Reviews: Four Nights/Four Shows in NYC

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the primary reason we traveled to New York City at the beginning of April was to see Broadway shows. The announcement of Glengarry Glen Ross last fall triggered our trip, so when dates for the spring were announced in February, we immediately purchased our tickets. These were followed by tickets for Good Night and Good Luck and Maybe Happy Ending. As recounted in the earlier post, we obtained tickets for a fourth show, Boop, on opening night the same morning as the performance!

Below are my reviews of all four shows. But first a few observations about the New York theater experience versus our experiences theater-going in Los Angeles.

Interestingly, all our shows started at 7 p.m.—versus 8 p.m. for evening shows in L.A. The earlier start allows theatergoers to grab dinner afterwards. This was reinforced by the fact that, after Maybe Happy Ending, when the cast came out after the curtain call to fundraise for Broadway Cares, an AIDS charity, they promised the audience they wouldn’t keep us long and people would still be able to make their restaurant reservations! In L.A., the late start is likely to accommodate the fact that most people have to navigate L.A.’s busy freeways to get to the venue. As such, this means shows usually end anywhere between 10 or 11 p.m. In L.A., by that time, most good restaurants are already closed so theatergoers usually head home. 

By contrast, we found that many restaurants (and, of course, bars) were still open and serving diners in the theater district. Indeed, nearly all the shows we watched clocked in at a surprisingly crisp two hours (two, Good Night and Good Luck and Maybe Happy Ending, didn’t even have intermissions!). And the show with the longest runtime, Boop, which is about 2-½ hours, started at 6:30 p.m.

In addition, because New York City’s theaters generally have smaller footprints, the mezzanine sections feel close to the stage, nearly atop the orchestra seats. In contrast, in L.A., the mezzanine sections tend to be fairly recessed back, away from the stage and the orchestra section. As such, at most of the shows where we were in the mezzanine, we were surprised at how close we still felt to the stage, like we were right on top of the actors!

Now on to the reviews (in the order watched):

Maybe Happy Ending 

Maybe Happy Ending is an original new romantic comedy musical one act that originated in South Korea in 2016 and made its American debut in Atlanta in 2020. It made its Broadway debut in Fall 2024, featuring a diverse cast that includes Tony Award winning Darren Criss (who is half-Filipino) and Helen J. Shen as the leads. (The show has a relatively small cast, with only two additional actors, one playing multiple roles.) 

The musical is a deft blend of the modern and traditional, and thoroughly charming, heartfelt and delightful. Though it’s a fairly small, modest production, it nevertheless features dynamic and innovative staging and stage craft that gives the show plenty of life and energy.

It's the story of two helpbots—android companions that are very human-like—who have been retired and abandoned many years before, and while searching for new meaning to their existence, find each other. As the story unfolds, we learn their backstories, including the reasons they were abandoned. Hanging over their blossoming romance is their fear that they will soon shut down forever due to the inability at some point to re-charge themselves, or to replace aging, obsolete parts. But this self-awareness of their pending expiration dates clearly is clearly a commentary on the audience's own mortality and limited shelf-life. How to best make use of that time and our fleeting lives—and whether love is worth pursuing even if it will inevitably end in loss and heartache—is very much the heart of this story.

Much of the show's charm comes from the performers. Criss and Shen have great chemistry and wonderfully bring out the heart and humor of the play. (As an older helpbot model, Criss subtley projects a slightly more robotic demeanor that is not too different than someone on the spectrum.) Kudos as well to Dez Duron, who provides musical interludes—though he never really interacts with the leads, he possesses a silky smooth voice that I could have listened to all night. 

In truth, of all the productions we saw, Maybe Happy Ending is the one I would recommend to anyone unreservedly.

Glengarry Glen Ross

As I said up top, this Broadway revival of playwright David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross is what triggered our travels. It's probably the play I’ve most wanted to see on stage and the announcement of this show—with actors Bob Odenirk, Keiran Culkin, Bill Burr, and Michael McKean—made it too irresistible to pass up.

I first encountered the play, of course, through the 1992 film adaptation, featuring a stellar cast that included Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey, Ed Harris, Jonathan Pryce, and, in what I consider one of the most electric and commanding cameos ever captured on film, Alec Baldwin. 

I knew going in that the film adaptation (also written by Mamet) was very different than the play, though I had heard that some productions had incorporated aspects of the film into the stage show.

Of course, I can’t speak to other productions, but this one seems solely based on the original play. Indeed, it has a very different structure. Whereas the film opens up the story a little and unfolds in a fairly straightforward chronological manner, the play is more impressionistic and primarily told in two acts. The first consists of three vignettes—all set in a Chinese restaurant—that establish the play’s main tensions. The second act, following an intermission, consists of what is the last extended climactic scene of the movie, in which all is revealed and resolved. (Indeed, as much as I love Alec Baldwin's scene in the film, which gets the story rolling in an explosive and immediate manner, it actually would not work in the play without major restructuring.)

While the film, of course, somewhat overshadows and colored my viewing of the play, the production and actors do their best to make the story its own thing and the roles their own. While all are solid, Bill Burr is a standout, perhaps the one performance that transcends the film and, perhaps, even surpassed his film counterpart (Ed Harris). Burr is a perfect fit for the role, projecting more of a lived-in sliminess that isn't quite there in the film. In contrast, Culkin has the unenviable task of trying to make you forget Pacino as Richard Roma…which, of course, given the actor’s presence and line readings in that film, is very difficult.

Revelations in recent years about Mamet’s views and politics also somewhat affected my response to the play. In the original film, the obsession with alpha maleness and what it means to “be a man” are somewhat undermined by the film’s humor, leading one to see the movie as somewhat of a satire of hypermasculinity. In contrast, Mamet’s views make clear that these are themes he is seriously exploring in the play, which makes the play feel somewhat dated and badly aged.

It’s hard to tell how much of the audience had seen the film, but going in knowing the story is somewhat of a disadvantage since the revelations at the end are not a surprise. That said, the play is a smaller and more intimate piece, while the film plays more like Shakespearean tragedy.

Good Night and Good Luck

Good Night and Good Luck is a stage adaptation of the 1995 film of the same name about television journalist Edward J. Murrow that was directed and co-written by actor George Clooney. In the film, Clooney played Murrow’s producer and partner-in-crime, Fred Friendly, but for the stage adaptation, Clooney plays Murrow himself.

The piece tells the story of Murrow’s efforts to stand up to and challenge U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy during the infamous Communist 1950s witch hunts. It hews fairly closely to my memories of the film, complete with the use of the framing device of Murrow speaking at a dinner event in his honor, which bookends the opening and closing of the film, as well as of musical interludes featuring a jazz singer recording in the same studio.

To be clear, this play only happened because of Clooney. The actor clearly believed that the story's message of the importance of journalism as the Fourth Estate and its role of speaking truth to power—while also acknowledging the challenges that our news media face as subdivisions of corporate entities whose goals are commercial and avoiding offending its audience, rather than the public good—remain as relevant as ever. Like the film, the production has Clooney (as Murrow) interacting with real footage of celebrities and other figures. The production and performances are solid, with actor and comedian Ilana Glazer particularly a standout as journalist Shirley Wershba.

What really elevated the production was the final coda, which returns to where the play began, with Murrow speaking to the audience at a lectern at an event. It segues into a cacophony of media clips over the years from the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Iraq War, and the Obama years, culminating in a powerful final image that directly connects the show to the modern day, which brought a collective gasp to the audience.

Below: Curtain call from the night we saw Good Night and Good Luck

Boop

Boop is a traditional family-friendly big Broadway musical about animated star Betty Boop, filled with show stopping numbers. It opens in the black and white cartoon world of Betty Boop (giving a nice nod to the Fleischer Studio), who eventually finds her way into the “real” world, where she tries to find herself and navigate the modern world, though the show also makes clear that the character was an early symbol of feminism and self-agency.

While the show was entertaining enough and the performers topnotch, we never felt fully engaged or invested with the characters in the same way as, say, Maybe Happy Ending. Nevertheless, we’re glad we were able to see it—and on opening night, no less! 

Below: Curtain call from the opening night of Boop.