There are family secrets we inherit, family stories we repeat and family wounds we spend a lifetime trying to understand. In Crazy Mama: A True Story of Love and Madness, playwright Sharon Scott Williams turns her own family history into a theatrical examination of what happens when a child grows up loving someone she cannot save.

Rubicon Theatre Company will bring the Off-Broadway premiere of Williams’ autobiographical play to 59E59 Theaters this fall, with Linda Purl taking on an extraordinary 16 characters under the direction of Anson Williams. Will Huse joins her as The Blues Man.

For television audiences, the director Anson Williams remains instantly associated with Warren “Potsie” Weber on the iconic series Happy Days, but his career behind the camera has been extensive, directing hundreds of hours of television. There is also a delightful bit of Happy Days symmetry in his collaboration with Purl: she played Ashley Pfister, Fonzie’s girlfriend, during the series’ tenth season. Decades later, the two are reunited on considerably darker territory, with Williams directing Purl through a story in which comedy and heartbreak live uncomfortably close together.

The story begins just days after Sharon’s eighth birthday. Racing home from school to beat her teenage brother, Spikey, to the final piece of birthday cake, she walks into the kitchen and finds her mother holding a knife. The sheriff takes her mother away, and a deputy gives the little girl an explanation both brutally simple and wholly inadequate: her mama is “not right in the head.”

What follows is not simply a story about mental illness. It is the story of a daughter who spends decades believing that if she loves fiercely enough, tries hard enough or somehow finds the right answer, she can rescue her mother.

That distinction gives Crazy Mama its emotional center. Mental illness affects the person living with it, but its reach rarely stops there. It changes marriages, childhoods, siblings and entire families. Williams writes from the perspective of someone who knew both the love and the fear inside that experience.

“Mental illness affects one in four people, but all-too-often individuals and families don’t speak of their experience and hide their pain,” Williams says. “I was lucky. I had my family to help me through it, but there were times we were afraid to talk about it. Crazy Mama is a story that helps lift that stigma.”

Rather than treating its subject with unrelenting solemnity, the play is laced with humor as well as pathos. That matters. Families living through extraordinary circumstances still laugh, fight over birthday cake, irritate one another and get through Tuesday. Resilience isn’t always heroic. Sometimes it is simply continuing to love someone when love cannot fix what is wrong.

For Purl, whose career has moved easily between stage, film and television, Crazy Mama presents a formidable theatrical challenge. Sixteen characters pass through a single performer, requiring not merely vocal or physical transformation but the creation of an entire family and world around one woman’s memory.

The production arrives in New York following its world premiere at Rubicon Theatre Company in Ventura, California, in March 2025. Rubicon Producing Artistic Directors Karyl Lynn Burns and Jonathan Drahos now bring the work east for its Off-Broadway debut.

The creative team includes Brian Gale, who provides lighting and projection design, and Lindsay Jones on sound design. Alexandrea Hess Rodriguez serves as production stage manager, with Stephanie Coltrin as associate producer.

At its heart, Crazy Mama asks a difficult question: What happens when the person you desperately want to save is someone you do not have the power to save?

Williams lived that question. Now Linda Purl will become the 16 people who helped her tell the story.

Performances begin September 16, with opening night set for September 22. The limited engagement runs through October 18 in Theater C.

Crazy Mama runs two hours and five minutes, including intermission, with performances Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m., and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $42, including the $2 fee, through 59E59 Theaters, by phone at 646-892-7999, or at the box office at 59 East 59th Street.

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.

G.H. Harding

HONEY MONEY NO MORE? — News that Maria Bartiromo was fired from Fox reverberated around the world and generated a literal ton of ink.

Bryan Freedman

With high-powered pit-bull lawyer Bryan Freedman (fresh from the Blake Lively/Just Baldoni mess) on the case, who knows what will happen.

She first gained notoriety as ‘Money Honey’ and has been a star for years.

(Via Showbiz 411) Maria Bartiromo’s new Hollywood lawyer has something to say. Bryan Freedman says Maria was not fired by Fox News, that she’s still an employee, and all reports to the contrary are false.

You can see his statement below.

Freedman also says there’s no truth to the reports that Bartiromo was acting as a double agent, feeding Donald Trump and Fox News with info about each other. Believe me, I know that when Fox News breaks up with you, it isn’t pretty. It’s not their style. In the end, they will have to pay out her contract. But for now, lots of posturing on both sides.

For many years, Maria Bartiromo hosted three number one rated television shows on Fox channels. She has been, without question, one of the hardest working journalists throughout her award-winning career.

The irresponsible reports that have been published stating that Maria Bartiromo was fired or is no longer an employee of Fox are absolutely and unequivocally false. Make no mistake, we have the receipts and witnesses and they will come out whether through the courthouse or otherwise. Those reporting her firing or the incredulous facts supporting that fiction have exhibited a complete and utter reckless disregard for the truth.

Bryan Freedman, Attorney for Maria Bartiromo

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Derrek Kupish/Shutterstock (14186545bu)
Patti Labelle
2023 CMT Smashing Glass – Tributes to Tanya Tucker and Patti LaBelle, Arrivals, Nashville, Tennessee, USA – 15 Nov 2023

PATTI LABELLE — Common, Patti LaBelle and Public Enemy are the artists who will be honored at the 2026 Black Music Action Coalition Gala, presented by Live Nation, taking place on September 24, 2026, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. She of course, front LaBelle with the late Nona Hendryx, but has remained a marquee-name for sure. So well deserved!

SHORT TAKES — (Via Billboard.com) Cassandra Wilson, the two-time Grammy Award-winning jazz singer, songwriter and producer has died. She was 70. Dubbed America’s best singer by Time magazine in 2001, Wilson was best known for her genre-bending voice, which expanded the boundaries of traditional blues-based jazz and worked effortlessly across folk, pop, R&B, country and beyond. At the heart of all her work was her idiosyncratic contralto, a soulful sound distinctly tied to her roots … (Via Deadline) As Simon Cowell continues to recover from back surgery, another America’s Got Talent alum is returning to the judge’s table. On Wednesday’s episode of the NBC reality competition series, it was announced that Heidi Klum will fill in for Cowell next week during a special three-hour broadcast of the Season 21 quarterfinals. Klum served as a judge on America’s Got Talent from 2013 to 2018, before returning from 2020 to 2024. She exited the AGT judge’s table last year, shortly after she was invited back to host Project Runway for Freeform and Disney+ …

Mr T

On Friday’s Today Show, Al Roker caught with the infamous Mr. T from The A-Team. Who says you can’t get a doc made? Mr. T’s one is out now on Netflix … Much ink this week about Miley Cyrus changing her name to just Miley; and a new album appears with the single “Bass Persuades.” The song is typical high-energy Miley, but the video looks like a combo of the best parts of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video and Debbie Gibson’s “Electric Youth” video. Funny! …

Micky Dolenz on KTLA

Here’s Micky Dolenz at LA’s KTLA being interviewed in advance of his show at The United Theater Downtown in LA next Saturday, February 12; and his new EP Timeless, featuring the singles “Terri” and “Any Way You Want Me To.” February 12 is the official date of the Emmy-award winning TV-show The Monkees debuting on NBC. L-R-Standing-Jasmine Simpkins and Dolenz -sitting- Samantha Cortese and John Fenoglio … Anthony Pomes and his Doors-tribute band Carnival Dogs played My Father’s Place Friday night.

Eppy and Anthony Pomes aka “Inner Jim”

Here’s Inner Jim with Eppy … (via Deadline) Prime Video has opted not to proceed with a second season of the superhero series Spider-Noir starring Nicola Cage. Spider-Noir was the second series ordered and first to make it to the screen under a multi-title deal between Amazon MGM Studios and Sony Pictures Television based on IP from Sony Pictures’ Universe of Marvel Characters. Too bad as I loved it and Cage was just superb as usual … Happy Bday Sharon White

 NAMES IN THE NEWS —– Anna Chan; Joe Lynch; Gary Graff; Paul Grein; Adam White; Anthony Pomes; Pierce Brosnan; Kevin Spacey; Kimberly Cornell; Amanda Naylor; Tom & Lisa Cuddy; Gary Graff; John Hughes; Dan Mapp; Paul Pierce; Judy Kaufman; Marjorie Schwartz; Lora Evans; Ben Kenney; Angela Tarantino; Lee Jeske; Randy Alexander; Peter Shendell; Romeo Escobar; Oleg Cassini; and CHIP!

 Images on this page have been licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license