The Figs

Get your PJs — it’s time for a slumber party! Eliya Smith, the playwright best known for her Off-Broadway debut Grief Camp, will return to the New York City stage with her new play Dad Don’t Read This at St. Luke’s Theatre this May. The play, which will star Amalia Yoo, Renee-Nicole Powell, Sophie Rossman, and Katya Thomas, will play a strictly limited engagement from May 4 to 24, with an official opening set for May 11.

The play is set in Central Ohio, where four girls meet weekly for a sleepover. They talk all night, play The Sims, and attempt to get drunk. It’s a play about the people you know before you know anything.  

“I love the potency of emotion in young people — the stakes of everything are so high, and feelings come easily and powerfully,” playwright Smith said in a statement. “Dad Don’t Read This is my love letter to adolescence and to teenage friendship and also an attempt to document how excruciating it is to be only partially a person.”

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The creative team for Dad Don’t Read This includes scenic and props designer by Forest Entsminger, costume designer Dante Gonzalez, lighting designer Abigail Sage, sound designer Mitchell Polonsky, choreographer Lena Engelstein, production stage manager Mya Piccione, and assistant stage manager Madeline Riddick-Seals. The play will be directed by Chloe Claudel. 

Dad Don’t Read This plays at St. Luke’s Theatre on West 46th Street in New York City from May 4 to 24. For tickets and more information, visit here. 

As a devoted fan of comedian Michelle Collins for years and years, I am thrilled to report she's in top form. Back in New York for her new show: Wait Why Don’t I Know You, I caught up with Collins recently to chat all things growing up in Florida, her new podcast with BritBox, and her love of Joe’s Pub. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.  

So talk to me about this new set. As a fellow South Floridian, I love that you go deep into your roots. How did this come to be?

I've been doing standup for a long time and I really love it. It's probably where I am my most authentic self, I would say--in front of people, the immediate feedback. I've been doing it a long time, but I haven't had that big special yet. And when I went on tour with the cast of Queer Eye last year, you know, I opened for them and then I moderated and, not to sound cocky, but afterwards all these people would come up to me and be like, wait, why don't I know you? And I was like, well, I don't know. You know, what do you say to that? It's a compliment and it's obviously meant in such a nice way, but it's like, well, I guess because I haven't been as lucky as some other people. So, that kind of gave me the idea for the title of the show. And then I went home to Miami and found all these childhood pictures. And as an FBC, Formerly Bullied Child, I wanted to figure out why I'm a comedian, who I was, who I am now and have it be used as an opportunity to be funny and random.

You are obviously no stranger to talking about your family during your shows, but I’m curious what is was like revisiting and finding all of these old photos and diving into that?

It was actually a bit painful and I think it brought up some really weird feelings about my childhood and also how I looked when I was growing up because I was so deeply insecure. Then I looked at the pictures and I was like, oh, you should have been, look at you: you looked like a mess. Of course you were insecure, you know? It was really hard actually seeing photos of myself when I had short hair in the sixth grade. That was a nightmare in many respects. Also, being overweight and being tall and having to navigate that as a woman who was in high school. It was difficult. But it was funny because my mom was like, oh, well, which pictures are you taking from us? Which pictures are using? And I didn't want to tell her because I was just like, no, let me do this. I'm going through this journey. Like, no. It was harder than I thought. But then, on stage, I turn it into something positive.

Let's talk about Joe's Pub for a minute. Why is it such a special place for you?

I have a serious love for that venue. It's the most glamorous, fun, cozy, chic, delicious drinks, delicious food, the best employees, the people who work there are so unbelievably amazing and nice. I always feel very safe when I go to Joe's Pub. It just has a good energy. I've performed in places that don't have a good energy and you do feel that. Places that are either too big, the room is too long, all these other things. Joe's Pub is just magical in every way. I love singing there. I love having my slides up behind me and also being able to communicate with the audience who sits essentially, you know, two inches away from my crotch. They're fabulous and I just adore it.

I want to talk about BritBox for a minute and how this all came together. Talk to me about how excited you are for this new moment right now.

Well, here's the thing. I have always been trying to figure out a way to infiltrate England. It's been top of my list genuinely since birth. And I can't believe I finally, kind of, did it with this podcast. I have been the biggest Anglophile my entire life. I love the English. I spend so much time in London. I love their comedy, their drama, their sensibilities, everything about that country, genuinely, I connect with. Edith Bowman, who's my co-host, she's really well known in England as a presenter. Every English friend of mine adores her. She is just the funniest, loveliest, petite Scottish woman. We really clicked from the get-go. You know, it doesn't always happen that way. Sometimes chemistry can feel forced with people. Not with her. I just adore her and I'm so happy that we click the way we do. It's been really fun. We've had incredible guests on so far. The English are just inherently funny. We've yet to have someone who doesn't have a great sense of humor. They're always down to self-deprecate and have a good time and I'm over the moon about it.

I want to talk about Broadway for a minute. What is your dream Broadway role and how can I make it happen?

My dream...I have a couple. You know, I have a deep singing voice. So, I have to be realistic about this. I would love to be the plant in Little Shop. I think I'd crush as Audrey II. Honestly, you know how much I love Les Miserables. And I really think that they need to do a gender swapped, Tilda Swinton version of Les Mis, where I am ideally Javert. I think his songs are more in my wheelhouse. And I think I'd look better with like a low pony, double-breasted situation. I think physically I've got what it takes to be Javert.

While you're in town, are you gonna catch any shows?

I'm dying to see Death Becomes Her. Haven't gotten the chance. I've seen Oh, Mary! twice: once here with Cole [Escola], once in London with Mason Alexander Park, but Maya Rudolph is one of the great goddesses of my life, so I would die to see that.

Michelle, I can’t wait. 

Even if you don't know who I am, you will laugh. I feel like there's something for everybody in the show at some point. And I know that's true because there are women who bring their husbands, who have no clue who I am, and they always have a good time.

On paper, a one-person show about writing down life’s little joys (ice cream!) on Post-its and nurturing our feelings – with audience participation – seems the type of over-therapized, anti-art nonsense that activates the most reactionary sleeper cells in my psyche. And seeing an enthusiastic Daniel Radcliffe hold a stranger’s jacket, pretending it’s a sick dog named Indiana Bones, in the first couple of minutes of Every Brilliant Thing felt like a nightmare slowly coming alive.

That some 50 minutes later Radcliffe would have me, along with the rest of the crowd, stand up to do the wave without an ounce of cynicism speaks to his extraordinary charm as a performer, and to the writers Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe’s ability to fully disarm us, and overcome the almost insurmountable corniness its premise threatens. 

Radcliffe’s unnamed protagonist tells us about a list he started compiling as a young boy following his mother’s suicide attempt, which was relayed to him by a father who is caring, if ill-equipped (as so many of us are) to properly discuss her mental health. His grade school counselor helps him sort out his feelings, as does a college professor later on after his mother’s second attempt. He takes up list-writing in fits and starts as he journeys through adulthood, marveling at how much better his childhood self was at dealing with the unnameable, especially once he’s blindsided by his own slip into depression.

The play is similarly excursive, maintaining a steady forward momentum (Macmillan co-directs alongside Jeremy Herren) even as the protagonist veers into detours, most of which involve a sort of prop comedy in which the audience is the prop. Radcliffe employs a handful of the few dozen people seated onstage (the set is Vicki Mortimer) to act out parts in his story, and while it’s made clear participation is optional, no one at the performance I attended seemed able to resist. These moments are deployed deftly, with the plot kicking in long before they can start to grate, though it can’t hurt that the experience runs just over an hour.

Macmillan and Donahoe’s script is nimble and impressively executive in its underlying theory that happiness – just like depression, as the protagonist learns from Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther – can be contagious. As Radcliffe ricochets throughout the theater, asking for audience help with winning earnestness, the idea arises that community is what happens when you crowd-source what you need.

The actor is a revelation, though I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise that someone who could have retired a multimillionaire at 22 but keeps pushing himself into new challenges really does love what he gets to do for a living. Beside Radcliffe’s magnetic charisma, it’s his palpable joy in the project that shines brightest. There are a few reactions carefully calibrated for maximum fawning, sure, but his demeanor throughout suggests that he, too, is working through the meaning of performance; of engaging strangers through the one-way mirror through which they’ve grown accustomed to seeing him.

Every Brilliant Thing is in performance through May 24, 2026 at the Hudson Theatre on West 44th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.