Harry Potter-Adjacent Broadway Reviews: In “Giant,” a Future Dumbledore Plays a Beloved Children’s Book Author With Troublesome Political Views (Sound Familiar?), While a Former Harry Potter Demonstrates Empathy and Grace in “Every Brilliant Thing”

Giant (c) Joan Marcus

Broadway: Giant 
At the Music Box Theatre

The first thing the audience sees when they walk into the Music Box Theatre for Giant is a broken house, and with all due respect to set designer Bob Crowley, it hits the nail on the design head, but for British playwright Mark Rosenblatt (his first play), it may be too much of an apt metaphor. This is the Gipsy House of Roald Dahl (John Lithgow), and in 1983, he and his fiancée, Liccy (Rachael Stirling), short for Felicity, are renovating it for a fresh start after Dahl’s divorce from actress Patricia Neal. As the play starts, there are construction sounds, and tarp instead of walls, which adds to Dahl’s stress, as he edits his new book, The Witches with his British publisher Tom (Elliot Levey). On top of that, a representative from Farrar Strauss Giroux, Dahl’s American publisher, is set to arrive to discuss the fallout of a book review he wrote where he disparages all Jews for supporting the death and destruction of the 1982 Lebanon War. Both publishing houses want the outspoken author to do an interview where he would apologize for the perceived antisemitic opinions, which they think will affect sales of The Witches. The American arrives (“The eaglet has landed,” Dahl notes) and it’s Jessie Stone (Aya Cash), a young woman who professes her love for Dahl’s book and even has a copy of The Twits for him to sign for her son. Once pleasantries are done with, the real meat of the meeting (and the play) occurs: What to do to smooth over the offensive language in Dahl’s review? Dahl doesn’t see why it’s so imperative, but he does acquiesce for Liccy’s safety as he has received death threats, which is why a policeman is guarding the house. Dahl is rightly suspicious of why Jessie was chosen to represent FSG, and when it’s revealed that she, like Tom, is Jewish, Rosenblatt gets to dig into the knotty geopolitical question of Israel, especially to those people who are watching all of this from outside the Middle East. 

Theater Reviews: “Jesa” Uniquely Focuses on First-Generation Korean Sisters, Now Orphans; “Monte Cristo” Is a Throwback Musical That Slowly Wins the Audience Over; “The Wild Party” Brings Up Memories of its First Production While Forging its Own Identity

Jesa (c) Joan Marcus

Theater: Jesa 
At the Public Theater 

The most impressive element of Jeena Yi’s Jesa, a Public Theater and Ma-Yi Theater Company co-production, is that it takes a well-worn theatrical staple (the family drama) and makes it believably modern. Like the recent plays The Hills of California and The Blood Quilt, Jesa deals with a family of sisters, after the death of their parents, but they’re Korean American (as opposed to Irish or African American as they are in the other plays, respectively). We are at the Southern Californian house of Grace (Shannon Tyo), the second oldest, where she took care of her mother while raising her daughter with her husband. Grace and her sisters are performing a Jesa, a ceremony of remembrance and honor, in which food is placed at the altar dedicated to their parents, as their mother (referred to as Umma) recently passed. Two sisters live nearby: Elizabeth (Laura Sohn), the youngest who is a no-nonsense businesswoman, and Tina (Tina Chilip), the eldest who is a chef. Flying in from New York is third-in-line Brenda (Christine Heesun Hwang), a struggling theater director. Because the ceremony is usually performed by the male members of the family, it’s sort of a hodgepodge evening, with the sisters arguing about the order of events and how things are supposed to be laid out, but refusing to call their male cousins for help. 

Reviews: My Take on the Enjoyable Ryan Gosling Sci-Fi Film, “Project Hail Mary;” a Curious, if Oblique, “Bughouse,” a Play About the Artist Henry Darger; and the Indescribable Aussie Evening at a “Burnout Paradise”

Project Hail Mary (c) Amazon MGM Studios

Film: Project Hail Mary 
In Cinemas 

Even if you didn’t know that the new Ryan Gosling astronaut film, Project Hail Mary, was based on a book by the same author who wrote The Martian, it would become clear soon enough. Like Matt Damon’s botanist character, Mark Watney, stuck on Mars trying to survive on his own, Gosling’s Ryland Grace is a molecular biologist working as a high school science teacher who finds himself alone on a spaceship called the Hail Mary in a different solar system. And like Watney, Grace has to science the crap out his situation. It turns out that our sun is slowly dying, as are most suns in the Milky Way, except the one Grace is there to research to see why it’s immune to the solar disease. Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller have envisioned a beautiful and engaging screen adaptation, but it would not be as successful without a charismatic lead, with Gosling finally getting to shed the wordless loner persona of his characters in Drive and The Place Beyond the Pines to become the relatable charmer that was hinted at in The Nice Guys and La La Land. This is also not Gosling’s first time in space either, as he played Neil Armstrong in the underrated First Man. But here, Gosling’s is so relatable and charming as Grace that the audience I was with at an IMAX 70mm screening was on his side from the beginning. When Grace has to do a spacewalk for the first time, the doors open, the score (excellent, by Daniel Pemberton) and sound effects disappear, and it was only then that I realized how quiet the theater was: no popcorn eating, no talking, no texting. That’s how invested we all were in this poor man’s hopeless situation. 

The Interested Bystander’s Final Oscar Predictions for 2025-2026

Hamnet (c) Focus Features

For the longest time, it all seemed like a slam dunk for One Battle After Another for this year’s Oscars win (like Oppenheimer and Everything Everywhere All at Once), following a lot of prizes from the critic prizes. And even though it does seem that the industry prizes like the DGA, PGA and BAFTA, for some reason a lot of weight has been given to the SAG Actor Awards, even though it would seem that the actor’s branch would go for Sinners, following other big ensemble, crowd pleaser that weren’t big Oscar players like Dreamgirls, The Help, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Black Panther and American Hustle. 

And while it is true that Sinners did overperform at the Oscar nominations with the most ever (at 16), I still think this genre horror (albeit with a very effective racism and slavery overtones) will be hard for the Academy to embrace. The years that CODA and Parasite surprised with underdog wins, the perceived frontrunners (The Power of the Dog and 1917, respectively) those years were losing momentum with the audience pleasers overtaking the artier choices. I don’t see that attitude with One Battle After Another. People still love Paul Thomas Anderson and do believe this is his best and most accessible film, like Christopher Nolan and before him. However, if Sinners wins a lot of awards early in the evening, everything goes out of the window, and this more popular film will win. Again, I will give the odds of the top nominees of each category (so you will see how tight the race is) as well as my vote (if I had one). 

Enjoy the predictions and have fun on Sunday, March 15 on ABC. 

Theater Reviews: Mint Theater Presents “Zack,” Another Amusing Harold Brighouse Play; “Spare Parts” Envisions a World With a Possible Fountain of Youth, and “Bigfoot!” Humanizes (and Musicalizes) an Outsider

Zack (c) Todd Cerveris

Theater: Zack 
The Mint Theater at Theatre Row 

The Mint Theater has resurrected another play by the British playwright Harold Brighouse, who is best known for Hobson’s Choice, produced over a century ago on Broadway and made into a popular movie in the ‘50s. Last year, they revived Brighouse’s Garside’s Career in a lovely production, and now they are producing Zack, the playwright’s follow-up to Hobson’s Choice. And I have to say, plotwise, it doesn’t have the heft or historical intrigue of the other two plays. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed the production, mainly for its title character. Zach (Jordan Matthew Brown), unlike Mr. Hobson and Mr. Garside, neither has choice nor career. He is the younger and more unpredictable brother of the upstanding Paul (David T. Patterson), who runs a wedding planning service for their much put-upon mother, Mrs. Munning (Melissa Maxwell). Times are tough, so when Virginia (Cassia Thompson), a wealthy distant cousin, comes for a visit, Mrs. Munning hopes to make a love match for Paul. She also tries to keep the kind-hearted but bumbling, overweight and heavily bearded Zack, whom she considers an embarrassment, out of all family interactions. But try as they may, it seems Virginia has more in common with Zack than Paul, and when the rest of the family gets wind of their flirtation, plans are afoot to get Zack out of their hair. This includes an odd plot moment when Zack makes a joke about marrying local girl Martha (Grace Guichard) and her over-protective father holds him to that promise. The problem with Zack is that even if it’s a fascinating time capsule, it’s not very funny for a comedy of manners. Zack is relegated to almost a supporting role for much of the play as we witness most of the other not-so-sympathetic characters try to scheme and manipulate each other for their selfish ends. But whenever Zack appears, in the hands of the talented and immensely likeable Brown, he’s always a decent and honest person, even if he sometimes believes everyone’s bad opinions of him. Britt Berke’s evenhanded production may not make Zack a compelling play to revisit, but it’s fascinating to see how a playwright from early in the last century gave voice to a compelling outsider.