A New York moment: 

Readers may know Babette’s Feast from the original short story by Isak Dinesen or the acclaimed 1987 film adaptation. Now that story is playing in an open-ended run off-Broadway, in a gorgeous old church in New York’s theater district.

A New York moment: 

In recent days I’ve had two wildly divergent theater experiences: one, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical, and two, Babette’s Feast, which just opened off-Broadway. It seems wrong to even put those productions in the same sentence, but they’re playing in the same neighborhood.

Broadway bestowed its top accolades last night during the Tony Awards. Dear Evan Hansen, a musical about a 17-year-old who invents a friendship with a classmate who commits suicide, won the night’s top honors, winning best new musical and earning leading man Ben Platt the best actor award. Oslo, a show about the 1993 meetings between Israelis and Palestinians, won best new play of the season (see Emily Belz’s WORLD Magazine review of Oslo).

At a time when political discord seems to find its way into every dinnertime conversation, a new Broadway play explores the world’s most intractable political divide: that between Israelis and Palestinians. Oslo recounts the top-secret back-channel talks in Norway that led to the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian peace accords, a story drawn from the playwright’s relationship with some of the negotiators.

Ten years ago WORLD, I believe, was the first national publication to report of an effort to bring a strong Christian musical to Broadway.

We don’t like to follow a sad but common journalistic tendency—get a story and then abandon those whose lives are tied to it—so it’s a pleasure to report that Amazing Grace, after a short and unsustainable Broadway run in 2015, will in November become the first production ever on the boards of the brand new World Stage Theater at the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C.

Max McLean’s Fellowship for Performing Arts has its latest production playing off-Broadway in New York—Martin Luther on Trial. The story, which McLean wrote along with playwright and King’s College professor Chris Cragin-Day, imagines Lucifer putting Luther on trial to see whether the father of the Protestant Reformation belongs in hell rather than heaven. In this show, McLean is essentially a producer—he does not act in the play itself. A national tour is in the works after the play’s New York run ends Jan. 29.