Broadway Musical Review—“The Queen of Versailles” with Kristin Chenoweth

The Queen of Versailles

Music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, book by Lindsey Terrentino

Directed by Michael Arden; choreographed by Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant

Performances through December 21, 2025

St. James Theater, 246 West 44th Street, NY

queenofversaillesmusical.com

Kristin Chenoweth in The Queen of Versailles (photo: Julieta Cervantes)

Proof that lightning does not strike twice, the latest Stephen Schwartz musical starring Kristen Chenoweth already posted its premature closing date on Broadway, while an earlier collaboration you might have heard about, Wicked, keeps going. But The Queen of Versailles is a cautionary tale for collaborators about what not to do when creating a Broadway musical.

It’s to Schwartz’s credit to try something original, and the story of Jackie Siegel, as seen in the eponymous 2012 documentary film directed by Lauren Greenfield, certainly qualifies. (Has there been another Broadway musical based on a documentary?) Greenfield’s film explores Jackie’s and ultra-rich husband David’s conspicuous consumption with both sympathy and bemusement, something difficult to finesse in a big-budget stage musical. 

So Lindsey Ferrentino’s book and Schwartz’s songs try and have it both ways. We root for Jackie as she lucks into getting rich after some bad decisions, but as she and David start to throw around their money on a mansion nicknamed Versailles, it becomes increasingly difficult to spend time with them, especially since David is so heartless a millionaire villain, and F. Murray Abraham plays him as a comic caricature.

Chenoweth, on the other hand, remains enjoyable and funny, which makes Jackie less nuanced and, when she’s in financial and personal doldrums—the 2008 recession brings mansion construction to a halt, then her teenage daughter Victoria commits suicide—there’s a gaping dramatic hole that no amount of teary songs—including the Act I finale, “This Is Not the Way,” which Chenoweth carries effortlessly—can fill.

This might have worked shorter, making Jackie’s roller-coaster ride faster. Instead, it lumbers around for a bloated 2-1/2 hours, with sympathy gone and dramatic comeuppance obvious. Even appearances Louis XIV to make explicit the parallels between the Versailles of the 17th and 21st centuries are less amusingly pointed as they recur.

Needless to say, director Michael Arden’s slick staging can’t reconcile the inherent messiness of the subject and Schwartz’s and Terrentino’s treatment, while the first-rate trappings—Dane Laffery’s clever sets and video design, Christian Cowan’s tongue-in-cheek costumes, Natasha Katz’s brilliant lighting—only obscure the dramatic emptiness.

Chenoweth, of course, dominates any show she’s in, but that only shows up the rest of the cast. Abraham’s David has a few amusingly nasty moments and Nina White’s Victoria has the needed pathos, but they are shunted aside by the hurricane at the center. Even though Chenoweth gives it her all, she can’t save The Queen of Versailles from being guillotined.

December '25 Digital Week II

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Hamnet 

(Focus Features)

Chloé Zhao has made an enveloping adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novelistic flight of fancy about how the death of 11-year-old son Hamnet affected William Shakespeare and his wife Anne (in the film, Agnes)—directly leading to the Bard’s most celebrated tragedy (which includes the ghost of a beloved father and many ruminations about dying by the protagonist), Hamlet. Beautifully filmed and filled with more nature shots than anything by Terrence Malick—who should get a co-directing credit—Hamnet is at its most persuasive showing how death was perceived four centuries ago, as personal and up-close rather than clinical and distant. The acting is immaculate, especially by Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Paul Mescal as Will.

Happy Holidays 

(Film Movement)

Palestinian director Scandar Copti’s drama about the interactions of several family members through four interlocking stories set in Jerusalem insightfully shows how women are still often treated as second-class citizens in supposedly enlightened patriarchal societies. A Jewish woman, Shirley, decides to keep her baby over her Palestinian ex Rami’s objection; Rami’s mother Hanan deals with financial difficulties that are exacerbated by an accident involving her daughter Fifi, who’s having a secret affair; and Shirley’s sister Miri, dealing with her teenage daughter’s depression, tries convincing Shirley to have an abortion. The acting, by a mainly amateur cast, is unforgettably real in front of Copti’s vigorously probing camera.

Little Trouble Girls 

(Kino Lorber)

Slovenian writer-director Urška Djukić’s auspicious debut is set in a girls’ school where the members of the choir—including shy 16-year-old Lucija—become friends and adversaries, finding humor in and mocking each other’s budding sexuality as well as dealing with their mercurial male chorus master. Without condescension, Djukić shows how these teenagers act together and separately, while her excellent young actresses are led by Jara Sofija Ostan, who gives a star-making performance as Lucija. 

Rosemead 

(Vertical)

Lucy Liu is astonishingly good as Irene, a terminally ill Chinese mother in San Gabriel Valley, California, who’s worried about her schizophrenic 17-year-old son Joe’s future without her in director Eric Lin and writer Marilyn Fu’s heartbreaking study that’s enormously sympathetic but also unrelievedly depressing. Liu’s wrenching portrayal, superbly complemented by Lawrence Shou as Joe, leads to a shocking but understandable final decision that makes this film hard to shake.

In-Theater/Streaming Release of the Week 

Man Finds Tape 

(Magnolia)

In this cleverly constructed found-footage thriller, documentary filmmaker Lynn returns to her small Texas hometown to study footage that captures weird phenomena happening to locals that no one can remember—and that’s before she has to deal with the legacy of her brother and a newly-arrived stranger. Directors Peter Hall and Paul Gandersman don’t do anything particularly original here, but their eerie premise and the terrific acting by Kelsey Pribilski as Lynn give this just enough to make it weirdly watchable.  

Streaming Release of the Week

After the Hunt 

(Amazon MGM)

The latest mild provocation from Italian director Luca Guadagnino is a soggy #MeToo drama that plays out on the Yale campus as Margaret, a bright student of professor Alma, accuses another professor, Hank—with whom Alma has been carrying on an affair under her therapist husband Frederik’s nose—of sexual abuse, triggering an investigation that could ultimately derail Alma’s chances of getting tenure. There’s some good material in Laura Garrett’s script, but the personal relationships are navigated by Guadagnino in a way that eschews depth for obviousness. The performances follow suit: Ayo Edebiri (Margaret), Julia Roberts (Alma), Michael Stuhlbarg (Frederik) and Andrew Garfield (Hank) give solid but uninspired portrayals, further stranding what aspires to be a mature drama. 

CD Release of the Week 

Saint-Saëns— L’ancêtre

(Palazzetto Bru Zane)

French composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) is best known for his glorious Biblical grand opera, Samson et Delilah, which premiered in 1877; nearly three decades later, he wrote this lyrical opera set in Corsica that has much beautiful music but a less well thought-out plot. Happily, listening to this richly produced audio recording means that one can elide the hackneyed story and characters and concentrate on the imposing orchestral and vocal writing.  Kazuki Yamada conducts the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and the Philharmonic Chorus of Tokyo in a first-rate performance that includes a top-notch group of singers led by Jennifer Holloway, Gaëlle Arquez, Hélène Carpentier, Julien Henric, Michael Arivony, Matthieu Lécroart. As always with Bru Zane releases, this two-CD set houses an impressive 127-page booklet that comprises the libretto and several essays about the opera, including a report from Saint-Saëns’ most famous student, composer Gabriel Fauré, about its 1906 premiere in Monte Carlo.

Off-Broadway Play Review—Martyna Majok’s “Queens”

Queens

Written by Martyna Majok; directed by Trip Cullman

Performances through December 7, 2025

Manhattan Theatre Club, 131 West 55th St, New York, NY

manhattantheaterclub.com

Marin Ireland and Anna Chlumsky in Queens (photo: Valerie Terranova)

In her sprawling, messy play Queens, Martyna Majok shows real sympathy for and insight into the women—mostly immigrants, living at one time or another in a basement apartment in the eponymous borough—whose relationships, hopes and fears ring even truer now during the second Trump administration than when the play premiered, during the first Trump administration.

Renia, from Poland, runs things, first helping out the (unseen) landlord after arriving then eventually taking over the place herself. Other women drift in and out over the years the play covers (from the months after the terrorist attacks in 2001 to the early summer of 2017), including Pelagiya, from Belarus; Aamani, from Afghanistan; and Isabela, from Honduras. Later, Isabela’s daughter Glenys shows up as well as Inna, a young Ukrainian woman looking for her mother, who left Inna back home for a new life in America, and another woman from Poland, Agata, who gives Renia a surprising update about her family.

Queens opens with a bang—literally, as the newly-arrived Inna confronts Renia on the street and punches her in anger—and soon settles into a realistically belligerent tone, as these women remain on edge even during good times. Personal difficulties, biases, disagreements and misunderstandings rear their heads, and alternating events 16 years apart show that these women are always dealing with external political forces beyond their control.

Majok smartly concentrates on the women as individuals and not as symbols, although the charged atmosphere makes it almost inevitable that soapbox speechifying is included. But the strength and solidarity of the play’s eight women are never in doubt, even as pettiness or insecurity makes them antagonists.

One of those eight appears only in a flashback to Ukraine, just prior to Inna leaving for the U.S. Inna babysits for Lera, who returns home from an evening out trying to impress young American men in the hopes that she can join them in America. Instead, Inna hijacks Lera’s would-be sugar daddy in an implausible scene and ends up being the one to leave Ukraine, although she quickly realizes she’s been conned.

Happily, Majok otherwise keeps contrivance to a minimum and, even if some of what the women face is melodramatic, it often rings true. The production couldn’t be bettered. Trip Cullman directs resourcefully on Marsha Ginsberg’s realistically bedraggled set of the women’s apartment, lit magisterially by Ben Stanton. And the eight performers are splendid, led by Marin Ireland’s stoic Renia; this is a cast so authentic individually and collectively as to bring out the humanity of the play more subtly than Majok. 

Kudos to them for not only mastering difficult Eastern European accents, for the most part, but also learning to speak Polish (Ireland and Anna Chlumsky, as Agata) and Ukrainian (Julia Lester, as Inna, and Andrea Syglowski, as Lera). Despite its faults, Queens is a memorable theatrical melting pot.

December '25 Digital Week I

CD Release of the Week 

Taylor Momsen’s Pretty Reckless Christmas 

(Fearless)

Sure, it’s a calculated move, but why not? Taylor Momsen—lead singer of one of the best rock bands around right now, the Pretty Reckless—played, at age 7, Cindy Lou Who in the annoying movie adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, with Jim Carrey in green prosthetics as the dastardly villain. A quarter-century later, Momsen returns to full-throatedly sing “Where Are You Christmas,” which she warbled in the movie (and which Faith Hill made into a holiday perennial). 

The new version, backed by her band, rocks nicely but would have been even better if they really cranked it up. It returns at the end, slightly changed, as “Christmas, Why Can’t I Find You,” which allows the adult Momsen to cede her EP’s opening and closing voices to her younger self. The other songs are fun holiday originals: the finger-snapping “I Wanna Be Your Christmas Tree,” with its hilarious double entendres like “Stuff that turkey with your Pepperidge Farm/Cover it in gravy and all your charm”; the irresistible power pop of “Christmas Is Killing Me,” with its immortal couplet “Christmas is killing me/Someone stop Mariah Carey”; and the, well, very bluesy “Blues for Christmas,” all of which let Momsen show off her incredibly versatile voice. But now that she’s gotten Cindy Lou out of her system, here’s hoping the new year brings a new Pretty Reckless album on the order of the group’s killer recent single, “For I Am Death.”  

In-Theater Release of the Week

A Private Life 

(Sony Pictures Classics)

Jodie Foster gives an impressive performance, primarily in French, in Rebecca Zlotowski’s typically genre-bending study of a divorced analyst dealing with professional and personal crises: she has a strained relationship with her son, his wife and their young baby, while she follows up on her suspicions of a longtime patient’s supposed suicide. Always good with actors, Zlotowski follows suit here: supporting Foster’s accomplished turn are Daniel Auteil as her frisky ex, Vincent Lacoste as their chip-on-his-shoulder son, Virginie Efira as the dead patient and Mathieu Almaric as her grieving widower. But the script by Zlotowski, Anne Berest and Gaëlle Macé has characterization problems and plot holes that prevent the movie from really taking flight.

Streaming Releases of the Week 

The Best You Can 

(Sony)

Pairing real-life husband-and-wife Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick as Stan (a single father with a musician daughter, Sammi) and Cynthia (married to the much older Warren—who’s beginning to show signs of dementia) has its charms, especially in the easy rapport of the couple’s scenes together in what may or may not become an affair. Yet writer-director Michael J. Weithorn doesn’t know what to do with the rest of his sitcomish comedy-drama, so good actors like Judd Hirsch (Warren) and Brittany O’Grady (Sammi) are left adrift. 

Reflection in a Dead Diamond 

(Shudder)

The latest contraption from Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani—French husband and wife writers-directors based in Belgium—blends James Bond spoofing with bloody revenge melodrama: a retired spy, John D (played by Fabio Testi and Yannick Renier as his older and younger incarnations), remembers his youthful exploits when his fascinating new neighbor disappears. Cattet and Forzani always bring their A game to their often dazzling visuals, although they inevitably overdose on gorgeously composed shots at the expense of their tale. 

WTO/99 

(Foghorn Features)

In 1999, Seattle was the location for a meeting of the nascent World Trade Organization, which looked to negotiate new trade deals to link the world economy and generate prosperity, but strange bedfellows like unions, chambers of commerce and liberal activists declared the WTO antithetical to human rights, the environment and labor and came to protest in the tens of thousands. Director Ian Bell has painstakingly assembled a compelling and eye-opening look back at living history: that volatile moment presaging the unholy mess we find ourselves in, told exclusively through archival footage from TV news reports and amateur home videos.

Blu-ray Release of the Week

The Long Walk 

(Lionsgate)

Stephen King’s short novel about a dystopian U.S. where the eponymous event takes place, with the lone survivor winning a jackpot—an unoriginal but workable premise on the page—has been turned into an enervating film by director Francis Lawrence and writer JT Mollner, who do little with the anti-dramatic storyline of young men walking alongside soldiers who shoot anyone who falls off the pace. Flashbacks to our main protagonist Garraty’s home life with mom and dad (Judy Greer and Josh Hamilton, both wasted) and occasional closeups of blown-off heads don’t alleviate the tedium. Cooper Hoffman (Garraty) and a cast including Charlie Plummer and David Jonsson try to bring individuality to this faceless crew, but Mark Hamill’s cartoonish antagonist makes that nearly impossible. The film looks great on Blu; lone extra is a 75-minute making-of documentary.

November '25 Digital Week III

Streaming Releases of the Week 

Anniversary 

(Lionsgate)

A political film that demands to be treated seriously is a rarity nowadays, but this apocalyptic drama, slickly directed by Jan Komasa from a hamfisted script by Lori Rosene-Gambino, pretends to be a daring cautionary tale when it’s only a pedestrian treatment of how a sea change in American politics (called, blandly, “the change”) takes its toll on an affluent family. The country is turned upside down along with the Taylors, but despite politically motivated killings and a suicide bombing, little of it rings true or plausible, mainly because it fails at being clinical and probing. Convincing performances by Diane Lane (mom), Kyle Chandler (dad), Zoey Deutsch, McKenna Grace and Madeline Brewer (daughters), Dylan O’Brien (son), and Phoebe Dynevor (son’s wife and main catalyst) can only do so much. 

Frankenstein 

(Netflix)

Mary Shelley’s classic Gothic thriller remains unnerving and relevant, with movie adaptations as far flung as James Whale’s 1931 talkie that made a star of monster Boris Karloff and Mel Brooks’ explosively funny but faithful parody-cum-homage, 1974’s Young Frankenstein. Now Guillermo del Toro lumbers into view with a typically overwrought, stuffed-to-the-gills adaptation whose elaborate visuals makes it seem as if we’re watching a video game. Bluntly directed with a sledgehammer, the film evaporates from memory as soon as it’s over, stranding good performers as Jacob Elordi (monster), Oscar Isaac (doctor) and Mia Goth (love interest). 

Vindication Swim 

(Brilliant Pictures)

The story of Mercedes Gleitze—a young Englishwoman who was the first female to swim the English Channel in 1927, then tried to do it again when her achievement was questioned—is certainly inspiring, and director/writer Elliott Hasler milks it for all its worth in this entertaining if conventional biopic. As Mercedes, Kirsten Callaghan is highly impressive both in and out of the water, and the era’s anti-woman, pro-white male politics makes for a good antagonist, yet this could have been so much more memorable than it turns out to be.  

4K/UHD Releases of the Week

The Conjuring—Last Rites 

(Warner Bros)

This latest (and last?) dramatization of the pioneering paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren’s exploits with malevolent hauntings uses the same blueprint as the series’ three earlier entries, but Michael Chaves’ overly fussy direction makes this all too familiar as its 2 hours and 15 minutes drag unnecessarily. On the plus side, there’s solid acting by Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson as the Warrens and well-cast support from Mia Tomlinson, Ben Hardy and others as the affected Smurl family. There’s a superior UHD transfer; extras include on-set featurettes and interviews.

Howards End 

(Cohen Film Collection)

The peak of the uneven James Ivory-Ismail Merchant-Ruth Prawer Jhabvala team’s career was this absorbing 1992 adaptation of E.M. Forster’ classic novel about the shifting relations and attitudes among the different classes in Edwardian England: it’s old-fashioned filmmaking done so well that it’s transfixing to watch. Ivory’s directing and Jhabvala’s writing were never equaled by them before or after, while the cast—Emma Thompson, Anthony Hopkins, Helena Bonham Carter and Vanessa Redgrave, for starters—is flawless. The film has a spectacular film-like sheen in 4K; extras include a new audio commentary, vintage Ivory and Merchant interviews,  and on-set interviews and featurettes.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Strauss—Intermezzo 

(Naxos)

Richard Strauss (1864-1949) wrote 15 operas—among them classics Salome, Der Rosenkavalier, Arabella and Capriccio—but this talky drama based on his personal life has never really caught on, despite lovely music and a wonderful lead role for the soprano playing a famous conductor’s wife, whose complicated relationship with her husband makes her seek out an affair. Tobias Kratzer’s 2024 Berlin State Opera staging is set in the present day, which neither harms nor helps the storytelling—happily, the orchestra and conductor Donald Runnicles are in fine form, and, as Christine, Swedish soprano Maria Bengtsson gives the towering portrayal the opera needs to succeed. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.   

The Island Closest to Heaven 

(Cult Epics)

Morimura Katsura’s story about Mari, a Japanese teenager visiting the ravishingly beautiful islands of New Catalonia, becomes, in director Nobuhiko Obayashi’s capable hands, a tender character study that is the opposite of his earlier, often delirious films House and School in the Crosshairs. Buoyed by an accomplished, understated performance by Tomoyo Harada as Mari, this is a  modest, satisfying drama. There’s a good hi-def transfer; extras include an audio commentary and making-of featurette.

CD Releases of the Week

Rachmaninoff/Elgar—The Bells/Falstaff 

(Harmonia Mundi)

Two works inspired by two great American and English writers make up this terrific disc, starting with The Bells, a choral symphony by Sergei Rachmaninoff whose texts have been freely adapted from poems of Edgar Allan Poe—the creative fusion of the Russian composer’s rich melodies and American author’s unsettling imagery results in a truly unique work. Edward Elgar and William Shakespeare are a less surprising combo, and Elgar’s symphonic study about the Bard’s wondrous comic creation Sir John Falstaff is rollicking and contemplative by turns. Vasily Petrenko leads the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in an outstanding Falstaff, and the Philharmonia Chorus and three fine soloists contribute to a superb version of The Bells. 

Grace Williams—Works for Orchestra 

(Lyrita)

Welsh composer Grace Williams (1906-77)—barely known on this side of the Atlantic, at least—wrote attractive music in various genres, and this disc is a worthwhile primer to anyone (like me) heretofore unfamiliar with her music. Williams’ shimmering violin concerto has a persuasive soloist in Geneva Lewis; her supple Sinfonia concertante for piano and orchestra sounds exquisite in soloist Clare Hammond’s hands. On the concerti and brooding Elegy for string orchestra, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales sounds remarkably cohesive, considering there’s a different conductor for each work.

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.