Cost of Living Tickets

Martyna Majok's 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning play receives its Broadway premiere after a celebrated Off-Broadway run with Manhattan Theatre Club. Get Cost of Living tickets on New York Theatre Guide.

Cost of Living is a play about caregiving, alienation, and connection. There are two central pairs of characters: Ani and Eddie, and John and Jess. Ani and Eddie are estranged spouses, but following an accident that leaves her a double above-the-knee amputee, he returns to care for her. Elsewhere, John, who has cerebral palsy, hires Jess to assist him with daily tasks. But Ani and John's disabilities, and their companions' roles as caregivers, are the least of what this play is about.

The loud-mouthed firecracker Ani is bitter at Eddie for leaving her and equally bitter about his coming back, yet he persistently does his best to lighten her mood and be there for her. And John and Jess are both Princeton grads, but while John holds many privileges because of that education, his wealth, and his whiteness, Jess is barely making ends meet by working for John. As these two couples navigate their own issues of race, class, personality, and more, it gets less clear who exactly is caring for whom. And the pairs' stories eventually collide, too.

After a world premiere at Williamstown Theatre Festival, Manhattan Theatre Club premiered Cost of Living off Broadway in 2017 to acclaim; the show was a New York Times Critic's Pick. Now, MTC is also mounting the Broadway premiere at its home venue, the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. In between these productions of Cost of Living in New York, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2018 and premiered in London in 2019, with original cast member Katy Sullivan as Ani.

Sullivan also returns for the Cost of Living Broadway premiere, alongside fellow original cast member Gregg Mozgala and original Obie Award-winning director Jo Bonney. In a five-star review of Cost of Living in 2017, our critic said: "Cost of Living reawakens my belief in the poetry of theater and highlights its purpose as the critical eye on our human existence. On the face of it you might think that Cost of Living is a melancholy story, but Ms. Majok brilliantly infuses her characters and dialogue with biting humor."

Coincidentally, in the 2021-22 season, MTC also mounted the Broadway premiere of a Pulitzer Prize-winning play with its original Off-Broadway stars and director: How I Learned to Drive, starring Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse and directed by Mark Brokaw.

Majok is a Polish American playwright whose break came in 2014 with the play Ironbound. She followed it up with Cost of Living, Queens, and Sanctuary City, which debuted with New York Theatre Workshop in 2021 and earned a five-star New York Theatre Guide review. Cost of Living marks Majok's Broadway debut.

Tickets to Cost of Living in New York are on sale now.

By: Martyna Majok
Director: Jo Bonney
Producer: Manhattan Theatre Club
Cast list: Gregg Mozgala (as John), Katy Sullivan (as Ani), Kara Young (as Jess), David Zayas (as Eddie)
Design: Wilson Chin
Lighting: Jeff Croiter
Costume: Jessica Pabst
Sound: Rob Kaplowitz