» This Week on Broadway for October 4, 2026: Degenerates @ Playwrights Horizons BroadwayRadio

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10/4/26

James Marino,Michael Portantiere,Peter Filichia

This Week on Broadway for October 4, 2026: Degenerates @ Playwrights Horizons

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Peter Filichia, James Marino, and Michael Portantiere talk about Degenerates @ Playwrights Horizons, Human Things @ The West End Theatre, Patti LuPone: A Life in Notes @ 92Y, Irish Repertory Theatre’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape, New York Philharmonic and Brian Stokes Mitchell, and creation stories and all the important importants @ LCT3

Note: This week there was an audio issue on James’ microphone. We were unable to fix it for this episode.

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Panel:

Peter Filichia | [email protected] | Facebook
PETER FILICHIA is a playwright, journalist, and historian with a number of books. Peter’s new day-by-day desk calendar – A SHOW TUNE FOR TODAY – 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year – is available at finer retailers!

Larry, The Big-Time Broadway Producer @ The Hopkinton Center for the Arts (HCA)
October 9 – 18, 2026

Showtune for Today: Our Time from Merrily We Roll Along

Big!

Michael Portantiere | [email protected] | Facebook
MICHAEL PORTANTIERE has been a theater journalist for more than 50 years. The founder and editor of CastAlbumReviews.com. He is also a theatrical photographer whose photos have appeared in The New York Times and other publications. Additionally, Michael is known as a producer and director of shows at 54 Below, the Laurie Beechman Theatre, and other venues.

Coming up: 54 Loves Cast Albums! 3rd Edition – October 4, 2026

James Marino | [email protected] | Facebook
BroadwayStars

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Flea Market recap

Reviews:

PF + MP: Degenerates @ Playwrights Horizons, through November 1, 2026
Written by Else Went
Directed by Emma Rosa Went
The boys are fucked. And they know it. In their own obscure corner of the internet, they offer each other proof that the game is rigged against men: it was over before it began, they will never be loved, better just to lay down and rot. When an unexpected relationship begins to form, the consequences of the boys’ fatalism are made painfully clear. Degenerates offers a telescopic, darkly funny view of one insular community, formed on the bedrock of shared and infinite miseries.

PF: Human Things @ The West End Theatre, through October 18, 2026
Two-time Tony Award winner Victoria Clark (Kimberly Akimbo), Rebeca Robles (Fires, Ohio), Ben Rosenfield (HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire”), and Tony Award nominee Michael Mulheren (Bright Star; Kiss Me, Kate) are set to star in the world premiere of the new play Human Things, written by Joshua Owen and directed by Rory McGregor.

Greg (Rosenfield) and Margaret (Robles) are on the rocks. More specifically – they are on an atoll in the South Pacific where Margaret is studying a dwindling population of migratory birds and Greg is doing… something. He’s not quite sure what he’s doing, actually. He’s doing his best. When Bo (Mulheren) and Darce (Clark) arrive, stranded, having crashed their beloved Hula-Hoop into a nearby coral reef – they bring with them a storm that threatens to reshape the world in ways both big and small.

MP: Patti LuPone: A Life in Notes @ 92Y Geffen Stage at Kaufmann Concert Hall, October 1, 2026
Broadway royalty and triple Tony Award winner Patti Lupone opens the new Tisch Music season with a one-night-only concert of the songs that have been touchstones in her remarkable life on and off the stage. Celebrated for her iconic performances on Broadway in Company, Gypsy, Evita, and more, LuPone dips into a personal songbook blending the musical theater anthems she owns with intimate standards and classic pop in a show that weaves songs and stories together in one unforgettable night.

Conceived by Scott Wittman
Written by Jeffrey Richman
Music direction and arrangements by Joseph Thalken
Strings: Brad Phillips

PF: Irish Repertory Theatre’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape, through November 15, 2026
Directed by Ciarán O’Reilly (Ulster American), The Hairy Ape will begin previews September 25, 2026, with an opening night set for October 4, for a limited run through November 15, 2026, on Irish Rep’s Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage (132 West 22nd Street).

MP: New York Philharmonic and Brian Stokes Mitchell

Classical Music Is in Crisis. Gustavo Dudamel Is Here to Save It.
This week marks the start of the Gustavo Dudamel era in New York.

The superstar conductor was just 28 when he became the musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2009. A native of Venezuela and a product of its El Sistema musical training program, Dudamel quickly established himself not just as a great conductor, but also as a cultural force of nature. In his time in Los Angeles, he expanded the Philharmonic’s repertoire, created a successful youth outreach program, won prestigious awards and ingratiated himself with Hollywood elite.

Now, after 17 years in Los Angeles, Dudamel is taking the helm at one of the world’s most famous and storied orchestras: the New York Philharmonic. It’s a job once held by Leonard Bernstein, and Dudamel is hoping to follow in Bernstein’s footsteps to make the Philharmonic and the music that it plays a bigger part of the pop culture landscape.

On today’s episode, Joshua Barone, who covers classical music for The Times, discusses Dudamel, what he’s accomplished and the high hopes for his tenure with the New York Philharmonic.

PF: creation stories and all the important importants @ LCT3 / Claire Tow Theater, through November 15, 2026
A New Play By Mfoniso Udofia
Directed By Tamilla Woodard
Centering on a midlife Black woman pulled between her many selves—child, future daughter, artist, possible mother—the play pulses with longing as its heroine races against the clock and the limits of her own body. Moving across time and space, from ancestor to AI, from dream cycle to IVF cycle, through music and ritual, Udofia weaves her own surprising folktale on the cost of creation and the impossible work of becoming.

Discussion:

Shuffle Along Reunion Concert to Be Broadcast on PBS in 2027 By Margaret Hall
Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Billy Porter, Adrienne Warren, Brandon Victor Dixon, and more returned to recreate the 2016 musical.

Future Episodes:

Peter’s Brainteaser:

He is still considered one of the most esteemed playwrights in Broadway history.

His second-longest running Broadway play has had multiple revivals.

It has not one, but two married couples where the wife’s first name has three letters and the husband’s first name has six.

Who’s the playwright? What’s the play? What are the four names of the wives and husbands?

Michael’s Musical Moments

MUSICAL MOMENTS: JUDY GARLAND AT MANHATTAN CENTER, “SOMETHING’S COMING” from WEST SIDE STORY April 26, 1962