High Spirits (2026) (Encores!)

At its core, Encores! at City Center is about reviving shows you've never heard of with big names on little rehearsal. High Spirits embodies this spirit. Almost everyone was on book, save for Rachel Dratch who hardly has any lines, though she is hilarious just moping around. Andrea Martin was not only on book, but she lost her spot and had to halt the show. Steven Pasquale kindly hustled over to help her find her line. That was the funniest part of the show because she's such a comedienne about it. The show is a musical adaptation of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit. Coward's wry humor is light and British. It's like watching Downton Abbey; the latest Downton movie actually featured a visit from Mr Coward himself. Philippa Soo has the sensibility and mannerisms for it. She plays opposite her real life husband, Pasquale, playing his second wife. The plot is about a seance that brings back his first wife's ghost. None of the music is all that memorable, or good frankly, but Katrina Lenk has a couple songs as the first wife that suit her voice nicely. Overall, it's a weird show. It actually quite closely resembles the plot of Death Becomes Her. But it's not as funny or fun as Death Becomes Her. 

McNeal (2024) (Broadway)

In Robert Downey Jr.'s Broadway debut, he plays a writer using AI to write his new book. There's a confusing meta plot where he may be writing the play that we're watching unfold before our eyes. It's fine but the gimmick about AI isn't really saying anything new or meaningful about AI. And I bet AI technology improves so much over the next couple years that this will quickly feel outdated. And it's just kind of boring. I did fall asleep a bit in the scene at the agent's office. It's really unfortunate because I like Andrea Martin a lot. She's so funny but I missed half her scene and don't know if she landed any jokes.

There is a plot in here that is very similar to The Wife. McNeal wins the Nobel Prize in literature but he might have sold his wife's writing as his own. Or he might've adapted her story into his own, and does that make it his? There's some gender politics thrown in there. And much to everyone's surprise, he says multiple times that he admires Harvey Weinstein. Just wasn't on my bingo card this year. The character though is very much Iron Man. Robert Down Jr basically plays the same character, and I bet that's why he was cast. He's a macho man who is successful and brazen, fast-talking, generally dismissive of other people--not exactly likeable but on some level respectable? That plays out in real time to as his profiler from the newspaper starts our repulsed but is slowly converted to write a piece about him that's just about as good as it was going to get based on the garbage he's spewing at her.

The set was pretty cool. The sets at Lincoln Center Theater are always handsomely made. It makes use of screens to display the AI. There are some deepfakes that don't really add anything to the story.