John Mellencamp’s America is heading to the stage. Ogunquit Playhouse will present the world premiere of Small Town: A John Mellencamp Musical, a new musical built around 24 songs from Mellencamp’s unmistakably American catalog, running October 1 through November 1, 2026.

With a book by Obie Award-winning playwright Naomi Wallace and direction by Lisa Peterson, Small Town isn’t being positioned as simply another greatest-hits jukebox musical. Instead, Mellencamp’s songs become the vocabulary for a multigenerational story about a community in free-fall and the people trying to hold onto love, hope and one another when the promise of a better life begins slipping away.

At its center are Jack and Diane—yes, those Jack and Diane—played by Dillon Klena and Morgan Higgins. Klena, who appeared in the national tour of Jagged Little Pill, stars as Jack opposite Bad Cinderella‘s Higgins as Diane, two young lovers refusing to allow the circumstances surrounding them to extinguish whatever youthful fire they still possess.

There is some serious Broadway pedigree surrounding them. Ron Bohmer, whose Broadway credits include Les Misérables, plays Jack’s father Sean, while the always-wonderful Annie Golden takes on Lou. The Great Gatsby‘s Matt Saldívar plays Diane’s father Sergio, with Dale Soules as Jack’s Aunt Box and Luna Lauren Velez as Diane’s mother Maria.

The ensemble features Angela Chatelain Avila, Mayelah Barrera, Zach Cossman, Mollie Diaz, Louis Jannuzzi III, Noah LaPook, Victoria Lourdes, Kaitlyn O’Leary, Sam O’Neill, Alex Paez, Kendall Rivera, Lionna Romans, Deandre Sevon and Ariana Valdes.

The score reaches across Mellencamp’s career, including “Hurts So Good,” “Lonely Ol’ Night,” “Small Town” and, naturally, “Jack & Diane.” That last song alone gives Wallace an intriguing theatrical foundation. Mellencamp’s 1982 hit was never simply a catchy story about two teenagers. Beneath its irresistible chorus was something more melancholy: youth disappearing almost before we realize we had it and the uncomfortable knowledge that life doesn’t necessarily turn out the way we imagined.

That tension could make Small Town considerably more interesting than the standard jukebox formula. Mellencamp’s songs have always been populated by working people, restless young people, disappointed people and Americans attempting to reconcile the country they were promised with the one in which they actually live. Put those songs into the hands of a playwright like Wallace, and there is plenty of dramatic territory waiting underneath them.

Peterson, whose Broadway credits include Good Night, Oscar, directs, with choreography by Richard J. Hinds. Andy York serves as music supervisor, with Jason Hart as music director. The design team includes Klara Zieglerova on scenic design, Haydee Zelideth on costumes, Richard Latta on lighting, Kevin Heard on sound and Roxanne De Luna on wig, hair and makeup design.

Executive Artistic Director Bradford Kenney has made clear that Small Town is also part of Ogunquit Playhouse’s expanding commitment to developing new work. That makes this October engagement particularly worth watching. Ogunquit has increasingly become a place where ambitious commercial theatre can develop outside New York while still drawing heavily from Broadway’s creative and performing community.

Small Town arrives with something many new musicals spend years trying to acquire: an instantly recognizable musical identity. Mellencamp’s songs aren’t merely familiar; they belong to a particular portrait of America. The real test will be whether Wallace, Peterson and company can make us hear those songs differently by giving the people inside them lives beyond the three or four minutes we’ve known them.

If they can, that little pink house in Ogunquit may eventually find itself considerably closer to Broadway.

Small Town: A John Mellencamp Musical begins performances October 1 and runs through November 1 at Ogunquit Playhouse.

Tickets for Small Town at Ogunquit Playhouse

Broadway is heading into fall with casting news, long-awaited arrivals and one New York tradition celebrating a milestone of its own. Krysta Rodriguez is joining A Few Good Men, Galileo has added some formidable Broadway talent, The Fantasticks has finally assembled the company that will bring the legendary musical to Broadway, and the Broadway Flea Market & Grand Auction is turning 40. Off-Broadway, a new musical takes on the complicated world of teenage mental health, while out of town Signature Theatre offers a fresh look at Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along.

The Broadway production of Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men continues to assemble an impressive company around the previously announced Bradley Whitford, who will play Col. Nathan R. Jessep, and Tom Blyth as Lt. Daniel Kaffee.

Rehearsal photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Joining them are Krysta Rodriguez, Stephanie Berry, Nick Blaemire, Michael Braugher, Christopher Gurr, Billy Eugene Jones, Collin Kelly-Sordelet, Shunté Lofton, Michael Oberholtzer, Lavel Schley, Thom Sesma, Daniel Velez and John Zdrojeski. Brendan Evan Behm, Alex Ekker, Drew Elhamalawy, Miles Fowler, Quentin Nguyen-duy and Stephen Michael Spencer complete the company as Marine and military personnel.

Rodriguez is an especially welcome addition. From Spring Awakening and The Addams Family to First Date and Into the Woods, she has repeatedly proved herself an actress capable of bringing intelligence and individuality to roles that could easily disappear in lesser hands. Pairing her with Whitford and Blyth makes this revival increasingly interesting.

Broadway’s upcoming musical Galileo has added Javier Muñoz, Bradley Dean and Jordon Lee Garcia, who will make his Broadway debut, to the company led by Raúl Esparza, Jeremy Kushnier and Joy Woods.

There is also an intriguing development in the title role. Michael Park will alternate with Esparza as Galileo at select performances. Park brings considerable stage credentials of his own, alongside his television work in Stranger Things, making this far more than conventional understudy casting.

With Esparza at its center and Muñoz, Dean and Park now joining the company, Galileo is quietly assembling the kind of cast that makes a new musical worth watching closely.

One of the theatre community’s most beloved annual rituals returns on Sunday, September 27, when the Broadway Flea Market & Grand Auction celebrates its 40th anniversary.

Produced by and benefiting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, the sprawling outdoor event will once again take over West 44th and West 45th Streets, Shubert Alley and Times Square from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m., with the live auction beginning at 5 p.m.For Broadway fans, the Flea Market remains something wonderfully peculiar to New York: part treasure hunt, part reunion, part theatrical yard sale and part fundraiser. Forty years later, it is still one of the rare places where a piece of Broadway history might be sitting on a table waiting for someone to discover it.

It seems almost impossible. The Fantasticks is the longest-running musical in history, yet it has never actually played Broadway. That changes this fall.

Second Stage Theater has announced the complete company for the Broadway premiere, directed and choreographed by Tony Award winner Christopher Gattelli. Zane Phillips, making his Broadway debut, will play El Gallo, joined by Maxim Chlumecky as Matt, Nathan Levy as Lewis, Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer as Mildred Hucklebee, Ruthie Ann Miles as Bessie Mae Bellomy, David Patrick Kelly as Henry, Kevin del Aguila as Mortimer and Ahmad Simmons as The Mute.

The new interpretation makes a significant change to the familiar story, centering two boys and their two mothers, while retaining Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt’s tale of young love, parental interference, separation and reconciliation.

With its book and lyrics by Tom Jones and music by Harvey Schmidt, The Fantasticks has spent decades living just outside Broadway mythology while becoming one of the most enduring musicals ever written. Its score gave us “Try to Remember,” “Soon It’s Gonna Rain” and “They Were You,” songs that long ago escaped the boundaries of the original production.

Previews begin October 22 at the Hayes Theater, with opening night set for November 16. The engagement is scheduled for 15 weeks.

After all these years, The Fantasticks is finally moving a few blocks uptown.

KOTA Productions will present the world premiere of Sound Mind from September 17–20 at Urban Stages, timed to Suicide Prevention Awareness Month.

Featuring music and lyrics by Ray Andersen, known to younger audiences as mr. RAY, and a book and lyrics by Sheryl Berk, the musical follows a group of teenagers inside an inpatient mental health facility. Over 12 weeks, the characters confront depression, anxiety, OCD, PTSD, social phobia and other struggles while music becomes another language for experiences they have difficulty expressing.

Andersen’s score blends pop, hip-hop and rock with ballads, while the project itself grew from his experience watching a close family member spend time in a similar treatment facility. Andersen also has an unusual musical résumé, having performed with artists including Meat Loaf, Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi before building a career creating music for children.

An original cast album is scheduled for release in October.

There is always a danger when theatre tackles subjects this delicate that message overwhelms character. Sound Mind is attempting something more difficult: allowing teenagers to speak from inside those experiences rather than reducing them to diagnoses. That distinction will ultimately determine whether the musical succeeds.

Signature Theatre has released its first look at its new production of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Merrily We Roll Along, returning the musical to the Signature stage after a 20-year absence.

Jason Gotay, Jake Loewenthal and Melanie Field lead the company, with Matthew Gardiner directing and Jonathan Tunick’s orchestrations accompanying one of Sondheim’s most fascinating scores.

Told backward across 20 years, Merrily begins with friendships damaged by success, compromise and disappointment, then gradually strips away the cynicism until we finally meet the hopeful young people those adults once were. That reverse structure remains the show’s great cruelty: we already know what these people will lose while watching them discover everything they believe they are going to have.

The company also includes Kerstin Anderson as Beth Spencer, Maria Rizzo as Gussie Carnegie, James Whalen as Joe Josephson and Neal Gaensehals as Frank Jr., with an ensemble featuring Joel Ashur, Ben Beckley, Lindsay Nicole Chambers, Eric Easter, Jonah Ho’okano, Stephen Russell Murray, Beatrice Owens, Sarah Anne Sillers and Alondra Trinidad-Colon.

Its score contains “Good Thing Going,” “Not a Day Goes By” and, of course, “Our Time”—a song whose optimism becomes more devastating precisely because we know what happens next.

Between major Broadway castings, an Off-Broadway classic finally crossing onto Broadway, a 40-year theatre tradition and Sondheim once again asking us to look at who we were before life intervened, September is beginning to look very much like New York theatre has returned from summer vacation.

What began as one of the most intriguing theatrical reunions of 2027 has now lost both of its stars.

Jonathan Bailey has withdrawn from the upcoming West End revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park With George, following **Ariana Grande’s departure from the production last month. The two Wicked stars had been set to reunite onstage, with Bailey playing Georges Seurat and Grande taking on the dual roles of Dot and Marie.

Bailey described the Sondheim musical as a passion project, but acknowledged that the relationship between George and Dot lies at the center of the work and expressed his support for the actors who will ultimately inherit the roles.

“After much consideration, I have decided to step back from Sunday in the Park with George,” Bailey announced, adding that Grande remains one of his “dearest friends.”

His departure fundamentally changes what had made this revival such an event. Bailey and Grande weren’t simply two stars attached to a Sondheim musical; audiences had already invested in their chemistry as Fiyero and Glinda in Wicked. Seeing them tackle George and Dot—two artists bound together by love, ambition and the painful cost of creation—promised an entirely different examination of that connection.

Grande withdrew last month after announcing that she was stepping back from public visibility following the conclusion of her Eternal Sunshine tour in London. Her decision followed intense online discussion surrounding her appearance after the release of the music video for “Petal.”

The production, however, is not disappearing. Empire Street Productions confirmed that the revival remains scheduled for the Barbican Centre in London next summer, with Marianne Elliott directing. Producers say casting discussions are underway and that the creative team is now reshaping the production around a new company while maintaining the artistic ambitions of Sondheim and Lapine’s musical.

That is no small undertaking. Sunday in the Park With George is unusually dependent upon the chemistry between its two central performers. George and Dot are not conventional romantic leads. Their relationship is frustrating, intimate, selfish, loving and ultimately unfinished. The musical asks what an artist sacrifices in order to create—and what happens to the people who discover that they are competing with the work itself.

Replacing one half of that equation would have changed the production. Replacing both effectively creates a different production altogether.

It also leaves the Barbican revival with a fascinating casting problem. Grande and Bailey brought enormous international attention before a note had been sung. Their replacements will inevitably face comparisons to a pairing audiences never actually got to see.

Yet there is something appropriately Sondheim about what happens next. Sunday in the Park With George is, after all, a musical about making art when the picture refuses to come together the way you imagined.

As Sondheim wrote: “White. A blank page or canvas.” For Marianne Elliott and her creative team, that is essentially what they have again. Now they have to fill it.

I can generate a wordless image for this right now—which style should I use: empty Broadway-style stage with two abandoned spotlights, Seurat-inspired Paris park, or unfinished canvas and theatre lights?

The Hamptons went to the dogs—in the very best possible way—as NYC Second Chance Rescue gathered animal lovers, philanthropists and familiar faces at a private Bridgehampton estate for its 5th Annual Concert for a Cause.

The summer benefit honored legendary entrepreneur, philanthropist and longtime animal advocate John Paul DeJoria, while also marking the world introduction of Pawpoint.

Beth Stern (Image Credit: BFA / David Benthal)

DeJoria, whose philanthropic work has long extended to animal welfare, was recognized for a commitment that dovetails naturally with the mission of Second Chance Rescue.

“It is an honor to be recognized by NYC Second Chance Rescue,” DeJoria said. “Their compassion, dedication, and commitment to animals are truly inspiring, and I am grateful to be part of an evening that will help so many animals in need.”

Hamptons benefit should never forget the party, the evening came with some serious musical wattage.

Ashanti (Image Credit: BFA / David Benthal)

Grammy Award winner Ashanti headlined alongside platinum-selling artist Fabolous, giving the intimate Bridgehampton gathering considerably more star power than the average summer fundraiser.

Fabolous Photo by Rose Billings

Fabolous (Image Credit: BFA / David Benthal)

The generosity continued offstage. A live auction featured experiences including a yacht charter donated by Lauren and Eddie Shapiro of NestSeekers, while a paddle raise brought in additional funds for the rescue’s work with some of the animals most difficult—and expensive—to save.

Beth Stern (Image Credit: BFA / David Benthal)

Among those joining the evening were Beth Stern

Caroline Radziwell (Image Credit: BFA / David Benthal)

Carole Radziwill, Peter Cook,

Bradley Fishel, Alexandra Fishel, Maria Fishel, Kenneth Fishel Beth Stern (Image Credit: BFA / David Benthal)

Kenneth and Maria Fishel, Blair and Margit Brandt, Jennifer Brooks, Lisa Blanco, Lisa Rose, Katie McEntee, Daisy Toye, Eric Muschinski, Tina Guidipipietro and Rocco Guidipipietro, along with DeJoria, Ashanti and Fabolous.

Lisa Blanco, Ashanti, Jennifer Brooks (Image Credit: BFA / David Benthal)

Behind the glamour is a mission with very real consequences. Founded in 2009, NYC Second Chance Rescue concentrates much of its work on animals that frequently have the fewest options: large-breed dogs and critically injured or medically complex dogs and cats pulled from overcrowded municipal shelters.

Since its founding, the nonprofit has rescued more than 17,000 animals, providing medical treatment, rehabilitation, foster care and ultimately the possibility of a permanent home. Its work extends beyond rescue through community programs designed to help people keep the animals they already love.

The evening was presented with support from Alexander Capital Ventures LLC, Montauk Project and the Phenom Foundation, with Renaissance Properties, Margot Brandt Palm Beach and Cindy Karen serving as Champion sponsors.

There are plenty of beautiful parties in the Hamptons every summer. The best ones manage to send everyone home having accomplished something besides being photographed.

Concert for a Cause did exactly that—turning one glamorous Bridgehampton night into second chances for animals who desperately need them.

I Play Rocky TIFF

Thursday, when tickets went on sale, I sat down with my carefully constructed festival calendar and started turning intentions into actual seats. It was a feverish exercise, as numerous films were sold out before I even had the chance to look at the seating chart. I shuffled my hopefuls around the time slots and kept my spirits high, or at least I tried to, as the whole thing was a complex time map, with every film potentially fitting into numerous places, and one had to be a few steps ahead of the game to win. By the time I was finished with this equivalent of a 403-piece puzzle of a cloudy sky, I had purchased tickets for far more films than I care to admit, and scheduled a whole bunch more for press screenings. I still have one more opportunity next Sunday to press-pass purchase five more films, assuming the ones I want are still available. But I’m not holding my breath. What does all this mean? It means the schedule is already beginning to resemble the kind of September I was anxiously hoping for when I started plotting all of this out.

That plotting was the subject of my recent article, Planning TIFF Is a Film Festival of Its Own, and now comes the part where the planning meets reality. Last year, I think I saw more than 25 films, which was already a fairly ambitious amount of time spent sitting in dark rooms across Toronto. This year, the current calendar is pointing toward something in the neighbourhood of 30 films. Some are locked in with tickets or press screenings. Some are marked as alternatives because TIFF scheduling has a funny way of forcing choices upon you. Others on my list have three question marks sitting in front of them because I am still hoping to find a way into the theatre, whether that means waiting in line for a late cancellation or seeing what the press reps can make happen.

Coward TIFF

The opening stretch already has me moving quickly. Thursday begins with the Festival’s most difficult choice: either Tender Loving Care at 8:40 in the morning, or Coward at 8:30 am. Both are playing in theaters a few short blocks away from each other, and both are calling my name. Which film I’m leaning toward is a complicated question that seems to change every hour. Both sound like films I could love, but for very different reasons. Whichever one I do get into (because there are no guarantees when it comes to press screenings), I do believe I will be both happy with my choice and disappointed that the other isn’t anywhere else on my list. After that festival Sophie’s Choice, I’ll be leaving just to line up for another, probably a press screening of Fjord in the afternoon. That is, if I can shift a doctor’s appointment.

Friday brings a press screening of Andrew Haigh’s A Long Winter in the morning, which I’m super excited to see. I’m bypassing four other press screenings, three of which I have scheduled in at other times, but one, The Housewife, remains out of reach. Hur Jin-ho’s The Assassin(s) sneaks in that afternoon, followed by live theatre at night. Saturday has Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, rather than Everyone Wants to F*ck Me, which I arranged for the next Saturday, thankfully, followed by a pair of purchased tickets to Being Heumann with my buddy who’s coming in for the festival’s first weekend. That might be it for the day (we are seeing some live theatre that night as well, just like the two previous evenings, so don’t go thinking this theatre junkie is being lazy). Sadly, those two will be it for the first Saturday of the festival, as there were no tickets left for this Andrew Scott fan for his In Conversation With… Seeing his film two days later will have to suffice.

A Long Winter TIFF

But once again, I’m getting ahead of myself. Sunday is not going to be a day of rest, as this is where the calendar starts looking particularly TIFF-like. I Play Rocky screens for the press in the morning, a choice made because I was able to purchase a ticket for its press screening competitor, Misty Green, for later in the week. I could have done the reverse, but that turned out to be an impossible task. A screening of Babies before the evening choices begin to collapse around us. I am still hoping to find a way into The Debut, Club Kid, or Coward that night, but they were sold out minutes into my purchasing frenzy, and I was left holding tickets to none of them, including Bitter Christmas, the film that was supposed to be the main event for that Sunday with my NYC buddy.

But not all was lost. Monday brings a morning screening of Prima Facie, instead of the screening for Bitter Christmas, because, miraculously, my buddy was able to score a few tickets for a Tuesday afternoon public screening of Almodóvar’s film, saving the day and my buddy’s trip. I did manage to purchase us tickets for both Elsinore and All About Corinne, but I didn’t have the same luck with one of his choices, Neverman.

By Tuesday, our terms of engagement are fully established. I’ll start out with press screenings of Alpha Gang and A Taste for Murder in the morning on my own. Our prized get, Bitter Christmas, takes the afternoon. A press screening of Possible Love arrives in the evening after my buddy heads to the airport (exhausted but hopefully happy with our cinematic adventure), and the highly anticipated Tenzing closes out the night.

Wednesday’s press pool brings me La Bola Negra, YAGA, and Danny Boyle’s Ink into my lap, with a public screening of Neverman squeezed in as my afternoon refresh, and Atonement as my late-night nightcap. Then Thursday starts the press insanity all over again with The Diary of a Chambermaid, moving into Purgatory and Sunburn, that is, if I actually cancel the dentist appointment I foolishly scheduled for this week. That leaves me staring at the possibility that it’s doubtful I’m going to get into Making Waves with Hunter Williams or his YAGA later that evening.

Friday and Saturday are already becoming their own endurance exercise, and thankfully the training that I will experience early that week should be paying off. The Housewife is still on the wish list, but I’m not holding my breath. Two purchases, Misty Green and Up Against It, are booked midday, with Club Kid continuing to hover around the calendar like a sound mix heard in the far-off distance, coming from multiple possible places. But with no ticket in sight, the sound in the air might have to suffice. And I might actually have an early night, when I can eat a decent meal and get a good night’s sleep.

Saturday brings Below and the animated Muyi to the screen, with the much-looked-forward-to Everyone Wants to F*ck Me arriving later that evening. Club Kid, Trash Mountain, and Love of Your Life are still on my wish list, but will probably not make it to my real list for this day. And I may have to become okay with that fact. Sunday races in Run Terry Run in the morning, bumping right up to the possibility of the People’s Choice screening. But one more film awaits me that evening: The Beloved, a last-minute purchase, because why not; it was available, and my adrenaline got the best of me.

Scrolling through the calendar as a whole, I can already see where the exhaustion is going to kick in, and the hunger might take on a larger role than just a supporting one. And then there are the films I wanted but didn’t get. In Conversation with… Andrew Scott, The Debut, Club Kid, The Housewife, Love of Your Life, Making Waves With… Hudson Williams, and Wild Horse Nine are all sitting in that particularly frustrating category of films I have not quite managed to secure. At this point, I am prepared to make a small offering to the TIFF press-pass gods. The problem with several of them is that the press dates conflict with other films already occupying the calendar, which means there is no magical second version of September available to me. I can only be in one screening room at a time. But all luck is not completely lost quite yet. I will still have another chance for this madness to take over my brain. Next Sunday, I am being given the opportunity to press-pass purchase five more films, so the calendar is not finished yet. I suspect neither is the list of things I will suddenly decide I absolutely must see or the list of things I wasn’t able to get into that I really wanted.

That manic uncertainty and disappointment are probably the part of TIFF planning I enjoy the most and am frustrated by equally. I can spend weeks building a schedule, moving films around like pieces of a wildly erratic puzzle, finding alternatives, counting travel time minutes between screenings, and convincing myself that I have finally solved the puzzle, only to discover that the real schedule is the one that unfolds around me. A film I thought was essential might turn out not to fit. Something I barely had on my radar might become the thing everyone is talking about. A late cancellation might open a seat. A conversation in a queue might send me somewhere completely different. The calendar tells me where I am supposed to be. TIFF itself will have plenty of ideas about where I actually end up.

For now, though, the tickets are bought, the press screenings are beginning to take shape, and my September is starting to look very real. Lucky thirteen films are already paid for. A whole bunch more are sitting in the press calendar. A handful have question marks attached to them, weighted down with hope, and there is still one more chance to make five more selections next Sunday. And don’t forget the People’s Choice Award Winner. That might give me the opportunity to see a celebrated film that I didn’t manage to slot in. I may end up with around 30 films this year, or I may discover that TIFF has other plans for me that include a padded cell or a stylish white straitjacket. Either way, the festival is no longer something I am simply planning. It is sitting there in my calendar in yellow-highlighted time slots, waiting for me to get on the first streetcar, walk into the first theatre, find my seat, and let the next film begin.

The Debut TIFF

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