There is no question that Sydnie Christmas can sing.

That was never really the issue Sunday night at Sony Hall. The winner of Britain’s Got Talent possesses a formidable instrument, charisma, an enormous belt, considerable control and, perhaps most importantly, the instinct not to use all of that power all of the time. At her best, Christmas will release a thrilling wall of sound and then suddenly pull the voice back, allowing something warmer and more vulnerable to emerge. It is a beautiful choice because it tells us she understands that volume and emotion are not the same thing.

The frustrating thing about her Sony Hall concert was how often the evening prevented us from hearing precisely what makes her special. Thankfully my video’s allow you to hear much better than being at the venue.

Christmas is enormously likable. She has an unaffected warmth with an audience and none of the distancing polish that sometimes arrives when a singer becomes famous very quickly. Her audience clearly adores her, and Sunday night’s crowd was firmly in her corner from the moment she appeared.

Smartly, she included “Tomorrow,” “My Way” and “Over the Rainbow”  the songs that introduced her to the world on Britain’s Got Talent. Those performances remain important because they reveal what first made people stop and listen. Christmas didn’t win simply because she could produce spectacular notes. There was an emotional immediacy to her singing that made familiar material suddenly feel personal and she made iconic songs hers.

From Christmas’s concert it seems she intends to move into musical theatre—and she made that ambition clear—this concert however raised some questions about how she is positioning herself for that next chapter. Her rendition of “Don’t Rain On My Parade” made me instantly want to see her do Funny Girl.

Most surprisingly, she did not perform “Animal Lover” from her role as Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmatians The Musical. Thankfully PBS will be presenting Sydnie Christmas: Live in London where the song will be sung. For a singer actively interested in establishing herself within musical theatre, omitting material that already connects her directly to the form seemed a curious decision. A concert isn’t simply a collection of songs; it is an opportunity to tell an audience, and perhaps an industry, who you are and where you intend to go next.

Some of the musical-theatre choices she made were less successful. “Maybe This Time” from Cabaret should seemingly be ideal territory for Christmas. It requires enormous vocal ability, but the song is not really about singing enormously. Sally Bowles is trying to convince herself that perhaps, against all available evidence, life will finally choose her. The song needs hope, desperation and the terrible possibility that Sally herself doesn’t quite believe what she’s singing. Christmas sang it impressively, and her audience loved it. Christmas has the instrument; what she now needs to explore is how thoroughly that instrument can disappear inside somebody else’s life, which is normally her forte.

Dez Duron and Sydnie Christmas

During a duet with Dez Duron from Maybe Happy Ending. Unexpectedly, he emerged more strongly from the number. Not because Christmas suddenly lacked vocal ability, but because musical theatre operates under different rules from a concert. The best singer doesn’t necessarily win the scene. Given the raw material she possesses, watching her develop could be extremely exciting.

Unfortunately, another obstacle Sunday night had nothing whatsoever to do with her. The band was too loud. They were amazing, especially the drummer but in a room as cavernous as Sony Hall with concert goers talking and food being eaten and delivered there were times the intimacy of her voice was swallowed up.

That matters enormously with a singer like Christmas because one of her greatest strengths is dynamic contrast. She can produce that tremendous belt and then retreat into something much more delicate. When the orchestration overwhelms the quieter passages, the effect can make the voice appear inconsistent when the singer is actually making an intelligent musical choice.

You should never have to strain to hear Sydnie Christmas. Sony Hall itself is the wrong room. Sony Hall can be terrific for the right performer, but Christmas’s particular appeal requires intimacy. Her personality invites an audience toward her rather than projecting an enormous theatrical persona across a cavernous space. She needs a room that allows silence to become part of the performance.

Put her at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Put her in a small Broadway theatre. Put her in The Carlyle. Put her at Carnegie Hall. Put her in Town Hall. Give her an acoustically sophisticated room where the audience can hear the moment that massive voice becomes almost a whisper.

The Sony Hall environment worked against precisely the qualities that distinguish her from dozens of other powerhouse vocalists.

Christmas also performed two original songs she wrote from her album The Artist, which  is scheduled for release on October 2nd. They are perfectly respectable songs, and she sings them extremely well, but stylistically they feel strangely displaced—as though they wandered out of the late 1980s or early 1990s and never entirely discovered that popular music had moved on. That creates another problem. Christmas’s voice may be more contemporary than her material. However she did a soul/disco set that was remarkable and I personally would love to see her do a retro album of that genre.

This is where Christmas now faces the wonderful—and dangerous—problem that confronts enormously gifted singers after their initial breakthrough. What do you do with the gift? She has already proved that she can sing. Repeatedly. She doesn’t need another evening designed to prove how high, how loudly or how spectacularly she can belt. We know. What she needs now is material worthy of the voice and a director—or musical director—willing to be ruthless about choosing it. She needs arrangements that leave room around her. She needs a venue that understands intimacy. If musical theatre is genuinely where she wants to go, she needs to move beyond singing songs beautifully and begin allowing characters to take possession of that extraordinary instrument, because the potential is absolutely there.

Sunday night didn’t diminish my opinion of Sydnie Christmas’s talent. If anything, it clarified it. She is better than the concert built around her.

That may sound like criticism. For an artist still deciding exactly who she intends to become, it may actually be the most encouraging thing one can say.

Some Broadway friendships end when the final curtain comes down. Others apparently turn into a rock-and-roll band.

Michael Longoria

The Midtown Men brought their irresistible combination of Broadway polish, four-part harmony and pure 1960s swagger to Eisenhower Park’s Harry Chapin Lakeside Theatre, proving once again that Jersey Boys may have introduced these four men to one another, but it certainly wasn’t the end of their story.

Christian Hoff

Tony Award winner Christian Hoff, Michael Longoria, Daniel Reichard and Tony Award nominee J. Robert Spencer first shared a stage as members of the original Broadway company of Jersey Boys, the musical phenomenon that turned the story and songs of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons into one of Broadway’s biggest hits.

Daniel Reichard

They spent more than a thousand performances together before doing something rather unusual: instead of simply moving on to their next individual Broadway jobs, they took the chemistry they had developed eight shows a week and created something of their own.

J. Robert Spencer

The result was The Midtown Men.

Michael Longoria, Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard and J. Robert Spencer

And while their pedigree is unmistakably Broadway, this isn’t Jersey Boys on tour. The Midtown Men became their own musical act, expanding beyond The Four Seasons to embrace the glorious pop landscape of the 1960s—The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Motown, The Rascals, The Mamas & the Papas, The Ronettes and more. Their official repertoire has long celebrated the decade that gave America some of its most enduring pop music, with four singers who know exactly how to sell both a harmony and a story.

Michael Longoria, Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard and J. Robert Spencer

What makes the group work isn’t simply nostalgia. Plenty of acts can recreate the music of the ’60s. The Midtown Men have something considerably harder to manufacture: history with one another.

Michael Longoria, Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard and J. Robert Spencer

They learned how to listen to one another on a Broadway stage. They know where the other voices are going, when to step forward, when to pull back and how to turn four leading men into one sound. Reichard has recalled that while they were still performing Jersey Boys, the four would gather in dressing rooms between shows and work out harmonies to other songs they loved from the decade. In other words, The Midtown Men were quietly being born backstage while another show was happening out front.

Michael Longoria, Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard and J. Robert Spencer

That musical shorthand followed them to Eisenhower Park.

Christian Hoff

Christian Hoff

Christian Hoff

Hoff brings the confidence that won him the Tony Award for his portrayal of Tommy DeVito. Reichard, Broadway’s original Bob Gaudio, possesses the musical-theatre storyteller’s instinct for finding the character inside a song. Spencer, the original Nick Massi and later a Tony nominee for Next to Normal, supplies formidable Broadway chops, while Longoria—who originated Joe Pesci before succeeding John Lloyd Young as Frankie Valli—knows a thing or two about sending a voice soaring above a crowd.

Michael Longoria

Michael Longoria

Michael Longoria

Together, however, they stop being four Broadway résumés and become a genuine group.

J. Robert Spencer

J. Robert Spencer

J. Robert Spencer

There is something wonderfully circular about what happened to these men. They began as actors playing a band, only to discover along the way that they actually were one. What started under Broadway lights developed into years of concerts across the country, recordings and even a nationally televised concert special.

Daniel Reichard

Daniel Reichard

Daniel Reichard

The Harry Chapin Lakeside Theatre is precisely the sort of setting where this music feels at home. These songs weren’t created to sit politely behind glass as artifacts of another era. They were made for summer nights, for dancing, singing along and suddenly realizing that you remember every word to a song you haven’t consciously thought about in twenty years.

Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard

That’s the pleasure of The Midtown Men. They don’t treat the 1960s as a museum exhibition. They remind you why this music became permanent in the first place.

Christian Hoff, Michael Longoria

The Beatles gave us exuberance. Motown gave popular music sophistication and irresistible rhythm. The Beach Boys made adolescent longing sound like California sunshine. The Four Seasons gave us those impossible harmonies and that unmistakable falsetto.

Daniel Reichard

J. Robert Spencer

Daniel Reichard, J. Robert Spencer,

Michael Longoria

Christian Hoff

Four Broadway actors fell in love with all of it. Nearly two decades after first coming together, Hoff, Longoria, Reichard and Spencer are still standing beside one another, still singing, still touring and still having what appears to be a ridiculously good time doing it.

Michael Longoria, Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard and J. Robert Spencer

Not bad for four guys who were originally hired to pretend to be a band. Turns out they were just getting started.

G.H. Harding

VALLI COME, VALLI GO? — The big media news in the last few days has been whether Frankie Valli has officially retired. The 92-year-old singer canceled the remainder of that he’s his tour this year and has been picture in the media in a wheelchair, looking terrifically frail.

His brother Bobby issued a statement that Frankie would indeed be retiring then rescinded it a day later after an apparent admonishment from Frankie himself.

What gives?

Rumors abound that his wife, his fourth, Jackie, wants him to go on, most likely due to the amount of money a Valli-performance makes. From what I’ve been able to source, Valli never really made tons of money as the songs were written by Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe (“Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like A Man”), and it was only when the play (and movie) Jersey Boys happened, that the dollars started flowing in. That said, if the man is in pain and poor health, he should address that first and foremost. No question.

Read more from The Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.com/tvshowbiz/article-16054101/Frankie-Valli-92-touring-future-canceling-concerts-health-issues.html 

Whatever develops, he’s had a miraculous career and his songs are forever in the great American song book.

SHORT TAKES — For all you Odyssey fans; the Hollywood Reporter reminds that here was a 1997, four-hour miniseries on NBC, starring Vanessa Williams as Calypso; Isabella Rossellini as Athena; Bernadette Peters as Circe; and Armand Assante as Odysseus. Directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, it earned 5 Emmy noms and two wins and had no less than some guy named Francis Ford Coppola as a producer. Wild! …

Dave Marsh

The legendary Dave Marsh passed Friday and left quite the memory. From Creem Magazine to Bruce Springsteen to the Kristen Ann Carr foundation he was a passionate advocate of the arts and a terrific writer. The story about Creem’s Lester Bangs throwing a typewriter down the stairs, turns out to have been about Marsh, per writer Susan Whitall. He was a tough guy to get to know, but his passion was amazing. RIP Dave and condolences to Barbara Carr …

Copilot

Tom Cuddy turned us onto the band Copilot from Massachusetts and after several visits to their site, came across their music video for their absolutely compelling “Let Me Down.” The band is sensational and lead singer Maggie Hall is simply superb. What a voice! Check the video out here:

… Here’s a shout-out to Deadline for one of their best headlines ever: Holy cow! Or whatever kind of Holy is yelled out in a comic book, but Sony/Marvel Studio’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day crossed the $2 billion global mark, becoming the second fastest movie to do so and the eighth movie to ever cross that benchmark ...

Micky Dolenz on Chris Carters’ Breakfast With The Beatles on SiriusXM /Beatles Channel, September 6, discussing his new EP Timeless which features “Terri” and the just-released “Waiting For Day”  … Watched Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008) again; what an amazing picture with star performances from Christian Bale; Gary Oldman; Morgan Freeman; and Gary Oldman. I saw it when it first came out, but after witnessing his genius in The Odyssey, I think I appreciated it a lot more this time around. And what a standout performance from Heath Ledger as The Joker. Positively chilling … Happy BDay to Russ Titelman and Madonna … RIP Arlene Smith.

NAMES IN THE NEWS — Ty Burr; Keifer Sutherland; Harrison Ford; Bill McCuddy; Gary Graff; Katie Couric; Cory Robbins; Eddie O’Loughlin; Bill Adler; Kevin Mazur; Chuck Pulin; Manny Bella; Josh Fellner; Tom & Lisa Cuddy; Hal Wilner; Lou Reed; Andy Greene; Jon Landau; Chris Ortiz; Lisa Warren; Amanda Naylor; Mark Bego; Dave Marken; and CHIP!

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The curtain may come down, a production may close, and a performance may disappear into theatrical memory, but the cast album is where musical theatre gets its second life. This summer and fall, an unusually rich group of recordings is arriving across streaming platforms, CDs and increasingly coveted vinyl editions, preserving everything from intimate new musicals and Off-Broadway discoveries to major Broadway revivals, conceptual works and a Cats recording unlike any Andrew Lloyd Webber has made before.

Already available is Alone, a new concept album featuring music and lyrics by John Ertman and Joseph Mathusek and an impressive company that includes Taylor Iman Jones, Linedy Genao, Zachary Noah Piser, Adi Roy, Rachel Webb, Kim Onah, Michael Nigro, Nathan Levy, Claire Kwon, Cassidy Sledge, Ellis Gage, Andy Harman and Gray Watson. Released digitally August 7 by Picardee Records, the album introduces its musical world without waiting for a full production to arrive—a reminder that increasingly, new musicals are finding audiences through headphones before they ever find a theatre.

Also newly released is Sappho: The Poetess, a London EP written and performed by Hayley Canham. The August 12 Center Stage Records release gives the ancient Greek poet a contemporary musical voice, joining the continuing wave of theatre composers rediscovering women whose lives have survived history largely through fragments, mythology and the interpretations of others.

August 14 brought two dramatically different recordings. Good Guy With A Gun!, a concept album by Philip Labes and Micah O’Konis, arrives with one of the most eclectic casts of the season, including Chris Sullivan, Kimiko Glenn, Anthony Rapp, Yvette Nicole Brown, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Jason Alexander, Richard Kind, Kristen Schaal and Paul Walter Hauser. Even before a full stage production, that roster alone gives the project considerable curiosity value.

The same day, Center Stage Records and Yellow Sound Label released Empire: Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording, preserving Caroline Sherman and Robert Hull’s musical about the creation of the Empire State Building. Directed Off-Broadway in 2024 by Tony winner Cady Huffman, Empire looks at the audacity required to build upward during one of the most precarious moments in American history. Its characters include industrialists, immigrants and Mohawk ironworkers, turning the construction of a skyscraper into a story about ambition, labor and New York’s almost pathological refusal to believe something cannot be done.

The recording features Danny Iktomi Bevins, Devin Cortez, Morgan Cowling, Kaitlyn Davidson, Joel Douglas, Alexandra Frohlinger, Albert Guerzon, Kiana Kabeary, Howard Kaye, April Ortiz, Jessica Ranville, Paul Salvatoriello, J Savage, Robbie Serrano and Ethan Saviet, with an ensemble including Joseph Fierberg, Kennedy Perez, Matt Gibson, Julia Louise Hosack and TJ Newton. For a musical whose central character is essentially New York itself, the album gives Empire a chance to continue climbing long after its Off-Broadway run.

Then comes one of the most intriguing releases of August. Night Side Songs, Daniel and Patrick Lazour’s deeply human musical produced by Lincoln Center Theater at LCT3’s Claire Tow Theater earlier this year, arrives digitally and on streaming platforms August 21 through Octoverse Media and Warner Music Group’s Arts Music. The first single, “My Stuff,” is already available, with CD and vinyl editions planned later in the year.

Night Side Songs occupied an unusually delicate place in the theatrical landscape when it played LCT3 from February 14 through March 29. Rather than treating illness, caregiving and mortality as dramatic devices, the Lazours created a folk-inflected musical concerned with the conversations that happen around bedsides, the things people say and cannot say, the jokes that break unbearable tension and the strange community that forms around someone whose life has suddenly changed. The recording features the original Lincoln Center Theater company of Robin de Jesús, Brooke Ishibashi, Jonathan Raviv, Kris Saint-Louis and Mary Testa, joined in the studio by an audience that sings along in keeping with the score’s communal folk tradition.

The album is produced by Mara Isaacs, Todd Sickafoose and Andy Einhorn, with Daniel and Patrick Lazour co-producing. The stage production earned nominations from the Drama Desk, Drama League and Lucille Lortel Awards, including recognition for its music, ensemble and production. The album should allow one of the season’s quieter musicals to find the larger audience intimate work sometimes struggles to reach during a limited theatrical run.

Also arriving August 21 is Schmigadoon! (Original Broadway Cast Recording), with music and lyrics by Cinco Paul. The Joy Machine Records release features Alex Brightman, Sara Chase, Ana Gasteyer, Ann Harada, Brad Oscar, Isabelle McCalla, Ivan Hernandez, Maulik Pancholy, Max Clayton, McKenzie Kurtz and Ayaan Diop. What began as a television series lovingly skewering—and embracing—the conventions of classic musical theatre has now completed the circle by becoming a Broadway musical with its own cast recording. There is something wonderfully appropriate about a show born from affection for cast albums becoming one itself.

On August 28, Evita gets another major recording, this time preserving Jamie Lloyd’s London production starring Rachel Zegler, alongside Diego Andres Rodriguez, James Olivas, Aaron Lee Lambert and Bella Brown. The full album will be released digitally and as a triple-vinyl edition through The Other Songs. With Zegler bringing her acclaimed Eva Perón to Broadway in 2027, the recording arrives as both documentation of the London production and something of a preview for New York audiences. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s score has been recorded many times, but Evita has always been unusually dependent upon the personality of the performer standing at its center. Zegler now gets her own place in that lineage.

August 28 also brings Sara Bareilles’ Good Grief  through Epic Records on CD, digital and vinyl. Bareilles long ago crossed the line between pop songwriter and major theatrical voice with Waitress, and anything she releases now carries interest for both audiences. Her music has always lived comfortably in the space between confessional singer-songwriter intimacy and theatrical storytelling, making a new Bareilles album part of the broader musical-theatre conversation whether or not every song is headed for a stage.

September 4 brings the physical release Broadway collectors have been waiting for: the 2025 Broadway cast recording of Chess on CD and vinyl from Ghostlight Records, following its April digital release. The album preserves Nicholas Christopher, Lea Michele, Aaron Tveit, Hannah Cruz, Bradley Dean, Sean Allan Krill and Bryce Pinkham in Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Tim Rice’s gloriously oversized Cold War musical. Whatever one thinks of Chessdramatically, that score remains one of musical theatre’s great guilty-not-guilty pleasures, and this cast gives it formidable vocal ammunition.

On September 18, Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody enters the recording studio canon with a digital and triple-vinyl release from Center Stage Records. Dylan MarcAurele’s score is performed by Jay Armstrong Johnson, Jimin Moon, Ryann Redmond, Cherry Torres, Ryan Duncan, Shelby Acosta and Daniel Brackett. The fact that a knowingly outrageous Off-Broadway parody is getting a triple-vinyl edition tells you almost everything you need to know about the current cast-album market: audiences increasingly want theatre not simply as something they attended, but as something they can collect.

September 25 brings another kind of theatrical souvenir with Rise Up! Hamilton: The Anthology, arriving from Atlantic/Rhino on CD, digital and vinyl. More than a decade after Hamilton permanently altered the commercial expectations for Broadway cast recordings, the musical remains one of the rare modern theatre properties capable of generating the kind of ancillary releases normally associated with major recording artists.

And then there is CATS: The Jellicle Ball.

Atlantic Records has opened pre-orders for the forthcoming Original Broadway Cast Recording of the Tony-winning revival, produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alana da Fonseca. No firm release date has yet been announced, but this is arguably the recording collectors will be most curious to hear because The Jellicle Ball did something almost unimaginable: it made Cats culturally dangerous again.

The Broadway production reimagined Lloyd Webber’s musical through New York ballroom culture, transforming the Jellicle competition into a glittering collision of fashion, dance, queer history and theatrical spectacle. The company includes André De Shields, Ken Ard, Kya Azeen, Bryson Battle, Jonathan Burke, Baby Byrne, Tara Lashan Clinkscales, Bryce Farris, Elisa Galindez, Sydney James Harcourt, Dava Huesca, Dudney Joseph Jr., Junior LaBeija, Leiomy, Robert “Silk” Mason, Ernest Mingo, Tempress Chasity Moore, Primo Thee Ballerino, Xavier Reyes, Nora Schell, Bebe Nicole Simpson, Emma Sofia, Phumzile Sojola, Kendall Grayson Stroud, B Noel Thomas, Kalyn West, Garnet Williams, Teddy Wilson Jr., Darius Wright and Donté Nadir Wilder.

The production earned nine Tony nominations and won three, including Best Direction of a Musical, Best Choreography and Best Costume Design. Qween Jean’s costume win also marked a Broadway milestone as the first openly trans woman to win a Tony Award. The recording now has the unusual task of capturing a production whose impact was profoundly visual and physical—ballroom movement, fashion, attitude and audience energy—through sound alone.

Several other recordings remain on the horizon without firm release dates. Joy Machine Records will release Beau The Musical, with music by Ethan D. Pakchar and Douglas Lyons and lyrics by Lyons, featuring Matt Rodin, Jeb Brown, Max Sangerman, Miyuki Miyagi, Andrea Goss, Amelia Cormack, Ryan Halsaver and Derek Stoltenberg.

Ghostlight Records is also preparing a London concept album of Death Note, The Musical, with Frank Wildhorn’s music and Jack Murphy’s lyrics performed by a company including Adam Pascal, Joaquin Pedro Valdes, Dean John Wilson, Aimie Atkinson, Frances Mayli McCann, Rachel Clare Chan and Christian Ray Marbella. Wildhorn and Death Notehave long seemed destined for one another—large emotions, operatic stakes and characters who consider moderation an unacceptable personality trait.

JAY Records has two particularly traditional theatre recordings waiting in the wings. A new studio cast recording of The Fantasticks features Brad Oscar, Telly Leung, Elizabeth Teeter, Lewis Cleale and Ron Raines, arriving just as the famously long-running Off-Broadway musical prepares, astonishingly, for its first Broadway production. The label will also release Lovesong, Michael Valenti’s setting of lyrics by Dorothy Parker and Sir Walter Raleigh, performed by Jenn Gambatese, Lauren Molina, Matt Bogart and Jeff Kready.

Also forthcoming is the studio EP Salem, with music and lyrics by Amanda Ribnick and Jennifer Lucy Cook and performances by Bryce Pinkham, Kuhoo Verma, John-Andrew Morrison, Gabi Carrubba, Lizzy Murray and Katherine Lynn-Rose, while PS Classics will release Ricky Ian Gordon’s Sycamore Trees, featuring a mouthwatering company of Farah Alvin, Marc Kudisch, Judy Kuhn, Jessica Molaskey, Matthew Risch, Diane Sutherland and Tony Yazbeck.

What makes this particular stretch of releases interesting is how thoroughly the cast album has escaped its old definition. Once, the recording primarily existed to preserve the score of a Broadway musical. Now we have concept albums creating audiences before productions exist, limited-run Off-Broadway shows finding permanence after closing, London productions introducing themselves to American listeners, parody musicals getting elaborate vinyl editions and established Broadway properties becoming collectible objects in multiple formats.

Streaming should theoretically have made albums less precious. Instead, vinyl has made them objects again.

And musical theatre, perhaps more than almost any other form, understands why that matters. A performance is ephemeral by design. The actor sings the note, the orchestra plays the chord, the audience hears it—and then the moment is gone.

A cast album refuses to let it disappear.

This fall, there will be quite a lot worth keeping.

G.H. Harding

LIONESS — Taylor Sheridan’s epic series Lioness, has taken a fierce new turn for its third season as Zoe Saldana’s character Joe has been outed and captured initiating a fierce plan from Nicole Kidman and Michael E. Kelly.

This season started off more like the movie Sicario, which Sheridan wrote in 2015, and two episodes in shows no signs of slowing down. The plot for this season had been written all through Season Two, but still, to see it unfold is somewhat alarming.

Morgan Freeman returns as a somewhat shadowy government figure … along with the always reliable Bruce McGilll, but it’s Kelly who delivers just an amazingly good performance as another government figure, the mysterious Byron Wesfield, who arguably controls the entire Lioness-program.

I got burnt out on Tulsa King, and even Dutton Ranch I couldn’t watch, but this one, shines like a star. Read more from Collider: https://collider.com/lioness-season-3-review-taylor-sheridan-zoe-saldana/

HUSTLER MEETS A HIPPO — I only went once to Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club on West 51st in NYC. I found it ironically lifeless and to be candid, the people there I felt I needed to exit from very quickly. Just not my scene.

Now, something called Peppermint Hippo (???), which sarcastically (I think) bills itself as the leading men’s club establishment around, is taking over the space. I guess there’s still a market for clubs like these. Scores still exists, but I couldn’t give you 5 friends who would even entertain going there.

Growing up in Long Island, I’ll never forget when I was about 17 or 18, a topless bar (heaven forbid!) was about to open in nearby Port Washington. Summoning all my courage, I went with some others, and was really turned off in every way. I saw many older patrons behaving in a way that I found offensive.

Read more from Phil O’ Brien’s W42 sheet:https://w42st.com/post/larry-flynts-hustler-club-hells-kitchen-peppermint-hippo/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=30bdbf5cf2-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_08_12_11_59&utm_source=W42ST.nyc&utm_term=0_-30bdbf5cf2-561746079&mc_cid=30bdbf5cf2&mc_eid=b59263acd0

SHORT TAKES — Micky Dolenz, resuming his Monkees 60th Anniversary tour next week, hits LA’s KTLA on September 3 … Paramount/Skydance’s David Ellison has formally threatened to move the studio (and, possible Warner’s too) out of California if the proposed merger remains stuck. That’s where daddy-David Ellison is based. Stay tuned ….

Alden Ehrenreich

(Via Deadline) Following his first Tony win earlier this summer, Alden Ehrenreich has zeroed in on his next big movie role and it’s a high-profile project. Sources say he is set to join Michael B. Jordan and Austin Butler in Universal Pictures’ Miami Vice ’85, an original take on the classic 1980s drama series. Joseph Kosinski is directing the pic from a script by Dan Gilroy… PR-pasha David Salidor at Titan. The newly opened Mexican-eatery under the Brooklyn Bridge …

Bob Iger

Just in: Disney’s former-chief Bob Iger and Thrive Capital boss Josh Kushner, just bought the Los Angeles Lakers for $12.5 billion and is Barry (Killer) Diller buying CNN?

… Not a huge Mamdani-devotee, but giving away 2,000 free theater tickets, with TDF, is utterly brilliant.

Per The PATH Fund’s Cori Gardner: “The arts are not extra! Theater, music, dance and all art forms should be accessible and for everyone. I appreciate Mayor Mamdani making this happen, and getting more young people into Broadway shows.” Bravo! … Watched Katseye on NBC’s Today Show yesterday. Are they the K-Pop Spice Girls? Boy, thank God for backing-tracks. Fun, but musically, a producer’s folly … And, per Deadline: Disney+ is not proceeding with its live-action Power Rangers series. The project, written and executive produced by Percy Jackson and the Olympians executive producers/showrunners Jonathan E. Steinberg and Dan Shotz, was set up for development at the Disney streamer about a year and a half ago with sibling 20th Television as the studio. It will not be going past the development stage … Happy Bday August Darnell; Nancy Quinter Blanc;  and Scott Stevens.

NAMES IN THE NEWS — Copilot; Frisker Jones; Anthony Pomes; Raspin Stuwart; Adrian Niles; Bill Evans; Deb Caponetta; Melissa Davis; Anthony Noto; Judy Cachese; Herb Corsack; Chris Blackwell; Herb Rosen; Neil Cooper; Paul Cooper; Melissa Davis; Jeffrey Vogel; Steve Leeds; Tom & Lisa Cuddy; Chuck Darrow; Gary Graff; Donna Dolenz; Melinda Newman; Tessy Hart; Chris Ortiz, Lisa Warren, William Schill; and SADIE!

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