#250608 ~ And We're Back...
Brian Eugenio Herrera's #TheatreClique Newsletter for June 8, 2025
WELCOME to #TheatreClique — my emphatically intermittent newsletter dedicated to encouraging you to click out to some of the most interesting, intriguing & noteworthy writing about drama, theatre & performance (at least, so says me)…
This Week's #TheatreCliquery:
For the opener to this long-awaited (ha!) return of #TheatreClique, I lift this charmingly theatrekiddish goof of a musical video from music theatre multi-hyphenate Alyssa Payne that just happens to offer one of the most compelling, comprehensive, and complex Broadway season-recaps I’ve yet encountered…
EDITOR’S NOTE: whenever possible, whenever linking to paywalled pieces, I try to “gift” the article to #TheatreClique readers. In other words, clicking out to articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic, and Wall Street Journal should neither present hassle nor burn through your current allotment of free views. Here’s hoping more outlets — hello LATimes! hi NewYorkMagazine! yo NewYorker!— adopt similar technologies for subscribers soon...— adopt similar technologies for subscribers soon...
#NowClickThis…
Wherein I highlight a handful of the most click-worthy theatre links I’ve encountered in the last few…
at ExtendedPlay, TheCivilians’s Faith Zamblé talks with playwright Anne Washburn to talk about what Washburn’s "murder board" practice/performance reveals about the current challenges facing non-profit theatre;
3Views takes on the recent ClubbedThumb production of Milo Cramer’s Business Ideas, with critic/scholar Christian Lewis’s Review, dramaturg/scholar Christine Mok’s Inside View, and artist/educator Marissa Joyce Stamps’s Purview of the show;
at Another Eye Opens, veteran (I’d call him “legendary”) arts writer Don Shewey revisits his exhilarating 1990 American Theatre piece that ponders the complex pleasures (and history) of ogling actors on stage;
at The Wall Street Journal, financial trends reporter Charles Passy considers the ambivalence among Mary Todd Lincoln impersonators around Cole Escola’s success;
in completely unrelated Charles Passy reportage, consider his MarketWatch breakdown of how savvy ticket buyers can (somewhat) reliably find discounts for shows in NYC;
at them, freelance writer/editor Mathew Rodriguez ponders that fact that “the Kennedy Center’s MAGA-Influenced Lineup Includes… A Lot of Drag?”
in a “richly detailed profile” double-header, New York Times arts writer Alexis Soloski showcases the artists serving two of my favorite Broadway performances this season: respectively, Dead Outlaw’s Andrew Durand and Buena Vista Social Club’s Natalie Venetia Belcon;
at Reliable Sources, CNN’s chief media Brian Stelter inadvertently does dramaturgy in this richly contextualized primer for the livecast presentation of the Broadway production of Good Night and Good Luck;
at TeenVogue, rising journalist (and my recent advisee) Annie Rupertus reports on the alarming wave of college campuses closing their Women’s and LGBTQ+ Centers;
among the remarkable remembrances of Edmund White (1940-2025) flowing through my various feeds, the interviews by/with theatre folk — with Tim Murphy at Caftan Chronicles and with Don Shewey at Another Eye Opens — most capture my own glancing experiences of him — first as a teacher (who accepted so many of my friends into his writing workshops while rejecting me not once but twice) and then as a colleague in Princeton’s Lewis Center for the Arts.
And don’t miss this exhilarating behind-the-scenes and step-by-step breakdown (is that a pun?) of one of the most exciting how’d they do that sequences on Broadway this year…
#HighLikes from That One “Critic” Who Likes Everything:
Wherein I offer capsule reviews of what I liked best about the shows I just saw. Perhaps one day I’ll compose my manifesto about why I find it more intellectually gratifying, ethically sound, and personally sustainable to emphasize what I most enjoy and admire about the shows I see but, for now, consider MY LATEST HIGH-LIKES from…
#72: Death Becomes Her (Lunt-Fontanne • NYC)
When I first saw this production back in January, both leads happened to be out. I know, I know… But experiencing Death Becomes Her that night — thanks to its (very impressive) understudies — confirmed that this dazzling crowd-pleaser of a musical has the sturdy-yet-nimble bones necessary for an effective farce. Still, I wanted to see Hilty and Simard do their high/low tag-team comedy thang for myself and, boy howdy, am I glad I did. Megan Hilty’s wafting silliness just makes me smile and Jennifer Simard twists a gag like no other high belting diva I know. So ‘twas a happy return to the simple yet perverse pleasures of this exceptionally well-costumed production — all hail the delicious genius of Paul Tazewell — a production that does now seem poised, like its central divas, to have an unexpectedly long life…
#73: The Last Bimbo of the Apocalypse (New Group @ Signature • NYC)
In this weirdly wondrous new musical by Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley (of FakeFriends notoriety/fame), a trio of unlikely teenaged internet sleuths endeavor to find the lost “last” girl in a notorious old-timey photograph (from 2006), thereby activating a stealthily stark account of "being terminally online.” Rory Pelsue’s direction theatricalizes internetic intimacies vividly, eliciting dazzling performances from the six-member cast. Most notably, Natalie Walker (so astonishing and DramaDesk-nominated for The Big Gay Jamboree) knocked me all the way out all over again but, honestly, it’s the chiller-thriller ditty “Stop Scrolling” that remains most seared into my soul. This mind-blowing song — thanks to Sara Gettelfinger’s roof-shaking vocals plus mind-bending choreography from Jack Ferver and Olivia Palacios — distills The Last Bimbo’s incisive deployment of the pop-musical’s emotional potency to open urgent questions about the interplay of loneliness, isolation, and the hunger for validation in the social-media era. A remarkable achievement.
#75: O.K.! (INTAR • NYC)
A potently theatrical (and emphatically Latina/e) portrait of the many contingencies inflecting the question of "reproductive choice" in the contemporary US. In O.K.!, a touring group of Latina/e theatremakers confront the shifting local legal landscapes of reproductive health in a post-Dobbs America. Deftly dappled with relevant historical and health information, Christin Eve Cato’s deeply moving and deeply funny play oscillates stylistically between real-time realism and fantastical fabulation. Director Melissa Crespo’s dynamic, consistently-surprising, and richly theatrical production allows the intersecting complexities of Cato’s remarkable script to breathe fully — thanks in no small part to the contributions of the wildly charismatic cast: Yadira Correa, Danaya Esperanza, Claudia Ramos Jordán and the (ahem) transformative Cristina Pitter.
#HigherEdBurblings
Wherein I highlight some of what’s currently bubbling inside the higher ed bubble, especially those burbles that might be of particular interest/relevance for theatrefolk…
Amidst the ongoing current funding crises in the arts, I’ve found it surprisingly instructive to listen to and learn from those in the sciences, for whom such catastrophic funding collapses are novel — or at least not as recurrently familiar as they are for those of us in the arts and humanities. That’s why I’m looking forward to listening in on this conversation. Advance registration required via this link.
