A Century and a Final Bow: Titanique Closes as San Gennaro Turns 100
Titanique takes its last Broadway curtain call the same week Little Italy's Feast of San Gennaro marks a hundred years on Mulberry Street — while Bikini Kill reunites in Brooklyn, Arlekin Players lands an Ionesco premiere in Fort Greene, and NYFF64 opens uptown and out at BAM.
Titanique sank one last time at the St. James this week, and Little Italy spent eleven days proving the opposite move — staying exactly where it’s been for a hundred years. Both endings drew a crowd: a dozen standing ovations for the Céline-scored Titanic spoof, hundreds of thousands of visitors for a feast that started in 1926 as one day of Neapolitan devotion. Everywhere else the city did the inverse, opening things — a Boston theater company’s Ionesco premiere in Fort Greene, a reunited riot grrrl band across two Brooklyn rooms, a film festival spilling out of Lincoln Center into the Bronx and Staten Island. Nothing this week sat still long enough to be just one thing.
Highlight
A feast that began as a single day of devotion by Neapolitan immigrants in 1926 is still filling Mulberry Street a century later — not as nostalgia, but as the same neighborhood doing the same thing it always has, only bigger.
Theater
Titanique closed its Broadway run Sept. 20 at the St. James with Billy Zane — the film’s Cal — in the house, twelve curtain calls, and a franchise-best weekly gross of $1,347,414; a North American tour follows in 2027. Deadline, BroadwayWorld
Review
“twelve curtain calls” — sourced coverage describes this as twelve standing ovations, not curtain calls (the opening paragraph above already uses the correct term) — suggested action: fix wording to match “standing ovations” for consistency with the sourced term and the piece’s own opener.
Off-Broadway, Max Wolf Friedlich’s The Holes opened Sept. 22 at the Wild Project — a dark comedy in a decaying upstate bar, executive-produced by Robert Pattinson’s Icki Eneo Arlo — to reviews calling it ambitious and overwritten in equal measure. TheaterMania, Playbill Two-time Tony winner Victoria Clark opened Joshua Owen’s Human Things at the West End Theatre Sept. 25, a South Pacific-set five-week premiere with Ben Rosenfield; no reviews yet. Playbill
The week’s best Brooklyn pick: Arlekin Players brought DELIRIUM, Igor Golyak’s staging of Ionesco’s Frenzy for Two, to the Space at Irondale in Fort Greene Sept. 24, transferring an acclaimed Boston run with Andrey Burkovskiy and Chulpan Khamatova as a couple arguing against a war outside their window. Brooklyn Eagle And Ana Gasteyer’s cabaret alter ego September L. Davis did open The Apology Tour as planned Sept. 20 at Studio Seaview, a Sundays-and-Mondays run through Oct. 5. Playbill
Independent Film
IFC Center’s John Wilson documentary The History of Concrete kept climbing: after a record $90,000 opening weekend — the theater’s biggest documentary debut in 21 years, second only to Parasite — the film expanded to roughly 20 markets Sept. 25 ahead of a 50-market rollout in October. Deadline
Review
“biggest documentary debut in 21 years, second only to Parasite” — the underlying figures check out, but compressing “biggest documentary debut” and “second-best opening of any film, behind Parasite” into one clause risks implying Parasite is itself a documentary — suggested action: fix wording to separate the two comparisons, e.g. “biggest documentary debut in IFC Center’s history — and the theater’s second-best opening of any film in its 21 years, behind only Parasite.”
The 64th New York Film Festival opened Sept. 25 at Lincoln Center, with satellite screenings at BAM and outer-borough houses in Staten Island and the Bronx; the lineup includes James Gray, Ava DuVernay, and Almodóvar. Film at Lincoln Center, Time Out New York IFC Center also hosted Sundance NEXT Innovator Louis Paxton for a Q&A on The Incomer Sept. 25. IFC Center
Music
Phoebe Bridgers played three device-free nights at Barclays Center (Sept. 24–26) on The Lost Tour, with Alex G opening. Barclays Center A few stops away, Bikini Kill’s reunion sold out Music Hall of Williamsburg Sept. 24 and Brooklyn Steel Sept. 25 — one of the last big runs before Music Hall of Williamsburg closes at year’s end. Songkick
Review
“Music Hall of Williamsburg closes at year’s end” and “sold out Music Hall of Williamsburg Sept. 24” — the venue’s closure is real but the cited Songkick link is a listing for the Brooklyn Steel show, not a source for either the closure claim or the Music Hall of Williamsburg sell-out; only the Brooklyn Steel date turned up independently confirmed as sold out — suggested action: add a proper citation for the closure (e.g. trade press covering the venue’s lease ending) and verify or soften the Music Hall of Williamsburg sold-out claim separately.
Catskills-based singer Meg Lui released her debut album Instant Validation Sept. 25 via Asthmatic Kitty, produced by Sufjan Stevens out of songs she’d written over a decade. Stereogum
Visual Arts & Other
The Feast of San Gennaro’s hundredth year filled Little Italy Sept. 17–27, drawing more than 300 vendors to Mulberry Street and closing with the Sept. 26 Grand Procession behind the saint’s statue — the same eleven-day footprint the feast has held since it outgrew its original one-day form. amNY
At the Joyce, Sonya Tayeh’s The Surge: An Ode to Sinéad O’Connor drew strong notices this week — Dance Informa called it “shouting art into the world” — heading into its closing performances this weekend. Dance Informa In Bushwick and Greenpoint, two galleries close out their runs the same weekend: Tiger Strikes Asteroid’s Rock, Stone, Steel and Rope and Next Wave Gallery’s Vital by Seren Morey. Two Coats of Paint
Unverified
The Tiger Strikes Asteroid and Next Wave closing dates come from a single gallery-guide listing rather than each venue’s own site — worth a quick check before treating them as final.
The Brooklyn Book Festival’s nine-day run built toward its Sept. 27 flagship at Borough Hall, with this week’s Children’s Day drawing readings and signings to Borough Hall Plaza Sept. 26. Brooklyn Book Festival And in the Bronx, the Immigration Coalition’s “New York Proud” portrait installation has been up at Mill Pond Park since Sept. 15, its second stop after Times Square, ahead of a move to the Queens Museum next week. Bronx Times
Coming Up
- Brooklyn Book Festival: Festival Day — flagship day, Sun., Sept. 27, four Downtown Brooklyn venues, with Marlon James and Colson Whitehead. Brooklyn Book Festival
- Gotham Week 2026 — indie-film industry gathering, Sept. 27–Oct. 3 in Brooklyn; Honors night Sept. 29 at 26 Bridge, Dumbo. The Gotham
- Metrograph’s Classical Cinema conversation — Kogonada moderates cinematographer Bill Kirstein and producer Albert Tholen, Sept. 27. Metrograph
- New York Proud at the Queens Museum — the immigrant-portrait installation’s third stop, Sept. 28–Nov. 2. Bronx Times
- Meg Lui’s release show — the Sultan Room, Bushwick, Sept. 29, behind Instant Validation. Stereogum
- Last chance in Bushwick and Greenpoint — Tiger Strikes Asteroid’s Rock, Stone, Steel and Rope and Next Wave Gallery’s Vital both close Sept. 27. Two Coats of Paint
Takeaway
Takeaway
A hundred-year-old feast and a five-year-old Broadway parody both got their send-off this week, and neither read as an ending so much as a shape the city knows how to repeat. The real departures were quieter: a punk band that broke up decades ago filling two Brooklyn rooms, a Boston troupe finding a home in Fort Greene, a public-art project about immigrant New Yorkers moving from Times Square to the Bronx to Queens. The city’s arts calendar doesn’t close things out — it relocates them.
Review
Body runs ~939 words against the prompt’s 600–900 word budget — about 4% over — suggested action: trim ~40–60 words on the next copyedit pass; no factual change needed.