Theater Update: Leslie Odom Jr., back in ‘Hamilton’

November 19, 2025

Dear Theater Fans,

This week our intrepid critics did a bit of time traveling.

Laura Collins-Hughes reviewed Tom Hanks’s Off Broadway show, “This World of Tomorrow,” which toggles between the future of 2089 and the 1939 New York World’s Fair in Corona, Queens. It’s a time-travel romance as “comfort-food,” Laura wrote, adding that it “often feels like a period musical minus the songs.”

Elisabeth Vincentelli revisited the 1980s courtesy of the Broadway revival of “Chess,” starring Lea Michele, Nicholas Christopher and Aaron Tveit. Though she had mixed feelings about the show, she admitted that the music gets her every time: “Thinking back to Michele’s big, then bigger, then biggest ‘Nobody’s Side’ or Christopher’s red-hot, neck-vein-bursting ‘Anthem,’” she wrote, “I can feel the needle move toward the positive side.”

Also new to Broadway: Robert Icke’s suspenseful new take on the Sophocles tragedy “Oedipus,” starring Lesley Manville and Mark Strong. In her review, Alexis Soloski wrote that the change in timeline works. “The results are slick, sleek, mordant. It’s a spine tingler, if not quite the ethics tangler of the original.”

Also this week: Jesse Green checked in on the status of cultural diversity and representation onstage and in films, following the controversial “Maybe Happy Ending” casting of Andrew Barth Feldman; Michael Paulson had advice for readers wondering about environmentally friendly ways to dispose of old playbills; and Salamishah Tillet talked to Leslie Odom Jr. about his return to “Hamilton” and what makes “The Room Where It Happens” so thrilling.

You can see for yourself in this video of a slightly younger Odom Jr. performing “The Room Where It Happens.” Plus, a bonus clip: “One Night in Bangkok,” from “Chess.” These two songs have been vying for the No. 1 spot on my list of earworms for the past week!

Please reach out to me at theaterfeedback@nytimes.com with suggestions for stories or to offer your thoughts about our coverage. And urge your friends to subscribe to this newsletter.

Have a wonderful week,
Nicole Herrington
Theater Editor

A man in Revolutionary garb, including a white ruffled shirt under a navy suit jacket, looks into the camera while sitting for a portrait with his head resting on his left hand.

Elias Williams for The New York Times

Leslie Odom Jr., Back in the Room Where It Happens

In “Hamilton,” no moment captures the actor’s emotional expansiveness, artistic breadth and vocal depth better than this number.

By Salamishah Tillet

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