There are performers who make you wonder how they did it. Then there are performers who make you stop caring how they did it because you’re having far too much fun watching them do it. Suhani Shah belongs firmly in the second category.

Her Spellbound, now finishing its limited New York engagement at SoHo Playhouse, left me with two questions: Why is this woman not playing a much larger venue, and how is she not already a household name in America and beyond?

Shah certainly isn’t unknown elsewhere. She has performed more than 5,000 shows across 20 countries, amassed more than 10 million followers across social media, and brought Spellbound to sold-out audiences across India, the UK, Australia and beyond. In 2025, she received FISM’s Award for Best Magic Creator, becoming the first Indian to receive the honor. Yet this extraordinary performer has arrived in New York for a relatively intimate run at SoHo Playhouse, where Spellbound plays only through September 6.

New York, pay attention. Shah doesn’t need spectacle. There are no massive contraptions, disappearing elephants or Las Vegas machinery attempting to convince us that something impossible just happened. Her material is human beings. She watches, listens, plays, calculates—or does something I am still not entirely prepared to explain—and somehow appears to get inside people’s minds. More importantly, she is completely adorable.

That matters more than it sounds. Mentalism can become chilly very quickly. There is something inherently intimidating about a performer standing in front of an audience essentially saying, I know something you haven’t told me. Shah removes that barrier with humor, warmth and an extraordinary natural likability. She has that elusive quality the entertainment industry spends fortunes trying to manufacture: the “it” factor. You want to watch her before she has done anything astonishing.

Then she starts doing astonishing things. Spellbound is built around audience participation, with Shah pulling seemingly random information from the people sitting in front of her. The audience isn’t decoration; it becomes her material. Numbers are chosen, thoughts are formed, decisions appear spontaneous, and Shah keeps pulling information out of the room that she simply shouldn’t possess.

Then comes the piece that floored me. Early in the evening, Shah borrows a twenty-dollar bill from an audience member. Remember that bill. You won’t understand its importance until much later. Another audience member receives what appears to be a certificate naming them the evening’s “Best Audience Member.” Someone is brought onstage, and that person and four others supply random numbers. Nothing about the sequence seems particularly consequential at the time. It is simply another piece of Shah’s very clever game with the audience. Until the end.

The certificate isn’t what we thought it was. It contains the total of those randomly supplied numbers. That twenty-dollar bill returns. Its serial number corresponds to the same number. I was spellbound.

But something more interesting happened to me during Spellbound. Shah convinced me so completely of her ability that I began wanting more than the show was designed to give me.

The material in Spellbound is wonderfully calibrated for a broad audience. It is funny, accessible, surprising and enormously people-pleasing. People gasp. They laugh. They stare at each other trying to work out what the hell just happened. Shah understands exactly how to construct an evening that sends an audience home delighted.

I wanted her to go deeper. I wanted to know what happens when Suhani Shah stops asking for numbers and begins asking the questions we don’t know how to answer. I wanted to see what she perceives beneath the easily accessible layers of a person. I wanted the psychological, intuitive, even psychic possibilities of what she does explored much further.

That is admittedly asking Shah to perform a rather different show—and quite possibly one that a general audience wouldn’t want to experience. I am the person who wants to know what is underneath the underneath. Give me the trick and I’m delighted. Convince me that you can actually perceive something I cannot, and I immediately want to know what that ability says about consciousness, intuition and the human mind. Shah made me believe there is considerably more there.

Whether what she does is mentalism, extraordinary observation, psychology, intuition, technique, something genuinely psychic, or some combination Shah is far too clever to reveal. What I can say is that sitting in the theatre, she made it feel absolutely real. That is ultimately the mentalist’s greatest trick or is it a trick?

The title Spellbound turns out to be unusually accurate. Suhani Shah is warm, funny, astonishingly accomplished and enormously charismatic. More than that, she feels like a performer who has not yet reached the size of American stage she belongs on. SoHo Playhouse may be where New York is discovering her. I have a strong suspicion it won’t be where New York ultimately keeps her.

By the way, T2C isn’t finished with her yet. Check out Live From The Hotel Edison Times Square Chronicles Presents, where Suhani Shah will join us for our next podcast. After watching her read an audience, I have an infinite amount of  questions of my own that I can not wait to address.

Do not miss Spellbound. It plays at the SoHo Playhouse through September 6th, so you have two more performances to catch her. Information and tickets are available through SoHo Playhouse, with Shah’s future international dates available at Suhani Shah’s official site.

This is not a show to miss.

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.

Broadway will go dark for a moment on Tuesday, September 8 at 6:45 p.m., when the marquees of all 41 Broadway theatres dim simultaneously in memory of 13 artists and industry figures whose work helped shape the theatre—and, in several cases, American culture far beyond it.

The September Broadway in Memoriam tribute will honor Tim Curry, Clive Davis, Gina Ferrall, Josh Grisetti, Jeff Hamlin, Glen Hansard, Louise Lasser, Anna Louizos, Seth Marquette, Dolly Parton, Anne Russell, James Walsh and Harold Wheeler.

There is something particularly moving about the Broadway tradition of dimming the lights. Theatre is built on illumination—the marquee, the footlights, the spotlight—and so Broadway marks loss by taking that light away. For a few moments, Times Square becomes noticeably darker, acknowledging that someone who contributed to its brilliance is no longer here.

This September’s list crosses nearly every corner of the industry. Tim Curry, forever associated with his indelible Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, was also a three-time Tony Award nominee whose Broadway career included Amadeus, My Favorite Year and Spamalot. Dolly Parton, whose songs, personality and unmistakable generosity made her one of America’s most beloved entertainers, also left her mark on Broadway through 9 to 5: The Musical and the theatrical projects that followed.

Clive Davis, Nancy Pelosi

Clive Davis, one of the towering figures of the recording industry, spent decades influencing the music that ultimately found its way onto stages as well as records. Glen Hansard, whose music helped give Once its singular heartbeat, became part of Broadway history when the intimate musical defied conventional Broadway expectations and captured the 2012 Tony Award for Best Musical.

Broadway will also remember the extraordinary orchestrator, composer, conductor and musical director Harold Wheeler, whose career stretched across decades and included work on The Wiz, Dreamgirls, The Full Monty, Hairspray and countless other productions. Wheeler’s contribution was often the kind audiences feel without necessarily knowing whose hand created it—the musical architecture beneath some of Broadway’s most memorable nights.

Anna Louizos and Ken Billington in The Producers Exhibit Photo credit Rebecca J Michelson

Theatre designer Anna Louizos gave physical form to stories through a career that included scenic and costume work and multiple Tony nominations.

Louise Lasser Photo Magda Katz

Louise Lasser, best known to much of America through television and film, also had roots on the New York stage. Gina Ferrall, Jeff Hamlin, Seth Marquette, Anne Russell and James Walsh will likewise be remembered for lives and careers connected to the Broadway community.

Josh Grisetti

For T2C, the inclusion of Josh Grisetti carries particular weight. Grisetti, who died at only 44, possessed the kind of talent that made an audience look twice: an actor with comic precision, musical intelligence and an individuality that could not be manufactured. His work ranged from the stage to television and film, but those who saw him in the theatre understood exactly what Broadway has lost.

The September ceremony is part of the relatively new Broadway in Memoriam initiative, established last year to create a more consistent and inclusive way of honoring members of the theatrical community. Rather than allowing recognition to depend upon sporadic individual marquee dimmings, the quarterly tradition gathers multiple members of the Broadway family into a shared remembrance.

The ceremony now takes place four times annually, on the second Tuesday of September, December, March and June, with all 41 Broadway theatres participating simultaneously. The committee can also designate a separate dimming for an individual whose contribution to Broadway is considered profoundly significant.

Members of the Broadway community may submit creative professionals who have worked on Broadway, as well as career professionals who devoted their lives to the industry, for future consideration. The next submission deadline is November 17, for the December 8, 2026 dimming. Information and submissions are available through Broadway in Memoriam.

Broadway is an unusual place. Shows disappear. Sets are struck. Costumes are packed away. Dressing rooms are emptied and another name eventually goes above the theatre door. An industry devoted to creating moments that vanish every night has always had a complicated relationship with permanence.

That is why September 8 matters.

At 6:45 p.m., Broadway will briefly extinguish the lights that ordinarily announce who is playing, what is opening and what audiences should see next.

For that moment, the darkness will say something else entirely:

We remember who was here.

There is something about a cast album that keeps theatre alive long after the curtain comes down. This late-summer crop is particularly eclectic: vampires, Eva Perón, 1979 New York nightlife, memory and mortality, a queer singer-songwriter discovering a family secret, and a developing musical using its music to support Alzheimer’s care. Some are full cast recordings, some are singles offering the first glimpse of what’s coming next, and one is finally getting the vinyl treatment it deserves.

The Lost Boys Sinks Its Teeth Into Vinyl

Atlantic Records’ The Lost Boys (Original Broadway Cast Recording), already available digitally, will arrive physically on October 30 on CD and as a two-LP black-and-red vinyl edition—a color combination that seems almost mandatory for a musical about the vampires of Santa Carla. The 27-song album features music and lyrics by Tony-nominated trio The Rescues—Kyler England, AG and Gabriel Mann—and includes the bonus track “Brother,” which was cut during Broadway previews.

The recording features the Broadway company led by LJ Benet, Shoshana Bean, Ali Louis Bourzgui, Benjamin Pajak, Maria Wirries and Paul Alexander Nolan, with fan favorites including “Secret Comes Out,” “Now, Forever,” “Superpower” and “If We Make It Through the Night.”

It also preserves a show that emerged from the 2026 awards season with four Tony Awards, including Featured Actress in a Musical for Bean, Featured Actor in a Musical for Bourzgui, Scenic Design for Dane Laffrey and Lighting Design for Michael Arden and Jen Schriever.

Listen to or preorder The Lost Boys

Rachel Zegler’s Evita Comes Home From London

Jamie Lloyd’s electrifying London revival of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita has released EVITA: The Full Album, recorded live at the London Palladium in July 2025. The 30-track recording is available digitally and as an extravagant three-LP vinyl set, arriving ahead of the production’s planned Broadway transfer in spring 2027.

Rachel Zegler leads the company as Eva Perón, joined by Diego Andres Rodriguez as Che, James Olivas as Juan Perón, Aaron Lee Lambert as Agustín Magaldi and Bella Brown as The Mistress. Zegler’s “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” previously reached No. 1 on the UK’s Official Vinyl Chart, while the Palladium production collected two Olivier Awards, two London Standard Theatre Awards and five WhatsOnStage Awards.

The beauty of recording this particular Evita live is that Lloyd’s production wasn’t conceived as a museum piece. It had heat, theatricality and controversy, and the album captures a company performing the score rather than politely preserving it. Broadway audiences now have something of a musical preview before Eva arrives in New York.

Listen to EVITA: The Full AlbumBat Boy Is Back—and Still Delightfully Insane

Ghostlight Records and Yellow Sound Label have released Bat Boy: The Musical (New York City Center Cast Recording), preserving the terrific 2025 City Center Gala revival directed by Alex Timbers.

The recording features Taylor Trensch as Edgar/Bat Boy, alongside Kerry Butler, Gabi Carrubba, Andrew Durand, Mary Faber, Alan H Green, Evan Harrington, John-Michael Lyles, Tom McGowan, Jacob Ming-Trent, Alex Newell, Olivia Puckett, Christopher Sieber, Rema Webb and Marissa Jaret Winokur. The new album contains 23 tracks, including three songs receiving their world-premiere recordings, and expanded orchestrations for 12 musicians by Laurence O’Keefe and Ben Green.

Inspired by the infamous 1990s tabloid story, Bat Boy remains an outrageous mixture of horror, satire, tragedy, religion, sexuality and small-town hysteria. More than two decades after its 2001 Off-Broadway premiere, the score has lost none of its wonderfully warped personality. As T2C said of the City Center production, it was “absurd, hilarious, and weirdly unforgettable.”

Stream Bat Boy: The Musical

Beau: The Musical Offers Two More Songs Before the Album Arrives

Joy Machine Records has released “Crush” and “It Couldn’t Be,” two new singles from the forthcoming Beau: The Musical (Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording). “Crush” features Matt Rodin and Miyuki Miyagi, while “It Couldn’t Be” pairs Rodin with Max Sangerman. The full recording is expected this fall.

Conceived and written by Douglas Lyons, with music by Lyons and Ethan D. Pakchar and lyrics by Lyons, Beaufollows Ace Baker, a young queer singer-songwriter who discovers that Beau—the grandfather he believed was dead—is actually alive. As family secrets unravel, a guitar becomes the connection between generations and a way of recovering years that can never quite be returned.

The Off-Broadway production earned an impressive 10 Drama Desk nominations, including Outstanding Musical, along with nominations from the Outer Critics Circle, Drama League and Off-Broadway Alliance. The forthcoming album also features Jeb Brown, Andrea Goss, Amelia Cormack, Ryan Halsaver and Derek Stoltenberg.

Listen to the new Beau singles

Kevin Chamberlin Takes a “Wander” With Big Man

The developing Big Man: A New Musical releases its second single, “Wander,” on September 4, performed by three-time Tony nominee Kevin Chamberlin. The musical features music by Billy Recce, book and lyrics by New York Timesbestselling author Sheryl Berk, arrangements by Lena Gabrielle, with the single produced and orchestrated by Nick Anton.

Inspired by Berk’s own family experience, Big Man enters the imagination of Albert, whose modest memory-care room gives way to the swagger and fantasy of 1960s Las Vegas. “Wander” is Albert’s assertion that age and circumstance do not erase identity, dignity or the desire to determine one’s own life.

The song follows the musical’s first single, “Wanted to Believe,” performed by Ramin Karimloo. There is also a purpose beyond introducing a developing show: proceeds from 99-cent downloads of both songs benefit the Alzheimer’s Association.

Big Man: A New Musical

This Ain’t No Disco Goes Back to New York in 1979

For those who prefer their musical theatre with considerably more downtown grit, Center Stage Records has released This Ain’t No Disco: World Premiere Recording—Songs from the Musical by Stephen Trask, the composer behind Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Peter Yanowitz.

Part rock opera and part impressionistic portrait of New York City in 1979, the musical moves between Studio 54, the Mudd Club, downtown lofts and the art world, following strivers, artists, dreamers and beautiful disasters searching for identity and belonging in a city about to undergo enormous cultural change.

And what a recording cast: John Cameron Mitchell, Lena Hall, Sean Ono Lennon, Jake Shears, Miriam Shor, Brandon Uranowitz, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Lilli Cooper, Taylor Hanson, Chilina Kennedy, Adam Chanler-Berat and more.

The musical originally premiered at Atlantic Theater Company in 2018 under the direction of Darko Tresnjak with choreography by Camille A. Brown. Eight years later, the recording gives Trask and Yanowitz’s score an entirely new opportunity to find its audience.

Stream This Ain’t No Disco

Night Side Songs Preserves One of the Season’s Most Intimate Scores

Finally, Octoverse Media and Warner Music Group’s Arts Music have released the cast album of The Lazours’ Night Side Songs, following its 2026 Lincoln Center Theater engagement at LCT3’s Claire Tow Theater.

Featuring Robin de Jesús, Brooke Ishibashi, Jonathan Raviv, Kris Saint-Louis and Mary Testa, the album captures Daniel and Patrick Lazour’s folk-inflected score and its examination of illness, caregiving, faith, fear, memory and the strange intimacy created when someone’s life changes irrevocably. An in-studio audience even joins the company in song, giving the recording the communal quality at the heart of the piece.

The stage production earned a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Music, a Drama League nomination for Outstanding Production of a Musical and Lucille Lortel nominations for Outstanding Musical and Outstanding Ensemble. The digital album is available now, with CD and vinyl editions planned for later this year.

What connects these recordings isn’t style—there could hardly be more distance between Evita, Bat Boy and Night Side Songs. It is preservation. Theatre disappears nightly, even while a production is still running; no two performances are precisely the same. A cast album catches one incarnation before everyone moves on.

And this summer, Broadway and Off-Broadway have given us quite a lot worth keeping.

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.