Agreed that Nicolette's photo looks a little posed. I also love how each Playbill is personalized, but I wish hers looked more chill, like previous Jennas.
The Lifespan of a Fact looks so bad. I hate how they just took photos of the actors on red carpets or any random photo they found on Google Images and just pasted it onto the cover, it doesn't look great.
I think if you want to cut costs and print in black and white, you should design a Playbill cover that looks good in black and white. Even though not everyone likes Scott Rudin's Playbill covers, he always seems to have them designed in black and white so they don't look cheap. The Waitress ones can run into this problem, they look cheap in black and white. Same goes with The Nap.