One of the most buzzed about performances in London last season will be making its way stateside this spring. It was announced today that David Cromer will mount Lindsey Ferrentino’s visceral play The Fear of 13, based on the documentary directed by David Sington. This will mark two-time Oscar winner Adrien Brody’s Broadway debut, as well as Tessa Thompson’s debut. 

The Fear of 13 tells the extraordinary true story of Nick Yarris, who spends more than two decades on death row for a murder he insists he did not commit. Through a series of prison visits with a volunteer named Jackie, Nick traces a life shaped by impulse and consequence. As Nick and Jackie’s conversations deepen, the line between witness and participant blurs, forcing both to confront what justice demands, what belief requires, and the perilous distance between true freedom and the illusion of self-determination. By turns devastating, darkly funny, and life-affirming, The Fear of 13 is a powerful exploration of truth and trust, conscience and connection. 

Previews are set to begin Thursday, March 19, 2026 with an official opening night on Wednesday, April 15 at the James Earl Jones Theatre here in New York City. 

The Fear of 13 is also proud to announce a groundbreaking partnership with the Innocence Project, whose mission is to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate, and equitable systems of justice for everyone. Its work is guided by science and grounded in anti-racism. 

Amex Presale Tickets will be available starting Tuesday, January 20 at 10am ET  through Friday, January 23 at 11:59am ET here. 

Let us be glad, let us be grateful! It was announced today that Keri René Fuller, who is currently the Elphaba standby, will assume the role full time, alongside Emma Flynn as Glinda in Wicked beginning March 3, 2026 at the Gershwin Theatre here on Broadway. 

Wicked will mark Flynn’s Broadway debut. She recently led the West End production of Clueless as Cher. 

Lencia Kebede and Allie Trimm will play their final performances on Sunday, March 1. Currently the 4th longest-running show in Broadway history, Wicked is currently in its 23rd year on Broadway. 

Additional principal casting will be announced in the coming weeks. 

The Broadway sensation Wicked looks at what happened in the Land of Oz…but from a different angle. Long before Dorothy arrives, there is another young woman, born with emerald-green skin, who is smart, fiery, misunderstood, and possessing an extraordinary talent. When she meets a bubbly blonde who is exceptionally popular, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships…until the world decides to call one “good,” and the other one “wicked.” 

Within the past week, an online conspiracy dubbed “Conformity Gate” developed amongst a small subset of the Stranger Things fandom, theorizing that a “secret” final episode to the Netflix hit would be released on January 7. The theory spread quickly in certain corners of Twitter and TikTok, catching fire in the most delusional corners of an intense fanbase. 

Now, “Conformity Gate” is hardly the most high-profile example of a persistent rise in conspiratorial thinking in American culture. Nor is it close to the most dangerous—that list includes the Epstein files, the 2020 election, or the now-flagging but deeply influential QAnon movement. Yet the Stranger Things fracas points to how deeply embedded conspiracy theories have become within the United States, to the point where even minor concerns like a sci-fi family drama get swept in. 

Tracy Letts saw it coming. Written 11 years before his Pulitzer Prize-winning smash August: Osage County, Letts’ disturbing 1996 work Bug concerns a pair of outcasts, Agnes (Carrie Coon, of White Lotus and The Gilded Age) and Peter (Namir Smallwood of Pass Over) locked away together in seedy Oklahoma motel room. Agnes is fleeing her abusive ex-husband Jerry (Steve Key), none too successfully; Peter’s background is hazy. As the two grow closer, Agnes is soon sucked into Peter’s paranoid theorizing around government surveillance, poisonous technologies, and above all else: bugs. 

Peter sees bugs everywhere. In the walls; in the bed; even inside his own skin. Desperately, he claws them out, drawing blood. 

At first, Agnes doesn't see the bugs. In time, Peter opens up about his time in the army—first becoming sickened in Syria, then experimented on in a secret lab. Then one day, Agnes looks into Peter’s hair, and suddenly sees it: a bug. 

Like Killer Joe, another early Letts work, Bug is probably best known for its act two descent into surreality and shocking violence. But in this affecting Broadway revival, a transfer from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre running at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre through February 8, director David Cromer puts his focus on the gentler side of Letts’ psychological study. (Well, at least for act one.) 

Certainly Letts has great empathy for its central pair, both of them deeply traumatized. Agnes and Peter’s bond grows sweetly, almost romantically at times, over a slow-burn first act. Smallwood hits a remarkable balance of vigor and vulnerability, finding delicate nuance beyond even what Letts’ text suggests. The text cannot quite carry the added weight of Peter now also existing as a Black body in America—but again, Smallwood has no trouble filling in those cracks with unspoken details. 

For Coon, this production’s slow emotional buildup proves trickier. Her Agnes is desperate, but also formidable; searching for comfort, but also whip-smart. Coon’s effortless power as a performer sometimes works against her, though these contradictions also lie in the text. Agnes’ strength does make her eventual fall into delusion a little bit harder to believe. 

Cromer is looking to deepen Agnes and Peter’s psychology, probing beyond even a hint of stereotype. That comes with huge benefit, but also a cost—when the pair’s shared descent into delusion truly kicks off, it feels abrupt. As does the tonal shift a quick toggle from hangout (act one) to psychodrama (act two). 

Once that descent begins, though, it’s a perverse  thrill to the end. Aided by a masterful set change (the decaying scenery is by Takeshi Kata, spookily lit by Heather Gilbert), Cromer expertly turns the dial up to 11 as Agnes becomes fully consumed by Peter’s conspiratorial mind. The late arrival of the mysterious Dr. Sweet, played with almost otherworldly strangeness by an excellent Randall Arney, elevates the proceedings to unnervingly heightened, wholly gripping heights.

Even as his characters destroy their world and themselves, Letts never loses sight of the strange comfort in a good conspiracy theory. (Many of the real-life examples Peter manically cites are, in fact, entirely true.) One unifying theory making sense of all the pain is, for these damaged souls, so much more comforting. Even if it means setting it all on fire. 

Bug is now in performance at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on West 47th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.