There is something deeply unsettling about encountering Anton Chekhov’s Ivanov shortly after someone you knew has taken his own life.

We recently lost Josh Grisetti to suicide at 44. Josh seemed to have everything: extraordinary talent, intelligence, humor, a career, people who cared about him and presumably decades still ahead. Yet what someone appears to have from the outside tells us very little about what it feels like to inhabit his life from within. Sitting through writer-director Laura Strausfeld’s 100-minute adaptation, The Real Ivanov, I couldn’t stop thinking about that.

Chekhov’s Ivanov (Sam Underwood) is a provincial Russian gentleman of property in his 30s who has reached the unbearable realization that he is not the man he intended to become. He is educated but aimless, broke, his estate is failing, and his wife is dying of consumption. Worse, he no longer loves her and wonders if he ever did. He sees his own failures with excruciating clarity and hates himself for them, but possesses neither the energy nor the belief necessary to change.

That is what makes Ivanov so difficult and, for certain people, so painfully recognizable. This is not simply a play about depression. It is about what happens when you cannot stomach your own existence as it has become. Human beings find innumerable ways to escape themselves—alcohol, drugs, sex, work, food, addiction, distraction, but what happens when you are too sensitive to what you see, including what you see in yourself, and none of the exits actually takes you away?

Chekhov wrote Ivanov in the 1880s, when depression was neither understood nor treated as it is today. Ivanov is surrounded instead by people who diagnose him morally. He is selfish. He is weak. He is cruel. He is lazy. He should pull himself together. Some of those accusations aren’t entirely wrong, which is what makes Chekhov far more interesting than a simple portrait of a suffering man. Ivanov behaves terribly. The tragedy is that he knows it.

His wife Anna (Ivory Aquino) has given him everything. She is dying from consumption, knows her husband no longer loves her, and nevertheless clings desperately to what remains of their marriage. Ivanov betrays her, berates her and then despises himself for doing so. Anna’s devotion has become its own tragedy; in refusing to relinquish the man who has emotionally abandoned her, she gradually relinquishes herself.

Hovering around them is Anna’s pompously moral doctor, Eugene Lvov, played by a miscast and oddly out-of-place Elijah Guo. Elijah Guo fares considerably worse as Lvov, Anna’s pompously moral doctor. Guo seems completely out of his element onstage, delivering a performance without the technique, authority or theatrical presence the role requires. Lvov should be maddening in his absolute conviction of his own righteousness; here, the character becomes irritating for entirely the wrong reasons.Lvov is certain of everyone else’s moral failings while remaining remarkably blind to his own. Chekhov understood this species of human being particularly well: the person so convinced of his own righteousness that judgment itself becomes a character flaw.

Ivanov’s uncle is played with considerable spirit by Jordan Lage, although he sometimes seems to have wandered in from a somewhat different production. Sam Adegoke plays Ivanov’s shady cousin, who oversees the failing estate and begins the evening by pretending to shoot Ivanov—a gesture that becomes considerably darker in retrospect.

Amelia Mason, Sam Underwood all photo’s by Russ Rowland

Then there is Sasha, played with luminous subtlety by Amelia Mason, Sasha has been mad about Ivanov since girlhood and believes she can rescue him from himself. Her love is genuine, naive and dangerous in the particular way love becomes dangerous when we convince ourselves that wanting to save someone means we actually can.

Sasha’s wealthy, fumbling father is wonderfully played by Spencer Aste, who at moments reminded me enormously of Chip Zien. Sarah Long plays Sasha’s cold, stingy mother, while Kimberlee Walker supplies the giddiness as a widow intent upon marrying into royalty. Around Ivanov, friends, relatives, creditors and acquaintances continue talking, wanting, judging, scheming and living while he becomes progressively less capable of doing any of it.

Soph Metcalf, Amelia Mason, Spencer Aste, Sarah Long, Sam Underwood, Jordan Lage, William DeMeritt, and Kimberlee Walker all photo’s by Russ Roland

Strausfeld is right to cut Ivanov to 100 minutes. Chekhov’s point does not become more profound simply because we spend another hour getting there. The difficulty lies instead with a company composed largely of actors whose experience is rooted in television. Screen acting and stage acting require different muscles, and Chekhov is particularly unforgiving of the distinction. The camera can capture a thought barely registered across an actor’s face; onstage, that thought must somehow travel across the room without losing its truth. Here, some performances remain at camera scale while others are pitched toward the theatre, leaving the company without a unified language. The problem isn’t that Strausfeld has cut too much Chekhov. It is that not everyone onstage knows how to make the Chekhov she retained reach us.

Initiative Productions is fledgling, and it shows. The cast does not gel into a coherent world. Performers seem to be working in distinctly different acting styles; several roles are miscast, and some of the supporting performances simply aren’t yet equal to the demands of Chekhov. Strausfeld understands what she wants to say with the play, but she needs a company capable of speaking the same theatrical language.

Underwood initially left me uncertain, but his Ivanov grew on me as the evening progressed. There is something appropriate about not immediately being seduced by this man. Ivanov isn’t a romantic hero waiting for us to understand him. He is difficult, exhausted, unpleasant and increasingly trapped inside himself. Underwood eventually finds the suffocation underneath that behavior, and by the conclusion I understood the journey he was attempting.

Jiyoun Chang’s scenic design is minimal, with rugs spread across a planked floor delineating four locations. Ella Matza dresses this cross-section of humanity largely in tans and creams while separating Ivanov visually in black and white. He is already apart from them before he finally removes himself altogether.

William DeMeritt, Soph Metcalf, Sam Underwood, Sam Adegoke, Spencer Aste, Elijah Guo, Jordan Lage, Sarah Long, Amelia Mason, and Kimberlee Walker All Photo’s by Russ Roland

Strausfeld’s strongest theatrical idea comes at the end. A long red carpet becomes the setting as the people surrounding Ivanov chatter, posture, judge and reveal the extraordinary shallowness and narrowness of the world enclosing him. Humanity keeps talking while Ivanov is running out of reasons to listen. The staging becomes almost suffocating, and suddenly the uneven production finds the play’s pulse.

Sam Adegoke, Sam Underwood, Amelia Mason, and Spencer Aste all photo’s by Russ Rowland

That sequence struck me particularly hard because it didn’t feel confined to nineteenth-century Russia. Look around now. We live in a culture of relentless noise, judgment, performance and certainty. Everyone has an opinion about everyone else. Everyone knows what another person should have done, should have felt, should have overcome. We rarely know what is actually happening inside the person standing beside us. Some people can shut that noise out. Some cannot. Some people survive the ugliness of the world by refusing to look too closely. Ivanov’s tragedy is that he looks at humanity, looks at himself, and cannot look away.

I think that is where Ivanov will divide its audience. Many people will simply see a privileged, self-pitying man behaving badly and wonder why everyone around him doesn’t walk away. They aren’t necessarily wrong. Others will recognize something considerably darker: the moment when a person sees both the world’s ugliness and his own flaws so clearly that he can no longer find a place within either that he wants to inhabit.

That doesn’t make suicide noble. It doesn’t make Ivanov a hero. And it certainly doesn’t tell me why Josh Grisetti made the decision he made. That belongs to Josh, and none of us left behind gets to pretend we know the entirety of another person’s final interior world. Losing him made Chekhov’s play land differently for me.

We are extraordinarily good at looking at another person’s life and inventorying the reasons they should be happy. Talent, love, success, youth….possibility. We are considerably less capable of understanding that none of those things necessarily tells us what that person sees when they look inward.

The Real Ivanov is an uneven production of a play that is anything but easy. Initiative Productions needs to become considerably more rigorous about casting and establishing a unified acting style. Strausfeld’s adaptation sometimes moves too quickly, and not every member of the company can carry what Chekhov demands.

Amelia Mason can. Spencer Aste can. And, ultimately, Sam Underwood got me there. More importantly, Chekhov got me there.

This production will not resonate with everyone. I don’t think it is supposed to. There are people who will look at Ivanov and never understand why he cannot simply get on with his life. There are others who will understand him immediately. After losing Josh, I wish considerably fewer of us did.

The Real Ivanov: Lynn F. Angelson Theater,  through September 19. Tickets and information are available at The Real Ivanov.

Photo: Jenny Anderson

Not surprising, one night with the original Broadway revival cast of Falsettos was never going to be enough. The 10th Anniversary Reunion Concert of William Finn and James Lapine’s beloved musical sold out Carnegie Hall in a remarkable 90 minutes, and now a second performance has been added for Monday, November 2 at 7 p.m. at Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage.

And yes, the gang really is all coming back.

Tony Award winners Stephanie J. Block, Christian Borle and Brandon Uranowitz, Tony nominees Andrew Rannells and Betsy Wolfe, and Emmy nominee Tracie Thoms will reunite to reprise the roles they played in Lincoln Center Theater’s acclaimed 2016 Broadway revival. Anthony Rosenthal, the production’s original Jason, will also make a special guest appearance.

The originally announced October 18 concert was intended to be a one-night-only event. Broadway audiences apparently had other ideas. Once tickets disappeared almost immediately, “one night only” became considerably more negotiable.

There is another lovely full-circle element to the reunion. Tony-nominated director and choreographer Ellenore Scott, who served as assistant choreographer on the 2016 revival, will return a decade later—this time as director of both Carnegie Hall performances.

“Ten years ago, I had the gift of watching these brilliant actors work, and helped bring this beautiful show to life on Broadway as an assistant choreographer,” Scott said, describing the company as having since become dear friends and her return as director as “the most beautiful full-circle moment.”

Vadim Feichtner also returns as Music Director and Conductor, leading a band that will include most of the revival’s original musicians, while Cory Pattak will design the lighting.

The reunion carries particular poignancy following the death of composer and co-creator William Finn in 2025. Falsettoshas always possessed that rare ability to be screamingly funny until suddenly it isn’t. Beneath the neurotic family dynamics, sex, jealousy, baseball, Judaism and glorious messiness lies a story about love confronting mortality—and about the families we inherit, create, fracture and somehow continue to love.

The musical grew from Finn and Lapine’s one-act works March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, eventually becoming Falsettos, which opened on Broadway in 1992. Set against the emergence of the AIDS crisis, it centers on Marvin, his former wife Trina, their son Jason, Marvin’s lover Whizzer, psychiatrist Mendel and the wonderfully described “lesbians from next door,” Dr. Charlotte and Cordelia.

Lincoln Center Theater brought the musical back to Broadway in 2016 under Lapine’s direction, opening at the Walter Kerr Theatre on October 27. The revival received five Tony Award nominations and was subsequently filmed for PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center, allowing a production with a relatively limited Broadway run to find an audience far beyond West 48th Street.

Ten years later, that audience clearly hasn’t gone anywhere. There is something particularly fitting about Falsettos returning through a reunion rather than a conventional revival. This is, after all, a musical obsessed with the complicated meaning of family. Bringing these particular actors and musicians back together isn’t simply nostalgia; their chemistry became part of what audiences loved about the 2016 production.

Both Carnegie Hall performances will benefit The BroadwayEveryDay Foundation and Family Equality, adding another layer of purpose to an evening already steeped in memory, love and chosen family.

Tickets for the newly added November 2 performance go on sale to the general public Wednesday, August 26 at 11 a.m. ET through Carnegie Hall, by phone at (212) 247-7800, and at the Carnegie Hall Box Office at 57th Street and Seventh Avenue.

Considering what happened the first time around, anyone planning to attend might not want to spend 11 a.m. leisurely contemplating the decision.

Apparently, Falsettos fans move fast.

Marsha Stephanie Blake, Lily Rabe and Raúl Esparza in The Winter’s Tale. Photo: Joan Marcus

Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale has always been a peculiar creature. Watching Daniel Sullivan’s production at the Delacorte Theater, one can almost believe three different playwrights wandered into the room, each wrote a section, and Shakespeare somehow decided to keep them all.

The first gives us jealousy and tragedy. The second practically abandons that world for pastoral comedy. The third turns toward repentance, spirituality, forgiveness and something perilously close to resurrection.

That extraordinary construction can be thrilling when the pieces somehow find one another. Here, despite some truly exceptional performances, magnificent design and a final sequence that approaches theatrical magic, they don’t always.

The difficulty begins with Leontes. Shakespeare gives us remarkably little preparation for the Sicilian king’s sudden conviction that his pregnant wife Hermione (Lily Rabe) has been unfaithful with his closest friend, Polixines, King of Bohemia (Gilbert Owuor). There is no Iago whispering poison into his ear, no gradual accumulation of evidence, not even much indication that this particular demon has been living inside Leontes waiting to escape. Hermione is essentially doing what her husband has asked of her—encouraging Polixenes to extend his visit—and suddenly Leontes sees betrayal. One wants a crack before the earthquake. A line, a look, some indication that jealousy has always been Leontes’ private monster would make the catastrophe that follows infinitely more psychologically plausible. Instead, the audience is left wondering not merely why he believes this, but: Has he always been like this?

Raúl Esparza in The Winter’s Tale. Photo: Joan Marcus

That is hardly Raúl Esparza’s fault. Esparza is, as always, a formidable actor, and once Leontes is inside the madness, he commits to it completely. He gives the king intelligence, fury and ultimately genuine remorse. The problem is that Shakespeare asks the actor to make an enormous psychological leap before giving him much of a runway. Esparza can make us believe the man. The text doesn’t always help us understand how the man arrived there.

Gilbert Owuor, Lily Rabe Photo by Joan Marcus

Lily Rabe has the opposite challenge as Hermione. Her performance is utterly human and wonderfully raw. There is nothing remote about her suffering. Her bewilderment at being accused by the man who should know her best, the indignity of having to defend what should never have required defending, and the devastating consequences of Leontes’ obsession give Rabe some of the production’s strongest dramatic material.

Yet the person who ultimately holds The Winter’s Tale together is neither Leontes nor Hermione. It is Paulina, Marsha Stephanie Blake. Superb in the role, in a play populated by kings, queens, lovers, clowns and improbable transformations, Paulina somehow emerges as its most recognizably human being.

She is the one person who refuses to surrender either her morality or her character simply because a king demands it. When Leontes constructs a false reality and expects everyone around him to inhabit it, Paulina says no. She speaks truth when truth is dangerous. She protects the infant Perdita—played as a young woman with an incandescent openness by Isabela Ferrer—and it is Paulina who persuades her husband, Antigonus, to take responsibility for saving the child.

Steven Skybell Photo by Joan Marcus

Stephen Skybell is wonderful as Antigonus, taking a comparatively small role and creating some of the most memorable moments of the evening. Skybell has that rare ability to make Shakespeare sound not like language being performed but like thoughts occurring to him for the first time. His Antigonus is funny, warm and wonderfully alive, which makes what happens to him matter far more than the famous theatrical joke that ultimately awaits him. Because Antigonus’ act of mercy places him in the chain of events leading to perhaps Shakespeare’s most celebrated stage direction: “Exit, pursued by a bear.” The audience may laugh—and Shakespeare certainly intended them to—but Paulina loses her husband and Paulina pays dearly for doing the right thing.

That matters because almost everyone at the center of the tragedy is eventually given something back. Leontes is offered the possibility of redemption. Hermione is restored. Perdita returns, and a family shattered by jealousy is astonishingly reconstructed. Paulina participates in creating that restoration for everyone else, even though the person she lost cannot be restored to her. Antigonus remains dead.

That is what makes Paulina’s eventual role in the miracle so extraordinary. She does not guide others toward forgiveness because life has spared her. She does it while carrying a loss that the play itself cannot undo. She may, in fact, have lost more permanently than anyone else in the play, yet she becomes its guardian rather than its victim. She remains beside Leontes through his years of repentance, never allowing him to forget what he did but also never preventing him from becoming something better than the man who did it.

Blake gives Paulina an earthbound authority that gradually begins to feel almost otherworldly. She becomes the play’s guardian angel, quietly steering something beneath the visible story. And by the end, Shakespeare entrusts the impossible to her. That is where The Winter’s Tale finally becomes extraordinary.

Chuck Cooper, Steven Skybell, Michael Khalid Karadsheh Photo by Joan Marcus

Before we get there, however, Sullivan’s direction has to navigate Shakespeare’s wild transition into Bohemia, where Perdita is being raised by elderly shepherd (Chuck Cooper). This is where the production becomes particularly disjointed. Some of the characters seem to have wandered in from Twelfth Night, played with a broadness and comic eccentricity that belong to an entirely different theatrical vocabulary from the severe emotional landscape established earlier.

Certainly, Shakespeare intended the rupture. Sicilia is a place where jealousy has frozen everything it touches; Bohemia bursts with youth, sex, foolishness, music and life. Winter has to become spring. However knowing that the fracture is intentional doesn’t automatically make every theatrical choice cohere. Sullivan’s production too often feels as though it is presenting the different personalities of The Winter’s Tale rather than revealing the invisible thread connecting them.

Fortunately, Stephen Skybell seems entirely at home in both worlds Shakespeare has created. Doubling as Antigonus and Autolycus, Skybell gives two wonderfully distinct performances, in the process, practically steals the evening. As Antigonus, he brings warmth and humanity to the darker world of Sicilia, making his loss register as more than the setup for Shakespeare’s famously absurd bear. Then, as Autolycus, he seems to reinvent himself completely, embracing the mischief and theatricality of Bohemia without losing the truth underneath it. Skybell has that rare gift of making Shakespeare sound less like literature being performed than thoughts occurring spontaneously inside another human being. His work has wit, ease and specificity, and some of the most alive moments of the production belong to him. In a play that sometimes struggles to make its wildly different worlds coexist, Skybell moves between them effortlessly.

The production is also frequently gorgeous. The set by Maruti Evans gives the Delacorte a visual world worthy of Shakespeare’s strange geography, while Linda Cho’s costumes are sumptuous without becoming imprisoned by period. Bradley King’s lighting is particularly beautiful, shifting the emotional temperature of the enormous outdoor space and becoming increasingly important as the play moves toward its final mystery.

Tom Kitt’s music is glorious. Rather than merely accompanying the production, it helps supply some of the connective emotional tissue missing elsewhere. Kitt understands that underneath Shakespeare’s structural peculiarities is a movement from destruction toward possibility, and his music allows us to feel some of what the direction doesn’t always articulate.

Then comes the statue, suddenly everything stops. Years have passed. Leontes has lived with what he did. Perdita has returned. The oracle has been fulfilled. Paulina brings everyone before what appears to be a statue of Hermione. What follows at the Delacorte is spectacular. The transformation from statue into living woman is handled with such beauty that, for several moments, all the structural arguments one has been having with the production become irrelevant. Hermione moves. Stone becomes flesh. Lily Rabe returns not as an image, memory or symbol but as a living woman, and theatre performs the trick it has been promising since the evening began. It makes us believe the impossible.

Importantly, Paulina controls the moment. She determines when they may see Hermione. She commands their attention. She summons music. She asks them to awaken their faith. In a fascinating sense, Paulina becomes the director of Shakespeare’s final scene. The most practical, morally grounded person in the play is ultimately entrusted with its miracle. Perhaps that is the secret of The Winter’s Tale.

 The Winter’s Tale isn’t really a play about jealousy. It isn’t even ultimately about forgiveness. It is about whether something destroyed can ever truly live again. Leontes cannot undo what he did. Sixteen years of repentance cannot return Antigonus. It cannot erase Hermione’s suffering or give Perdita back her childhood. Shakespeare is too intelligent to pretend otherwise. What he offers instead is grace. Not restoration without consequence. Not forgiveness through forgetting. Grace after consequence.

That is why Paulina is so essential. She remembers everything. She compromises nothing. She demands accountability from Leontes and still becomes the person who eventually opens the door to forgiveness.

Daniel Sullivan’s production never entirely reconciles the strange collection of theatrical worlds Shakespeare handed him. At times it feels fractured; at others unnecessarily broad. The direction doesn’t always illuminate why these radically different pieces belong together.

Yet surrounded by beautiful design, Tom Kitt’s evocative music and exceptional performances—Rabe’s wounded humanity, Esparza’s ferocity and remorse, Blake’s magnificent moral authority and Skybell’s scene-stealing ease—the production keeps reaching toward something larger.

Then, finally, Hermione moves. For one astonishing moment at the Delacorte, we awaken our faith. Shakespeare’s strange, fractured Winter’s Tale becomes whole.

The Winter’s Tale: Delacorte Theatre, Central Park, Three hours and 30 minutes with one intermission. Runs through August 23

One of New York’s favorite summer traditions continued this week as Broadway in Bryant Park once again turned the Midtown lawn into an open-air theatre, bringing together performers from The Book of Mormon, The Great Gatsby, Heathers: The Musical and Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody for an afternoon of free performances.

Helen Little

Ashley De La Rosa

Ashley De La Rosa, Helen Little

Presented by 106.7 LITE FM, the afternoon was hosted by the station’s Helen Little, with Ashley De La Rosa joining as co-host. Broadway in Bryant Park has long been one of those quintessentially New York events: office workers on lunch breaks, theatre lovers and tourists gathering on the lawn while Broadway performers trade their usual proscenium arches for sunshine, skyscrapers and a decidedly less formal audience.

J. Casey Barrett. Vance Klassen, Andrew Nelin, Kevin Clay. Andrew Stevens Purdy, Thomas Doelger, Diego Enrico, Joshua Keen and Henry McGuiness

Diego Enrico and Kevin Clay

Thomas Doelger and Charlie Franklin

Diego Enrico and Kevin Clay

The Book of Mormon, still one of Broadway’s most irreverent long-running hits, was represented by J. Casey Barrett, Vance Klassen, Andrew Nelin, Kevin Clay, Andrew Stevens Purdy, Thomas Doelger, Diego Enrico, Charlie Franklin, Joshua Keen and Henry McGuinness. More than a decade after arriving on Broadway, the musical continues to demonstrate the remarkable staying power of a show that turned religious satire, outrageous comedy and an unexpectedly traditional musical-theatre heart into a theatrical phenomenon.

Alex Prakken, Brandon J. Large, Nathaniel Hunt, Traci Elaine Lee, Drew Lake, Justin Keats, Emily Anne Nester, Matt Wiercinski and Kurt Csolak

The Cast of The Great Gatsby that includes, Brandon J. Large, Nathaniel Hunt, Traci Elaine Lee, Drew Lake, Justin Keats, Emily Anne Nester, Matt Wiercinski and Kurt Csolak

Alex Prakken

Alex Prakken

Alex Prakken

The Cast of The Great Gatsby that includes, Brandon J. Large, Nathaniel Hunt, Traci Elaine Lee, Drew Lake, Justin Keats, Emily Anne Nester, Matt Wiercinski and Kurt Csolak

The glamour of the Jazz Age arrived courtesy of The Great Gatsby, with Alex Prakken, Brandon J. Large, Nathaniel Hunt, Traci Elaine Lee, Drew Lake, Justin Keats, Emily Anne Nester, Matt Wiercinski and Kurt Csolak taking the Bryant Park stage. The Broadway musical, inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quintessential American novel, brought a splash of Gatsby excess to the lawn—a fitting contrast to the decidedly democratic pleasure of seeing Broadway for free in the middle of Manhattan.

John Cardoza, Thalia Atallah, Ava DeMary, Jackera Davis, Zan Berube, Kiara Michelle Lee, Emma Benson and Syd Sider

John Cardoza and Kiara Michelle Lee

John Cardoza and Kiara Michelle Lee

John Cardoza

Jackera Davis, Zan Berube and Ava DeMary

Things became considerably darker—and deliciously more dangerous—with Heathers: The Musical. John Cardoza, Kiara Michelle Lee, Thalia Atallah, Ava DeMary, Jackera Davis, Zan Berube, Emma Benson and Syd Siderrepresented the cult musical, whose wicked combination of teenage cruelty, black comedy and infectious pop-rock music has given Heathers a devoted following that has only grown since the show first arrived in New York.

Jay Armstrong Johnson and Ryann Redmond

Kevin Clay

Ryan Duncan

Daniel Brackett, Ryan Duncan, Shelby Acosta, Jay Armstrong Johnson, Cherry Torres and Ryann Redmond

Daniel Brackett

Jay Armstrong Johnson

Ryann Redmond

Then came one of the afternoon’s cheekier offerings, Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody. Daniel Brackett, Ryan Duncan, Shelby Acosta, Jay Armstrong Johnson, Cherry Torres and Ryann Redmond brought the parody to Bryant Park, adding another flavor entirely to a program that happily jumped from established Broadway blockbusters to cult favorites and irreverent new work.

Jane Fujita

Daielle Dellilo

Eyllah Babbitt, Danielle Dellilo and Kelly Branco

Also participating in the afternoon were Eyllah Babbitt, Danielle Dellilo and Kelly Branco, along with Jane Fujita

and representatives from Taiwan Tourism, adding to an event that has increasingly become as much a Midtown summer gathering as a theatrical sampler.

That has always been the particular charm of Broadway in Bryant Park. Broadway can be expensive, carefully scheduled and sometimes intimidating to those who don’t regularly venture inside its theatres. Here, the walls disappear. There is no velvet rope separating the initiated from the curious. Someone can wander through Bryant Park, hear an extraordinary voice coming from the stage, sit down on the lawn and discover a show they had never considered seeing.

And for Broadway itself, that matters. A few songs performed on a summer afternoon can accomplish what an advertisement sometimes cannot: they allow an audience to experience the performers themselves. The theatre becomes immediate, accessible and wonderfully difficult to ignore.

Broadway in Bryant Park continues throughout the summer at Bryant Park, located along Sixth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets. Lawn seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

In a city where Broadway normally begins when the house lights go down, Bryant Park continues to prove that sometimes the best way to sell the magic of theatre is simply to bring it outside and let New York stumble upon it.

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.