We could go see Boop for a few more weeks! Boop! The Musical will play its final performance on Sunday, July 13, 2025 at the Broadhurst Theatre. The musical, at time of closing, will have played 25 previews and 112 regular performances.

The principal cast of Boop! The Musical is headed by Jasmine Amy Rogers as Betty Boop and Tony Award®-winner Faith Prince as Valentina, Ainsley Melham as Dwayne, Erich Bergen as Raymond Demarest, Stephen DeRosa as Grampy, Anastacia McCleskey as Carol Evans, Angelica Hale as Trisha, Phillip Huber as Pudgy the Dog, Aubie Merrylees as Oscar Delacorte, and Ricky Schroeder as Clarence.

The cast also includes Lawrence Alexander, Courtney Arango, Colin Bradbury, Tristen Buettel, Joshua Michael Burrage, Victoria Byrd, Dan Castiglione, Rebecca Corrigan, Ian Gallagher Fitzgerald, RJ Higton, Nina Lafarga, Morgan McGhee, Ryah Nixon, Christian Probst, Gabriella Sorrentino, Derek Jordan Taylor, Lizzy Tucker, Amy Van Norstrand, Damani Van Rensalier, and David Wright Jr.

Tony Award^®-winning director/choreographer Jerry Mitchell brings the Queen of the Screen to the theater in BOOP! The Musical, with celebrated multiple Grammy^® Award-winning composer David Foster, Tony Award^®-nominated lyricist Susan Birkenhead and Tony Award^®-winning book writer Bob Martin. 

For almost a century, Betty Boop, created by animation pioneer Max Fleischer, has won hearts and inspired fans around the world with her trademark looks, voice, and style. Now, in BOOP! The Musical, Betty's dream of an ordinary day off from the super-celebrity in her black-and-white world leads to an extraordinary adventure of color, music, and finding love in New York City — one that reminds her and the world, “You are capable of amazing things.” 

The design and creative team for Boop! The Musical includes David Rockwell, scenic design; Gregg Barnes, costume design; Philip S. Rosenberg, lighting design; Gareth Owen, sound design; Finn Ross, projection design; Sabana Majeed, hair and wig design; Michael Clifton, makeup design; Skylar Fox, illusions design; The Huber Marionettes, marionette design; Daryl Waters, music supervision and arrangements; Doug Besterman, Orchestrations; Rick Fox, music director; and Zane Mark, dance music arrangements. Casting is by The TRC Company, Kevin Metzger-Timson, CSA and Tara Rubin, CSA. DB Bonds is Associate Director, Rachelle Rak and Jon Rua are Associate Choreographers, and General Management is by Foresight Theatrical.

Write It Out!, a 10-week free playwriting workshop for people living with HIV and AIDS, is accepting applications for its 2025 cohort and the Write It Out! Prize through July 30 at 11:59 p.m. ET. 

Interest applicants must submit a writing sample no more than 10 pages long. Those applying for the prize, which includes a $10,000 unrestricted cash prize and a dramaturg to assist the recipient in developing a new play, must submit an original full-length play (no musicals are accepted). Applicants can choose to request confidentiality if accepted to either the program or the prize — wishing to remain anonymous will not impact the selection process. 

Write It Out! has doubled down its commitment to the Poz community amidst threats to federally funded HIV/AIDS programs. The 2025 cohort of writers will work with professional directors and actors to mount their plays on World AIDS Day, Dec. 1. They are provided with a stipend and a trip to New York, including Broadway tickets.  

This is the program’s sixth year. It was founded by award-winning Poz playwright Donja R. Love in 2019, with the aim of creating a community for Poz artists and giving them space to tell their stories. In 2021, it introduced the Write It Out! Prize, which was funded in its inaugural year by Billy Porter. 

“Write It Out! offers opportunities for its participants to reckon with their HIV status through art. Write It Out! gives its participants a community, a place to belong, a place void of isolation and shame,” one alumnus of the 2023 cohort said in a statement. “At the age of 72, and after living with HIV since 1989, I found it to be one of the seminal events of my life. I am deeply grateful to every person and organization that supports this exceptional work.”

For more information and the application, visit here.

Among the most delightful theatrical experiences of 2024 was Julia Randall’s dementedly funny play Little Miss Ransom. Staged in the subterranean Bushwick home of rising company Adult Film, Ransom tackled America’s ever-growing obsessions around true crime and conspiracy theory with a perverse wit. Randall’s mind is a dark one—indeed, Ransom ended, appropriately (and satisfyingly), on a note of gruesome brutality. 

Now, Randall has crossed the river to Union Square, where her new play Dilaria makes its world premiere off-Broadway at DR2 through August 3. Thankfully, the playwright’s messed-up proclivities have survived the trip intact. Dilaria is skillfully immoral, a lively dissection of our grotesque attention economy. While it never quite reaches the manic heights of Ransom, this work nonetheless announces an exciting new talent.

Dilaria centers on a pair of college besties, Dilaria (Ella Stiller) and Georgia (Chiara Aurelia), now both living in New York. Dilaria is cruel and controlling, while Georgia is seemingly under her spell. (Do these two need to fight, or just fuck?) After the death of a mutual friend prompts an outpouring of love on social media, the imperious Dilaria seizes upon a new tactic for online adoration: staging her own death. But this time, Georgia decides her vicious friend has gone too far.

The character of Dilaria is a larger-than-life figure, though only barely—her particular brand of narcissism will be sadly familiar to most, along with a penchant for spinning grand, self-serving fictions. The role demands a domineering and intimidatingly charismatic presence, and a sharp Stiller is most of the way there, though she’s not quite as powerful as Randall’s script demands. 

The most precise comedic work comes from Christopher Briney (of Amazon’s The Summer I Turned Pretty), who is laugh-out-loud funny as Noah, Dilaria’s unexpectedly wise and empathetic booty-call. Briney’s dopey smile at Georgia finally pronouncing his name right (it’s “No-AH”) is a golden bit of character-based humor. Aurelia feels more uncertain as Georgia, but that’s more a writing issue—Georgia’s own personal brand of sadism takes a bit too long to come to the fore. 

As a whole, the play builds too slowly, and should reach manic heights of heinousness faster than it does. Though director Alex Keegan guides her actors well, she never quite hits the tone of disturbed perversity that Randall’s writing demands. But when we do finally reach a final blow-out, it’s a glorious denouement, hitting that perfect balance of tragically horny and gruesomely macabre. 

‍Dilaria is now in performance through August 3, 2025. For tickets and more information, visit here.