Seasons don’t have themes. Scores of reveals will open this fall from Broadway to Off-Off, however no shadowy group meets to decree a season message. Even so, it was exhausting to disregard a sure XX-shaped sample rising: girls and energy. Greater than half of the reveals in our fall preview focus on girls’s points (reproductive rights, consent, motherhood) or showcase a robust feminine lead (Norma Desmond, Ayn Rand, Mama Rose). It could’t probably have something to do with a sure November election, might it? Regardless, girls are middle stage. (So are avant-garde icons: Richard Foreman, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Builders Affiliation, Elevator Restore Service.) Take a look at the listing and get tickets earlier than the present sells out. Oh, and vote.
Jack Tucker: Comedy Standup Hour on the Connelly Theatre (September 3–13)
If you happen to attend stand-up comedy, you’ve in all probability seen folks bomb. Additionally, you’ve seen them kill. Jack Tucker, the flop-sweat-spraying alter ego of Zack Zucker, does each. On this excellent collision of stand-up and clowning, Tucker is a intentionally pathetic species of male comic: attempting to tread the road between edgy and woke—and stumbling throughout it. The enjoyable is watching Tucker spiral into determined failure amid extremely dense and humorous sound results (air horns, gunshots, music samples). Each punch line is aimed squarely at his personal face.
McNeal on the Vivian Beaumont Theater (September 5–November 24)
MCU MVP Robert Downey, Jr. makes his Broadway debut within the new tech drama by Ayad Akhtar (Disgraced). No stranger to taking part in cocky, sensible, but flawed males, Downey is Jacob McNeal, a feisty, macho, old-guard novelist (assume Philip Roth) who develops an obsession with Synthetic Intelligence. Is the literary lion prowling for recent meat on-line? We’ll see when the Lincoln Middle Theater manufacturing, directed by Bartlett Sher, opens.
The Ask on the Wild Venture (September 6–28)
Savvy and twisty playwright Matthew Freeman explores the advanced politics of giving—like donating wealth to nonprofit organizations—on this two-hander starring stage vet Betsy Aidem (Prayer for the French Republic) and Colleen Litchfield (Leopoldstadt). Aidem is a rich Higher West Sider who locks horns with a Gen Z fundraiser from the ACLU visiting her to solicit a giant reward. The generational fight is refereed by ace director Jessi D. Hill.
Blood of the Lamb at 59E59 (September 14–October 20)
Abortion has been a divisive subject for many years in America, however with a right-leaning Supreme Court docket and social conservatives scorching to control girls’s our bodies, the stakes couldn’t be greater. Enter Arlene Hutton’s prescient and highly effective post-Roe drama, through which two girls face off in a Texas airport. One’s pregnant, the opposite is a court-appointed lawyer representing the girl’s unborn fetus. Margot Bordelon directs the formidable Johanna Day (Sweat) and Meredith Garretson (Syfy’s Resident Alien).
Security Not Assured on the BAM Harvey Theater (September 17–October 20)
Primarily based on the quirky 2012 movie starring Aubrey Plaza and Mark Duplass, this new musical hopes to take audiences on a sci-fi journey (of types). Nkeki Obi-Melekwe performs a journalist investigating a categorized advert that seeks volunteers for time journey. Taylor Trensch (Expensive Evan Hansen) is the would-be wormholer and Lee Sunday Evans (Dance Nation) directs. Songs are by alt-rocker Ryan Miller (of the band Guster).
Sundown Boulevard on the St. James Theatre (previews September 28; opens October 20)
That is fairly the season for radical takes on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s decidedly un-radical musicals. This summer time introduced CATS: The Jellicle Ball to PAC/NYC, which turned the feline blockbuster right into a Queer Ballroom pageant. Now director Jamie Lloyd (Hedda Gabler) applies his Eurochic minimalism to the bombastic adaptation of the Hollywood basic. Ex-Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger wraps herself within the light glamour of Norma Desmond.
Shit. Meet. Fan. at MCC Theater (October 10–November 17)
Satire isn’t lifeless in these hypersensitive occasions; it simply wants a vigorous shaking. That’s the place writer-director Robert O’Hara is available in. The gifted button-pusher behind Bootycandy and Barbecue has tailored the 2017 Italian movie Good Strangers for this dinner-party comedy. A bunch of associates play a sport the place any textual content or cellphone name they obtain is shared with the remainder of the visitors. Cue a flood of embarrassing secrets and techniques and explosive betrayals.
Tooth at New World Levels (previews October 16; opens October 31)
After a buzzy run at Playwrights Horizons this spring, this musical horror-comedy about Christianity and feminine empowerment tries a business run. Petite powerhouse Alyse Alan Louis returns within the position of Daybreak, a Purity teenager attempting to remain chaste for Jesus, who discovers that hanky-panky brings out a fanged monster, um, down there. The catchy and raunchy rating is by Anna Ok. Jacobs (music) and Michael R. Jackson (lyrics). Sarah Benson can be again to restage the gory and blasphemous silliness at New World Levels.
A Girl Amongst Ladies on the Bushwick Starr (October 16–November 10)
Kind-bending playwright Julia Might Jonas had a success within the fiction world along with her subversive campus novel Vladimir; now she’s again with a “response play” bouncing off Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. Turning the main focus from responsible white males to girls and moms, Jonas undermines our assumptions about catharsis and tragic heroes. This New Georges and Bushwick Starr coproduction takes place on the Starr’s brand-spanking new house.
Dying Turns into Her on the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre (previews October 23; opens November 21)
The 1992 F/X-heavy comedy returns as a musical campfest and twin automobile for Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard, taking part in a few looks-obsessed Hollywood frenemies. These aware of the Robert Zemeckis film (anchored by Meryl Road and Goldie Hawn), will know the twist (and we’re not simply speaking Madeline’s damaged neck): a magical potion that confers everlasting life—even when the flesh itself is lifeless and rotting. Director/choreographer Christopher Gattelli has the duty of translating grotesque visible gags to the stage.
Atlas Drugged on the Skirball Middle for the Performing Arts (October 25–27)
Spectacular video set up + dense social subject: for many years that’s been the essential formulation of the Builders Affiliation, the singular multimedia troupe led by director Marianne Weems. This time, the Builders are splicing collectively sport reveals, nationwide politics, and Synthetic Intelligence—all in service of dissecting Ayn Rand’s fascist-libertarian doorstop, Atlas Shrugged. They’ve even created a composite character operating for President: AI Rand. Deliver your Republican pal. Deliver your technophile pal. Hell, convey them each and argue in regards to the present at a bar after.
King Lear at The Shed (October 26–December 15)
There was no Shakespeare in Central Park this summer time, for the reason that Public was renovating the Delacorte. If you happen to’re hard-up for the Bard, get your repair on the Shed, the place Kenneth Branagh will headline a brand new model of the tragedy a few highly effective previous ruler who received’t let go of energy. Aside from Branagh’s crisp and authoritative line readings and Stonehenge-y visuals, this Lear reduce (which beforehand performed in London) runs just below two hours.
GATZ on the Public Theater (November 1–December 1)
Talking of cuts, there’s not a single phrase omitted from Elevator Restore Service’s now-legendary staging of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Nice Gatsby. Getting shut to twenty years previous, this astonishing daylong efficiency returns to the Public, the place it made its NYC debut in 2010. Director John Collins and an outstanding ensemble (led by Scott Shepherd, who memorized the Jazz Age novel) channel the e-book with a mix of winking literalism and intensely resourceful interpretation, letting Fitzgerald’s glittering prose mild up drab fashionable life.
Gypsy on the Majestic Theatre (previews November 21; opens December 19)
Audra Mcdonald, with six Tony Awards already a legend, makes historical past as the primary Black actress to play Mama Rose. The truth is, all the George C. Wolfe manufacturing reconceives the Jule Styne–Stephen Sondheim–Arthur Laurents basic because the story of Black and biracial performers attempting to make it in a segregated America.
No President on the Skirball Middle for the Performing Arts (December 5–7)
Theatrical pranksters of the very best order, the Nature Theater of Oklahoma (headed by Pavol Liška and Kelly Copper) smushes collectively Tchaikovsky’s effervescent rating for The Nutcracker with a demented situation involving rival safety firms who come to blows attempting to guard (checks notes) a really invaluable theater curtain. One aspect is fashioned of ex-actors; the opposite of ex-ballet dancers. Anticipate so-bad-it’s-good ballet strikes.
Suppose Lovely Madeline Harvey at La MaMa E.T.C. (December 12–22)
It’s been 11 years since avant-garde titan Richard Foreman offered certainly one of his trademark nightmare dioramas through which every thing and nothing is smart (Outdated-Normal Prostitutes on the Public). Now comes new efficiency textual content, however Foreman’s not directing. The corporate Object Assortment ushers on this noirish, absurdist romance, tailored and directed by Kara Feely with authentic music by Travis Simply. Ravishing downtown star Maggie Hoffman takes on the title position, a lady in a café who wonders if she really exists.