Hit Machine

Josh Radnor (How I Met Your Mother) and Noah Galvin (Dear Evan Hansen) star as Alex and Wesley, two brothers who grew up making music together to drown out the noise around them.One became a record executive with countless platinum records under his belt. The other went nowhere, but not for lack of talent.When they reunite for one combustible night in Wesley’s Bel Air mansion, Wes is facing a crisis of his own. His prized new artist, Defy, needs a single to reclaim a narrative spiraling out of control. Alex sees an opening: a chance to create the hit that could save Defy, impress his brother, and finally change the course of his own life.What follows is a darkly funny and emotionally charged collision over family, memory and who gets to control the narrative of their shared past.Bound by the same bruised childhood and divided by success, they’re dragged into a final, desperate collaboration - where the only way to tell the truth is to turn it into a song. As the brothers’ dueling survival systems produce dueling songs, the play asks who gets to shape the story, who gets left out of it, and whose truth makes the final track. Featuring original music by three-time Grammy Award-winning musician Ben Harper and directed by former Bush Theatre Associate Director Daniel Bailey (Red Pitch), Hit Machine is an intimate and explosive play about brotherhood, male violence, creative theft and the cost of turning pain into art.The play was a finalist for the Eugene O’Neill 2025 National Playwrights Conference and was featured in IAMA’s New Works Fest and The Working Theater’s Stage Left Festival. It is produced by Spiral Stairs Entertainment in association with Soho Theatre, BPM Theatrical and Kater Gordon.