Tom Hanks, Playwright, Part 1

 

[In 2013, Academy Award-winning film actor Tom Hanks (1994, Best Actor in a Leading Role for Philadelphia; 1995, Best Actor in a Leading Role for Forrest Gump) made his Broadway début in the limited run of the Broadway show Lucky Guy, Nora Ephron’s last play.  (Ephron died on 26 June 2012; rehearsals for the production began on 14 January 2013, 6½ months later.  Hanks had also starred in two films written by Ephron, Sleepless in Seattle in 1993 and You’ve Got Mail from 1998; Hanks costarred in 2017’s The Post, which director Steven Spielberg dedicated to Ephron’s memory.)

[Lucky Guy ran at the Broadhurst Theatre from 1 April to 3 July 2013 (with two extensions from 16 June and 30 June), a total of 33 previews and 104 regular performances.  It was Hanks’s last New York stage appearance (though his last stage performance was as Falstaff in Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles’s 2018 Henry IV).  Hanks (b. 1956) took home a Theatre World Award for Outstanding Broadway or Off-Broadway Debut Performance for Lucky Guy. 

[In May 2023, the renowned actor published a novel, The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece (Alfred A. Knopf).  It’s “about the making of a star-studded, multimillion-dollar superhero action film . . . and the humble comic books that inspired it.”  It became a New York Times Bestseller and was recognized by National Public Radio as one of the “Best Books of the Year” for 2023.  The Library Journal put the book on its “Lead Holds” list, indicating significant reader demand.  (See “Tom Hanks, Novelist“ [22 May 2023].)

[Before the novel, Hanks published Uncommon Type (Alfred A. Knopf, 2017), a collection of short stories inspired by his vintage typewriter collection. The stories are linked by a common theme: each involves a typewriter in some way.  They aren’t about the typewriters themselves, but about something that might have been written on them.  Uncommon Type was a national bestseller and included in USA Today’s 10 Best Books, NPR Best Books of 2017, and Barnes & Noble Best Fiction of 2017. 

[Now, based on the stories from Uncommon Type, Hanks has written a play (in which he also stars).  This World of Tomorrow was coauthored by Hanks and playwright, adapter, director, and theater teacher James Glossman and directed by Tony Award-winner Kenny Leon (Best Direction of a Play for A Raisin in the Sun, 2014, and multiple nominations).  The play had a limited Off-Broadway run in the Kenneth C. Griffin Theater at The Shed in Hudson Yards, a real estate development on the far West Side of Midtown Manhattan (ov-er a functioning rail yard); it started previews on 30 October 2025, and opened on 18 November with a closing date of 21 December.

[The story of This World follows Bert Allenberry (Hanks), a scientist from the year 2089.  Disenchanted with his high-tech future, he uses a portal to travel back repeatedly, on a quest for true love, to 8 June 1939, to the site of the New York World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens, where he falls in love with a bookkeeper named Carmen (Kelli O’Hara). (The fairgrounds were revived 24 years later for the 1964 World's Fair, for which it was redesignated Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, the name it bears today.)

[If anyone thinks that it’s no coincidence that Hanks and Glossman’s play is entitled This World of Tomorrow and is plotted around repeated visits to the 1939 World’s Fair, whose official theme and motto was “The World of the Tomorrow,” you’d be absolutely right!  Here’s what Hanks, himself, said in Vogue that makes this clear:

“I’ve always had a fascination for the 1939 World’s Fair because it was so blatant for its optimism,” Hanks reflected. “It was called The World of Tomorrow, and it was viewed that all humans would have a common future—a shared one of opportunity, growth, and possibility powered by the four freedoms that everybody in the world was entitled to” (Paul Chi, “Meryl Streep, Katie Holmes, and More Helped to Fête Tom Hanks’s Return to the Stage in This World of Tomorrow,” Vogue 19 November 2025).

[(Sidebar: The “Four Freedoms” invoked by Hanks may refer to the celebrated set of fundamental human objectives articulated by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt [1882-1945; 32nd President of the United States: 1933-45] in his 6 January 1941 State of the Union address, but the 1939 World’s Fair celebrated a slightly different set of Four Freedoms: Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, and Freedom of Assembly.

[[Conceived by the Fair’s Board of Design, the idea to promote the liberties enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was prompted by the United States Constitution Sesquicentennial, a nationwide commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the creation, ratification, and implementation of the United States Constitution, 1937-39. The notion was championed by New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia [1882-1947; 99th Mayor of New York City: 1934-46].).

[(The fair opened on 30 April 1939, the 150th anniversary of the first inauguration—in New York City, then the nation’s capital—of George Washington [1732/O.S.: 1731-1799; President of the United States: 1789-97], the first chief executive under the newly-ratified Constitution. President Roosevelt gave the opening address that day, noting in his speech the First Amendment’s freedoms, clearly having taken notice of the Four Freedoms sculptures by Leo Friedlander [1888-1966], which La Guardia had dubbed “the heart of the fair,” across the Court of Peace from the speaker’s rostrum.

[(Roosevelt surely saw the Fair’s successful use of the Four Freedoms terminology and was doubtlessly inspired to repurpose the phrase to transform the Fair’s celebration of domestic American democratic values into a global manifesto of universal rights for people “everywhere in the world.”

[(Two years later, in what became known as the “Four Freedoms speech,” the Four Freedoms FDR enumerated, symbolizing America’s ideals, became: Freedom of Speech and Expression, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear.

[(Delivered 11 months before the United States entered World War II, the speech provided a moral justification for American intervention and a vision for a post-war world order. The Four Freedoms became a foundational cornerstone for the United Nations (established in 1945) and were enshrined in the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948.)

[This first installment of the two-part post primarily consists of articles, all from the New York Times, about Hanks’s composition of the script (as described by himself) and his participation in the production, but in Part 2, to be published on Saturday, 3 January 2026, I will post excerpts from Stephen Colbert’s interview with Tom Hanks on The Late Show of 3 November and a selection of reviews of the performance.]

“TOM HANKS PLANS TO STAR 
IN A NEW PLAY THAT HE WROTE”
by Michael Paulson

[This short notice in the New York Times on 22 May 2025 (Section C [“Arts”]) was an early announcement of Hanks’s plans to mount a play he’d written on a New York stage.  It was posted on the paper’s website as “Tom Hanks Wrote a Play, and Will Star in It Off Broadway This Fall“ on 21 May.]

The work is scheduled to run for eight weeks at the Shed in Manhattan.

Tom Hanks, the acclaimed film actor, has written a new play about love, longing and time-travel, and is planning to star in an Off Broadway production of it this fall.

The play, This World of Tomorrow, will be staged in a 550-seat theater at the Shed, a performing arts venue on Manhattan’s Far West Side that has been helping Hanks develop the work over the last year. The play is scheduled to run for just eight weeks, from Oct. 30 to Dec. 21.

This World of Tomorrow is about a scientist from the future who travels back in time — to the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens — searching for love. It is based on elements of Hanks’s “Uncommon Type,” a collection of short stories published in 2017.

Hanks, who will play the scientist, will lead a cast of 10 to 12 performers [it turned out to be 11], some of whom will take on multiple roles. A two-time Oscar winner (for “Philadelphia” and “Forrest Gump”), Hanks has one Broadway credit, “Lucky Guy,” a 2013 newsroom drama for which he received [a] Tony Award nomination.

Hanks wrote the new play with James Glossman, a playwright and director with whom he has collaborated on other projects, including “Safe Home,” which had a production in 2022 at Shadowland Stages in Ellenville, N.Y. (It was also based on “Uncommon Type” stories.) The director of the new play will be Kenny Leon, who won a Tony Award in 2014 for “A Raisin in the Sun.”

Alex Poots, the artistic director of the Shed, said Hanks’s team approached him last year when they were looking for a place to develop the show. Poots leapt at the opportunity, he said, thinking “he’s one of the most beloved and trusted storytellers of our time.” Poots called the play “a classic love story,” but also noted that, because parts of it take place in 1939, “there is reference to the rise in authoritarianism.”

[Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), Duce (‘leader’) of the Fascist Party, was appointed prime minister of Italy in 1922; António Salazar (1889-1970) became prime minister of Portugal, a quasi-fascist dictatorship, in 1932; Hitler (1889-1945), Führer (‘leader’) of the Nazi Party, was elected chancellor (prime minister) of Germany in 1933; Francisco Franco (1892-1975), Caudillo (‘leader’) of the Falangist Party, became prime minister of Spain in 1936.

[Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) officially became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1922 and de facto leader of the USSR by 1929 by consolidating power after Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924. He held the post of Premier from 1941, ruling as a dictator until his death.

[In Japan, a powerful military faction, of which Hideki Tojo (1884-1948), then a colonel, was a founder and central figure, gained control as early as 1931, promoting aggressive expansionism in Asia. The military seized control of foreign policy, leading to the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and China in 1937. Tojo, by then a general, was Vice Minister of the Army from 1938 to 1940 and then Minister until 1944 and was a leading advocate for the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.  As Prime Minister (1941-44), Tojo consolidated immense power, at times holding multiple ministry positions, creating a virtual military dictatorship. He was responsible for the decision to attack Pearl Harbor, which brought the United States into World War II.

[Tojo’s leadership was characterized by a commitment to aggressive territorial expansion to secure vital resources for the Japanese Empire. As PM, he created a one-party system, ending democratic political processes, and through his control over the levers of state power, he suppressed dissent and oversaw the indoctrination of Japanese youth with extreme militaristic and ultranationalist values.]

This World of Tomorrow is one of three upcoming theater pieces to be staged at the Shed. It will present, in collaboration with Los Angeles’s Geffen Playhouse, a revival of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play “The Brothers Size,” starring André Holland, from Aug. 30 to Sept. 28. And from June 17 to Oct. 19 it will present “Viola’s Room,” an immersive audio production narrated by Helena Bonham Carter. It was created by Punchdrunk, the company behind “Sleep No More.”

[Sleep No More ran at the McKittrick Hotel in New York from 7 March 2011 to 29 September 2024. It was an immersive theater work created by the British troupe Punchdrunk. It was based primarily on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (from which the title is drawn), with additional inspiration taken from noir films (especially those of Alfred Hitchcock) and the 1697 Paisley witch trials, an incident in Britain that resembles the Salem, Massachusetts, occurrence of 1693.

[(The six-story McKittrick was a performance venue themed as a 1930s hotel in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, built in 1939 and used as an industrial warehouse (which also occasionally housed popular nightclubs in the late 1990s and early 2000s). The building was given a fictional name (taken from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film Vertigo) and past as a hotel that was shut down six weeks before it was scheduled to open. It was transformed into the immersive theater space for Sleep No More and reopened in 2011 and closed in 2025, a week after Sleep No More closed.

[(The former “McKittrick Hotel” has hosted several major events and creative takeovers throughout the year since it closed as a performance and nightclub space, including hosting a limited engagement for a new immersive production from Artemis is Burning titled The Death of Rasputin [Governors Island: 17 April-29 June 2025; former McKittrick Hotel: 31 October-1 November 2025]; the building is also scheduled to host a major New Year’s Eve celebration on 31 December.)

[The audience for Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, which can be categorized as immersive theater, promenade theater, and environmental theater wandered at their own pace throughout a set populated by actors. It was not interactive theater because the presence of the audience rarely had any bearing on the story or the performers. The production won the 2011 Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience and special citations at the 2011 Obie Awards for design and choreography.]

[Since April 2015, Michael Paulson has been the theater reporter of the New York Times.  From 2000 to 2010, Paulson covered religion for the Boston Globe, where he was part of the Globe team whose coverage of clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.  Since 2010, he’s worked at the New York Times, where he initially continued his religion coverage.  His work at the Times reflected his early politics roots and continued to tie religion to national issues.   Paulson has covered theater at the New York Times.]

*  *  *  *
“DAZZLING OPENING NIGHT WITH TOM HANKS”
by Sarah Bahr

[The second New York Times report on Tom Hanks and James Glossman’s play covered the night of the play’s official opening performance.  It ran in the print edition of 23 November 2025 in the “Sunday Styles” section, but online, as “A New York Night Out With Tom Hanks,” it was posted on 19 November, the day after the opening.]

Stars flocked to celebrate the actor’s Off Broadway show, ‘This World of Tomorrow.’

On Tuesday evening [18 November], more than 400 actors, directors and designers circulated under soft purple lighting inside the Shed, a performing arts center in Midtown Manhattan, to toast Tom Hanks and his new Off Broadway show, This World of Tomorrow.

“It’s the greatest thrill of my life,” Mr. Hanks, the 69-year-old veteran film star, said of performing in the play, which tells the story of a scientist from the future (played by Mr. Hanks) who travels back in time — to the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens — in search of love.

It was opening night for the production, based on Mr. Hanks’s 2017 short story collection, “Uncommon Type,” which was adapted for the stage with the playwright and director James Glossman. It is directed by Kenny Leon, who won a Tony Award in 2014 for “A Raisin in the Sun.”

And fellow stars, who entered alongside enormous projections of Mr. Hanks’s likeness, turned out. The illustrious crowd included the actors Meryl Streep, Martin Short and Steve Martin as well as the recently retired [on 22 October 2025] ballerina Misty Copeland.

“I’m a huge ‘Toy Story’ fan, so I’m excited to see him,” Ms. Copeland said of Mr. Hanks, who voiced the cowboy Woody in the “Toy Story” films and who is a two-time Oscar winner (for “Philadelphia” and “Forrest Gump”). Mr. Hanks has one Broadway credit, “Lucky Guy,” a 2013 newsroom drama for which he received a Tony Award nomination.

[Hanks was in four Toy Story films, all produced by Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Pictures: 1995, 1999, 2010, and 2019.  Toy Story 5 is due to be released on 19 June 2026, also produced by Pixar and Disney.]

The evening, which doubled as the Shed’s annual fund-raising gala and raised $2.1 million for the organization, honored one of its founding board members, Lew Frankfort, a former chief executive of Coach [Coach New York; American company specializing in luxury accessories such as handbags].

It began with a cocktail reception, where guests — who included Ms. Copeland, a board member of the organization, and Mr. Hanks’s wife, Rita Wilson — munched on chips and nuts before sitting down to a dinner of curated small plates like quail eggs, sweet potatoes and cocoa-braised short ribs.

Around 8 p.m., guests filtered into the Griffin Theater for the evening’s performance. For about the next two hours, Mr. Hanks and his co-star, the Tony Award-winning stage actress Kelli O’Hara, who plays his love interest, gallivanted around a World’s Fair set that included projections of the fair’s General Motors Futurama exhibit and the illuminated water fountains in the Lagoon of Nations.

After the show, attendees were welcomed back to the world of today with hot dogs and ice cream bars, featuring some decidedly 21st-century trappings, including cilantro and an apple cider sorbet.

[Sarah Bahr is an editor on the New York Times’s Flexible Editing desk and covers culture and style for the paper, writing about theater, film, TV, music, visual art, pop culture, parties, and nightlife.  She earned a master’s degree in English from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.  She worked for the Times as a multiplatform editing intern in Summer 2019, and has contributed to USA Today, Forbes Travel Guide, The Indianapolis Star, and Indianapolis Monthly.  She’s thrilled to return to New York, where in 2019 she saw 30 shows on and off Broadway in just 10 weeks.]

*  *  *  *
“WRITING A PLAY IS ELECTRIFYING (AND TERRIFYING)”
by Tom Hanks 

[Hanks’s own account of his first experience as a dramatist was published in the New York Times of 15 December 2025 (Section C [“Arts”]).  Online, the article was posted as “Tom Hanks on the Electrifying (and Terrifying) Experience of Writing a Play“ on 14 December.]

Tom Hanks looks back on the process of creating This World of Tomorrow with James Glossman.

At the very first rehearsal of the new Off Broadway play This World of Tomorrow our director, Kenny Leon, stopped us after two minutes — two minutes. “I don’t want to hear how you are saying the lines,” he told us actors. “I want to hear what you are saying.”

We may have been focused on our dialects, but he was listening for the language of the play. And that language? It had evolved from prose on the page, my prose.

The play was based on a collection of short stories I’d written, and now my words were being spoken by the members of our all-star cast, including Kelli O’Hara, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Jay O. Sanders. I was not only acting along side them, but I was also responsible for what was coming out of their mouths. Would my words inspire them? Would they help my castmates convey the language Kenny was listening for?

In our rehearsal room, the rewriting never ended. The script that my collaborator, the playwright James Glossman, and I had pored over for months now sounded completely different coming from the cast. It was a little surreal to hear Ruben as a tech genius from the future explaining the perils of time travel or Kelli as a bookkeeper from the Bronx telling the story of her magical day at the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens. Both sounded just as we had imagined but also completely different as we went from table reads to rewrites to rehearsals and more rewrites before finally freezing the script.

These words have been with me for over a decade. My stories were published in 2017 in a collection titled “Uncommon Type.” Then, over the past three-and-a half years, in the form of a script adapted from two of these stories. I’m no stranger to commitment. I’ve devoted months of my life to working on films and, back in 2013, the Broadway play “Lucky Guy.” But this would be different; this was years.

After quieting some internal doubts, I embarked on this endeavor, partly fueled by a desire to bring to life onstage a sense of lives caught between the certainties of the past and the unknowable future. I wanted theatergoers to ponder the possibilities of each present moment.

It all started during the Covid shutdown, when Jim presented a staged reading of my work at a fund-raiser for Shadowland Stages in Ellenville, N.Y. (Though we had never met, Jim and I had traveled in concentric theater circles in the 1970s and ‘80s.) His reading combined two stories from my book: “The Past Is Important to Us,” about a tech titan of the future who takes a sort of time travel vacation to 1939, and “Go See Costas,” inspired by my father-in-law’s escape from the Communists in postwar Bulgaria and his arrival in New York City.

[Though regions varied with respect to the imposition and withdrawal of closures due to the COVID pandemic, most areas of the U.S. issued shutdown orders in March 2020. In New York, the most restrictive closures began on 22 March. The order was lifted statewide on 15 June 2021.]

Jim thought the stories could work as pieces of theater: Two men leaving their pasts behind them, starting new lives in a new world and being changed by what they find in pre- and post-World War II America. I saw no reason to deny Jim that challenge.

What he called “Safe Home” evolved from a one-time reading into a full production at Shadowland. Opening night was in July 2022 [15 July-7 August], and I was rather thrilled by the production — though the play was crammed to the rafters with ideas and plot, and burdened with dialogue, monologues and explanations.

Still, given our overlapping pasts and affection for the prose of the short stories, we felt a desire to revisit the work. But where to begin — again? Jim and I exchanged pages for two years, rewriting each other, struggling to produce coherent dialogue, debating phrases and scenes. This is a science fiction story, but even we realized we were really pushing the logic of the science, the reasoning, the physics.

Then at an invaluable weeklong workshop in 2024 at Portland Stage in Maine, it became clear that James and I needed to work together in person in order to wrestle the play into shape. We settled on my agent’s offices in the Chrysler Building in Manhattan. Would it be the crucible of creativity we needed?

[The Portland Stage workshop was part of the troupe’s annual Little Festival of the Unexpected (21 May-6 June 2024). Performances of See You Tomorrow, the new title of the play that would become This World of Tomorrow, were offered on 12 and 14 June.]

We revisited our research about the 1939 World’s Fair, and kept landing on a didactic bit of narration: “The present is but an instant between an infinite past and a hurrying future . . . [.]” This came from the designer Norman Bel Geddes’s “Futurama,” a vast design for a future world, presented by General Motors in what was the fair’s most popular attraction.

We forged ahead, developing back stories for each character, figuring out which speeches resonated, and testing the number of jokes audiences would tolerate. We wanted to get the era right. One character played by Sanders owns a Greek diner just off Sheridan Square [heart of Greenwich Village]; another, Carmen Perry (O’Hara), works at a handbag factory, and lives with her brother’s family in the Bronx. Virginia, Carmen’s niece (Kayli Carter), is the president of her school’s radio club and obsessed with the advent of television. I portray a wealthy tech entrepreneur from 2089 who meets these characters when he travels back in time.

Sometime in the summer of 2024, we let some trusted minds read the latest rendering of our work. Debating innocuous wording was slightly excruciating (Do audiences respond better to “we have a situation” or “we have a problem”?), but the reactions landed like a gut punch: “Interesting!” “Huh?” “You might have something here.” Translation: There is more work to be done.

Somehow the manuscript made its way to Alex Poots and Laura Aswad at the Shed, who offered an official workshop — a staged reading. Jim and I gulped at the reality of what this deep throw would mean, then thought ‘Well, yeah, why not?’ We slapped the date on our calendars and rushed headlong into more revisions.

Now, how is this for timing? The reading of This World of Tomorrow was held at the Shed the day after the 2024 presidential election [5 November]. Just as we were taking an audience back to 1939 — which held its own uncertainty around war and the financial rebound from the Great Depression [1929-39] — there was a looming uncertainty, in 2024, of what the next four years would mean for the United States. Then came the realities of our endeavor: constructive criticism of what remained cloudy in the play’s narrative, theme and language.

As Jim and I dove back into the script, we were guided by notes from Alex and Todd Kreidler, the dramaturg and associate director; the reactions of the folks who attended the workshops; and friends who had read (and reread) it. Despite the work to be done, the Shed offered this fall for a production. Jim and I agreed to take the leap.

As rehearsals began at Gibney Center downtown [a dance venue with two facilities: Lower Manhattan and Union Square], missing beats were revealed. More revisions were made. The writing felt endless. New pages greeted the team each morning. Oftentimes the actors’ work the day before informed these new passages, their stone-cold authority illuminating moments that needed adjustments. Kenny kept stopping us, wanting to hear what the play was saying, in the language of the theater.

Previews arrived, and I eventually surrendered all but my actor hat. Jim and I handed over the final script to the cast to perform.

It’s electrifying to be a playwright — as terrifying a creative experience as I’ve ever had. It has also been a pleasure and an honor to join a cast and crew with such dedication, joy and brass. Some days, amid the rush of performing for a live audience, I feel as if our reality is forcing us to engage with the play’s themes: Staying present by embracing the moment, while also hurrying toward our inevitable future — the play’s final performance on Dec. 21.

[These three articles on This World of Tomorrow by Tom Hanks and James Glossman cover the announcement of the play’s arrival in New York City, the opening performance, and coauthor Hanks’s discussion of his inaugural experience as a writer of plays. 

[The second installment of “Tom Hanks, Playwright” will include excerpts from the transcript of Hanks’s 3 November 2025 guest shot on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.  It’ll be posted on Sunday, 4 January, and I hope all ROTters will come back to read it.  Hanks is always an affable and amusing talk show guest, and this was no exception (though I have excerpted only the parts of the show in which the celebrity talks about the play).

[Part 2 will also include reviews of the Off-Broadway première of This World of Tomorrow.]

"How the character and traditions of Santa Claus evolved over centuries"

by Stephanie Sy and Mary Fecteau

[This bit of American Christmas lore aired on PBS News Hour on Christmas Day, 25 December 2025.  I’ve occasionally posted some sort of seasonal offering on or near holidays, such as Christmas or Hanukkah, even one on Valentine’s Day, so here’s a conversation about how Santa Claus came to be the “jolly old elf” we traditionally see in the U.S. whenever he’s mentioned or seen (say, around a mall or department store at this time of year).

[Speaking of Santa, earlier this year—I was late for Yuletide ’24—I posted a piece on NORAD Tracks Santa, the defense alliance’s official Santa site, called “Here Comes Santa Claus” (3 January 2025).  Other Christmas-related posts have been “‘Is There a Santa Claus?’” (25 December 2009), “‘It's a Wonderful Life Was Based on a “Christmas Card” Short Story by Philip Van Doren Stern’” by Daven Hiskey (26 December 2016), and “Spirit of 1907 Christmas, Recovered in 1999, Completed in 2016” (21 December 2022).  I even did a Hanukkah post last year, “Dreidel” (6 January 2024); the holiday in 2023 was 7-15 December, so I was a little late with the post.]

William Brangham [substitute anchor for the “PBS News Hour”]: So, for this next story, we need to warn you. If you have small kids in the room, you may want to mute this and come back a bit later, because we’re talking about that visitor from the North Pole, OK?

This Christmas Day, many good boys and girls welcomed that familiar visitor last night, the jolly man in the red suit with a sleigh full of gifts. But that white bearded figure that we all recognize as Santa Claus, he is a relatively modern creation shaped over centuries.

Stephanie Sy recently talked with an author who unwraps the surprising history of Old Saint Nick.

Stephanie Sy: That author is Gerry Bowler.

And his book “Santa Claus: A Biography” [McClelland & Stewart, 2005] traces how the legend of our favorite bearded gift-giver evolved over centuries.

[Gerry (G. Q.) Bowler (b. 1948) is a Canadian historian whose research focuses on the intersection of religion and popular culture, especially Christmas. He has taught at a number of universities in western Canada and spent 25 years with the University of Manitoba as a Professor of History.]

Gerry, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the “News Hour.”

So I want to hop right into it.

Is Santa Claus – and – I quote from the book – a figure of mythology or a creature of literature or a tool of a clever capitalist?

Gerry Bowler, Author, “Santa Claus: A Biography”: He is a wonderful myth, about 1,700 years old, American in renovation and largely a conspiracy by families.

So it changes over time.

Stephanie Sy: Saint Nicholas was an actual fourth-century bishop [traditionally 15 March 270-6 December 343, Anatolia (modern-day Turkey)]. What was he most known for?

Gerry Bowler: At the time of his life, he was known for generosity.

But when he died, a cult grew up around him inside Christianity that made him the most influential, popular male saint on the Christian calendar. He was the patron saint of so many things, but probably his most famous miracle in the Middle Ages was his resurrection of three murdered boys who had been chopped up and put in a pickle barrel.

He discovered this and put them all together again. So he becomes the patron saint of children. And thus around maybe the 12th century, he was someone who parents and the church said came on December 6 [his feast day] to bring presents for good little girls and boys to leave something in their shoe.

[The tradition of leaving something in children’s shoes in celebration of St. Nicholas (on 6 December, St, Nicholas Day, or its eve, the night of the 5th) stems from legends associated with the historical figure Saint Nicholas of Myra. In the most famous story, St. Nicholas tossed bags of gold coins through an open window or down the chimney of the house of a poor man with three daughters but no dowry for them.  One bag landed inside a stocking or shoe left by the fireplace to dry.

[These acts of secret generosity formed the basis of the tradition of children in many cultures, particularly in Europe, leaving their shoes or stockings out on the eve of St. Nicholas Day. Adoption of the tradition spread among the German, Polish, Belgian, and Dutch communities throughout the United States. Americans who celebrate St. Nicholas Day generally also celebrate Christmas Day as a separate holiday and some of the traditions and rituals of St. Nicholas Day, such as leaving out a stocking to be filled, have become traditions of Christmas here.]

Stephanie Sy: So, Gerry, it sounds like there’s this darker side of the Santa Claus legend to talk about here that a lot of people are unaware of.

Gerry Bowler: Well, in the 1500s, when Protestants abolished the cult of saints, parents had to have some kind of magical gift-bringer. They still wanted that aspect.

In many places, they turned to the Christ child. In French, you call it Le petit Jésus. In German, it’d be Das Christkindl. The Christ child is certainly a great Christian symbol, but he lacked two things that Saint Nicholas had had. One, the baby is obviously not going to carry a big sack. And, two, he’s not scary.

And Saint Nicholas could scare kids into good behavior. So what happened in Germany and in the Northern Europe was that the Christ child started becoming accompanied by scary helpers. They carried a whip or switches or a chain.

In Austria, of course, we have Krampus, which looks exactly like the devil. So he’s one of those scary helpers.

Stephanie Sy: So this goes back to your first answer, which is there was this conspiracy of families. Are they basically at the root of the Santa Claus that we know today?

Gerry Bowler: Well, a number of New York poets and thinkers and rich landowners wanted to make Saint Nicholas the bearer of good things and also a bit of a threat to bad kids.

The first poem that takes Saint Nicholas out of his Catholic bishop’s uniform and puts him in a fur-trimmed red robe is called “A Children’s Friend” in the 1820s. It’s a poem that describes this Christmas Eve midnight gift-bringer who comes equipped with a reindeer-powered sleigh.

[A Children’s Friend (whose full title is The Children’s Friend: A New-Year's Present, to the Little Ones from Five to Twelve) is an 1821 booklet published in New York City by William B. Gilley, a well-known bookseller and a neighbor of Clement Clarke Moore (see below).

[The poem, called by its first line, “Old Santeclaus with Much Delight,” which has been adopted as its title, was published anonymously. While some have historically attributed it to Clement Clarke Moore, modern scholars often credit the publisher William B. Gilley (ca. 1785-1830) or the illustrator Arthur J. Stansbury (1781-1865) with its authorship.

[A Children’s Friend was intended to be a small series of children’s booklets published by Gilley in the early 1820s, offering moral lessons and engaging stories to foster positive behavior. (“Old Santeclaus with Much Delight” was Number III in the series. The title of Number I was “Infant Thoughts,” intended as a moral and educational tool for young children. The titles or themes for Number II are not well-documented.) The series was intended to be ongoing; however, there’s no evidence the series extended significantly beyond the initial installments.

[The original is a small, 6-inch paperback containing eight hand-colored lithographic engravings (considered the first in a book in America). It sold for 25 cents for colored copies and 18¾ cents for plain ones ($7.10 and $5.40 in 2025, respectively).

The next year [1823], Clement Clarke Moore [1779-1863; resident of Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood] takes that sleigh, multiplies the reindeer, and writes a poem for his family.

Stephanie Sy: And the poem you’re referring to there is “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.”

Gerry Bowler: “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” a “Visit from St. Nicholas.” And it goes viral, as it were.

[The poem’s formal title is “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (actually, “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas”), but it’s more commonly known by its first line: “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.” The poem was first published anonymously in the Troy, New York Sentinel on 23 December 1823, having been sent to the paper by a friend of Moore.]

It’s adopted by families first in the Northeastern United States. Then it spreads to Canada and throughout the rest of America.

Stephanie Sy: So, in other words, there’s sort of this amalgamation of traditions that are folded in and layered on.

Gerry Bowler: That’s the nature of Christmas. Christmas is very adaptive. By 1900, Santa is pretty much set, though, except with the addition of Rudolph in 1939.

(SINGING [“Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” the 1949 song written by Johnny Marks (1909-85) and first recorded by Gene Autry (1907-98), based on the 1939 story Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer published by the Montgomery Ward Company.])

Gerry Bowler: And despite all kinds of efforts by Hollywood and commerce to make him in their image, he’s remained pretty stable since then.

Stephanie Sy: Why do you think the legend of Santa Claus has endured for centuries?

Gerry Bowler: Because it is so valuable to families.

Saint Nicholas is this embodiment of generosity, of unmerited favor, to which you add a fantasy, a midnight gift-bringer from some place enormously exotic, powered by reindeer, for crying out loud. It serves to give kids an idea of fantasy, of generosity.

So, as long as families continue to love Santa Claus, it doesn’t matter what Wall Street or any particular denomination happens to be for or against him.

Stephanie Sy: That is Gerry Bowler, the author of “Santa Claus: A Biography.”

Thank you so much for joining us. Happy holidays.

Gerry Bowler: My pleasure, and merry Christmas.

In the 1860s, renowned political cartoonist Thomas Nast [1840-1902] created the distinctly American image of Santa Claus we recognize today: a jolly, plump, grandfatherly figure.

[Thomas Nast’s first depiction of Santa Claus was an illustration titled "Santa Claus in Camp," published on the cover of the 3 January 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly. This initial rendition, from the middle of the Civil War, differed significantly from the modern, non-partisan figure he later became.

[Santa was depicted as a staunch Union supporter during the American Civil War. He is shown sitting in a sleigh distributing gifts—such as warm clothing and Bibles—to Union soldiers in a military camp. Instead of his now-standard red suit, Santa wore a jacket patterned with white stars and trousers with stripes, mimicking the American flag. Santa is shown holding a “jumping jack” toy that is a caricature of Confederate President Jefferson Davis with a noose around his neck. (Nast was a Republican, the party led by Union President Abraham Lincoln.)

[Influenced by his German heritage (Nast was born in Germany) and Clement Clarke Moore’s poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” Nast drew Santa as a small, plump, elflike figure with a full white beard.

[While this was his first direct depiction, Nast also included a secondary illustration in the same issue titled “A Christmas Furlough,” which featured a smaller Santa delivering presents through a chimney in the background of a domestic scene.]

[Stephanie Sy is a PBS News Hour correspondent and serves as anchor of PBS News Hour West.  Throughout her career, she served in anchor and correspondent capacities for ABC News, Al Jazeera America, CBSN, CNN International, and PBS News Hour Weekend.  Prior to joining News Hour, she was with Yahoo News where she anchored coverage of the 2018 Midterm Elections and reported from Donald Trump’s victory party on Election Day 2016.

[Mary Fecteau is an Emmy Award-winning Producer at PBS NewsHour. Her work has aired nationally on PBS.

[I’m not Christian, so Christmas has no significance to me as a religious holiday.  I do share in the cultural festivities—we had a tree in our home and we exchanged gifts—but in my family the significance of 25 December is that it’s my birthday.  Last Thursday was my 79th.

[Over the years, I’ve spent Christmas in some far-off places.  I’m not even counting the places where I was living when 25 December came around—Washington, D.C.; Koblenz, Germany; Berlin; New York City.  On this continent, I’ve marked the holiday in Chicago; New Orleans; Williamsburg, Virginia (for an 18th-century celebration); Mexico City; and Quebec City.

[On the way to New Hope, Pennsylvania, in 1985, my parents and I stopped to watch Washington Crossing the Delaware at Washington Crossing.  In 1976, I had performed the role of Hessian Colonel Johann Rall, the mercenary defender of Trenton who was defeated by Washington’s Continentals on Christmas night 1776, in William Mastrosimone’s Devil Take the Hindmost (see my post “Johann Rall: A Historical Portrait,” 10 and 15 December 2009).  The play was presented in the bicentennial year; the historical reenactment we saw was staged on the 209th anniversary of the crossing.

[Abroad, I saw Christmas in Paris on my 16th birthday in 1962 and London the next year.  Zermatt, Switzerland, home of the Matterhorn, was the site of three holidays after that, and one in Gstaad.  Zermatt’s on the side of a mountain and climbs up the slope toward the ski areas.  You get there by a special, small-gauge rail line and one stop up the mountain is a village called St. Niklaus.  Of course, we called it “Santa Claus Town.”  At night, the village of Zermatt looks like a giant Christmas tree because of the lit-up chalets and hotels climbing up the mountainside.

[I observed one memorable holiday at the 700-year-old home of a family of friends in the tiny French town of Villefranche-de-Lauragais in 1971.  On Christmas morning, I cooked French toast for my hosts, which was a great astonishment for the Humiliens on two counts: first, the idea that I would (or, I suppose, could) cook for them was a surprise; second . . . well, French toast isn’t French!  They’d never heard of such a thing.  They were so thrilled, they talked about this event for years to come.   

[I was in Shanghai on Christmas 1980, followed by Cairo in 1982.  Christmas, of course, isn’t a holiday in China, but they mark it for us tourists.  Christmas Eve dinner was a special banquet at a hotel in Shanghai.  Marvelous and exquisite! Shanghai, because of its history as a European enclave, is proud of its reputation for European cuisine.  I still have the menu from this Christmas Eve meal (see “Travel Journal: People's Republic of China, 1980 – Part 2” [27 December 2021]).

[In Cairo on 25 December, also not a holiday in Egypt, we went to Giza to see the sound and light show at the pyramids.  Now, I’m not a big fan of sound and light shows; I find them hokey and enervating.  The most interesting thing about the performance at Giza was that it was the same show that Roger Moore’s James Bond was at in the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me—when he first encounters Jaws (see “Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982 – Part 9” [11 August 2021]). 

"Defying the Odds Far From Broadway"

by Michael Paulson 

A Supplement to the Regional Theater Series 

[This article ran in the New York Times of 16 December 2025, Section C (“Arts”), reported from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Naples, Florida.  It’s posted on the paper’s website as “As Regional Theaters Struggle, Some Defy the Odds,“ 16 December.

[Previous entries in the “Regional Theater” series, as well as some posts that are just relevant to the regional theater in America:

•  “‘Bigger Than Broadway!’" by Richard Zoglin (12 September 2024)

•  “Art Will Out” (3, 6, 9, 12, and 15 August 2024)

•  "Wish You Were Here" by Gabriela Furtado Coutinho (6 July 2024)

•  "‘If You Rebuild It, Will They Return?’: Regional Theaters Struggle to Revive” by Rob Weinert-Kendt (11 May 2024)

•  "‘Audiences Are Back, More or Less’" (18 March 2024)

•  “‘Theater in rural Appalachian Virginia brings regional themes to the stage’" by Jeffrey Brown and Alison Thoet (17 March 2023)

•  “A Crisis In America's Theaters” (13 September 2023)

•  “The Regional Theater: Change or Die” (3 October 2023)

•  “Regional Theater: History” (8 October 2023)

•  “A History of the National Endowment for the Arts” (5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 30 November, 3, 13, 16, and 19 December 2023)

•  ‘‘‘In rural Oregon, regional theater sparks a creative revival’" by Jeffrey Brown (27 August 2018)

[In the article reposted below, there are several plays mentioned.  I’ll provide some background facts on the plays in the afterword to this post.]

Theaters in Naples, Fla., and Milwaukee are among a handful of regional companies that are thriving.

America’s regional theaters are facing difficult times: staging fewer shows, employing fewer workers, and running deficits more frequently than before the pandemic.

But not all of them are struggling. Some are booming.

In Wisconsin, Milwaukee Repertory Theater has finished the first phase of an $80 million renovation of its three-theater complex in an old power plant along the Milwaukee River. In Naples, Fla., Gulfshore Playhouse has just begun its second season in a new $80 million complex with a curved facade meant to evoke the nearby sand and sea.

Both theaters are now breaking their own records. Milwaukee Rep’s staging of “Come From Away,” the first show on the theater’s renovated main stage, has just ended its run as the highest-grossing production in the company’s 71-year history. And Gulfshore Playhouse’s current production, “Irving Berlin’s White Christmas,” is breaking every record for that company, with a nightly waiting list for people seeking seats.

Kristen Coury, the Playhouse’s chief executive and producing artistic director, described her programming mantra as “up and known.” Translation: When deciding which shows to produce, she selects ones that are upbeat and well-known.

“We’re at a moment now where there’s a lot of poke-you-in-the-eye theater, like, ‘I don’t care what you think — this is good for you, and I’m going to make you feel like a terrible person, and you better buy a ticket anyway,”’ Coury said.

“My first covenant is with the audience, and I care about what they think,” she added. “People don’t want to spend money on a show they don’t think they’re going to like.”

The Milwaukee theater’s leaders, though making different choices in all sorts of ways, make a similar point. “We actually like our people,” said Mark Clements, the artistic director in Milwaukee. “We’re not trying to be didactic and lecture people.”

For a struggling industry, these two theaters — and a handful of others — are models of success: They are producing a healthy menu of shows, drawing large audiences, running budget surpluses and raising money for capital projects. But they are definitely in the minority.

American theaters, after some initial signs of recovery postpandemic, have more recently taken a second dip, according to Jen Benoit-Bryan, the executive director of SMU DataArts, a national arts and culture research center at Southern Methodist University [Meadows School of the Arts, University Park, Texas].

The numbers are grim — from 2023 to 2024, theater attendance fell 19 percent and income fell 37 percent, according to SMU DataArts. “Everybody is hurting, but theaters are hurting at a different scale than other arts organizations,” she said.

Figuring out what thriving theaters have in common is complicated. They vary in location, size and degree of influence, and include companies like Pasadena Playhouse in California and the Guthrie Theater in [Minneapolis,] Minnesota.

A number of them (but not all) seem to share a few distinctive attributes: communities with less-competitive cultural landscapes, where the theaters have high visibility and civic standing; programming philosophies that prioritize what audiences might want to see over what artists believe audiences would benefit from seeing; and the lingering benefits of having minimized the duration of their Covid shutdowns, which helped audiences maintain the theatergoing habit.

At the start of the pandemic, Gulfshore laid off three-quarters of its staff, opting to safeguard its resources for reopening. “While we were doing that, other theaters were spending a truckload of money keeping people employed for a year who were doing nothing but sewing masks,” Coury said.

Milwaukee Rep, on the other hand, retained 95 percent of its staff, believing it would allow them to restart more quickly. The theater was worried about a talent drain, which many of its peer institutions experienced during the pandemic; it also arrived at the pandemic with sizable cash reserves, giving it options.

“We took a very different path than the rest of the field,” said Chad Bauman, the theater’s executive director. “We were doing performances when almost nobody else in the entire country was doing them.”

Milwaukee Rep, founded in 1954, is one of the nation’s oldest professional regional theaters. Gulfshore Playhouse, founded in 2004, is one of the newest — it was just admitted to the League of Resident Theaters [LORT], a national association of 81 leading regional theaters, in 2022. Both theaters have big dreams — they hope to attract pre-Broadway productions, which bring revenue and attention to regional theaters, but are hard to book, because expectations of audience, staff and facilities are high.

The two communities are quite different. Milwaukee is a sizable, historically blue-collar, overwhelmingly Democratic city, while Naples is small, packed with affluent retirees, and heavily Republican.

A commonality: The two areas have a lot of captains of industry. “We have the highest per capita amount of former C.E.O.s,” Coury said of Naples. She added that 90 percent of her fund-raising is from individuals, rather than corporations or foundations, and the biggest donors are Jay and Patty Baker, who gave $20 million. (He is the former president of Kohl’s.)

Milwaukee still has a robust corporate community, and the Rep has done better than many of its peers at attracting corporate contributions — the biggest donor to its renovation project is the largest Wisconsin-based bank, Associated Bank, which gave $10 million, and for which the theater center is now named. (By coincidence, the Bakers previously lived in Milwaukee and supported Milwaukee Rep.)

Both theaters’ capital projects faced significant damage from big storms. In Naples, Hurricane Ian knocked down several walls of the new Gulfshore Playhouse while it was under construction in 2022; in Milwaukee, intense flooding in August caused $7 million in damage to a production facility where the theater had been storing sets and costumes (including for its mainstay production of “A Christmas Carol”) while building its new home.

Gulfshore, which produces seven shows a season, has been growing fast; since the pandemic its annual budget has risen to $14.5 million from $3.6 million, and it now has 83 full-time employees. Its new main stage theater is nearly twice the size of the one in its former home — 368 seats now, compared to 200.

The theater opened its first season in its new home with “Anything Goes” and closed with “Sweet Charity.” It’s debatable if “Sweet Charity” is actually upbeat, because it ends unhappily for the protagonist, but both shows are indisputably classics, with songs that have become standards and big dance numbers. In between, Coury programmed two crowd-pleasing plays, the suspense drama “Dial M for Murder” and the farce “Noises Off.”

At the same time, in the new building’s 125-seat black box theater, Gulfshore staged three plays with sobering themes but a track record of success: “Every Brilliant Thing,” which deals with depression and suicide (and will have a Broadway production this season); “The Lehman Trilogy,” about the rise and fall of a financial empire; and “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill,” about Billie Holiday as she is grappling with addiction.

“My first question is always, ‘Is it good?”’ Coury said. “Not, ‘Do you feel like it will teach a good lesson?’ and not ‘Which agenda is attached to it?’ Just ‘Is it a good play?”’

Milwaukee Rep, with a $17 million annual budget and 125 employees, is a larger and more established company. It is producing 12 shows this season, including “The Lehman Trilogy” and “The Piano Lesson” [1987] (a Pulitzer Prize winner [1990] by August Wilson [1945-2005]) as well as two Agatha Christie-related shows, and expects to do 13 next year. It also does lots of new work, and, unlike many of its peers, has a 14,000-person subscriber base that has remained remarkably loyal.

[Milwaukee Rep has scheduled an Agatha Christie Festival for the 2025-26 season. It will consist of Mrs. Christie (2019; 14 April-10 May 2026), a play by Heidi Armbruster (b. 1976) that explores the real-life 11-day disappearance of Christie (1890-1976) in 1926 through the eyes of a modern-day superfan; and And Then There Were None (1943; 26 May-28 June 2026), a production of Christie’s own stage adaptation of her best-selling 1939 mystery novel. (Both the book and various adaptations are sometimes presented under the title Ten Little Indians.)]

“Obviously, theaters are struggling, and Milwaukee has bucked that trend,” said Ayad Akhtar [b. 1970], a [2013] Pulitzer-winning playwright (for “Disgraced” [2012]) who grew up in a Milwaukee suburb and serves on the Rep’s board. “There’s multigenerational industrial family support, and programming an artistic experience that is worthy of being thought about and at the same time can sell a lot of tickets.”

Akhtar’s “McNeal,” a play about artificial intelligence that debuted on Broadway last season, will reopen the Rep’s black box theater, with up to 220 seats, early next year.

The redone theater complex features some distinctive amenities — the main stage, with up to 670 seats, has different tiers, and the nicest seats (proving quite popular) are leather, with cup-holders and premium pricing. And the theater’s leadership can wine and dine donors in a backstage V.I.P. suite, with a window overlooking preshow warm-ups.

The theater’s leadership is proud of its status as an outlier, noting that not only is it defying downward trends on attendance and giving, but that it is also thriving in a state that has among the lowest levels of public arts funding in the nation.

The theater puts its three goals — to entertain, provoke and inspire — on banners.

“Where some have gotten into trouble is that they’ve over-rotated in one of these directions,” said Bauman, the executive director. “The secret sauce to programming is that if you’re an audience member, we have a really great, diverse mix of programming, and we never over-rotate in any one of those sides.”

[I found the practices of both the theaters about which Michael Paulson reports troubling, however successful they’ve been financially.  The "mantra" Paulson cites for Gulfshore, "up and known," sounds like the preference at an Off-Off-Broadway company where I interned as literary adviser for a graduate class in dramaturgy, the StageArts Theater Company. 

[I described that company in some posts on ROT, and their own criteria for plays they liked was "beautifully crafted plays that speak to the best in us."  They also said, "We believe that the qualities most absent in plays of the last few decades are a positive view of human beings and a respect for dramatic structure."  I said that this meant the "well-made play," with the added criterion of what I called "a happy ending" (I was being moderately sarcastic).

[The main difference with these companies is that StageArts produced new plays (because they thought that would attract reviewers, producers, and donors).  When I convinced the artistic directors to consider older plays and revivals, though I tried to steer them to less-well known scripts, they still applied their standard criteria—the well-made play with "positive" conclusions.

[What the two troupes in the Times article are producing seem to be largely audience-pleasers with little depth.  When they say they're catering to their audiences by producing plays they'll like—what they're doing is pandering, mostly to the lowest common denominator of their potential audience.  Most of the plays mentioned in the piece strike me as theatrical pabulum.  (It doesn't surprise me that Milwaukee Rep is a little more dramatically interesting than Gulfshore.  Milwaukee is a legit theater town; I saw some interesting pieces when I was there.  Naples strikes me as a middle-brow retirement community.)

[No dramaturg or literary manager is mentioned in the article, much less interviewed.  I'm sure Milwaukee Rep has one on staff, though Gulfshore may not.  One of the dramaturg's second-tier responsibilities is to try to expand the taste of the theater's community a little each season.  At the two houses profiled, no one seems interested in trying that.  That's just sad.]

[The information on the plays Paulson names in his report is compiled here for readers who want to know a bit about them.  Milwaukee Rep presented Come from Away, which had its professional première in 2015 at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, California, as a co-production with the Seattle Repertory Theatre.  It’s based on the true account of the town of Gander on the island of Newfoundland in Canada during the week following the 11 September 2001 attacks, when 38 planes, with nearly 6,700 passengers, were diverted unexpectedly to Gander International Airport in the town of about 11,000 because the airspace over the U.S. was closed.  The characters in the musical are based on actual Gander residents and the stranded travelers they housed and fed.

[The show was conceived by Michael Rubinoff, a Toronto lawyer, theater producer, and associate dean of visual and performing arts at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario.  He turned to Canadian husband-and-wife team of Irene Sankoff and David Hein.  The play’s title, Come from Away, is a traditional Newfoundland term for anyone—tourists, migrants from other parts of Canada, business travelers—who was not born on the island.

[The play transferred to Broadway, opening at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on 12 March 2017 and running until 2 October 2022, after playing 25 previews and 1,669 regular performances.  It was nominated for seven Tonys in 2017, winning for Best Direction of a Musical for Christopher Ashley, as well as Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Musical, Outstanding Book of a Musical, and Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical for Jenn Colella.

[Irving Berlin’s White Christmas was staged at the Gulfshore Playhouse from 14 November to 21 December 2025.  It’s a musical based on the Paramount Pictures 1954 film White Christmas with a book by David Ives and Paul Blake, and music and lyrics by Irving Berlin.  The musical premièred in St. Louis, Missouri, in 2000 and then toured the U.S. in 2004 and the United Kingdom in 2007. 

[The stage musical played a limited engagement on Broadway at the Marquis Theatre from 23 November 2008 through 4 January 2009, for 53 performances and 12 previews.  It returned for another limited run from 22 November 2009 to 3 January 2010.  It was nominated for two Tonys in 2009 and six Drama Desk Awards, but won none; the return engagement wasn’t nominated.  Irving Berlin’s White Christmas played in London’s West End in 2014 and 2019, in Australia in 2009, elsewhere in England in December 2023 and January 2024, and toured the U.S. several times between 2007 and 2019.

[The Milwaukee Repertory Theatre’s 50th-anniversary production of A Christmas Carol will run from 25 November to 24 December 2025.  It’s an adaptation by the Rep’s own artistic director, Mark Clements, who also directed the production.  The music for Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s current adaptation of A Christmas Carol was written and arranged by John Tanner, a Milwaukee Rep Associate Artist.

[Anything Goes (1934) at the Gulfshore Playhouse ran from 1 to 24 November 2025.  The classic musical has music and lyrics by Cole Porter and a new book, based on the adaptation for the 1987 Broadway revival, by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman.  (The original book was by P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, revised by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse.)

[The Broadway début was at the Alvin Theatre (now the Neil Simon) on 21 November 1934, with Ethel Merman as Reno Sweeney.  It ran for 420 performances, becoming the fourth longest-running musical of the 1930s when it closed on 16 November 1935.  It became a popular standard, including three Broadway revivals and at least one Off-Broadway staging, mostly for its Cole Porter score.]

[Sweet Charity (1965), based on the 1957 Italian film Nights of Cabiria (Le Notti Di Cabiria) by Federico Fellini, will close out the Gulfshore 2025-26 season from 10 April to 4 May 2026.  Directed and choreographed for Broadway by Bob Fosse, who conceived the stage version, starring his wife and muse, Gwen Verdon, as a dancer-for-hire at a Times Square dance hall.  (Her name was Charity Hope Valentine!)

[The musical had music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Dorothy Fields, and a book by Neil Simon.  After a tryout at the Shubert Theatre in Philadelphia starting on 6 December 1965, the production moved to Detroit for a month, and then premièred on Broadway at the Palace Theatre on 29 January 1966, and closed on 15 July 1967, for 608 performances and 10 previews.  The production was nominated for nine Tony Awards, winning for Fosse’s choreography.

[The play was revived on Broadway in 1986 and 2005, and Off-Broadway in 2016, picking up more awards each time.  Its West End première was in October 1967, starring Juliet Prowse and running for 476 performances.  It returned to London in 2009 and 2016, and played in Australia in 1967 and 2014, and toured the country in 2015.

[Dial M for Murder will be mounted by Gulfshore on 16 January-6 February 2026 in a double adaptation: first Alfred Hitchcock for his 1954 screenplay from Frederick Knott's original 1952 play; then from Hitch to Jeffrey Hatcher’s 2022 version for the Old Globe Theater in San Diego, California.  Hatcher made some changes, not the least of which is to switch out the unfaithful wife’s male lover (that would be Grace Kelly and Robert Cummings in the flick) for a woman—a change Gulfshore maintains.

[The Hatcher adaptation of the movie has never played Broadway, but Knott’s original play, called Dial “M” for Murder, was at the Plymouth and then Booth Theatre from 29 October 1952 to 27 February 1954.

[Gulfshore will present Michael Frayn’s 1982 farce, Noises Off, on 27 February-20 March 2026.  Derived from a one-act play called Exits Frayn wrote, which was performed in 1977, the backstage comedy was inspired when the playwright was in the wings in 1970, watching a performance of The Two of Us, a farce that he had written.  He decided the play was funnier from backstage than it was from out front and he was moved to write a play “from behind.”

[That play became Noises Off, which premièred in London in 1982.  It transferred to the Savoy Theatre in the West End, where it ran until 1987.  On 11 December 1983, a production opened on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre (now the Lena Horne), where it ran for 553 performances (11 December 1983-6 April 1985).  It was nominated for four 1984 Tony Awards including Best Play, but won none; and was nominated for Drama Desk Awards, winning for Director of a Play for Michael Blakemore and Outstanding Ensemble.

[Noises Off has become a staple of both professional theater companies and community theaters on both sides of the Atlantic.  Since Frayn has rewritten the play many times over the years—the last revision was in 2000—there are many differences between the 1982 and 2000 scripts.  I couldn’t verify which version of the text Gulfshore is using, though I imagine it would be the latest revision, or some combination, perhaps, making sure that the latest updated references have been incorporated.

[Duncan MacMillan’s Every Brilliant Thing is a 2013 solo, immersive play written with Jonny Donahoe.  It’s a life-affirming exploration of mental health, depression, and resilience told through the lens of a narrator’s lifelong list of everything that makes life worth living.  Gulfshore staged it from 14 November to 15 December 2025.

[After selling out at three consecutive Edinburgh Festivals, Every Brilliant Thing is touring worldwide.  It ran at New York City’s Barrow Street Theatre in Greenwich Village from 14 December 2014 to 29 March 2015.  The West End production of Every Brilliant Thing, featuring Daniel Radcliffe, is scheduled to open at Broadway’s Hudson Theatre in March 2026 for a two-month run.

[Stefano Massini’s The Lehman Trilogy (2013), adapted by Ben Power, will be produced at Gulfshore from 30 January to 2 March 2026.  The three-act play was originally written in Italian, but premièred in Saint-Étienne, France, in a French translation.  It’s been translated into two dozen languages and is one of the most produced plays in America.

[The play tells the story of the Jewish immigrant from Bavaria who arrives in America and founds the firm that becomes the Lehman Brothers. It eventually collapses in 2008 and brings the global economy down.  Three actors play the Lehman brothers and their descendants.  The Lehman Trilogy was produced in the U.K. at the National Theatre in 2018 under the direction of Sam Mendes.  That production transferred to the United States at the Park Avenue Armory, in New York City, from 22 March 2019 to 20 April 2019. 

[The production’s scheduled return to the U.S. was delayed by COVID, but the play did open on Broadway at the Nederlander Theatre on 14 October 2021 and ran until 2 January 2022, for 82 performances and 21 previews.  It won 2022 Tony Awards for Best Play, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play (Simon Russell Beale), Best Direction of a Play (Sam Mendes), Best Scenic Design of a Play (Es Devlin), and Best Lighting Design of a Play (Jon Clark).

[The Lehman Trilogy has been criticized for playing down the role of the Lehman family in slavery and for the crude, caricatured way in which it portrays their Jewishness.

[Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, a 1986 play with music by Lanie Robertson about Billie Holiday, premièred in Atlanta, Georgia, directed by Woodie King, Jr., and was then produced Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre in 1986.  When the production closed in 1987, it had run 281 performances and won the 1987 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Book (Robertson).

[The play was staged in theaters around the country, then opened on Broadway at Circle in the Square (Uptown) on 13 April 2014 and closed on 5 October.  It won the 2014 Tony Awards for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play (Audra McDonald) and Best Sound Design of a Play (Steve Canyon Kennedy); McDonald also won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play.

[Gulfshore will produce Lady Day from 20 March through 27 April 2026, which already includes an extension.  (For a report on a 2006 production of Lady Day, see “Two Looks Back (Play Reports from Rick’s Archives),” 23 July 2016.)

[Milwaukee Rep will mount their production of The Lehman Trilogy from 13 January to 8 February 2026.  The cast includes the Washington, D.C.-based actor Edward Gero (see “Amadeus (Round House Theatre, Bethesda, MD)” [6 July 2011], “Red (Arena Stage)” [4 March 2012], “The Originalist (PBS)” [17 July 2017], “The Originalist Squared” [7 August 2018]).

[1987’s The Piano Lesson by August Wilson is the fourth in his Pittsburgh Cycle, set in 1936.  (It was the fifth to be composed.)  It received the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and will run at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater from 24 February to 22 March 2026.

[The first production of The Piano Lesson opened on 26 November 1987 at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, and closed on 19 December.  The show played at several important regional theaters, then, on 16 April 1990, it opened on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre, where it ran until 27 January 1991, a total of 8 previews and 328 regular performances.  It was nominated for five Tonys in 1990, including Best Play, but won none; it received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play.

[The Piano Lesson was revived on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre from 13 October 2022 to 29 January 2023.  The production was nominated for the 2023 Best Revival of a Play Tony but didn’t win; it did win, however, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play.  An acclaimed Off-Broadway revival opened at the Theatre Row home of the Signature Theatre on 18 November 2012 and, after many extensions, closed on 20 January 2013 (see “The Piano Lesson” [14 December 2012]).  It received four 2013 Lucille Lortel Awards, including the Outstanding Revival Award, plus two Obies and the Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best Play Revival.

[Ayad Akhtar’s 2012 one-act play Disgraced was his first stage play.  It premièred at the American Theater Company, Chicago, in 2012, and then was produced at Lincoln Center in New York City at the Claire Tow Theater in the fall of 2012, where it was extended several times.  It went to Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre, opening on 23 October 2014, receiving a nomination for the Best Play Tony for 2013 and won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.  Disgraced ran for 27 previews and 149 regular performances, closing on 1 March 2015.

[Akhtar’s McNeal ran from 30 September to 24 November 2024 at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, its Broadway house.  It will play the Milwaukee Rep from 10 February to 22 March 2026.  The play follows Jacob McNeal, a brilliant novelist obsessed with his own legacy and fascinated by artificial intelligence.  Set in the "not-too-distant future," the production explores the price of greatness and raises questions about art, truth, and originality. The Milwaukee Rep production features high-tech elements, including projections and special effects.

[Since April 2015, Michael Paulson has been the theater reporter of the New York Times.  From 2000 to 2010, Paulson covered religion for the Boston Globe, where he was part of the Globe team whose coverage of clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.  Since 2010, he’s worked at the New York Times, where he initially continued his religion coverage.  His work at the Times reflected his early politics roots and continued to tie religion to national issues.   Paulson has covered theater at the New York Times.]