Latest news with #SamPinkleton
New York Times
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Ta-Da!' Review: Josh Sharp Tries a Thing
Don't take this the wrong way, but Josh Sharp's mom, Amy, absolutely steals 'ta-da!,' his new solo show. He lets her do it, he is wise to — and she isn't even there. But we will get to that. Directed by Sam Pinkleton — fresh off his Tony Award win for Cole Escola's 'Oh, Mary!' — 'ta-da!' is a more intimate, less feral animal than that Broadway hit, and a bit of an experiment. 'It's an Off Broadway run,' Sharp tells the audience at the top of the show, at the Greenwich House Theater in Greenwich Village. 'So I'm trying a thing.' Abundant sex anecdotes are part of the thing; so is a very funny screed about umbrellas in Midtown Manhattan. Beneath its somewhat overstuffedness, this is an intricately structured piece about mortality, the self and embracing second chances. But to judge by the marketing, the main point of interest in 'ta-da!' is that Sharp — a comedian who was one of the writers and stars of the 2023 movie 'Dicks: The Musical,' a gleefully idiotic gay 'Parent Trap' spoof — memorized 2,000 PowerPoint slides to perform 'ta-da!,' an 80-minute show. And honestly, Sharp spends too long chattering to us about that feat. We don't need selling on it; civilians are impressed when performers memorize 80 minutes of anything. What's interesting is the way Sharp's autobiographical storytelling pairs the willful comic dumbness and over-the-top carnality of 'Dicks' with the more thoughtful, tender impulses of a piece that he directed Off Broadway, 'Sorry for Your Loss,' the comedian Michael Cruz Kayne's solo show about grief. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
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Vogue
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
With His New Show, Ta-Da!, Josh Sharp Finds the Magic—and the Music—in a 2,000-Slide PowerPoint Presentation
Vogue: I want to start by asking you about the origins of this show. When did you begin writing and working on it? Josh Sharp: It's been a few years, and a couple of paths converged. The concept of doing it with the slides was something I started a few years ago, but I was just doing it for 10 minutes. And then it just fleshed out from there and became 20 minutes, and then 30 minutes, and then 40 minutes. A good two-thirds of it is stuff written just for this show, and another third is the random old stand-up bit that's like, 'Oh, this actually fits in this thing.' So it sort of depends on where you define starting. The show is called Ta-da! and involves some elements of magic. Have you seen any magic shows lately? I love to see magic shows. When I'm in LA, I always go to the Magic Castle. I try to see the good ones: I loved [Derek DelGaudio's] 'In & of Itself.' Asi Wind is incredible. Every year there's a good magic show and I go see it. You worked on this show with Sam Pinkleton. How did that partnership come to be? And what does direction look like with such a personal show? There's a reason why everybody loves Sam—and it's that he's the best. We knew of each other and were friendly and had talked about other little projects, but then, when I really had this version of the show and I was doing it at comedy clubs, I invited him. And honestly, I just thought that he was way too busy to do this. But then we talked for like an hour after [the show], and I remember being like, 'Wait, just vibe-checking: would you direct this?' And he was like, 'Oh, I'd love to direct it.' So for a while, it was just a lot of conversations about it, because I was continuing to develop it in the comedy club space. And then, in the months leading up to the theatrical run, he was so good at assembling our team. This is my first time doing this type of theatrical run for a stand-up show—that sort of canonical act where the stand-up comedian plops down in an off-Broadway theater for a few months. But I directed one for my friend Michael Cruz Kayne, this show called Sorry for Your Loss that was at the Minetta Lane two years ago. So one of my favorite things from that side was just getting to build out this team of designers who are, like, cool, stunty theater professionals you can hire to just make your show more impressive. And Sam is so good at that. This is all to say: it's been freaking rad.
Bloomberg
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Bloomberg
Tony Winner Sam Pinkleton Never Thought
The riotously funny Oh, Mary! —a show that imagines Mary Todd Lincoln as an alcoholic and aspiring cabaret singer—won big at the Tony Awards on June 8, nabbing a best actor trophy for nonbinary comedian Cole Escola as Mary and a best director award for Sam Pinkleton. A veteran choreographer, Pinkleton was previously nominated for choreography in 2016 for Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, but Oh, Mary! is his first Broadway directing credit. The scrappy show started with a sold-out off-Broadway run at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in the West Village before transferring to the Lyceum Theatre last summer and has since broken box-office records. The wildly inventive, madcap show has been a critical and commercial smash, with talent including Tituss Burgess and Betty Gilpin donning the curly wig and black dress to play Lincoln. Star Escola is back in another limited run on Broadway, which has been extended through September. Despite Oh, Mary! 's massive success, Pinkleton says he and Escola had no inkling the production could become as big as it has.
New York Times
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Cole Escola Wins the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play
Cole Escola won the Tony for best actor in a play for their performance in the outlandish, ahistoric comedy 'Oh, Mary!' This is Escola's Broadway debut, and first Tony. Escola, who is nonbinary, plays a self-indulgent, scheming Mary Todd Lincoln, who aspires to become a chanteuse. As a result, her boredom — which includes pining to perform her 'madcap medleys' of yesteryear — drives her to all kinds of antics. (With Cole prancing around in a hoop skirt, hilarity ensues.) The New York Times chief theater critic, Jesse Green, called 'Oh, Mary!,' which Escola also wrote, 'one of the best crafted and most exactingly directed Broadway comedies in years.' Directed by Sam Pinkleton, the show opened at the Lyceum Theater last summer after a sold-out and twice-extended Off Broadway run. The play has also been extended multiple times since it transferred to Broadway. (It was the first show in the Lyceum's 121-year history to gross more than $1 million in a single week.) Escola, known for their roles in Hulu's 'Difficult People,' TBS's 'Search Party' and sketches on YouTube, came up through New York's cabaret and alt comedy scenes. The premise for 'Oh, Mary!' began with an idea, which Escola sat on for more than 12 years: 'What if Abraham Lincoln's assassination wasn't such a bad thing for Mary Todd?' The Tony Awards, like the Oscars, use gendered categories for performers, and Escola agreed to be considered eligible for an award as an actor. Escola isn't the first nonbinary actor to win a Tony Award. In 2023, J. Harrison Ghee became the first out nonbinary performer to win a Tony for best leading actor in a musical, for 'Some Like It Hot,' and Alex Newell became the first out nonbinary performer to win for best featured actor in a musical for 'Shucked.'
