Dear Theater Fans, It’s Helen Shaw here, hopping into your newsletter to share some thoughts about this spring season. For those following along with us, you know we are truly in the thick of it now. There are 13 Broadway openings just this month (is it a coincidence that one of them is a play called “The Fear of 13”?) — so in the end-of-season sprint, we’ve just completed the first lap. It seems as if the Theater in 2026 is particularly interested in audience participation: Maybe it’s trying to counteract our shared sense of emergency — it certainly focuses the mind in “Every Brilliant Thing” when Daniel Radcliffe, or Mariska Hargitay, asks you to help devise a whole show — or it might simply be producers capitalizing on the thrill of gathering. When Michael Paulson and Alex Marshall looked into the differing prices for Broadway and the West End, you may have noticed that Michael visited the wildly popular “Just in Time,” a show known for its star Jonathan Groff’s constant interaction with the audience. (Groff has left the tub; now “Splish Splash” duties have passed to Matthew Morrison and will soon pass to Jeremy Jordan.) We are all clearly desperate for contact, or even just the chance of it. Anecdotally, I can tell you that I walked past the Al Hirschfeld Theater the evening Megan Thee Stallion returned to “Moulin Rouge!” — she had fallen ill midway through a show just two nights before. The stage door was mobbed; someone was literally in a tree, desperate to see her in the flesh. So if you too are hungry for your participation fix, you can go shout “Attica! Attica!” at “Dog Day Afternoon”; you can respectfully murmur the appropriate call outs for “The Rocky Horror Show”; you can snap your Jellicle Ball fan (ooh! merch!) while getting your life at “Cats: The Jellicle Ball.” And participation maximalists should head Off Broadway, for the Australian hit “Burnout Paradise,” the zany challenge show profiled by Erik Piepenburg at the Astor Place Theater. The audience must help a quartet of performers on treadmills, who are racing the clock, as they execute a series of bonkers tasks. I adore this show: It’s the hardest I’ve ever belly-laughed while helping fill out a grant proposal. We are all still clearly looking for those laughs. Laura Collins-Hughes found them with Alden Ehrenreich at “Becky Shaw,” a fanged comedy that just opened at the Helen Hayes Theater; I found them, in of all places, a series of increasingly boisterous productions of Chekhov plays. As we head into the no-doubt bizarre weeks to come, I’ll keep looking for reasons — if not to laugh, at least to smile. For instance, I am utterly delighted that my favorite show in last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe is coming to Brits Off Broadway at 59E59, Victoria Melody’s often hilarious lesson in how to accidentally create a radical workers movement, “Trouble, Struggle, Bubble and Squeak.” Now there are some lessons we can use. I’m definitely going back, perhaps I’ll see you there! Please reach out to me at theaterfeedback@nytimes.com with suggestions for articles or to offer your thoughts about our coverage. And urge your friends to subscribe to this newsletter. Have a wonderful week, Like this email?Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up here.
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