As Broadway flickered, off-Broadway was defiantly lit

The American theater is still caught in the post-pandemic quandary of smaller audiences, higher costs and diminished funding. No sector seems to have an answer to this economic riddle.

Broadway has had an especially lean fall season. The highlight has been the revival of "Merrily We Roll Along," which transferred from New York Theater Workshop with its amazing trio of Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez intact. There have been other successes, most notably an invigorating production of Ossie Davis' 1961 satiric farce "Purlie Victorious."

But the real action in New York has been off-Broadway, where Aubrey Plaza made her professional stage debut, Alicia Keys released a musical inspired by her life, Stephen Sondheim's last work was sleekly unveiled and two of the most intriguing dramas of the year, Annie Baker's "Infinite Life" and David Adjmi's "Stereophonic," were launched.

There were other less easily categorizable offerings, performance-lecture hybrids that expanded the range of producing possibilities. Annie Dorsen's explored the implications of artificial intelligence on our culture, our planet and our understanding of what it means to be human. The Theatre for a New Audience presentation at Brooklyn's Polonsky Shakespeare Center proved that established nonprofits can trust their