The Trump administration wants to return us to the Fifties–but which Fifties? Economically it feels like the 1850s; in terms of health and wellbeing, maybe the 1450s. Culturally it’s the 1950s, a time of happiness and prosperity for all…or so MAGA imagines. As the 2025-2026 theater season begins Off Broadway two shows give the lie to that, one gently, one…not so gently.
At Classic Stage Company is a rare revival of Bus Stop, by William Inge, America’s bard of loneliness. Nominated for four Tony Awards the 1955 play was his third Broadway success, following Come Back, Little Sheba (1950) and the Pulitzer-winning Picnic (1953). Best known for its 1956 film version, with its star turn by Marilyn Monroe, it was last seen in New York on the main stem in 1996, with Mary-Louise Parker. Monroe’s wattage overshadows the ensemble nature of the piece, a good fit for the close quarters at Classic Stage, which scenic designer Peiyi Wong has transformed into a convincing diner somewhere in rural Kansas. (The real flies buzzing about add verisimilitude.)
The three-act show, performed with two brief intermissions over two hours, takes place amidst a snowstorm that has waylaid passengers overnight. Seen-it-all Grace (Cindy Cheung) runs the joint, assisted by Elma the waitress (Delphi Borich), an impressionable teen. Sheriff Will (David Lee Huynh) keeps a watchful eye on the place, always on the alert for trouble. And a bit of that comes with the emergency arrival of the juke joint singer Cherie (Midori Francis), who is fleeing the attention of the excitable cowboy Bo (Michael Hsu Rosen). Bo is accompanied by his mentor and father figure Virgil Blessing (Moses Villarama)–the two men plan to run a ranch together, but Bo’s infatuation throws that into doubt. Also marooned at the depot is Dr. Gerald Lyman (Rajesh Bose), a worldly, and world-weary, philosophy professor.
Inge, a son of the Midwest, knew this place and these people well. He was an alcoholic and a homosexual, dead at 60, a suicide. But Bus Stop is in many ways a comedy, a rowdy one at times, with an empathetic edge. Sex is a problem for these characters but they don’t fester in their despair, nor does Inge’s writing of them. Grace dangles both Will and the lusty bus driver Carl (David Shih) for laughs. Bo’s overzealous pursuit of Cherie, the first woman he’s ever known despite his caveman bravado, is funny, but Inge has given her scandalous “good time girl” a lot of moxie. She yearns for a worthy companion, which isn’t Bo, whose conduct raises Will’s ire. But Virgil urges his ward to be “gallant” toward Cherie, and in a tender confessional scene her resistance is lowered. Elma, meanwhile, must fend against Lyman, a drunken lecher with a checkered past. He talks a good game, though, and urges her to travel with him as they rehearse the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, part of a makeshift talent show to pass the hours. As the storm rages, then subsides, the characters sort out their self-delusions, bitter truths, and shots at happiness.
It’s a lovely, poignant piece, co-presented by Transport Group and directed, unfussily and with great tact, by TG’s Jack Cummings III. The pace is unhurried and the actors don’t push through it; there’s nothing “period piece” about the presentation. Its universal appeal is underscored by the third organization involved in the production, National Asian American Theatre Company (NAATCO). This is very much an “all-American” staging; Inge’s palette of characterization extends to everyone. Francis’ Cherie is more Rachel McAdams than Monroe and that’s all for the better, as her hopes and dreams are part of a shared humanity onstage. I was most touched, however, by Villarama’s Virgil. The part is typically given to a much older, sexless man, but Villarama brings a longing to it that differs from the wisdom of elders, making the show’s last scene all the more affecting. Virgil’s love dared not speak its name in 1955; it can, in 2025. For now.
The less said about Lights Out: Nat “King” Cole, at New York Theatre Workshop, the better. I love Cole, singer and pianist, and I’m a fan of multihyphenate Colman Domingo, who co-wrote this misguided play with music with its director Patricia McGregor. But, to paraphrase Roger Ebert, “I hated hated hated” this show. Why?
Cast as Cole, Dulé Hill is a reasonable facsimile of the great entertainer, singing, playing, and tap-dancing with easy aplomb. But, strike one, Cole didn’t dance a step. Perhaps Cole at the piano singing and telling stories of his life was thought to be boring, and it can be in bad bio plays with music. But don’t give a great talent a talent he didn’t possess. There is he, is though, whooping it up with his TV show guest Sammy Davis, Jr. (Daniel J. Watts), who is presented as a kind of demonic doppelgänger to Cole’s cautious, risk-averse self, depicted as the program, unable to find corporate sponsors, folds with a Christmas-themed episode. Though he brought Black talent into American living rooms in the Fifties Cole is as always holding in his resentment toward the white power structure, which is forever demanding that he powder his face to tamp down his Blackness. So he explodes into dance, gets mad at family and musical guests, and plans to speak up, as the onstage phantasmagoria of music and memories veers from Good Night and Good Luck to All That Jazz.
This is a peculiar show, stranger than last season’s dud A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical, which told his story through his embittered exes (a choice, as they say) but stuck to the facts and didn’t presume to speak for him. It’s that presumption that bothered me, the notion that Cole was some sort of fuddy-duddy transitional figure and not the bomb thrower that he should have been, and that this show is finally giving him a voice. Newsflash: he had a voice, and projected it across America. He died, tragically young, in 1965, as the Civil Rights Act was just getting started. He walked so that others might run. That was enough.
I’m not through, though. Strike two: the wearying, cutesy device of leading into dialogue with lyrics from songs Cole sang. Strike three: the arrhythmic, flabby pacing across 90 minutes that felt much longer in the absence of coherent, meaningful storytelling. Did Cole’s family approve this? (Natalie, played by Krystal Joy Brown, does appear to sing “Unforgettable”; she died ten years ago.) In this uncertain day and age we need art to hold us close and keep us together; with its gross fictionalization Lights Out does just the opposite. Turn it off.
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