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MOST RECENT ARTICLES BY:

Sara Holdren

Theater Critic
See all their articles from across New York Magazine
@swholdren
sara.holdren@nymag.com
  1. theater review
    Empire: The Musical Stacks Up 102 Stories, Every One a ClichéA cringey new musical about the rise of the Empire State Building.
  2. theater review
    Oh, Mary! Is Excellently UncivilCole Escola’s Mary Todd Lincoln farce transfers uptown, preserving the union between absurdity and hilarity.
  3. theater review
    From ERS's Ulysses.
    ERS’s Ulysses Is a Little Stately, a Little PlumpThink you’re escaping and run into yourself.
  4. theater review
    Kathleen Tolan, Connie Schulman, and Lizbeth Mackay in Clubbed Thumb's 2024 production of FIND ME HERE.
    Three-Sister Harmony in Find Me HerePlus an array of short-run summer shows to watch for if they return.
  5. theater review
    The Drag-Ball Cats Is GoodWell, now, how about that!
  6. theater review
    Looking Back at Bad Men: Dark Noon and Pre-Existing ConditionColonialism and abuse, addressed onstage.
  7. theater review
    Return of the Musical Rumble: The OutsidersDoes the Tony Award-winning stage adaptation stay gold?
  8. theater review
    An Estate That Divides: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s AppropriateSarah Paulson is furious and fearsome in this Tony Award-winning play.
  9. theater review
    Lindsay Mendez, Jonathan Groff, and Daniel Radcliffe in Merrily We Roll Along.
    Here’s to Them. Who’s Like Them? Damn Few.Turns out what Merrily We Roll Along needs most is three actors who can really bring it home, and here they are.
  10. theater review
    Stereophonic Moves to Broadway, and Thunder HappensThe Tony Award-winning play is a love song, bittersweet and wounded and ferociously loyal, to the act of making art.
  11. theater review
    A Vintage Satire That Still Has Sting: Purlie Victorious ReturnsOssie Davis’s plantation farce retains its wit and snap.
  12. theater review
    Feeling the Illinoise, This Time Through MovementSufjan Stevens’s album becomes a transcendent theater-dance-music piece.
  13. theater review
    Can You Teach an Old Sport New Tricks? The Great Gatsby on Broadway.Singing through the ash dump.
  14. theater review
    Time Out of Mind: The Welkin and HilmaTwo plays that mess with your sense of now.
  15. theater review
    Coach Coach Goes to Camp CampDoes Bailey Williams’s wellness-industry satire self-actualize?
  16. summer preview 2024
    11 Plays and Musicals We Can’t Wait to See This SummerFrom Titanic (not the movie) to Cats (very much not the movie).
  17. theater review
    Here There Are Blueberries Keeps This Moment at Arm’s LengthAs powerful as this Pulitzer-finalist play about Auschwitz is, it studiously avoids the conversations people are having right now.
  18. theater review
    The Beautiful Oddness of Shimmer and HerringbonePlus: Peregrine Teng Heard’s Redemption Story.
  19. theater review
    The On-and-Off Sparks of The Keep Going SongsAbigail and Shaun Bengson’s music-theater piece soars when it’s not trapped in twee.
  20. theater review
    Staff Meal Deserves Five Stars on YelpA play about restaurant-making that’s likely to resonate with any underpaid, overwhelmed, hyperpassionate, exhausted creator.
  21. theater review
    Stomping As They Climb in JordansIfe Olujobi’s claws-out satire doesn’t quite reach the tragic potential of its DEI-in-the-workplace premise.
  22. theater review
    The New Uncle Vanya’s Aims Are OffSteve Carell & Co. are individually appealing in Heidi Schreck’s translation, but the show itself never comes to life.
  23. theater review
    Putin Has a Lean and Hungry Look in PatriotsThe Crown creator Peter Morgan’s new play redirects his eye for palace intrigue to the power dynamics of post-Perestroika Moscow.
  24. theater review
    Eddie Redmayne as the Emcee in Cabaret.
    Dancing on the Surface in Cabaret and OrlandoAtmosphere is all in the loose hustle and bustle of a pre-show, but in a play proper, it can only carry you so far.
  25. theater review
    Living Is Harder: Suffs and GrenfellSuffrage and outrage make for rich stage experiences.
  26. theater review
    Writing Down the Bones: Sally & TomA curiously muted Hemings-and-Jefferson meta-story by Suzan-Lori Parks.
  27. theater review
    Look, I Made a Woman: LempickaThe musical somehow turns a radical bisexual painter, living and loving in Paris between the wars, a little bit boring.
  28. theater review
    St. Ronnie the Oblivious: Richard Foreman’s Symphony of RatsThe Wooster Group brings back a Reagan-era yawp of discontinuity.
  29. theater review
    Not Without Ambition, But … Macbeth (an undoing)A reimagining of Shakespeare, centering Lady Macbeth, asks the wrong questions about her.
  30. theater review
    Always Gets a Replay: The Who’s TommyYes, it’s a show from another time and culture. But the tension that disconnect brings is fascinating.
  31. theater review
    Grief Hotel, Where You Check In to YourselfLiza Birkenmeier’s discontinuous, fragmented play imagines a quasi-spa marketed to anyone experiencing loss.
  32. theater review
    A.J. Shively and David McElwee in Irish Rep's 2024 production of PHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME!
    Becoming Brian Friel: Philadelphia, Here I Come!At the Irish Rep, early work by a future master.
  33. theater review
    Water for Elephants Is Best When It’s Behind the TimesDazzling circus arts and great puppetry are almost enough.
  34. theater review
    In Teeth, Purity Culture Leaves Bite MarksMichael R. Jackson and Anna K. Jacobs are out for blood.
  35. theater review
    Ibsen, Translated Into American: An Enemy of the PeopleWith Jeremy Strong, Michael Imperioli, and drinks on the house.
  36. theater review
    Love and Brains, Dull and Sharp: The Notebook and The EffectA musical adaptation that’s generic to the point of inanity, and a play that asks and examines real questions about what a person is.
  37. theater review
    Corruption’s Heroes Are Not Serious PeopleMurdoch’s phone-hacking scandal, recounted by thinly drawn archetypes.
  38. theater review
    The Old-Weird-America Pleasures of Dead OutlawFrom the team behind The Band’s Visit, another musical that is more than meets the eye.
  39. theater review
    Doubt Returns in a Traditionalist ProductionJohn Patrick Shanley’s dialogue still packs heat, but the fire’s been turned down this time.
  40. theater review
    In The Ally, Impossible Conversations We’re All HavingItamar Moses’s drama about a lefty Israeli American caught up in the complexity of pro-Palestine academia is confident and eloquent in its humility.
  41. theater review
    Fiasco’s Smooth-Sailing PericlesAn affable, legible take that intermittently sings.
  42. theater review
    Tobias Menzies and Aerina DeBoer in The Hunt.
    Through a Glass, Familiarly: The HuntIn this adaptation of a Danish thriller, almost all the characters conform to movie-trope behavior and movie-trope actions.
  43. theater review
    Sunset Baby’s Troubled Children of the RevolutionDominique Morisseau’s play looks at the time after revolutionary fire is reduced to a simmer.
  44. theater review
    Alone in the Dark: I Love You So Much I Could Die and On Set With Theda BaraTwo solo shows, looking to make the most of limited resources—and one, at least, soars.
  45. theater review
    Two Queens (and Some Dancing): The ApiaryVirtuosic performances in a play that can’t quite get airborne.
  46. theater review
    Too Too Solid: Eddie Izzard’s HamletThe British comedian, so deft on a standup stage, has a go at Shakespeare—and tightens up.
  47. theater review
    The Trouble With Trolls, in Russian Troll FarmSarah Gancher’s play takes us to the bunker where disinformation begins its journey.
  48. theater review
    We’re in This Together: Bark of Millions and The Following EveningA maximalist performance and a quiet, inward-looking play—both, somehow, about creative legacy and earthly mystery.
  49. theater review
    Quiet Obsessions, Unplugged: Aberdeen and The Animal KingdomA verse play about Kurt, and a therapy play about hurt.
  50. theater review
    Soaring Voices and Plastic Plants in Days of Wine and RosesKelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James at peak vocal power.
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