What the City Let Go: The Week Cats Closed Early and a Forgotten Poet Found Late Fame
Cats: The Jellicle Ball takes its final Broadway bow the same night Willem Dafoe's Late Fame asks what it means to be remembered too late, while Misty Copeland curates ballet instead of dancing it and a new Lincoln Center Butoh commission closes out the week outdoors.
New York spent this week closing one door for every one it opened. Tonight, Cats: The Jellicle Ball takes its final Broadway bow at the Broadhurst, five months ahead of schedule despite three Tony wins, while a few blocks away Late Fame has Willem Dafoe playing a poet who spent decades assuming his best work had already been forgotten. Rush wrapped a victory-lap stand at the Garden without the drummer who defined its sound. Misty Copeland spent the week curating a ballet festival instead of dancing in one. Between the closings, the reunions, and the rediscoveries, the city kept circling one question: what actually gets remembered, and on whose schedule.
Highlight
The same night Cats: The Jellicle Ball takes its final bow at the Broadhurst, Storefront for Art and Architecture opens a show about longing and return, and Late Fame is already in its second weekend asking what it means to be rediscovered decades too late. New York doesn’t usually stage an ending and a rediscovery on the same calendar page — this week, on purpose or not, it did.
Theater
Cats: The Jellicle Ball plays its last Broadway performance tonight at the Broadhurst, closing five months early despite three Tony wins — the NYPL’s Theatre on Film and Tape Archive filmed the production this month so the choreography survives the closing notice. BroadwayWorld A few blocks south, Rosie O’Donnell’s Common Knowledge, after touring Dublin, Edinburgh, Sydney, Melbourne, and Glasgow, plays its own final performance at the Daryl Roth the same night. Broadway.com
Off-Broadway opened more than it closed. Disruption, John David Washington and Conrad Ricamora’s tech-founder drama, opened August 2 at Signature Center, reviewers praising Ricamora’s warmth against Washington’s charisma pushed “right up to the border of sociopathy.” Playbill La MaMa mounted the American premiere of John Donnelly’s The Pass, a traverse-staged British football drama, BroadwayWorld and at 59E59, Tollbooth Co. opened The Vessel, a small play built around Hudson Yards’ much-mocked stairway-to-nowhere. BroadwayWorld
Two more shows close this weekend — The Gin Game, with Debra Winger and Arliss Howard, TheaterMania and Playwrights Horizons’ The Potluck, built around the 1979 Greensboro Massacre. BroadwayWorld Uptown, previews of The Winter’s Tale continue at the Delacorte, Raúl Esparza and Lily Rabe building toward an August 11 opening. Playbill
Independent Film
The John Berger centennial that opened across five venues in late July closed its final leg at Anthology Film Archives this week, running through August 5. Film Comment Late Fame, Kent Jones’ Schnitzler adaptation starring Dafoe as a New York poet rediscovered decades too late, opened August 7 at Film at Lincoln Center and Film Forum to strong notices for Dafoe and Greta Lee. Deadline
Wild Inside, Penny Lane’s Flaco the owl documentary, kept running at IFC Center with Q&As through August 4, timed to International Owl Awareness Day. Variety Matt Johnson’s Tony, an Anthony Bourdain origin story with Dominic Sessa, opened August 7 including at Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn, and IFC Center paired The Big Cheese, a cheese-world documentary, with Q&As moderated by Murray’s Cheese’s Josh Windsor. Deadline
Rooftop Films marked its 30th anniversary with romance shorts screened outdoors at Industry City in Sunset Park, Bushwick Daily while MoMI’s “See It Big: 70mm!” kept 2001 and Lawrence of Arabia running in Astoria through month’s end.
Music
Rush closed its four-night “Fifty Something” reunion stand at Madison Square Garden on August 3, a run reviewers called a rapturous return, with new drummer Anika Nilles taking on Neil Peart’s parts. Forbes Makaya McCraven’s Village Vanguard stand had already wrapped August 2, just ahead of this week — one more sign of how much of the city’s best jazz turns over before anyone outside the room finds out. NYC Jazz Guide
Free and outdoors, Andrew Bird performed The Mysterious Production of Eggs in full for its 20th anniversary with the Wordless Music Orchestra at SummerStage August 6, and globalFEST brought Ukrainian quartet DakhaBrakha — touring behind their first studio album in six years — and Colombian accordionist Yeison Landero to BRIC’s Celebrate Brooklyn stage at the Lena Horne Bandshell August 7, free, echoing last week’s Latin NYC bill at the same stage. BRIC Heavier rooms had their own week: Norwegian symphonic black metal act Dimmu Borgir headlined the Palladium in Times Square August 7, and Bushwick’s Elsewhere booked Xkylar and Slow Joy back to back.
Unverified
Elsewhere’s Xkylar and Slow Joy bookings are drawn from the venue’s own calendar only — no independent press coverage confirms them.
Visual Arts & Other
Lincoln Center’s new Dance Encounters series opened with Vangeline performing a Butoh solo, Naiad Metal, at the Milstein Reflecting Pool nightly from August 5 through tonight, costumes by Machine Dazzle. The Joyce Theater’s Ballet Festival opened August 4, curated by Misty Copeland, putting dancers from American Ballet Theatre, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Houston Ballet, and New York City Ballet on one stage through August 16.
Review
This section carries several venue-and-date claims with no source link at all (Vangeline’s Naiad Metal, the Joyce Ballet Festival’s four-company roster, the Storefront/Sim Chi Yin opening below, and the Bronx Museum/Wave Hill First Friday) — unlike the rest of the brief. Spot-checks confirm the events and dates are real, but the Joyce Festival’s Dance Theatre of Harlem/Houston Ballet participation wasn’t independently corroborated — add source links (Lincoln Center, Amsterdam News/BroadwayWorld both cover the Joyce Festival) or an > [!unverified] flag.
Harlem Week’s second week brought Harlem Summer Nights, the free Friday market under the Manhattan Valley Viaduct, August 7, Amsterdam News and the Percy Sutton Harlem 5K drew more than 5,500 runners up Edgecombe Avenue August 8. Amsterdam News
Review
“More than 5,500 runners” — the linked Amsterdam News article itself reports “more than 5,000 runners”; 5,500 appears to be a pre-race NYRR turnout projection, not the figure in the cited source — fix the number to match the link, or cite the projection source separately.
On the Lower East Side, Storefront for Art and Architecture opens Sim Chi Yin’s Longings, Returns tonight with a live performance activating the gallery’s mural, built around the mass deportation of ethnic Chinese from British Malaya.
Outside Manhattan, the Bronx Museum and Wave Hill co-hosted a First Friday August 7 around David Antonio Cruz’s exhibition, on view at both institutions. In Prospect Park, Brooklyn artist Risha Gorig’s The Journey — neon-pink kinetic birds along the Lullwater, read as a metaphor for climate displacement — stays up near the Boathouse through month’s end. Brooklyn Eagle
Coming Up
- The Winter’s Tale opens — Raúl Esparza and Lily Rabe lead Shakespeare in the Park’s free Delacorte production, Aug 11. Playbill
- See It Big: 70mm! continues — Amadeus screens with producer Paul Zaentz in person, Aug 9, Museum of the Moving Image.
- Joyce Theater Ballet Festival runs through Aug 16 — Misty Copeland’s curated lineup keeps rotating casts from four companies.
- Sim Chi Yin’s Longings, Returns — on view through Aug 29 at Storefront for Art and Architecture.
- Interpol’s This Mirror Weighs a Ton — the NYC band’s new album, out Aug 28. The FADER
Takeaway
Takeaway
This was a week that treated closing and opening as the same gesture. The Public Library filmed Cats for the archive the same week Willem Dafoe played a poet who assumed his work was already forgotten; Misty Copeland spent it curating other dancers instead of dancing herself. New York doesn’t really let anything go — it just moves it from the stage to the record, and waits to see who comes looking for it later.