David Cromer Returns to DC With the World Premiere of Max Posner's Hanukkah Spectacular at Woolly Mammoth
This holiday season, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Hanukkah Spectacular, a new comedy by Lucille Lortel Award nominee Max Posner (The Treasurer), directed by Tony Award winner and MacArthur Fellow David Cromer (The Band's Visit). The production runs November 14-December 13, 2026.
Four artists. Three days. One conference room. And a Hanukkah show that could combust before it's even finished.
Set over a long weekend at a Midtown talent agency, Hanukkah Spectacular follows a group of Jewish artists brought together to create a commercially viable holiday hit about Hanukkah. As the pressure mounts, personalities collide, old tensions surface, and the lines between the people they are and the roles they are playing begin to blur. What begins as an attempt to make a holiday spectacular becomes an unexpectedly funny and complicated look at ambition, identity, family, and the stories we tell about ourselves.
Written by Max Posner and directed by David Cromer, Hanukkah Spectacular brings together a remarkable ensemble of actors led by Peter Friedman, widely recognized for his performance as Frank Vernon on HBO's Succession. Friedman has built an extraordinary stage career in some of the most acclaimed new plays in New York, appearing in original productions by writers including Annie Baker, Amy Herzog, Wendy Wasserstein, Will Eno, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, as well as Max Posner. His film credits include The Savages and Safe.
Friedman stars alongside Laura Heisler, Ben Edelman, Ben Beckley, and Ethan J. Miller. Heisler returns to Woolly following her appearances in David Adjmi's Stunning and Rocket to the Moon. Beckley's Broadway credits include What the Constitution Means to
Me, while Edelman originated the role of Paul in Josh Harmon's Admissions at Lincoln Center Theater before reprising the role on the West End. Miller makes his Woolly Mammoth debut.
At the helm is David Cromer, one of the most celebrated directors in American theater. Cromer has received a Tony Award, a Drama Desk Award, three Obie Awards, three Lucille Lortel Awards, four Jeff Awards, and the Drama League Founders Award for Excellence in Directing. In 2010, he was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow. His Broadway credits include The Band's Visit and The Sound Inside, among many others.
Cromer returns to Washington, DC for the first time since directing The Grapes of Wrath at Ford's Theatre in 2003. Hanukkah Spectacular also marks his second collaboration with Posner, following The Treasurer, which Cromer directed at the Sundance Theatre Lab and Playwrights Horizons.
For playwright Max Posner, Hanukkah Spectacular continues a body of work that finds humor and humanity in complicated relationships and unexpected situations. His play The Treasurer, also directed by Cromer, premiered at Playwrights Horizons and was named a New York Times and Time Out Critic's Pick and received a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for Best Play. Posner is a Sundance Institute Fellow, a recipient of the Helen Merrill Award and three MacDowell Fellowships, and was the 2024-25 Sun Valley Playwright-in-Residence at the Hemingway House.
"The first time I saw a reading of Hanukkah Spectacular three years ago, I knew I had just experienced something unforgettable, and I'm so lucky to get to share its world premiere with DC this holiday season," says Woolly Mammoth Artistic Director Reggie D. White. "Seeing Max (Posner) and (David) Cromer collaborate feels like once-in-generation chemistry. Watching them amplify, interrogate, and deepen each other's work is like you're witnessing two brilliant artists write the book on collaboration in front of your very eyes. Max's play is a hilarious and deeply recognizable story about a group of people trying to make something honest while figuring out what they actually believe. This production promises to be exactly the kind of work we come to the theatre to see: disarming, surprising, and so true that that it sends you back into the world thinking about your own life a little differently."
The production marks another addition to Woolly's longstanding role as a home for ambitious new work: Hanukkah Spectacular is one of five world-premiere productions on Woolly's 2026/27 season.