Spring 2026 Broadway Review Roundup #2: Death of a Salesman, Cats: The Jellicle Ball, Becky Shaw, and More

ChannelTim must keep up with the times, so I’ve joined TikTok! I am reviewing the New York spring theatre season over there, so go throw a follow my way. For those of you not on that app, I’ll be doing a couple of review roundups here. Below are the scripts for my videos. 

Monte Christo

It’s no easy task to take a work of 19th literature and adapt it into a musical. For every Les Mis, there are half a dozen Jane Eyres and Draculas. But that track record has not daunted the writers of Monte Christo: A New Musical, who approach the source material, The Count of Monte Christo by Alexandra Dumas, with a bewildering combination of pep and disinterest.

For a show that was only two hours long including an intermission, there was always going to be a lot of truncation of the plot, and that’s fine, but Monte Christo is also lopsided structurally. Most of act one is is taken up by the set up of Edmund Dantes getting set up, and he doesn’t take on the identity of the Count until Act two, which is where all of the interesting and fun parts are. That all gets rushed over because the early parts of the story are stretched out. That’s a failing of the adaptation by book writer Peter Kellogg. 

 It’s not just a simplification, it’s a straight-up dumbing down of the material, replete with comic relief side characters. This felt like it the stage adaptation of an off-brand Disney animated movie from the 1990s that never was. 

Which isn’t to say there’s nothing to enjoy in the York Theatre’s production of Monte Christo as directed by Peter Flynn. The sets and costumes are very impressive, and the cast is massively overqualified. Norm Lewis is in this show as a pretty minor character. He’s so underused to the point where when he came out to bow, I had totally forgotten he was in this show. Adam Jacobs plays Edmund Dantes, and Sierra Boggess plays Mercedes, his former fiancée. The love story is one area where the emotions are totally played for melodrama rather than comedy, as with most of rest of the show. Both actors are terrific, and the best songs, by Kellogg and Stephen Weiner of the night, belonged to Boggess. “How Did I Get So Far Away?” In act one and then “Goodbye”, the love duet, which sang by Boggess and Jacobs in act two. 

And in those moments, I have to say, I enjoyed myself. It’s not literary, it’s not deep, but it’s not boring! I paid 25 dollars for my ticket and I sat in row E. Monte Christo was at the Theatre at St. Jean’s until April 5th. 

Cats: The Jellicle Ball

I’m like a big fan of the musical Cats. I saw the 2016 revival three times and, for one Halloween, I even dressed up as the Rum Tum Tugger. So, in 2024, when an off-broadway production dubbed Cats: The Jellicle Ball opened, where the characters weren’t literal cats and which set the show within the context of ballroom culture, I was skeptical. So much of the appeal of Cats are the dances, so would having all new choreography in a totally different style work? The answer turned out to be a resounding yes. And two years later, Cats: The Jellicle Ball arrives on Broadway. Going into it, I was again skeptical. The venue it played in 2024 was very open and it had a long runway on either side of which were a good chunk of the seats. How could that possibly translate to a traditional Broadway proscenium? Turns out I need to stop being skeptical because this team, directors Zhalion Levingston and Bill Rauch and this fantastic cast, know exactly what they are doing and, although the staging worked better in that original space, the production is once again a high-energy, fun, and truly unique show. 

Some of the cast members, like Andre De Shields as Old Detoronemy and Sydney James Harcourt as the Rum Tum Tugger, come from a Broadway background, and others in the cast, like Junior LeBaeija as Gus and “Tempress” Chasity Moore as Grizabella, are from the world of ballroom. The fact that they all work so well as an ensembles speaks to how well this show fuses the traditions of both ballroom and musical theatre. 

Just about every song is a showstopper, so I can’t mention them all. But Skimbleshanks, the Railway Cat, played here by Emma Sofia and recontextualized as an MTA employee is simply brilliant. One number that did not really work for me, however, was Old Deutornomy. Perhaps it’s because the lyrics of that song, about paying homage to an elder of the community, were especially poignant in the new context, but I was disappointed by his entrance and the whole scene that followed. It’s the one moment where I felt like the reaction that was expected of the audience was a bit oversized compared to what was happening on stage. 

Overall, though, the Jellicle Ball is a really fun time and a great argument in favor of putting new concepts on old shows. I paid 62 dollars for a ticket I bought through my membership to TDF, and it happened to be located in row K of the orchestra, seat 1. Cats: The Jellicle Ball is playing at the Broadhurst Theatre. 

Becky Shaw

Gina Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw was a finalist for Pulitzer Prize for Drama back in 2009, shortly after its premiere. But, it’s only now finding its way to Broadway, in a new production directed by Trip Cullman.

The basic premise is what happens when a couple, played by Lauren Patten and Patrick Ball, decide to set up the co-worker of the husband, the titular character played by Madeline Brewer with the quasi-adoptive brother of the wife, played by Alden Ehrenreich, on a blind date. To say any more about what happens would spoil much of the fun, for this is a tightly and complexly plotted play. I often found myself not realizing where the playwright was leading things to until we were most of the way there.

There’s a lot of discussion of costs and worths of romantic relationship, so I’m tempted to say we’re in modern Jane Austen territory, but Gionfriddo’s language is a lot more blunt and biting. The recent movie Materialists was going for a similar vibe, but Becky Shaw’s characters are so specific, it’s hard to really compare it to anything. 

Every member of the cast, which also includes the great Linda Emond, is well-suited to their character, but it’s Brewer as the tricky, slippery Becky and particularly Ehrenreich as Max that stand out. It’s been 10 years since I first became aware of Alden Ehrenreich, after his memorable turn in the Coen Brothers’ Hail Caesar! Back then, I would’ve guessed he’d be a major star but his career hasn’t really delivered on that early promise, despite supporting parts in big movies like Oppenheimer and Weapons. But, in Max, he’s found a role that allows him to do career-best work. He is hysterically funny and although Max says and does unlikeable things, you want him to keep going because he is so enjoyable to watch. 

I paid 30 dollars For my ticket through Second Stage’s 30under30 program. I sat in Row D of the mezzanine, seat 8. Becky Shaw is playing at the Hayes Theatre until June 14th. 

The Last Five Years: 25th Anniversary Concert

I think nearly every musical theater fan of my generation has a time in their life where they become part of the cult following for Jason Robert Brown’s two-person musical The Last Five Years. I discovered the show via its cast albums when I was in high school, and this was right before the movie version came out, and I really loved its timeline trickery and thought it was the height of profundity. But as I got older, I thought my love affair with this show was over. A 2025 Broadway production starring Nick Jonas and Adrienne Warren left me underwhelmed and unmoved. 

So, I headed into the 25th Anniversary concert at Radio City starring Ben Platt and Rachel Zegler, with an open mind but also a suspicion that the magic this show worked on me as a teenager was just incapable of producing the same effect on me now. 

While I definitely no longer think it’s the height of profundity, this concert affirmed my opinion  it’s a damn good piece of musical storytelling, especially in an effectively staged and gorgeously sung production like this one.

The composer himself conducted the 8 person orchestra, and it sounded great, which is key in a show that literally nothing but songs. Platt and Zegler both put their own spin on material that has, at this point, been done by many other performers, so I have to commend them for finding ways to keep it fresh and true to the way it was written. Between this and Evita in London last year, I genuinely wonder if there is a role Rachel Zegler cannot sing better than just about anyone who has ever done it. 

As far as their acting, if he some underplayed moments, she overplayed some, so it all evened out. 

A quarter of a century after its premiere, The Last Five Years’ appeal is still evident, and its cult will only continue to grow as long as there are talented performers to take on the roles of Cathy and Jamie. I paid 93 dollars for my ticket and seat in the second mezzanine, row D. 

Death of a Salesman 

Although it is probably the canonical classic of 20th Century American plays, I had never seen nor read Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman until Joe Mantello’s new revival on Broadway. There have been 3 different productions on Broadway in my lifetime prior to this one, but it’s always eluded me, even though I’ve seen All My Sons, A View from the Bridge, The Crucible, and even relatively obscure The Price. I’m happy to say that my first exposure to this play was through this emotionally resonant and incisive production. 

Mantello’s concept unmoors the text from 1940s setting, which draws out how relevant the themes are to today. It’s a play about the first half of the 20th century turning into the second half of the 20th century, but it’s also, thematically, about how the end result of a society that treats money as being more important than people, and that’s certainly as sad but true reality we are dealing with today.

To that end, the set by Chloe Lamford, takes us out of the Loman family kitchen and into an eerie, industrial kind of garage. The costumes by Rudy Mance don’t suggest the ‘40s either, and the car, which is on stage the entire time and which Mantello zeroes in on as a major symbol in this production, is clearly not the 1940s Studebaker the script mentions. 

In another productions, all these elements could be distracting, but here they weirdly work to center the characters as the meat of the show. Forget the period trappings, what’s important is Nathan Lane’s heartbreaking take on Willy Loman, and Laurie Metcalf’s assured but really sympathetic portrayal of Linda. These performances are reason enough for this show to get revived yet again. 

On the night I went,  Jack Falahee played the Loman’s second son Happy, because Ben Ahlers was out. Falahee more than held his own against Lane and Metcalf, and I even preferred his performance to that of Christopher Abbott as Biff. Abbott’s not bad but by the end of the night it seemed like his choices became less surprising and interesting. 

I paid 108 dollars plus 500 Points on Audience Rewards for my ticket, which I’m not going to explain what that is but it was a good deal, and the seat was Orchestra row P, seat 6. Death of a Salesman is at the Winter Garden Theatre until August 9th.