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    Jinkx Monsoon Sails From ‘Drag Race’ to ‘Pirates! The Penzance Musical’

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    Jinkx Monsoon talks about feeling like a lifetime of hard work is finally paying off, and her return to Broadway as a zany maid in “Pirates! The Penzance Musical.”As she prepared to discuss a part in the upcoming Broadway show “Pirates! The Penzance Musical” with the director Scott Ellis, Jinkx Monsoon had only one outcome in mind. “I knew I was going in for a meeting, but I wanted to leave with that role,” she said in a recent conversation.And she was not coy about it. “The first thing she said was, ‘I’ve never wanted anything more than this,’” Ellis recalled, laughing.Now Monsoon is above the show’s title in playbills, alongside Ramin Karimloo and David Hyde Pierce. A lifetime of hard work has added up.“I’ve done so many freaking things!” Monsoon said. “I’ve been a stand-up comedian, I’ve been a singer and a dancer and a stripper. I think auctioneer is one thing I haven’t done.”A two-time winner of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Monsoon, 37, a Portland, Ore., native, has an eclectic résumé that includes cabaret shows, guest starring on “Doctor Who” and a wildly popular seasonal bauble, “The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show” (created and performed with BenDeLaCreme). When she made her Broadway debut in January 2023 as Matron “Mama” Morton in “Chicago,” casual — or perhaps cynical — observers might have assumed she was just another TV personality crossing off another item on her wish list, like headlining Carnegie Hall. (Monsoon did that, too, in February.)Instead it was a big step toward her end goal. She then took an even bigger step, professionally and personally, last year, when she was cast as Audrey in the hit Off Broadway revival of “Little Shop of Horrors” and ended up surprising even people who know her well.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Oedipus’ and ‘Rocky Horror Show’ Are Returning to Broadway

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      The Roundabout Theater Company will also present Noël Coward’s “Fallen Angels,” starring Rose Byrne and Kelli O’Hara.Roundabout Theater Company, the largest nonprofit on Broadway, will present three very different classics next season: a Greek tragedy, a drawing-room comedy and a monster musical.The English writer and director Robert Icke’s “Oedipus,” a new version of the seminal Sophocles drama about a king who inadvertently kills his father and marries his mother, will come to Broadway in the fall. The production, starring Mark Strong (“A View From the Bridge”) and Lesley Manville (“Phantom Thread”), had an enthusiastically reviewed previous run in London, and just received four Olivier Award nominations (for best revival as well as for the work by Icke, Strong and Manville).“Oedipus” is a commercial venture, with Sonia Friedman, Sue Wagner, John Johnson and Patrick Catullo as lead producers; Roundabout is presenting it this fall at Studio 54 and will offer it to subscribers as part of the nonprofit’s season.There were multiple versions of “Oedipus Rex,” as the show is traditionally called, on Broadway in the early 20th century, but then it largely disappeared — the last production, a weeklong run in 1984, was performed in modern Greek.After “Oedipus,” Roundabout will pivot to lighter fare: The musical “The Rocky Horror Show” in the spring of 2026 at Studio 54, and the play “Fallen Angels,” that same spring, at the Todd Haimes Theater. (The Haimes will close this fall for a renovation, which will include a restoration of the interior and an upgrade to the bathrooms, elevators and seats.)“The Rocky Horror Show” is a 1973 sci-fi spoof by Richard O’Brien; it first ran on Broadway in 1975 and was revived once before, in 2000. The new production will be directed by Sam Pinkleton (“Oh, Mary!”), who had been scheduled to direct a version of the musical in 2020 at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, but that production was scuttled by the pandemic.“Fallen Angels” is a 1925 comedy by Noël Coward about two married women with a shared ex-lover. This revival will be directed by Scott Ellis, the Roundabout’s interim artistic director, and will star Rose Byrne (“Bridesmaids”) and Kelli O’Hara (a Tony winner for “The King and I”).“Fallen Angels” has had two previous Broadway productions, in 1927 and 1956.Roundabout also has an Off Broadway theater, the Laura Pels, where next fall it plans to stage “Archduke,” a play by Rajiv Joseph (“Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo”) about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. Darko Tresnjak (a Tony winner for “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder”) will direct, and Patrick Page (“Hadestown”) will star.Roundabout plans to follow “Archduke” next winter with an Off Broadway production of “Chinese Republicans,” a satirical workplace drama by Alex Lin, directed by Chay Yew. More

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      Review: Daniel Dae Kim as a Playwright Unmasked in ‘Yellow Face’

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      David Henry Hwang’s 2007 play, now in a fine Broadway revival, is a pointed critique of identity, masquerading as a mockumentary.To write yourself into your own play is to put on a very curious mask. If it’s flattering, is it honest? If it’s honest, why bother?Those questions, both as artistic choices and as problems of social identity, are powerfully and hilariously engaged in the revival of David Henry Hwang’s “Yellow Face” that opened on Tuesday at the Todd Haimes Theater. The answers are deliberately equivocal. On one hand, this Roundabout production, directed (as was the 2007 original) by Leigh Silverman, stars the exceedingly likable and handsome Daniel Dae Kim as Hwang’s stand-in, called DHH. On the other, this DHH is a worm.So too is the sinuous story, which requires a ton of exposition to get on its way. DHH, exactly like Hwang, won a 1988 Tony Award for his Broadway debut, “M. Butterfly.” His 1993 follow-up, “Face Value,” won only notoriety. Closing before its official New York opening, it earned the nickname “M. Turkey.”From left, Kevin Del Aguila, Kim, Shannon Tyo and Marinda Anderson. The supporting cast, mismatched to roles without regard to gender or race, are all wonderfully inventive, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Face Value” was Hwang’s theatrical response to the “Miss Saigon” controversy, in which the producer Cameron Mackintosh, importing that megamusical from London in 1991, sought to import its star, Jonathan Pryce, as well. But because Pryce is white, and his character is Eurasian, protests against the casting ensued. Nevertheless, the show went on — and on and on — with Mackintosh dismissing the dispute as “a storm in an Oriental teacup.”Hence “Face Value”: a broad farce, set in part at the “Imperialist Theater,” about the casting of a white actor in the title role of a musical called “The Real Fu Manchu.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More