This is the last Christmas Eve New Yorkers will be spending with Christmas Eve, the character originated by Ann Harada in Avenue Q, because, after 15 years, Avenue Q will close in April. All those puppets, gone.

Today we look back at 2018 with 20 of my favorite human performances in shows that opened this year on New York stages, plus five of my favorite puppet performances.

We look ahead with the Spring 2019 Broadway Preview Guide: A Season of Theater Geniuses Making Their Broadway Debuts

We look at the present too, with

Holiday Theater Going, including the Christmas Week Broadway schedule. There are four Broadway shows with matinees on Christmas Eve, 14 with evening performances on Christmas Day, and 38 Broadway shows with performances the day after Christmas – indeed almost all have two performances that day, and one show has three!

The Week in New York Theater Reviews

Lynn Nottage’s play about a fashionable public relations executive’s Job-like descent into poverty and ascent into moral clarity, is the first in Signature’s season of Nottage’s comedies…But as the play progresses, and Undine regresses, “Fabulation” turns into something more clever and pointed than just broad comedy. The playwright does no less than subvert common assumptions about the characters that populate her play – some two dozen of them, portrayed by an impressively versatile eight-member cast.

reminded me what there is to love about theater, and how I can fall in love with it anew.

At first, though, I felt misled. The show is billed as “an immersive festival about New York for New Yorkers of all ages” and “modeled after the community organizing legacy of Jane Jacobs ,” who was an important writer, urban theorist, and community activist of Greenwich Village. The New Ohio is located in the Village, and “Up Close” promised “reimagined real moments” from the neighborhood’s history.

But when a woman who identified herself as Ms. Pea (Summer Shapiro), led us from the theater lobby down a dark staircase to the room where the festival would take place, I discovered that the New Yorkers present represented all ages between roughly five and 10.

The Week in New York Theater News



The Play That Goes Wrong will close on Broadway January 6, after 27 previews and 745 performances — and move six blocks away the following month to New World Stages, re-opening February 20. Here’s my wrong review

Director Gregory Mosher quit the Roundabout production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons because he wanted to cast two supporting roles with actors of color, while Rebecca Miller (Arthur Miller’s daughter and the executor of his estate) thought his concept “not fully thought out.” Jack O’Brien has taken the helm.

Stephen Schwartz Maria Irene Fornes …Stephen Sondheim, 89, nine-time Tony-winning composer, listening in the studio to a recording of the Broadway revival cast album of Sunday in the Park with George , 2019

The 2019 City Center Encores Off-Center season promises an exciting summer:

Working: A Musical, based on Studs Terkel book, featuring songs by Stephen Schwartz, Mary Rodgers, James Taylor, Lin-Manuel Miranda and others, June 26 – 29

Promenade, by Maria Irene Fornés & Al Carmines, about two escaped prisoners mingling in the city July 10 & 11

Road Show by Sondheim and Weidman July 24 – 27

La MaMa 2019 season highlights include Generation NYZ, the latest in Ping Chong’s Undesirable Elements series, China Fringe Theater Festival in February, Stonewall 50 in June.

.@LabTheaterNYC will present its 19th annual Barn Series of FREE new play readings, @CherryLnTheatre Jan 11-20, eg 3 by playwright @CookieRiverside, and “Children in Cages” developed with @daphnerubinvega, @nycbatwife, et al to celebrate “next generation of Artivists” pic.twitter.com/0kiO4wzl3J — New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 21, 2018

Speaking of @daphnerubinvega , who was glorious as the original Mimi in Rent (and is glorious still; my pic of her in her dressing room w/ a pic of her Mom). She will be host to a @RENTonFOX live viewing party Jan 27 @ParksideNYC , sponsored by @NYTW79, Rent’s original home. pic.twitter.com/bJTVJ6cOd7 — New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 21, 2018

Is it wrong, though, for me to see an irony (to put it politely) in Fox being the network to broadcast “Rent”? Will Sean Hannity watch? — New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 21, 2018

James Snyder will play Harry Potter with Diane Davis as Ginny Potter and Nicholas Podany as their son Albus Potter. Matt Mueller will play Ron Weasley with Jenny Jules as Hermione Granger and Nadia Brown as their daughter Rose Granger-Weasley. Playing Draco Malfoy will be Jonno Roberts with Bubba Weiler as his son Scorpius Malfoy.

Also joining the cast are Aaron Bartz, Will Carlyon, Kimberly Dodson, Patrick Du Laney, Sara Farb, Jonathan Gordon, Steve Haggard, Eva Kaminsky, Jack Koenig, Rachel Leslie, Sarita Amani Nash, Fiona Reid, Katherine Reis, Kevin Matthew Reyes, Antoinette Robinson, Stephen Spinella, Tom Patrick Stephens, Erica Sweany, and Karen Janes Woditsch, who are featured along with returning cast members Brian Thomas Abraham, Olivia Bond, Stephen Bradbury, James Brown III, Lauren Nicole Cipoletti, Zoë Feigelson, Jack Hatcher, Edward James Hyland, Joey LaBrasca, Landon Maas, James Romney, and Alex Weisman.

.@DaveedDiggs to star in “White Noise,” a new play by @SuzanLoriParks: when a racially motivated incident w/ cops leaves Leo shaken,he takes extreme measures

Mar 5 -Ap 14, @PublicTheaterNY MT @DaveedDiggs

Suzan-Lori Parks has been one of my favorite playwrights since I was 18. pic.twitter.com/Xed8H8LntI — New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 18, 2018

The end of an era! Concord Records has taken over 188-year-old Samuel French and created Concord Theatricals, (which also includes Rodgers and Hammerstein, Tams Witmark, and a joint venture with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s company.)

When @HamiltonMusical opens in Puerto Rico Jan 8, starring @Lin_Manuel, it won’t be at @uprrp,but a more secure theater; producer @Jseller feared protests. Why protests?

The students are protesting tuition hikes, closures, reprisals

Background on protests:https://t.co/OudGFKwDnV — New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 22, 2018

A complicated issue. It’s unfair to frame this as the poor vs. the arts.

The vast majority of individual donations are to churches and schools

But good read in @FT https://t.co/linDo97n9N — New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 21, 2018

“There are diminishing resources (for the arts), and that’s not just money…The hope is…we can stop the decline…Individuals who have never acknowledged one another will need to communicate & connect” – retiring executive producer @BAM_Brooklyn Joseph Melillo, in @HowlRound pic.twitter.com/MhdXvYsFrB — New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 18, 2018

How well do you know these #Broadway shows that began #OffOffBroadway? Test your knowledge and RT with how many you correctly guessed! Take quiz ➡️ https://t.co/ekqAmrZSdw pic.twitter.com/lYx4cR8rJ5 — TDF (@TDFNYC) December 22, 2018

REST IN PEACE

Galt MacDermot, 89, the composer of “Hair.”

Donald Moffat, 87, a veteran of 20 Broadway shows as well as 60 other stage plays, 70 Hollywood and television movies and at least 60 television productions.

Peter Masterson, 84, actor (five times on Broadway), director and co-writer of the Broadway musical “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

Astronaut Bill Anders, orbiting the moon as part of the Apollo 8 mission, photographed “Earthwise” on Christmas Eve, 1968 — 50 years ago today.

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