Michael John LaChiusa and George C. Wolfe’s jazz-age tragedy gets the production it has always deserved.
Not everyone has been to this party. Not the joyous bar crawl, not the house party that got a little out of hand. This is the after-party in someone’s loft where the refreshments veer into the illegal, where things go somewhere nobody will discuss the next morning, and where dawn finds laughter, sleep, tears, and devastation scattered across the floor. If you have been to that party, The Wild Party will hit you like a memory you thought you’d buried. And if you haven’t, welcome. The wild party is about to begin.
Michael John LaChiusa wrote the music and lyrics, with a book by LaChiusa and George C. Wolfe, adapting Joseph Moncure March’s narrative poem from the twenties. The musical premiered on Broadway in 2000, earned seven Tony nominations, and closed after 68 performances. This Encores! production, directed by Lili-Anne Brown with choreography by Katie Spelman and guest music director Daryl Waters, is the production the show has been waiting twenty-six years for.
The show is performed without intermission. Queenie, a vaudeville dancer, and Burrs, a vaudeville comedian, throw a party. The guests arrive: a fading legend who still commands every room she enters, a sixteen-year-old with bright eyes and a dream, a pair of would-be producers who get more than they bargained for but perhaps exactly what they wanted. Performers, hustlers, lovers, and admirers living at the exciting fringes of society fill out the rest. Each character gets a song that tells you who they are. Wesley J. Barnes and Joseph Anthony Byrd, as the Brothers D’Armano, arrive with a charming number about downtown heading uptown, and for a moment, you think you know what kind of party this is going to be. Then, as the evening deepens, everyone returns for numbers that strip them further, their performances fraying as they succumb to the monster of a party they have collectively created. You feel you know these people. Of course, you never did.
Encores! exists to give worthy musicals a second chance, typically in lightly rehearsed concert presentations with first-rate talent. This production transcends that entirely. It is fully staged, fully costumed, and could transfer tomorrow. Jasmine Amy Rogers is a magnificent Queenie. She drags the spotlight with her and finds the right balance of confidence and desperation in a woman who is the tragic heroine of the piece. Jordan Donica plays Burrs with relentless energy and drives the downward spiral of the evening. Adrienne Warren’s Kate is wonderfully understated in a role that could easily go over the top; she is the truth teller, and she is terrifying. Tonya Pinkins, who appeared in the original Broadway production, returns as Dolores and gives us Eartha Kitt in full glory. And Betsy Morgan’s Sally, mute for nearly the entire evening, delivers a legit soprano late in the show with the force of something you didn’t see coming.
Arnel Sancianco’s scenic design creates a 1920s downtown loft where every corner gets used over the course of the evening. The poem and the play demand travel through multiple rooms and shifting moods, and the design gets everything in with real ingenuity, even with a full orchestra compressing the
depth behind it. Linda Cho’s costumes are period-perfect. Justin Townsend’s lighting does the emotional heavy lifting as the night tips past the point of return.
The show is not for everyone. There is no one to root for, and if you pick someone, you will probably be disappointed. But isn’t that life? There is violence, sex, deception, hunger, experimentation, and drinking well past the point of drunkenness. Over the course of the evening, every pretense of decorum falls to the floor. LaChiusa’s score, dense and jazz-inflected and uncompromising, does not make any of it easy. It makes it true. Go.
Now Playing
The Wild Party played New York City Center (131 W. 55th Street, New York) March 18-29, 2026 as part of the Encores! series. Book, music, and lyrics by Michael John LaChiusa. Co-written with George C. Wolfe. Based on the poem by Joseph Moncure March. Directed by Lili-Anne Brown.
Up Next at Encores!
Next up at City Center: Billy Porter and Wayne Brady star in La Cage aux Folles, with book by Harvey Fierstein, music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, directed by Robert O’Hara with choreography by Edgar Godineaux. This production features an all-Black cast and the original 1983 orchestrations, not heard live since the show’s first Broadway run. June 17-28, 2026. Tickets at NYCityCenter.org.
© 2026 Adam Josephs. All rights reserved.
