Stranger Than FICTION

How the six o'clock news became your eight o'clock curtain.

- NAVEEN KUMAR

Razzle and dazzle rarely go out of style, but a new crop of Broadway shows are _betting that audiences are ready to face reality. On the heels of the industry's historic Covid shutdown, moony rom-coms like The Music Man and Funny Girl spelled box office gold, while beltathons like Six and & Juliet remain aloft on a cloud powered by pop music.

But today the world is still in crisis, and politics is growing more divisive. It's enough to make you want to go to the theater-not to escape but to make sense of it all. Vladimir Putin is at the Barrymore in Patriots, the latest by Peter Morgan, creator of The Crown; Hillary Clinton is producing Suffs, a women's suffrage musical; and the Nazis are once again encroaching on the louche riffraff of Cabaret. Meanwhile, Brian Cox is leading a West End revival of Eugene O'Neill's downward spiral A Long Day's Journey into Night, and a Harvard professor is mired in controversy in The Power of Sail at London's Menier Chocolate Factory.