Today on his podcast “Smartless,” it was announced that Tony and Emmy-winner Sean Hayes will return to the New York stage in The Unknown. This new one-man play by David Cale, will be directed by Leigh Silverman. Performances will begin at Studio Seaview on Saturday, January 31, 2026 with an official opening on Thursday, February 12, 2026 for a 10-week engagement. 

A gripping new play about a writer on the edge. Desperate to cure his writer’s block, Elliott retreats to a remote cabin—only to discover he may not be alone. As the boundaries between his work and his life collapse, Elliott begins to question everything he knows. Is he writing a thriller? Living one? Both? This new play is a provocative thriller that explores the fine line between fascination and obsession. 

“David Cale is a masterful storyteller and I am thrilled to be embarking on our third collaboration with The Unknown. We are joined by the charismatic, dynamic Sean Hayes, an imaginative design team and visionary producers and I can’t wait to share this enthralling show with audiences,” said directed Leigh Silverman.

The Unknown will feature scenic design by Studio Bent, costume design by Sarah Laux, lighting design by Cha See, sound design by Caroline Eng, music by Isobel Waller-Bridge. The production stage manager is Jason Hindelang, with production management by Hudson Theatrical Associates and Envoy Theatricals/Sam Dallas serving as general manager. For more information visit theunknownplay.com. 

To discover the musical Chess is to understand why people are obsessed with the musical Chess. Equal parts demented and exhilarating, this infamously troubled “Cold War Musical” is almost certainly unfixable. The show’s soaring highs are matched only by its plummeting lows. Yet this strange musical creature remains, above all else, just one hell of a good time. 

A thundering revival of this 1986 problem child, with music by ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus and lyrics by Tim Rice, opens tonight at the Imperial Theatre in the show’s umpteenth revised version. The latest book, a patchwork of multiple past iterations (with a few fresh tweaks), is by Emmy Award-winning actor-turned-screenwriter Danny Strong.  

So, I hear you ask: Did they fix Chess? 

The answer: Absolutely not. And please, please, may they never stop trying. 

What delights we would be denied if they did! Chiefly the delights of Andersson and Ulvaeus’ enduring score, a heart-pounding assemblage of stirring ballads, synthy flourishes and explosive rock opera. As played here by a booming 18-piece orchestra under Ian Weinberger’s musical direction, Anders Eljas and Brian Usifer’s orchestrations are crisp and powerful. 

Perhaps a bit too powerful, as the score does occasionally drown out the voices of a hard-working ensemble. Those finely-suited dancers, looking stylish in elegant gray, make up for it with dazzling moves choreographed by the ever-reliable Lorin Latarro (The Who’s Tommy). So invigorating is the dancers’ muscular backing that it’s a real loss, if perhaps an inevitable one, when they recede into the background for much of act two.

Michael Mayer’s slick, stylish staging is very much a concert, albeit as polished and elaborate a concert as you’re likely to see. (David Rockwell’s set keeps it simple, but is enhanced by richly colorful lighting from Kevin Adams and unobtrusive video by Peter Nigrini.) It’s hard to argue the approach. Chess is about the music, and Mayer knows it, notwithstanding the sincere efforts this team has made to clarify the storytelling. 

On that front, the bag is decidedly mixed. Strong’s book leans heavily on a tacked-on narrator, The Arbiter (a wonderfully hammy Bryce Pinkham, working wonders). As with most adjustments to Chess over the years, that expanded character creates as many problems as he solves. The narrative is clearer, certainly, but now filled with interruptions that feel awkward. Strong does not help his cause by sprinkling cringeworthy ripped-from-the-headlines gags about Biden and RFK into The Arbiter’s dialogue.

Yet all that scarcely matters when the powerful voices of Aaron Tveit, Lea Michele and a truly revelatory Nicholas Christopher shake the roof of the Imperial. Tveit and Michele struggle occasionally on the acting side, and the pair’s chemistry is iffy. But Tveit delivers a masterful “Pity the Child” and a deliciously sexy “One Night in Bangkok,” while Michele belts “Nobody’s Side” with absurd vocal power.

But it is Christopher, the lesser known of the three, who steals the show. His “Where I Want To Be” is a powerhouse; “Anthem” is faultless. He also finds a weighty and heartbreaking core to the character’s inner turmoil, lending this Chess one surprising and essential element: a beating heart.

Chess is now in performance at the Imperial Theatre in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

Right in time for the holidays, two families that are probably worse off than yours!

Robert Icke is one of our best and most exciting theatrical talents, full stop. Any announcement of new work from the writer-director, known stateside lately for his incendiary updates of the Oresteia, Hamlet and The Doctor (from Schnitzler’s Professor Bernhardi), are reason enough to immediately secure at least one round of tickets. So it’s curious that he’s hit a wall with Sophocles’ Oedipus. There’s still the baseline level of competence for which he’s come to be known – a sleek, glass-paneled modernist set by Hildegard Bechtler; laser-sharp performances, this time led by the phenomenal pairing of Mark Strong and Lesley Manville – that is leagues above most others’ hopes for excellence. But without the profound insight (modern and timeless) he’s excavated from those other works, there’s little to generate the same theatrical electricity.

Maybe it’s because, more than other Greek texts, Oedipus is something of a one-trick pony; a revelation waiting to happen. Icke is aware of this, writing in his script’s introduction (which I purchased sight-unseen because, again, I stan) that, “The tradition of Greek tragedy was to take a known story and re-tell it, changing it, re-making it to meet the present moment.” This he does with his usual cleverness, setting the tale on election night and turning Oedipus into an Obama-esque charismatic campaigning on hope, and the promise to solve the cold-case murder of his predecessor (and his wife Jocanda’s first husband).

That might not be the smartest investigation to open, as the blind prophet Teiresias (Samuel Brewer) sneaks into Oedipus’ office to cryptically suggest. It’s a nice Classical touch to keep the soothsayer, but it introduces a dramaturgical pitfall: In order to hold interest in a story whose surprises we already know, you either line up those dominoes and have a hell of a time toppling them, or you seek ways of making them fall that reveal fresh, new patterns. Icke’s Oresteia (sorry, I just think it might be the best play of the century) managed both while leaning harder into the latter route; reframing its entire chain of events as a tribunal judging its main character’s soul, and our own sense of right and wrong, every step of the way. His Oedipus, while glowing with his usual whip-smart language, doesn’t have much fun in the toppling. Each domino falls (“I killed who?! You’re my what?”) with complete earnestness, and without broader examination, even though we’d been tipped off by an earlier character and our own cultural literacy. There’s simply no tension. Thankfully, there’s little of that, too, in wondering whether Icke’s next project – his every project – will be worthy of appraisal. And if you see me soon, front row, at Oedipus, it’s because there are far worse places to be than at a Robert Icke production, or in the company of Strong and Manville.

Tension, meanwhile, is the driving force behind Anne Washburn’s latest play, The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire, sometimes – but not for long – to a frustrating degree. Directed by Steve Cosson, this commune-cult story set in the California desert reminded me of those mid-century B-movies like The Velvet Vampire or Manos: The Hands of Fate, which managed to posit New Age hippieism as (1) an abject terror, (2) a horrifying threat to normal values and, (3) maybe the way to go?

It begins with the death (or is it?) of one of the commune’s child members and how the leader’s decision to deal with this (or did he?) impacts the group’s future. Thomas (Bruce McKenzie), its head, is crunchy and surface-level agreeable. His partner (or is she?) Mari (Marianne Rendón), is not on the same page as him, but enjoys the quieter life they’ve built for themselves, far from the rest of the world’s oppressive structures. But soon the dead kid’s older brother (Tom Pecinka, as the two of them) shows up demanding answers, and finds some sideways ones in the homespun play their children have been workshopping.

That’s where the titular cauldron is introduced, in a fabulous display of old-school showmanship that brings out the best of Andrew Boyce’s scenic design and Monkey Boys Production’s puppets. (The puppets include a giggling school of “fire fish” that should, by all means, become next Halloween’s Niche Gay Costume.)

Fiery Fire is a purposefully evasive work, full of mysteries I’m not sure Washburn has entirely figured out – nor should she. Like the commune it portrays, it’s utopian, derivative, delusional and brilliant. Its ensemble boasts sterling turns from Bobby Moreno, Bartley Booz, Cricket Brown, Donnetta Lavinia Grays and Jeff Biehl, all of whom fill in this far-out community struggling to make sense of a world built for and without us. For all its opaqueness, the piece is incredibly propulsive and charged with the type of post-apocalyptic that feels just right – pre, or mid, apocalypse.

Oedipus is in performance through February 8, 2026 at Studio 54 on West 54th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

‍The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire is in performance through December 7, 2025 at the Vineyard Theatre on East 15th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.