Off Broadway shows, reviews, tickets and listings

The playwright Jordan Harrison memorably peered into the possibilities of technology in the prescient A.I. drama Marjorie Prime, a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize. Now he ventures back to the future in a play that imagines how post-human cultures might look back on the way we live now. The world premiere at Playwrights Horizons—a coproduction with Chicago's Goodman Theatre—is co-directed by David Cromer and Caitlin Sullivan; the cast of nine is made up of Cindy Cheung, Marchánt Davis, Layan Elwazani, Andrew Garman, Aria Shahghasemi, Kristen Sieh, Ryan Spahn, Julius Rinzel and Amelia Workman.

The Irish Rep gathers three short works by Nobel savage Samuel Beckett in a tryptich directed by the company's own Ciarán O’Reilly. The always compelling F. Murray Abraham (Amadeus) stars as a bitter man reflecting on his wasted life as he listens to recordings he made 30 years earlier in the evening's longest piece, Krapp's Last Tape (1958). That show is preceded by a pair of stark curtain-raisers: Not I (1972), a mouth-running monologue performed by Sarah Street; and Play (1964), in which Street, Roger Dominic Casey and Kate Forbes play a trio of inurned figures who babble about their love triangle. 

Mamma mia! That's a spicy comedy! Matthew Lombardo's one-act two-hander, party inspired by his own experience, traces the volatile relationship between a formidable Italian-American woman and her less self-assured son gay son. Caroline Aaron (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) and Matt Doyle (Company) share the stage, directed by Noah Himmelstein.

Christian Slater and Calista Flockhart play the parents in the latest revival of Sam Shepard's 1978 dysfunctional-family play, a dark satire of the American Dream set on a crumbling California farm. Scott Elliott directs the production for his New Group, with a supporting cast that comprises Cooper Hoffman, David Anzuelo, Kyle Beltran, Jeb Kreager and Stella Marcus.

NAATCO, also known as the National Asian American Theatre Co., presents an all-Asian, all-female adaptation of one of Shakespeare's final plays: a convoluted romance (and possible self-parody) that takes one of the Bard’s favorite plot twists—fake death—to a new degree of absurdity. Stephen Brown-Fried directs the world premiere of Andrea Thome's modern verse "translation" of the text, which was commissioned by Play On Shakespeare; the cast of 11 includes Jennifer Lim, Amy Hill, Maria-Christina Oliveras, KK Moggie, Anna Ishida, Jeena Yi and Julyana Soelistyo.

Wakka Wakka, the modern puppet company behind the madly audacious Made in China and The Immortal Jellyfish Girl, strings out another darkly comical epic by writer-directors Gwendolyn Warnock and Kirjan Waage. This time the setting is the underworld, and the central figures are a pair of skeletons whose deterioration takes an unexpected turn. The show is presented under the aegis of this year's Under the Radar festival. 

Veteran playwright Ken Ludwig (Lend Me a Tenor) digs through his parents' mail in a two-person epistolary drama inspired by his own family's correspondence. Michael Liebhauser and Alexandra Fortin play pen pals who exchange letters during World War II—he's a military doctor, she's a would-be actress in New York—and hope to connect in real life. Stephen Nachamie directs. 

The jokes are well-worn but the costumes are worn well in this campy new musical, which is exactly what you'd expect: high heels, big hair, sassy one-liners and enough RuPaul’s Drag Race contestants to fill their own season. The script—by Tomas Costanza, Ashley Gordon and Justin Andrew Honard (a.k.a. Alaska Thunderf**k)—provides a fishnet-thin plot about two rival drag clubs facing different sets of troubles. But Marco Marco’s sculptural outfits are bejeweled works of art, the wigs are amazing and director-choreographer Spencer Liff works in some terrific hairography. The current cast includes Jimbo and Nick Adams. 

Role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons are inherently theatrical: The players are all playing roles, after all. But the idea of building an actual stage show around the game—an entirely improvised one, guided by audience suggestions and decisions—seems, well, a little dicey. But an element of the unexpected is one of the things that makes this goofy fantasy show such fun. Whether or not you know much about D&D going in, it’s an adventuring party you won't want to miss.—Shaye Weaver

The 2025 season of City Center’s invaluable Encores! concert series begins with Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann's 2002 musical satire Urinetown, which imagines a dystopian future in which downtrodden citizens must line up and pay to urinate—until one brave young man refuses to mind his queues and pees. Jordan Fisher and Stephanie Styles play the juvenile leads, flanked by grade-A cast of comic gold miners that includes Rainn Wilson, Keala Settle, Taran Killam, Jeff Hiller, Kevin Cahoon, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Greg Hildreth and Tiffany Mann. Teddy Bergman directs, and Mary-Mitchell Campbell wields the baton. 

The dramatic archeologists of the Mint Theater Company bring another obscure play to light: a 1915 political satire by the British playwright Harold Brighouse (Hobson's Choice), in which a working-class Mancunian with a gift for oratory stands for election to the House of Commons. Matt Dickson directs the play's quite extremely overdue New York debut, which features Daniel Marconi in the title role. 

Signature Theatre resident playwright Samuel D. Hunter (The Whale) has been justly celebrated for a suite of sensitive works that focus on crises of self-knowledge and connection in rural Idaho. This time, Paul Sparks and Brian J. Smith play half-brothers—one of whom has moved to the Netherlands—who communicate long-distance to address their mother's failing health. Jack Serio directs the world premiere.

Gary Gulman, one of the country's leading stand-up comics, took a brave dive into the deep end in his 2019 special The Great Depresh, which examined his struggle with depression. His public self-analysis continues in an autobiographical solo comedy that retraces the roads that have led him where he is today. Moritz von Stuelpnagel (Hand to God) directs the Off Broadway premiere. 

The eminent Shakespearean actor and scholar Dakin Matthews adapts the two parts of Henry IV into one long three-act history play. Matthews also plays the title role, and Elijah Jones is his restless heir, Hal, who falls in with a feckless crowd. The plum role of Hal's principal bad influence, the expansive and mendacious Sir John Falstaff, falls to the reliably marvelous Jay O. Sanders (Uncle Vanya). The cast of 16 also includes James Udom as Henry "Hotspur" Percy—Hal's heated rival for his father's affections—and Cara Ricketts as his wife. Bedlam's Eric Tucker directs for TFANA. 

The Syrian-Palestinian writer-performer Khawla Ibraheem, who is based in the Golan Heights—part of the territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War—stars in her own solo drama about a mother in Gaza dealing with everyday challenges while preparing for the worst. Oliver Butler (What the Constitution Means to Me) directs this coproduction of New York Theatre Workshop and piece by piece productions, which is presented as part of the 2025 Under the Radar festival. 

Robin Lord Taylor (Gotham) plays Tennessee Williams and Brandon Flynn (13 Reasons Why) is Marlon Brando in Gregg Ostrin's drama, which explores the dynamic between playwright and star during the creation of A Streetcar Named Desire. Colin Hanlon directs the NYC debut of the play, which takes place in Provincetown in 1947 and costars Alison Cimmet and Sebastian Treviño as, respectively, director Margo Jones and Williams's macho lover and muse Pancho Rodriguez.

The versatile playwright Bess Wohl (Small Mouth Sounds) looks at Ohio women's dreams of liberation in two time periods—1970 and fifty years later—in a world premiere directed for the Roundabout by Whitney White (Jaja's African Hair Braiding). The highly promising cast comprises Betsy Aidem, Susannah Flood, Kristolyn Lloyd, Adina Verson, Irene Sofia Lucio, Audrey Corsa, Kayla Davion and Charlie Thurston.

Audience members choose their own paths through a specially designed multifloor complex in the Financial District in this all-new immersive theatrical experience from Emursive, the producers of Punchdrunk's Sleep No More. Dozens of performers evoke life in the Gilded Age through narratives loosely inspired by real New York City history as well as literary sources like the Faust legend and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. Teddy Bergman directs the show, which is written by Jon Ronson and features scenic design Gabriel Hainer Evansohn and costumes by Emilio Sosa.

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The ever-inventive theater company Bedlam lays claim to its new home at the Upper West Side's West End Theatre with an immersive staging of an original country jukebox musical built around songs by J.T. Harding, who has written hits for artists including Keith Urban, Kenny Chesney and Uncle Kracker. Peter Zinn's script centers on a pair of songwriters, played by Stephen Michael Spencer and Casey Shler, whose hardscrabble aspirations are obstructed in different ways by the drug epidemic and other challenges. Bedlam honcho Eric Tucker directs the New York premiere. 

Rotating casts of dynamos star in a new comedy by View master Joy Behar that looks at love, marriage and the end of both. Behar herself anchors the first cast (Jan 29–Feb 23) alongside Tovah Feldshuh, Susie Essman and Adrienne C. Moore. The second (Feb 26–Mar 23) comprises Susan Lucci, Cathy Moriarty, Tonya Pinkins and Judy Gold; the third (Mar 26–Apr 20) includes Veanne Cox, Jackie Hoffman and Andrea Navedo, joined by Gina Gershon at the start of April. Randal Myler directs the world premiere. 

In the manner of A.R. Gurney's Love Letters, rotating pairs of veteran actors co-star in Michael Griffo's epistolary two-hander, which traces the long-distance friendship between two women (one American, the other British) over the course of five decades, starting in the 1950s. Nancy McKeon (The Facts of Life) and Gail Winar (Trans Scripts) share the stage on January 18; after that come Mary Beth Piel and Ellen McLaughlin (Jan 20–26), Kate Burton and Pauletta Washington (Jan 25–Feb 2) and McKeon and Johanna Day (Feb 3–9). SuzAnne Barabas directs. 

The Civilians, one of Off Broadway's most consistently clever and original troupes, returns with a new docutheater work assembled—by conceiver-director Steve Cosson and Jocelyn Clarke—out of archival 1970s radio interviews with avant-garde artists (including many from WNYC's& Arts Forum). The five performers—Robert M. Johanson, Jennifer Morris, Joshua David Robinson, Maya Sharpe and Colleen Werthmann—received their lines through headphones, allowing them to channel the words and speech patterns of such outside-the-box creators as Harry Smith, Yvonne Rainer, Kenneth Anger and Babette Mangolte.

Melissa Gilbert (Little House on the Prairie) and Mark Moses (Desperate Housewives) play ex-lovers whose reunion, after 30 years, is complicated by a political divide: He is running for Congress as a Republican, and she is a liberal with a past that could hurt him. Colt Coeur's Adrienne Campbell-Holt directs this return engagement of Lia Romeo's two-hander, which she also directed last year with different actors.