Times Square smelled considerably better than usual Wednesday afternoon as Taste of Times Square returned September 9, turning Broadway and Restaurant Row into one enormous outdoor dining room. More than 30 neighborhood restaurants participated in the annual Times Square Alliance food and music festival, which stretched along 46th Street from Seventh to Ninth Avenues and across the Broadway plazas between 45th and 47th Streets.

For four hours, the neighborhood became a tasting menu of itself. Italian, Mexican, Caribbean, Cuban, Indian and classic American dishes appeared within steps of one another, with longtime Theatre District institutions joining newer arrivals and giving New Yorkers and visitors the chance to graze their way through the neighborhood without committing to a full dinner. Most tastes were priced at $5, with several larger offerings at $10.

Among the participating favorites were Bond 45 NY, Brooklyn Chop House, Ellen’s Stardust Diner, Hard Rock Cafe, Carmine’s, Becco, Havana Central, Le Rivage, Junior’s, Serendipity 3, Toloache, Tony’s Di Napoli and Virgil’s Real Barbecue. It was a rather wonderful reminder of something those of us who actually live and work here already know: Times Square may be famous for its lights and Broadway theatres, but there is an extraordinary amount of food tucked into these blocks.

Toffee Sticky Pudding from The Long Room

We started with dessert—or at least made very certain we didn’t miss it. The Toffee Sticky Pudding from The Long Room proved one of our happiest discoveries of the day. Sweets were surprisingly scarce, particularly compared with the number of savory offerings, making that pudding even more welcome. Between it, Serendipity 3’s Frozen Hot Chocolate and Junior’s cheesecake, the neighborhood’s sweet tooth was represented, but only just.

Toloache’s pork taco

Then came Toloache. Their pork taco was delicious enough to accomplish exactly what an event like Taste of Times Square is supposed to accomplish: it made us want to go back and review the restaurant properly. A few bites can be a far more persuasive advertisement than any press release.

Palermo Argentinian Bistro Steak and cheese bread

We already knew what Palermo Argentinian Bistro could do, having previously reviewed and loved the restaurant, but its steak and cheese bread provided a useful reminder. The steak was quite simply melt-in-your-mouth tender. There is also another Mexican restaurant, Rosa Mexican, preparing to enter the neighborhood, and we are more than ready to see what it brings to the increasingly interesting Theatre District dining scene.

Food, however, was only half the atmosphere. Music spilled through the plazas, including TSQ LIVE + MTA Music performer Bella Breen at Broadway and 47th Street, while the Broadway Dreams Foundation and Ellen’s Stardust Diner’s Stardusters were among the scheduled performers farther downtown. Street musicians filled in the spaces between, and at one point models were being filmed in the middle of it all. It was Times Square doing what Times Square does best: food, theatre, fashion, music and complete visual chaos somehow occupying the same few blocks without asking one another’s permission.

Catherine Russell

One of our favorite encounters was with Catherine Russell, who has spent nearly four decades playing Margaret Thorne Brent in the Off-Broadway thriller Perfect Crime. Russell isn’t simply part of Theatre District history; she is one of those people who actually makes the neighborhood feel like a neighborhood. She owns The Theater Center and Patzeria Perfect Pizza, and there she was Wednesday, not posing beside the booth but serving pasta to the people who stopped by.

That accessibility is part of what made Taste of Times Square work. For one afternoon, the barrier between restaurant and customer, performer and audience, Broadway and sidewalk largely disappeared. Restaurant owners and workers served food in the street while musicians performed a few feet away and thousands of people wandered from table to table deciding what smelled too good to pass up.

New York has an unnerving ability to place celebration and violence almost side by side.

Just a block from Restaurant Row, two people were stabbed Wednesday afternoon inside a West 47th Street building. Early reports differed on the precise address, ages and conditions of the victims, but police confirmed that a man and woman suffered stab wounds in the incident at approximately 2:45 p.m. Later reporting said both victims had been taken to Mount Sinai West and were in stable condition, while police were searching for a suspect. Contrary to some initial information circulating Wednesday, the latest reporting I found does not confirm that the male victim died or that a person of interest was in custody.

The contrast was impossible to ignore. A block away, people were eating tacos, listening to music and celebrating the restaurants that make Hell’s Kitchen and Times Square feel like home. Nearby, police were investigating a bloody act of violence.

That, too, is New York: glorious and maddening, communal and frightening, sometimes within a single city block.

For most of Wednesday, though, Taste of Times Square offered the version of the neighborhood worth fighting to preserve. Restaurants opened themselves to strangers, performers turned sidewalks into stages, Catherine Russell handed out pizza, and thousands of people ate their way through a community that is far richer and more local than the flashing billboards sometimes allow the rest of the world to see.

Somewhere in all of that, we discovered a sticky toffee pudding worth going back for.

There are certain conversations that simply belong in New York, and putting Gustavo Dudamel and Lin-Manuel Miranda together beneath the stars in Central Park feels like one of them.

On September 23, The Public Theater will bring back its Public Forum Duets with Public Forum Duet: Gustavo Dudamel & Lin-Manuel Miranda, a free, one-night-only event at the revitalized Delacorte Theater. The evening will combine conversation with live musical performances as two very different musical forces talk about music, life and, most intriguingly, what both mean in New York City.

Dudamel arrives at a fascinating moment in his relationship with the city. The celebrated conductor is the incoming Tang Music & Artistic Director of the New York Philharmonic, bringing with him not simply an international reputation but a deeply held belief in music as something that should reach beyond the traditional walls of the concert hall.

Miranda hardly requires an introduction to a New York theater audience. The creator of Hamilton has become one of the city’s most recognizable artistic voices, but his connection to The Public makes this particular pairing especially appropriate. Hamilton began its New York life at The Public before moving to Broadway, making The Delacorte an unusually fitting place for Miranda to join a musician beginning his own major new chapter in the city.

What makes the evening particularly appealing, however, is the word duet.

The Public Forum series has long been built around the idea that conversation itself can be a form of performance. The Public describes the program as a place where “art, ideas, and action collide,” bringing artists, thinkers and public voices together to examine the larger questions moving through the culture.

Dudamel and Miranda should have plenty to discuss.

One comes from the world of orchestras, where hundreds of years of musical tradition meet the challenge of attracting the audiences of tomorrow. The other helped take American history, hip-hop, musical theater and immigration and turn them into one of the defining theatrical phenomena of the 21st century. Both have spent much of their careers challenging assumptions about who certain kinds of music belong to and who should be invited into the room.

New York has always been a city that absorbs musical languages and makes something new from them. Classical music, Broadway, jazz, salsa, hip-hop, opera and countless sounds carried here by generations of immigrants coexist within a few subway stops of one another. Yet arts institutions everywhere are confronting the same question: How do you honor tradition without allowing tradition to become a gatekeeper?

Dudamel and Miranda have approached that question from very different directions. Bringing them together isn’t simply an appealing celebrity pairing. It offers the possibility of a conversation about where music goes next—and who gets to come along.

Best of all, the evening remains rooted in one of The Public’s defining principles: access.

Free tickets will be distributed on September 23 in several ways. Distribution outside The Delacorte begins at noon; an in-person lottery will be held at noon in The Public Theater lobby at 425 Lafayette Street; the TodayTix digital lottery remains open until noon that day; and a standby line at The Delacorte can begin distributing available tickets as early as 6 p.m. Public Theater members can also reserve seats with an additional donation.

Public Forum Duet: Gustavo Dudamel & Lin-Manuel Miranda — tickets and information

There is something wonderfully old-fashioned about the whole proposition: gather New Yorkers in Central Park, put two extraordinary musical minds onstage, add live music and see where the conversation goes.

In a city increasingly divided into algorithms, audiences and carefully targeted demographics, perhaps there is still something radical about simply gathering together to listen.

On September 23, New York gets one hell of a duet.

The New York Pops is heading into its 2026–27 season with James Bond, Broadway stars, holiday glamour and the cinematic worlds of John Williams and Steven Spielberg. Under Music Director and Conductor Steven Reineke, the orchestra returns to Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage with five programs that move easily between Broadway, Hollywood and popular music—exactly the territory The New York Pops has made its own.

The season begins October 23 with 007: James Bond Forever, featuring Tony Award winner Lena Hall. Few film franchises have produced music as instantly recognizable as Bond, where the songs have become almost as important as the Aston Martins, villains and martinis. From Shirley Bassey and Tom Jones to Adele and Billie Eilish, Bond music has always demanded singers with personality, and Hall certainly has that. With a voice capable of moving from rock to Broadway without losing its edge, she is an inspired choice for an evening devoted to 007.

On November 20, Broadway takes center stage with One Night Only: An Evening with Denée Benton and Jordan Donica. Benton, the Tony-nominated star of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, and Donica, whose Broadway credits include The Phantom of the Opera and Camelot, join The New York Pops for an evening built around two formidable voices. It is also the kind of pairing Carnegie Hall does particularly well: performers we know from the theatre given the room—and the orchestra—to show us something beyond the roles in which we first discovered them.

Christmas arrives December 18 and 19 with Sleigh Bells Ring, starring Tony Award winner Lindsay Mendez and Derek Klena. The Pops’ holiday concerts have become a New York tradition, and this year’s combination is particularly appealing. Mendez brings one of Broadway’s most distinctive voices and a wonderfully grounded sense of humor, while Klena has the soaring leading-man vocals the season practically demands. Add a full orchestra, Carnegie Hall dressed for Christmas and two nights just before the holiday, and this has all the makings of one of December’s lovelier escapes.

The new year introduces two powerhouse voices on February 5, 2027, with Introducing…Jimmie Herrod and Marisha Wallace. Herrod, who reached a huge national audience through America’s Got Talent, possesses a remarkable range, while Wallace has established herself as a force on both the West End and Broadway. The evening is part of The New York Pops’ Debut Series, placing the spotlight on artists ready for a major Carnegie Hall moment.

The Carnegie Hall season concludes March 5 with John Williams and Steven Spielberg: Movie Magic. This one barely needs explaining. Williams and Spielberg created one of the great director-composer partnerships in film history, producing music and images that became inseparable from one another. Jaws, E.T., Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List—for generations, we have heard Williams’ music and immediately seen Spielberg’s worlds. Hearing those scores played by The New York Pops in Carnegie Hall should be glorious.

Deborah Cox

Before all of that, however, The New York Pops goes underground—quite literally. On October 5, Grammy and Tony-nominated singer Deborah Cox headlines the annual New York Pops Underground cabaret fundraiser at 54 Below. Cox, currently appearing on Broadway in Titanique as the “Unsinkable” Molly Brown and serving as a co-producer of the production, has built a career that crosses R&B, dance music and Broadway. Her extraordinary “Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here” spent 14 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop chart, while her dance career has produced 13 No. 1 hits on the Hot Dance Club Play chart.

The evening begins with a 6 p.m. reception followed by dinner, wine pairings and the 6:30 p.m. performance. Also appearing will be the PopsEd Alumni Ensemble, made up of young musicians who previously participated in The New York Pops’ Kids on Stage program. That connection is important: proceeds from the evening support PopsEd, the organization’s music-education programs, which have reached more than 100,000 New York City students since 1991.

What makes this Pops season particularly attractive is its range. Bond one month, Broadway the next, Christmas in December, emerging voices in February and Spielberg and Williams in March. It doesn’t require audiences to choose between popular culture and great musicianship. The New York Pops has long understood that the two were never mutually exclusive in the first place.

In a city where fall calendars become impossible almost overnight, consider this your warning: Carnegie Hall just gave us five dates worth putting on the calendar before Fashion Week makes us forget what month it is.

The New York Pops 2026–27 season and tickets

New York Pops Underground with Deborah Cox

Before Rachel Zegler returns to Broadway as Eva Perón, she is making a considerably less formal stop in Cuba.

The Olivier and Golden Globe Award winner will host the next “dance-along” performance of the Tony and Grammy-winning Buena Vista Social Club on Tuesday, September 29 at 7 p.m., continuing what has quietly become one of Broadway’s most joyful traditions.

For one performance, the usual Broadway commandment—sit down and behave yourself—gets loosened considerably. Audience members are invited to dance from their seats whenever the music takes over, whether that means swaying, shaking a shoulder or surrendering completely to the rhythms that have made Buena Vista Social Club such an exhilarating night in the theatre.

There are rules. This is Broadway, after all. Patrons are asked to dance responsibly and return to their seats between songs so everyone can see and enjoy the performance. But within those boundaries, the evening turns the theatre into something closer to a communal celebration than a conventional Broadway musical.

Zegler follows a rather spectacular trio of previous hosts. Lin-Manuel Miranda launched the dance-along series in March, John Leguizamo took over in May, and Lupita Nyong’o hosted the most recent edition this summer. Each performance sold out, making a fourth installment almost inevitable. Zegler is an especially delicious choice.

She will return to Broadway next year in Jamie Lloyd’s acclaimed production of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita, reprising the Eva Perón performance that earned her the Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical. The production begins previews February 27, 2027, at the Winter Garden Theatre and officially opens March 25.

The London production became a phenomenon, with Zegler’s “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” spilling beyond the walls of the London Palladium as she performed the number from the theatre’s exterior balcony. That particular staging will not be recreated in New York; director Jamie Lloyd has said he is developing a new idea specifically for Broadway.

September 29th is a rather wonderful Broadway appetizer. Before the balcony, before the Winter Garden, before the diamonds and the ambition of Eva Perón, Rachel Zegler will be at Buena Vista Social Club, where the assignment is considerably simpler: Feel the music…..and dance.

Tickets for this special Dance-Along performance, as well as all regularly scheduled performances, are available at buenavistasocialclub.com

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.