less powerful that it should be. Paula Beer’s tremendously nuanced portrayal of Stella—she is impossible to look away from—helps ground the drama in her flawed but fascinating humanity.  

Blu-ray Release of the Week

Lohengrin 

(C Major)

Though German composer Richard Wagner (1813-83) was best known for his Ring cycle, this earlier opera is among his finest—it follows Lohengrin, a mysterious knight, who defends Elsa when she’s under suspicion for her brother’s death in a town rent by political upheaval and hostility. In this 2024 Vienna State Opera staging by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito, Elsa is not the innocent love interest Wagner created her as. But even a risible ending doesn’t ruin a magisterial music drama, with supple orchestra and choral work under Christian Thielemann’s baton and accomplished lead performances by British tenor David Butt Philip (Lohengrin), Swedish soprano Malin Byström (Elsa), German baritone Martin Gantner (villain Telramund) and Italian soprano Anja Kempe (Telramund’s wife Ortrud). There’s topnotch hi-def video and audio.

CD Release of the Week 

Bach Cello Suites—Anastasia Kobekina 

(Sony Classical)

The cover of Anastasia Kobekina’s superb new disc of the complete Bach unaccompanied cello suites—whose towering influence has only grown in the three centuries since they’ve been written—sums up how she performs these works: she sits holding a camera as if about to take a selfie. That’s how she approaches the six suites, as a self-portrait, since playing them tells as much about the performer as about the master who created them. And it tells us that the 31-year-old Russian cellist is the perfect artist to both draw out the mysteries at the heart of these suites as well as leave their ultimate interpretations to the listener.