Laura Collins-Hughes
@collinshughes
Journalist writing about theater, mostly. • Posting about theater, culture, journalism, NYC. • Skepticism yes, cynicism no. • Banner: detail, David Hockney’s “Dancers with Audience and Orchestra, August 2025.” • Freelance. • laura.collinshughes@gmail.com
“The Winter’s Tale” is an incredibly weird play, but god does Daniel Sullivan find the blazing beauty in it: the rampaging insecurity, the scraped-raw outrage, the soul-deep regret — and lucidity born of not rushing at all. Lily Rabe and Raúl Esparza: superb. Three-plus hours of your life: worth it.
These escalators, the only ones at the Columbus Circle subway station, were closed "for repairs" for actual *years*, reopened approximately two seconds before Thanksgiving 2025 and didn't even make it to the Fourth of July. An almost impressive indifference on the part of the MTA.
The sky over Manhattan is way darker gray than my phone wants to admit, but the other apocalyptic element is the Radio City marquee being mainly dark.
Of all the city's heatwave messaging, this friendly little fire hydrant how-to is the most iconically NYC.
A not actually peripheral point in the context of this article: the wildly condescending assumption, from someone at Poynter, that local news journalists understand the rules of the field only at a rudimentary level.
Irish Rep in recent seasons has belatedly paid more attention to female playwrights, and it’s very refreshing. Erica Murray’s “The Loved Ones,” now on the main stage, has a beautiful cast: Maryann Plunkett, Alana Raquel Bowers, Clare O’Malley and Donna Lynne Champlin. 📸 Carol Rosegg
“Thank you for voting,” the poll workers say, and so does a woman leafletting outside. They all smile, I smile back, and it’s bittersweet. “Pleasure,” I tell them, meaning it, but man it feels profoundly important to exercise that right, to refuse to take it for granted.
The costumes in NAATCO’s “Henry VI,” at the Public, are sculptural and stunning — the work of threeASFOUR. Costume design as fashion as art. Photos, of the fantastic Myka Cue as Joan of Arc, and of Teresa Avia Lim as Margaret and Paul Juhn as Suffolk, by HanJie Chow.
A great line, deep in Ann Patchett’s new novel, “Whistler.”
I don't think I've ever seen Classical Theatre of Harlem advertising in the subway. I'm so happy to see this on the A train.
I love this, from Ben Brantley. www.thestage.co.uk/news/theatre...
Something about naming an AI notepad after granola — crunchy, natural, wholly nondigital granola — seems particularly obscene.
Playwrights Horizons’ 2026-27 lineup is not boys boys boys, which feels something like atonement.
I spied, through the wrapped chain-link fence last night, the new trees going in near the reflecting pool at Lincoln Center.
My favorite thing about this Jackson McHenry interview with Alden Ehrenreich is that Ehrenreich admitted this. I love it because I always feel *so guilty* asking stage actors about roles *while they’re playing them*, and they always just say, no, no, it’s totally fine, won’t get in my head at all.
Wild how official production photos of “The Lost Boys” on Broadway suggest the vampires are actually flying, no wires required. I think I speak for most of the audience when I say *we know the vampires aren’t real*. Their wires are charming, theatrical, part of the fun. 📸 Matthew Murphy
Every time I see these ticket prices in a press release about this year‘s Tony Awards, my jaw drops. The fees alone — oof. And those seats are miles from the stage.
Rotten news from Cape Cod, where Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater has canceled its 2026 season.
Lesley Manville’s striking take on curtain-call manners on Broadway, in The Stage. “Why can’t they let it live in their souls for five minutes?” www.thestage.co.uk/news/lesley-...
It’s the land itself that gets you in Luke Murphy’s rural Irish noir, “Scorched Earth,” at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Mesmerizing dance theater. Like the very different “Kenrex,” coming up at the Lortel, it involves a small town, an unexplained death, closed-mouthed neighbors…. 📸 Teddy Wolff
Another of the Poems on the Underground, which caught my eye a few months ago: W.H. Auden’s “Epitaph on a Tyrant,” from January 1939.