In her New York directorial debut, LaChanze returns to the work of Alice Childress, in whose play Trouble in Mind she fiercely starred on Broadway in 2021, renewing interest in the writer’s under-seen oeuvre. This time, she stages her 1969 play, Wine in the Wilderness, in a smart Classic Stage Company production featuring a sizzling Olivia Washington.

Amid the Harlem riot of 1964, the suave young artist Bill (Grantham Coleman) is looking to complete the third panel of a triptych he’s painting on Black womanhood; the first canvas depicts youthful innocence, the second an idealized African mythos. The third, he heartily rhapsodizes with Oldtimer (Milton Craig Nealy), a friendly wino who breezes into his studio, will be a cautionary tale of the kind of “messed up chick” you’d cross the street to avoid.

This is why Tommy (Washington) is picked up at a bar and brought over by his friends Sonny-man (Brooks Brantly) and Cynthia (Lakisha May). Brash, lively, and not dripping with bohemian chic, they see her as the perfect model of Black womanhood gone wrong. With Oldtimer quietly observing, the three friends take turns slighting her looks, intelligence, and lifestyle while toasting their own advancement.

As in Trouble in Mind, which patiently laid bare the workplace microaggressions faced by a Black actress, Childress is interested in everyday culture wars, here the ones waged within a subculture; what we take from our people and how we sell them out in our quest for advancement. Tommy drinks, doesn’t know the African-American history books strewn about Bill’s apartment (the intimate set is by Arnulfo Maldonado), and definitely does not use the term “African-American,” opting instead for one which deeply, and showily, offends her host. But she’s no social work case, and is definitely no stooge. When, in a woman to woman moment, Cynthia advises she should soften up and become the kind of lady men open doors for, she fires back, “What if I'm standing there and they don't open it?”

There is a compelling conversation between Childress’s writing and LaChanze’s contemporary direction. The script doesn’t insist too hard, but it’s easy to imagine its subtext calling for these characters to be presented in a more caricaturish way which LaChanze is measured in tempering. So while Dede Ayite’s costumes and Nikiya Mathis’ wigs are characteristically rich, Tommy does not immediately read as the stereotype her peers perceive her to be. It’s a humanizing touch, trusting the author’s dialectics and her star’s ability, but one that softens the play’s blunt-force legibility. And yet LaChanze then continues this artists’ dialogue, complicating Childress’ too-clean finale with a poignantly unsettled closing tableau.

Four years after her incandescent performance in Trouble in Mind – which was both the veteran actor’s first time leading a Broadway play, and the 1955 work’s long-delayed Broadway debut – it feels as if LaChanze has clutched onto something beautiful in the elder’s work, and is now passing it forward. Washington, catching the baton, creates a performance that is compelling, evocative and all-encompassing; suggesting a woman determined on being life, whether of the party or of her own path. Out of this well-calibrated, finely acted production, the triumvirate of Washington’s performance, LaChanze’s direction, and Childress’s words, make it a must-see.

‍Wine in the Wilderness is in performance through April 13, 2025 at Classic Stage Company on East 13th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

The uber-prolific Kenny Leon has somewhat perfected his directorial strategy of casting extremely well then getting out of the way of his talented performers, trusting them to deliver the work cleanly, and largely on their own. If a bit of nuance goes unexplored here, or some text feels hurried there, he typically pulls it off on the strength of the material. It worked with a rollicking comedy like Purlie Victorious, it worked with an emotional meditation like Our Town. The approach does not work with Othello, his third Broadway show this season, which stumbles aimlessly and fruitlessly for nearly three hours.

Shakespeare’s works will outlive us all, but need a reason to be staged, a focus on one of the many thematic strands each contains, and through which they remain immortal. Though Leon’s two previous Shakespearean outings, both at the Delacorte, had specific takes on character and setting, there is nothing powering his Othello, leaving its two blockbuster leads, Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, stranded.

Gyllenhaal wrangles emotion out of his Iago, if he’s not completely at home with the Bard’s language. Washington, in a statement as baffling to write as the performance was to witness, seems to have little hold on crafting his character. This Othello does not carry the triumphant stateliness of an army general victorious over general circumstance and pointed racism, but rather the affable nature of an easy mark. When the scheming Iago suggests his new wife Desdemona (Molly Osborne) might be untrue, he falls for it immediately, sapping the bonafide thriller of any sense of tragedy. Andrew Burnap, meanwhile, is rather impressive as Cassio, with Anthony Michael Lopez and Kimber Elayne Sprawl also making the most of their Roderigo and Emilia.

It would be ludicrous to imply Washington and Gyllenhaal are incapable of turning in momentous, gorgeously attuned performances, so one searches for a directorial hand that emerges in other, bizarre ways. The set, by Derek McLane, whose structural minimalism is well-suited to the modern-dress costumes (by Dede Ayite), is simply not pleasant to look at, with columns sophomorically sponge-painted to suggest age. And Justin Ellington’s sound design vacillates clunkily between melodramatic, Disney-sounding strings and modern trap beats.

An introductory projection places the action in “the near future,” apparently one where the United States has invaded the story’s Venice, given the conflicting military and police patches worn onstage. This scene-setting appears following the magic trick involving Desdemona’s handkerchief which opens the show. Long before the accessory figures into Iago’s plot, it hangs mid-air against a blank stage before the performance begins. As it is invisibly whisked into the flies, the magic, drama, and knowing purpose that the gesture promises disappears almost as immediately.

Othello is in performance through June 8, 2025 at the Barrymore Theatre on West 47th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

During World War II, the British secret service did indeed conduct a deception operation known as Operation Mincemeat, in which the British dressed a dead body in the uniform of a Royal Marine, transported him to the coast of Spain, and planted fake documents on him in the hopes that German spies would find the body and its falsified military papers and move their troops out of Sicily, leaving it open for an Allied Invasion. 

If you’re thinking this doesn’t sound like the right kind of material for a musical, fret not: in the hands of the geniuses at SpitLip (David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson, and Zoë Roberts) it’s musical comedy gold. 

The cast—which includes 3 of the 4 members of SpitLip, plus Claire-Marie Hall and Jak Malone—is a tight ensemble of bumbling clowns, who tackle the breakneck pacing with unflagging energy and megawatt charm. 

Charles Cholmondeley, the mealy-mouthed operative who comes up with the titular operation, lacks the confidence to present the idea to his boss, Colonel Johnny Bevan (Zoë Roberts, hysterical in every role she inhabits). David Cumming is hilarious and lovable as the nerd so forgettable even his coworkers can’t remember him despite working with him for six years. Just watching him walk across the stage (I can only guess the direction was to avoid bending his knees as much as possible) is a delight. His dubious savior comes in the form of his coworker Ewen Montagu, who has enough arrogance and showmanship to sell Charles’ bonkers idea and actually get it approved. Natasha Hodgson is brilliant as the pompous, Eton-educated Montagu. Her gravelly voice and swaggering walk are perfect foils to Cumming’s meek Cholmondeley. 

The five actors switch roles and swap genders throughout, sometimes turning into a new character right before our eyes with a hairpin turn or the donning of a new costume piece or prop—the clever use of costumes and set by Ben Stones.

It’s this small, ragtag sensibility that keeps the show so utterly endearing. While the story lacks propulsive action, particularly in the first act, you hardly notice due to the uproarious comedy and the show’s music—an inventive pastiche of contemporary musical theatre and pop. (Music and lyrics, as well as the book, are all by the members of SpitLip.) Director Robert Hastie keeps the farce rolling, never missing an opportunity for comedy. The script’s raucous, joke-a-minute pacing is thrilling. Wartime espionage has never been this fun.

There’s a real, beating heart at the center of the show that elevates it above mere farce. Beneath the spoofs and gags, there’s an emotional depth that makes the comedy funnier and the satire sharper. While skewering the stuffy, educated British elite, SpitLip has done its due diligence by making room among the jokes to pay homage to the real man whose body was used as a pawn in a military operation. 

Like every member of the cast, Jak Malone plays many roles, most deliciously a foppish coroner, but his tender turn as Hester Leggatt, head of the secret service’s secretarial pool, is the most poignant and well-acted. Along with Claire-Marie Hall as Jean Leslie, the young upstart who wants to be useful beyond her administrative duties, they give voice to the women often banished to the background in stories such as these. 

It’s a testament to its ingenuity that the show accomplishes all of this without ever taking itself too seriously. There are plenty of winks and nudges to the audience throughout, but make no mistake—Operation Mincemeat is some of the best of what musical theatre can be. It demands to be seen.

Operation Mincemeat runs through August 18th at the Golden Theatre in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.