New York Mini-Reviews 2025 p2: Off-Broadway Musicals

The Jonathan Larson Project ★★★★ / Drag: The Musical ★★★

Just like the Off-Broadway Plays, these musicals are all of the standard we can easily see here at home, but both felt tied to New York for their own reasons.

The Jonathan Larson Project ★★★★

Music & Lyric by Jonathan Larson. Show conceived by Jennifer Ashley Tepper. Orpheum Theatre.

Less of a musical and more of a song-cycle, this collection of unheard, unproduced songs from the archive of Jonathan Larson has been floating around as a cabaret and a live recording for a few years. And, for a brief time, it got a fully staged production at the Orpheum.

This staging deserved a longer run than it eventually got, but in a crowded Broadway season it seemed to just get lost in the mix. Its rather random nature, with disparate tunes and no narrative thread to bind it together, made it a show for musical theatre fans and not the general audience.

The cast were all exceptional. I was familiar with Andy Mientus and Adam Chanler-Berat already but it was the two female cast members, Taylor Iman Jones and Lauren Marcus who really blew me away.

I can definitely see this landing at the Hayes sometime soon.

Drag: The Musical ★★★

Book, Music & Lyrics by Tomas Costanza, Justin Andrew Honard & Ashley Gordon. New World Stages.

My decision to finally see Drag: The Musical was based on timings. They were one of the only shows doing a Sunday evening performance. I’d heard some mixed reports about the show, and I’d long grown weary of the RuPaul’s Drag Race variety of drag, so I wasn’t going to go out of my way to see this. But some spare time, and the fact that Broadway legend Adam Pascal (continuing the Jonathan Larson/Rent theme – more on that to come) was the show’s “token straight man” got me planting myself down with a stiff alcoholic drink.

And I had a great time. For all the Drag Race alumni on the stage, it didn’t resort to riffing off the show. Cleverly written for Alaska Thunderf*ck (she walks on, throws out an insult, and sings a few songs with a very limited vocal range – and it’s brilliant) and Nick Adams (he walks on, sings, dances and poses like the Broadway pro he is and is equally wonderful), it knows what it’s trying to do and does it well.

Despite the punk/grunge aesthetics of the set, this show is pure pop and aimed at Drag Race’s core audience – straight women. The plot is frothy, the “meaningful message” is simplistic but heartfelt and the resolution obvious from a mile away, but I definitely enjoyed myself.