Audra McDonald as Madame Rose; Robert Downey Jr’s Broadway debut; Elton John’s first new Broadway musical in a dozen years. It’s onerous to withstand the lure of the large musicals and starry debuts which have come an increasing number of to outline Broadway. However the Fall New York theater season additionally affords an abundance of exhibits which can be extra offbeat…and off off beat. These will be difficult, however they’re challenges I take into account price taking.
Beneath, I decide ten exhibits opening between now and the top of the yr that excite me sufficient, or a minimum of make me curious sufficient, that I don’t wish to miss them, for causes I enumerate under. (As you’ll see, I don’t actually hold to 10; I additionally point out exhibits that appear associated in topic or tone to those I spotlight.)
I like to recommend trying out the whole Broadway 2024-2025 season; there are 16 exhibits opening on Broadway from September to December.
I may not wind up liking every thing on the listing under (I used to be disenchanted by three of the ten I listed in an identical publish final Spring.) I gained’t know if I’ll take into account these “should see” exhibits till I see them.
The listing is organized chronologically based on opening date, with the title linked to the present’s web site.
Forbidden Broadway: Merrily We Stole a Track
The place: Theater 555
What: The newest version of Gerard Alessandrini’s long-running parody revue, concentrating on previous and current Broadway exhibits (Hell’s Kitchen, Stereophonic, The Outsiders, The Nice Gatsby, Again to the Future, The Wiz and, sure, Merrily We Roll Alongside) utilizing their songs with new lyrics.
When: August 30 – December 1. Opening September 19
Why: Alessandrini has been doing this for greater than forty years. Not each tune parody lands, however there’s all the time sufficient cleverness and hilarity, which even engenders a way of camaraderie among the many in-the-know within the viewers.
Associated: Lots of the Broadway exhibits being spoofed are nonetheless operating.
S6: Small Ahead
The place: La MaMa ETC
What: The life story of Katya Snytsina, an Olympic basketball participant from Belarus, “the first and solely standard sports activities determine within the historical past of Belarus to have brazenly come out as homosexual” who now lives in exile as an activist in opposition to the dictatorship.
When: Sep 21, 2024 – Oct 13, 2024. Opening September 24.
Why: The primary cause to see “KS6: Small Ahead” is that it’s a manufacturing of Belarus Free Theater. Since 2005, the corporate has used theater as a type of resistance in opposition to the ruthless dictatorship of Alexander Lukashenko. However its ethical readability and sense of justice is just one cause to welcome a brand new present by this avant-garde firm. The whole lot I’ve seen by Belarus Free Theater — “Trash Delicacies, Time of Ladies, Burning Doorways – has been theatrically creative and infrequently bodily dazzling.
Associated: This can be a season brimming with exhibits by well-regarded avant-garde corporations, amongst others a revival of Gatz by Elevator Restore Service, and new works by Nature Theater of Oklahoma (“No President” at NYU Skirball) and Richard Foreman (“Suppose Lovely Madeleine Harvey,” additionally at La MaMa)
Fatherland
The place: New York Metropolis Middle Stage II
What: The true story of a teenage son who turned an informant in opposition to his father, a January 6 insurrectionist.
When: September 18 – November 23. Opening September 26
Why: This documentary play by Stephen Sachs, co-founder of L.A.’s Fountain Theater, was well-received when it debuted earlier this yr in L.A., praised as akin to “a modern-day Sophoclean tragedy.” The dramatization of true tales appears particularly efficient when the play explores how the political impacts the private in occasions of public turmoil.
Associated: Different such explorations: An encore presentation of Arlekin Gamers’ Our Class (antisemitism); Counting and Cracking (the refugee disaster) at NYU Skirball; “Good Bones” (gentrification) by James Ijames (“Fats Ham”) on the Public. A musical that shares the identical political second as Fatherland, however not the identical tone: Ghost of John McCain at SoHo Playhouse.
THE HILLS OF CALIFORNIA
The place: Broadway’s Broadhurst Theater
What: Within the sweltering warmth of a Seventies summer time, the Webb sisters return to their childhood house in Blackpool, an English seaside city, the place their mom Veronica is dying upstairs. Again within the Fifties ( as we see in flashbacks) there have been 4 sisters, who, pushed by their mom, rehearsed their Andrews Sister-like singing act and had a shot of fame, which price all of them dearly.
When: September 11 – December 8. Opening September 29
Why: This is a brand new play by Jez Butterworth, whose three earlier performs on Broadway have been numerous levels of riveting: Jerusalem, The River, and The Ferryman, which gained the Tony Award for greatest play. If it’s just like the others, it will likely be lengthy, crowded with humanity or a minimum of human feeling, and climax in one thing surprising.
Associated: The Blood Quilt by Katori Corridor at Lincoln Middle: “Gathering at their childhood island house off the coast of Georgia, 4 sisters meet to create a household quilt to honor their not too long ago deceased mom.”
MCNEAL
The place: Lincoln Middle’s Vivian Beaumont
What: Jacob McNeal (portrayed by Robert Downey Jr.) is a enormously revered author, however beneath the acclaim are unresolved grievances, household estrangement, and an unsettling fascination with Synthetic Intelligence.
When: September 5 – November 24. Opening September 30.
Why: Sure, Robert Downey Jr. is making his Broadway debut, and for his followers, I’m certain that’s the draw. For me, it’s playwright Ayad Akhtar, whose previous performs (the Pulitzer-winning “Disgraced”, “Junk”, The Invisible Hand), in addition to his novel “Homeland Elegies”, have taken on huge societal questions with mental rigor and dramatic depth.
Associated: Synthetic Intelligence is within the combine as properly within the Builders Affiliation’s “Atlas Drugged” at NYU Skirball, which they describe as: “The benzedrine rants of Ayn Rand meet Synthetic Intelligence meet electoral politics.” And considerably associated, two performs about robots: We Are Your Robots at Polonsky Shakespeare Middle and MAYBE HAPPY ENDING on Broadway a couple of relationship between two robots (Darren Criss being one of many robots.)
A Girl Amongst Ladies
The place: Bushwick Starr
What: A riff off of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” – “difficult the viewers to take part within the making of a tragic hero, expertise her Aristotelian fall from grace, and interrogate the that means of collective catharsis.”
When: October 15 – November 3. Opening October 19.
Why: The primary present to open within the Bushwick Starr’s new everlasting house, that is one in all author Julia Could Jonas’s 5 performs that reimagine male-dominated basic dramas largely from a feminine perspective (The performs are Lengthy Day’s Journey into Night time, True West, American Buffalo, Zoo Story – and now All My Sons.). This can be a excessive idea that I’m frankly skeptical the playwright can pull off as theater that works by itself, however intrigued to see her try.
Within the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot
The place: Playwrights Horizons
What: Because the oceans rise, a band of queer warehouse staff journey from job to job, operating from the encroaching shoreline. Written by Sarah Mantell. Directed by Sivan Battat
When: October 10 – November 17. Opening October 29.
Why: Winner of the 2023 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (“oldest and largest playwriting prize honoring ladies+”) it manages to tackle queer growing older, capitalism, local weather change, the apocalypse – and falling in love.
Associated: Working Theater, the one skilled theater in New York that’s by, for and in regards to the working class, is celebrating its 40th season underneath a brand new creative director (who I simply interviewed to debate performs about staff and dealing life, and who really useful Mantell’s play.)
Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!
What: Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins tries to purchase Carmelita Tropicana from the performer who created this persona, Alina Troyano, in a bit that’s described as “half intergenerational debate in regards to the legacy of “downtown” New York, half theatrical interrogation of the makes use of/abuses of nostalgia, actual property, “illustration”, and the “avant-garde.” It’s co-written by Alina Troyano and stars Carmelita Tropicana.
When: October 23-December 1. Opening November 6.
The place: SoHo Rep
Why: I don’t totally perceive the outline; I think I’ll be exasperated by this manufacturing, as I’ve been prior to now by a few of Jacobs-Jenkins’ most experimental work. However this can be a playwright with a wide-ranging creativeness and complicated understanding of American tradition. When his performs work – as “Applicable” did so astonishingly on Broadway final season – it drives house simply how mandatory it’s for any critical theatergoer to catch no matter he’s engaged on.
Talking of nostalgia: “Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!” is the final present at SoHo Rep’s 65-seat theater; they’re packing up after thirty-three years, and transferring in briefly with Playwrights Horizons.
TAMMY FAYE
The place: The Palace
What: A musical in regards to the life and profession of televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker
When: First Preview: October 19, 2024. Opening: November 14, 2024
Why: The primary Broadway musical by Elton John since “Billy Elliott” was hailed when it debuted in London two years in the past as campy enjoyable that additionally makes an effort to put the unusual story within the context of the rise in affect and ugliness of the Christian Proper. The much-praised Katie Brayben within the title position is making her Broadway debut.
GYPSY
The place: Broadway’s Majestic Theater
What:The sixth Broadway manufacturing of the 1959 musical by Jule Styne (music), Arthur Laurents (ebook) and Stephen Sondheim (lyrics) primarily based on the biography of the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, however centered on her stage mom Rose, which on this manufacturing is portrayed by Audra McDonald, essentially the most celebrated stage actress of her era.
When: First preview November 21. Opening December 19
Why: It’s Audra.
Associated: Divas dominate the Fall season, former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond within the second Broadway revival of SUNSET BOULEVARD; Patti LuPone vs. Mia Farrow in THE ROOMMATE; Megan Hilty vs.Jennifer Simard within the musical adaptation of the film DEATH BECOMES HER
Associated