Downstage Center with Howard Sherman

Amidst the welter of Best of and Most lists for 2025, American Theatre magazine took on a wider time horizon in its survey of the most influential theatre titles of the last 25 years, or quarter-century if you prefer. Like any such list, the results are fascinating and immediately provide a foundation for debate, disagreement and discussion, but this was no list cobbled together from the opinions of the magazine’s staff, as is often the case with such efforts, but a genuine survey. 

It makes no matter that the year is not yet over and these are really December to November rundowns. The nation’s cultural critics either rush or are pushed to recap all they’ve seen or consumed in some fashion. Those who follow arts criticism and its dedicated purveyors aren’t necessarily surprised by these lists, since they well may be evident to readers with long memories.

More than four decades after they took Manhattan cinematically, The Muppets finally made it to Broadway. Unfortunately, their sojourn was short-lived: they lasted only three weeks before the music stopped playing.

The concept of the zombie in popular culture owes its legacy not to Night of the Living Dead or The Walking Dead, but to a long-forgotten Broadway play entitled, simply, Zombie, which ran for all of three weeks back in 1932.

On Monday evening October 6, more than five dozen theatres, professional and academic, around the US performed Enough! Plays to End Gun Violence, a half-dozen short plays selected from a semi-annual national competition among high school student writers to explore the theme in its title. However, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a fully rehearsed performance originating within the East Baton Rouge Parish Public Schools system was silent, canceled at the last minute for indeterminate reasons.

The lede says “struggling.” The headline says “in trouble.” So when the New York Times uses those descriptors about musicals, theatre people sit up and take notice. Read Howard Sherman's latest BroadwayWorld column here.

The Des Moines Metro Opera is a 51-year-old company that’s been praised highly by The New York Times. The paper presumably knew little if anything about the near-Dickensian work practices endured by staff, apprentices and interns, some of whom make only $75 a day for the privilege of being associated with the company.

In the job posting heard ‘round the theatre world a few weeks ago, the powers that be at The New York Times declared that their new theatre critic will be “eager to embrace new story forms with strong visual, audio and video components,” someone who will be “ready to employ different platform,” and “routinely use alternate story formats and multimedia.” Don’t worry, the posting does also seek someone who can write, describing a “dynamic, digital first writer.” 

xIn the city where Houdini once extricated himself from a straitjacket while dangling upside down above Times Square, it’s surprising that we don’t get major magic acts on stage more often than we do in New York. This relative paucity is thrown into relief when magic, illusion, escape and the like actually do take up residence on New York stages, as is the case right now with Lord Nil extricating himself from threat of the Seven Deadly Sins at Stage 42 while just eight blocks uptown Jamie Allan is conjuring motorcycles and reams of playing cards at New World Stages with his show Amaze.