The People Versus Lenny Bruce: A Review

This courtroom drama, probing the trial of the outspoken (and groundbreaking) stand-up comedian, is playing Off-Broadway—but only through June 28th

By Suzanne Charlé

A trial reenacted: The People Versus Lenny Bruce. From left, Stephen Schnetzer, Dan Grimaldi, Johnny Anthony (playing the defendant), and Ian Lithgow. Photo by Russ Rowland.
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June 7, 2026
Susan Charlotte’s The People Versus Lenny Bruce, onstage Off-Broadway at Theatre Row through June 28, takes a deep dive into our right to freedom of speech—just when our First Amendment rights are being attacked. The plot? An exploration of the 1964 trial of the infamous and celebrated stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce, who was known for his satirical sociopolitical commentary and no-holds-barred language. Bruce was arrested by an undercover cop on April 3, 1964, after leaving the stage at Café au Go Go in Greenwich Village. The charge? Appearing in an obscene performance.

This play and two others by Charlotte—Unlucky Gal/The Story of Jane Doe (focusing on sexual abuse) and Last Chance Café (about voter suppression)—are based on court cases argued by Martin Garbus, one of the country’s leading First Amendment trial attorneys. Together, they form a trilogy known as All the Court’s A Stage. Unlucky Gal and Last Chance Café are slated to follow this production.

“Marty was my lawyer over 30 years ago. We became friends,” Charlotte told me when I interviewed her in May. Speaking with Garbus during COVID, she maintained “that his cases would be best told dramatologically.”

Garbus, now age 91, agreed. Deciding on three plays, he and Charlotte worked on them along with Anthony Marsellis, who’d previously directed the trilogy The Shoemaker (2006), A Broken Sole (2006), and Did You Know My Husband? (2018).

The infamous and celebrated Lenny Bruce.
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Ultimately, they focused on Garbus’s famous First Amendment case, The People v. Lenny Bruce.

“After what happened to Jimmy Kimmel, I thought that it was the perfect time to stage Lenny Bruce,” explains Charlotte. (In case you’ve forgotten, Jimmy Kimmel Live! was pulled in September 2025 by ABC over comments Kimmel made in his monologue about Charlie Kirk—not to mention Trump’s intense dislike of Kimmel.)

Using the actual transcript of the case and additional information she obtained in discussions with Garbus, Charlotte re-created the trial against Bruce that had taken place in the Criminal Court of the City of New York. She also created dialogue “imagining things the characters might have said”.

This is particularly true regarding Lenny Bruce, played with great passion and humor by Johnny Anthony, who previously appeared in the Off-Broadway production of John Leguizamo’s The Other Americans, as well as in the Law & Order TV series. Here in his first Off-Broadway role, he continually urges his lawyer, Garbus (played by Stephen Schnetzer), to let him act for the judges, so that they can understand his performance, rather than just hearing the vulgar words repeated and repeated by Herbert S. Ruhe, the New York license inspector—and former CIA agent—(played by Michael Citriniti).

Garbus, of course, won’t let Bruce “convict himself”. Instead, he calls on extraordinary personalities who willingly appear as witnesses. Dorothy Kilgallen, the conservative commentator and star of the TV show What’s My Line?, meets all of the prosecutor’s questions without hesitation, underscoring her admiration for the comedian and his work. As she puts it, “His unity, I believe, is social commentary. He goes from one subject to another, but there is always the thread of the world around us and what is happening today, what has happened, and what might happen tomorrow.”

Others who testify on Bruce’s behalf include the cartoonist/playwright Jules Feiffer, who says that Bruce “gets to the core of what the American experience is today…. He’s brilliant,” as well as the Presbyterian minister Forrest Johnson, who attended Bruce’s Café a Go Go performance and was a great fan. Reverend Johnson notes that Bruce’s humor took aim at “the cheapening of religion” of the times.

Nonetheless, Bruce is convicted. (After the trial, Ruhe, the loud and brazen witness for the prosecution who went undercover to Bruce’s performance, acknowledged that the arrest was a setup: “We aimed for Bruce. We picked him out of all the performers. I know he was not obscene, yet in a way I feel he had to be convicted.”

Bruce’s conviction was challenged, but he didn’t live to see it overturned on appeal. Depressed by his confinement, he died of a drug overdose. After his death, with his great sense of irony, Lenny claims to his lawyer: “So I’m a free dead man, Marty.”

For his part, Garbus notes that 37 years later, New York State Governor George Pataki granted Bruce a posthumous pardon for the obscenity conviction.

The People Versus Lenny Bruce is challenging to watch—even after Charlotte cut it a bit. It would have been better had Charlotte cut it significantly. But it is a timely, important play. Be sure to see it! It runs through June 28. You can book your tickets online at Building for the Arts / Theatre Row.

And watch for Last Chance Café, Susan Charlotte’s next play in her All the Court’s a Stage trilogy of Martin Garbus’s cases. Arriving just in time for the midterm elections, it deals with voter suppression. It is followed by Unlucky Gal: The Jane Doe Story, whose subject is sexual abuse.

Suzanne Charlé has written for numerous publications, including The Nation, House Beautiful, and The New York Times, where she was a freelance assigning editor for the Magazine. She has co-authored many books, including Indonesia in the Soeharto Years: Issues, Incidents and Illustrations.

For other NYCitywoman articles by Suzanne Charlé, see: