Broadway’s “Dog Day Afternoon” Revives an Iconic Heist—and Reopens Debates Over Trans Representation

Jon Bernthal stands onstage at the August Wilson Theatre, sweat slicking his T‑shirt as he bellows “Attica!” into a wall of sound. Extras playing New Yorkers chant back, TV cameras pivot toward the commotion, and the roar inside the 1,228‑seat Broadway house crests like a curtain call.

The moment, lifted from Sidney Lumet’s 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon, once evoked raw anger over police brutality and state violence. In 2026, it lands as a crafted high point in a new corporate-backed stage adaptation—and a test of how Broadway handles a story built on queer history, media spectacle and crime.

A high-profile adaptation with studio backing

The play Dog Day Afternoon opened March 30 at the August Wilson, where it is scheduled to run through June 28 following previews that began March 10. Written by Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Adly Guirgis and directed by Rupert Goold, it is billed as a non-musical adaptation of both the Warner Bros. film and the 1972 Life magazine article “The Boys in the Bank,” which chronicled a real attempted bank robbery in Brooklyn.

With television stars Bernthal and Ebon Moss‑Bachrach making their Broadway debuts and Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures as lead producer, the production sits at the intersection of several powerful trends: Broadway’s appetite for familiar film titles, studios’ push to turn screen properties into stage brands, and renewed scrutiny over how older queer and trans narratives are retold for contemporary audiences.

The plot: a robbery becomes a televised standoff

Set on Aug. 22, 1972, in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn, the play follows Sonny (Bernthal) and his nervous accomplice Sal (Moss‑Bachrach) as their midday attempt to rob a Chase branch spirals into a hostage standoff and media circus. Outside, Detective Fucco (John Ortiz) and federal agents jockey for control. Inside, bank tellers led by Colleen (Jessica Hecht) weigh fear against a growing, uneasy sympathy for their captors.

As in the film, the story’s emotional pivot point lies off to the side of the crime. Sonny’s estranged partner, Leon—a trans woman played here by Esteban Andres Cruz—is drawn into the glare when authorities bring her to the scene in hopes she can talk him down. Guirgis has described that relationship as the heart of the evening.

“It’s a love story,” he said in a recent interview. “They really love each other. They’re also really messed up.”

Guirgis, known for plays about New Yorkers on society’s margins, has said he wanted to highlight aspects of the story that were downplayed or sensationalized in earlier retellings, including the trans woman whose gender-affirming surgery Sonny claims to be financing and the role of economic precarity in his desperation. He has also cited the shifting language around gender since the 1970s.

Big stagecraft—and questions about tone

The creative team surrounds that material with large-scale stagecraft. Designer David Korins builds the bank interior and its surrounding streetscape across the August Wilson’s deep proscenium, while Brenda Abbandandolo’s costumes and Cody Spencer’s sound design—including blasts of period rock—anchor the action in a stylized 1970s New York.

Critics have largely praised those surfaces and the commitment of the cast. But many have questioned whether the tone of Guirgis’ script and Goold’s staging matches the stakes of the story.

Reviewers for major outlets have described an uneasy blend of sitcom rhythms and true-crime tragedy. The New York Times noted that raucous sound cues and comic business often feel imported from a broader, more cartoonish show. TheaterMania said the production “leans so hard into the comedy that there is almost zero dramatic tension or suspense,” adding that a crowd-pleasing final tableau undercuts the bleak facts of the real case, in which robber Sal Naturile was killed by the FBI during a failed airport escape.

The New York Post likened the evening to “a midseason-replacement sitcom,” arguing that the title of Lumet’s film had been “slapped” on lighter fare. Time Out New York, while commending the period design, concluded that Guirgis—whose earlier work has been celebrated for capturing New York’s grit and moral ambiguity—came up short this time. A lone strongly positive review in The Wrap called the show a “big, hugely entertaining and laugh-filled dramedy” that delivers exactly what many Broadway ticketbuyers seek.

A flashpoint for trans audiences—and a larger debate

Beyond questions of tone, the production has drawn attention from queer and trans theatergoers who see it as an opportunity—and a risk—in how it revisits a story that has long been central to debates over representation.

In the real 1972 robbery, 27‑year‑old John Wojtowicz told reporters he needed money to pay for the gender-confirmation surgery of his partner, Elizabeth Eden, then widely misdescribed in the press. A Life magazine article at the time put the word “wife” in quotation marks and referred to Eden with male pronouns. Lumet’s film, released three years later, cast cisgender actor Chris Sarandon as Leon and, while notable for acknowledging a trans character on screen, framed her through the era’s limited understanding of gender identity.

Guirgis and his producers have positioned the Broadway version as a corrective in at least one key respect: Cruz, who is trans, plays Leon. Casting a trans actor in a major role on a commercial Broadway stage remains rare, advocates note, especially under the banner of a well-known property.

“In the article they’re putting ‘wife’ in quotes, using the wrong pronouns,” Guirgis said in a feature about the production. “The way we talk about this now is different.”

Some trans audience members have welcomed the visibility while questioning how far the update truly goes. In detailed posts on the r/Broadway forum on Reddit, self-described trans theatregoers have said they were unsettled that Sonny repeatedly misgenders Leon even in private, tender scenes, while other characters sometimes use affirming language. One poster argued that this choice did not seem like a deliberate exploration of abuse within the relationship so much as “uninformed” writing that reproduced harm under the cover of period authenticity.

Others on the same forum pointed to recent musical adaptations such as Some Like It Hot, which significantly reimagined the gender politics of its source film, and said they expected a similar level of transformation.

Those exchanges reflect a broader cultural debate over how theater and film should handle slurs, misgendering and other forms of bigotry in historical stories. Some argue that scrubbing language risks sanitizing the past. Others counter that, in a climate where gender-affirming care remains a political flashpoint and anti-trans harassment is documented at high levels by groups such as the Human Rights Campaign, staging repeated misgendering without clearly articulated purpose can feel less like education than retraumatization.

Money, medicine—and Broadway’s reliance on familiar titles

The new Dog Day Afternoon arrives amid a larger fight over access to health care in the United States. In the original case, part of the payment Wojtowicz received for selling his story to Hollywood reportedly helped fund Eden’s surgery. Guirgis has said that connection between money, medicine and desperation still resonates, citing what he called the “evil” of insurance companies and gaps in the U.S. health system.

The show is also part of a wave of film-to-stage projects this season, including new versions of The Great Gatsby and Death Becomes Her, as Broadway producers lean on recognizable titles to draw tourists and occasional theatergoers. Unlike most of those adaptations, Dog Day Afternoon is a straight play rather than a musical, attempting to fill a large theater primarily with dialogue, star wattage and a familiar name.

That makes it a closely watched experiment for both Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures and ATG Entertainment, which now operates the August Wilson following a 2023 merger with Jujamcyn Theaters. Early in the run, the production has offered digital lotteries and rush tickets through third-party platforms, a common tactic to keep occupancy strong as word of mouth and reviews settle in.

An iconic chant in an era of managed nostalgia

Whatever its commercial fate, the stage version underscores how a once-messy piece of New York folk history has moved into an era of managed nostalgia. The bank that Wojtowicz tried to rob has long since been swallowed by industry consolidation. The “Attica!” chant, born of a 1971 prison uprising and its violent suppression, now doubles as a cue for applause.

On 52nd Street, the story of a botched heist tied to a trans woman’s medical care is being retold under bright lights and corporate logos. How audiences receive it—and how artists choose to revisit similar material—will help determine what kinds of queer and trans histories Broadway is willing to stage, and on whose terms.