“John Proctor Is the Villain,” Kimberly Belflower’s powerful, female-led play that uses “The Crucible” as a springboard for a penetrating #MeToo-era critique, has been extended a third and final time on Broadway. The production will now run through Sunday, Sept. 7 at the Booth Theatre.
The extension caps off multiple major developments for the show. Last week, Chiara Aurelia (“Cruel Summer”) stepped into the lead role of Shelby Holcomb, following Sadie Sink’s final performance on July 13. In addition, industry sources report that a film adaptation of the play is in active development at Universal Pictures, with Belflower adapting her own script and powerhouse producers Tina Fey and Marc Platt attached. Sink is set to serve as an executive producer on the project. The show also earned a high-profile visitor earlier this month: Lorde, whose song “Green Light” is featured prominently in the play’s explosive finale, attended one of Sink’s final performances and visited with cast members backstage.
Directed by Danya Taymor, “John Proctor Is the Villain” is set in a Georgia high school classroom in 2018, where students are studying Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.” But rather than reimagining Miller’s play, Belflower uses it as a framework through which the students, and the audience, begin to critically examine the patriarchal stories they’ve been taught. What starts as a literary discussion becomes a deeply personal confrontation with power, consent, and the legacies that shape identity.
‘Hamilton’ Turns 10 with fundraiser anniversary performance and trip to Yankee Stadium
Even after a decade, “Hamilton” is still in the room where it happens. The Broadway juggernaut will celebrate its 10th anniversary on Aug. 6 with a special performance that will serve as a fundraiser for the Immigrants: We Get the Job Done Coalition, a group of 14 nonprofits benefiting immigrant communities. The show will also get some love from the New York Yankees on August 25, when the team will honor the musical during a home game at Yankee Stadium. The first 10,000 fans will receive a co-branded Yankees–“Hamilton” cap. Looking ahead, Leslie Odom Jr., who won a Tony Award for originating the role of Aaron Burr, will return to the show for a limited run from September 9 to November 26.
In a headline-making decision earlier this year, “Hamilton” announced it would cancel its planned 2026 run at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. following President Trump’s unprecedented takeover of the Center’s board, in which he dismissed the previous bipartisan trustees and installed himself as chair.
‘Merrily’ Broadway Revival to Hit Movie Theaters in December
The Tony Award–winning Broadway revival of “Merrily We Roll Along,” Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s backward-structured, emotionally charged cult musical, will be released as a theatrical live capture on December 5, 2025, presented by Sony Pictures Classics and Fathom Events.
Filmed during its final performances at the Hudson Theatre in June 2024, the screen version stars the trio that helped turn the revival into a runaway success: Jonathan Groff as Frank, Daniel Radcliffe as Charley, and Lindsay Mendez as Mary. Under the direction of Maria Friedman, the stage production earned raves and multiple Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Musical, and was widely embraced as the most effective and emotionally coherent rendition of “Merrily” in the show’s troubled history.
This isn’t the first time Friedman’s production has made it to the screen. A previous version of the same staging, featuring a different cast, was filmed during its West End run in 2013 and screened in cinemas.
It’s worth noting that the Broadway live capture is entirely separate from the long-term film adaptation currently in development by director Richard Linklater. That project, starring Ben Platt, Beanie Feldstein, and Paul Mescal, is being shot in real time over two decades to mirror the reverse chronology of the story, a bold experiment that won’t see release for many years to come.
