Off Broadway shows, reviews, tickets and listings

Five college girls face a big test of their friendship when they stay up together to polish off their final coursework in Natalie Margolin's new play, directed by Jaki Bradley. Expect, if not outright slumber-party games, at least some Adderall-driven version of Truth or Dare. Tony nominees Julia Lester (Into the Woods) and Kathryn Gallagher (Jagged Little Pill) share the stage with Kristine Froseth, Havana Rose Liu and Alyah Chanelle Scott in the world premiere.

Patrick Bringley performs a stage adaptation of his bestselling 2020 memoir, All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me, in which he recounts the personal discoveries he made while working as security guard at the Met after quitting his job at the New Yorker in the wake of his brother's death. England's Dominic Dromgoole, who ran the Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London for a decade, directs the Off Broadway premiere.

Jonathan Silverstein directs the world premiere of Adam Kwon's chamber musical, the first tuner to be commisioned by Silverstein's Keen Company. Fresh from his fast-singing turn as the panicky gay groom in the national tour of Company, Matt Rodin stars as a small-town high school teacher in the 1990s whose efforts to help an ambitious theater kid run afoul of the local church. The rest of the cast comprises Jon-Michael Reese, Eliza Pagelle and the versatile Broadway leading lady Elizabeth Stanley (Jagged Little Pill).

Tommy Dorfman (Romeo + Juliet) plays the trans scion of a Hassidic rabbinical dynasty in Emil Weinstein's stage adaptation of Abby Chava Stein's 2019 memoir. Tyne Rafaeli (Selling Kabul) directs the Off Broadway premiere for New York Theatre Workshop, which is presented offsite at Abrons Arts Center.

Broadway favorite Norm Lewis (Porgy and Bess) stars as a 1950s barber who gets caught up in the small-time crookery of his dubious sons in Lonnie Elder III's drama, a critical and popular success in 1969. The seasoned Clinton Turner Davis directs this rare New York revival, the play's first in 40 years; James Foster Jr., Jeremiah Packer, Calvin M. Thompson and Bryce Michael Wood complete the main cast.

Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s path-breaking 1970 musical, about love and marriage and whether the twain can meet, is the show that made Sondheim's reputation as the voice of new American musical theater. It is mounted frequently in New York, most recently in an excellent 2021 Broadway revival; this more modest production, by Brooklyn's Theater 2020, is directed by David Fuller and stars Gavin Kenny as the commitment-averse main character, Bobby, a thirtysomething bachelor surrounded by couples.  

There lived a certain man, in Russia long ago, who was big and strong (in his eyes, a flaming glow); most people looked at him with terror and with fear, but to Moscow chicks, he was such a lovely dear. We speak, of course, of the libertine faith healer Grigori "Rah Rah" Rasputin, the so-called mad monk who insinuated himself into the Romanov court in the waning years of imperial Russia until a conspiracy of aristocrats finally managed to have him killed. The female-led troupe Artemis Is Burning invites audiences—who are encouraged to wear black—to relive those heady days of decadence and treachery in an immersive performance in the atmospheric environs of Governors Island. Set Ashley Brett Chipman conceived the show and also directs it with former Sleep No More resident director Hope Youngblood, with assistance from Julia Sharpe; those three women also cowrote the script with David Campbell. James Finnemore is the choreographer. (The ticket price includes ferry trips to the island and back.) 

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 Alaska, Nick Adams and Adam Pascal.—Melissa Rose Bernardo

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

Space colonists on a distant planet—some of them human, others not—are shaken and stirred by sensual alien objects in this avant-garde multimedia theater piece and installation by Poland's Łukasz Twarkowski, adapted from Olga Ravn's 2020 sci-fi novel. Performances are in Polish with English surtitles; the production includes strobe lights, very loud music and, as is traditional at Skirball Center presentations, nudity.  

The supreme Elizabeth Marvel returns plays a fashion photographer on a disastrous shoot for the cover of Vogue in a new dark comedy by Caitlin Saylor Stephens, set on a European estate after the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Di. Morgan Green directs the play's world premiere at Lincoln Center Theater's intimate Claire Tow space, with an all-female cast that also includes Stella Everett, Maia Novi, Britne Oldford, Sarah Marie Rodriguez and Madeline Wise.

The expert Jack O'Brien directs the latest revival of Henrik Ibsen's once-scandalous 1882 play about the roots of deadly social disease, a classic indictment of bourgeois hypocrisy. Stage A-listers Lily Rabe, Billy Crudup and Hamish Linklater star opposite second-generation acting stars Levon Hawke and Ella Beatty in this Lincoln Center Theater production, which marks the New York debut of a new translation by Ireland's Mark O’Rowe. 

Caryl Churchill (Cloud Nine) is among the finest, strangest and most wonderful playwrights in the English language, so it's always a treat to get something new from her. This time it's a quartet of mostly short experimental works that debuted to acclaim at London's Royal Court Theatre in 2019 and 2021: Glass, about a girl made of, you guessed it, glass; Kill, a monologue for the bloodstained Gods of Olympus; What If If Only, in which a grieving man receives a strange visitation; and the longest piece, Imp, in which an elderly woman threatens to unleash a magical spirit in a bottle. Churchill's frequent collaborator James Macdonald (Escaped Alone) directs.

Eliya Smith's new play, which spies on teenagers at a summer camp in Virginia, was scheduled for January before it got delayed by labor pains at the Atlantic.  Now it resurfaces with most of its original actors—Arjun Athalye, Maaike Laanstra-Corn, Jack DiFalco, Alden Harris-McCoy, Renée-Nicole Powell, Lark White and Danny Wolohan—now joined by Grace Brennan and Dominic Gross. Les Waters (Dana H.) directs the world premiere.

Ryan J. Haddad burst onto the NYC performance scene in 2015 with Hi, Are You Single?, his one-man show about being a horny gay man with cerebral palsy. Ten years later, the funny and talented writer-performer offers a sequel of sorts to that show, perhaps addressing how he has changed in the intervening decade, during which he has raised his profile significantly as an actor (including with a recurring role on The Politician) and won an Obie for Best New American Play for his 2023 show Dark Disabled Stories. Danny Sharron directs this Playwrights Horizons offering. 

Stage master David Greenspan (I'm Looking for Helen Twelvetrees) applies his golden archness to by Mona Pirnot's comedy about life as a downtown playwright. Greenspan plays a quartet of millennial women, under the guidance of director Ken Rus Schmoll (A Map of Virtue). Delayed by a strike at the Atlantic earlier this year, the show is now back on track for an April run.

Where better to send up the conventions of Irish drama than at the Irish Rep? Derry Girls star Saoirse-Monica Jackson and the estimable Kate Burton lead the cast of Ciara Elizabeth Smyth's world-premiere comedy, about a Dublin theater troupe that gets its Irish up when the writer of its Broadway-bound production strays too far from the tried-and-true path of commercial plays from the Emerald Isle. Nicola Murphy Dubey directs the show, which has been in development at the Irish Rep for several years, and Kevin Oliver Lynch, Brenda Meaney and Angela Reed round out the ensemble. 

The J2 Spotlight Musical Theater Company, which stages short runs of underexposed musicals from Broadway's past, continues its fifth season with this bouzouki-heavy 1968 musical adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis's novel (and Michael Cacoyannis's film) about a bookish young man who befriends an earthy Greek peasant. Book writer Joseph Stein was coming off Fiddler on the Roof when he created this show with composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb, who were coming off Cabaret; though not by any metric as successful as those shows, Zorba had a respectable nine-month run, was revived in 1983 and contributed one song—the declaratory "Life Is"—to the standard repertoire of older nightclub singers. J2 cofounder Robert W. Schneider directs a cast led by Jeremy Radin, Quinn Corcoran, Catherine LeFrere, Katie Claire McGrath and Elora Von Rosch.

Writers Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley and director Rory Pelsue are the Fake Friends gang behind 2020's uproarious Circle Jerk, a Charles Ludlam–style satirical farce about technology and white supremacy that was a surprise finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Expect wild things from their follow-up at the New Group: an original musical that envisions a trio of Gen Zers on a quest to track down a missing pop star from the 2000s. The cast of the world premiere includes Sara Gettelfinger, Natalie Walker, Patrick Nathan Falk, Keri René Fuller, Luke Islam and the distinctive Milly Shapiro, who shared an honorary 2013 Tony Award for Matilda and famously lost her head in Hereditary.

Whitney White has become one of the industry's leading directors, earning a Tony noms for last season's Jaja's African Hair Braiding and helming Liberation at the Roundabout this spring. In April, however, she takes center stage as the writer and performer of this musical dive into the dark soul (and R&B and gospel and pop and rock) of Lady Macbeth, as seen therough a lens of Black womanhood. The play is directed by Tyler Dobrowsky and Taibi Magar, the married artistic directors of Philadelphia Theatre Company, where the musical was seen in 2023; Raja Feather Kelly is the choreographer, and Charlie Thurston (who is in the cast of Liberation) reprises his role as Macbeth. 

Three Black artists from different disciplines, cultures and generations compete for attention and opportunity at an international conference for artists of the African diaspora. WP Theater partners with Colt Coeur to present the world premiere of Francisca Da Silveira's drama; Ato Essandoh, Nedra Marie Taylor and Nimene Sierra Wureh play the clashing trio. To ensure greater access, tickets are sold at pay-what-you-can prices (from $30–$100) and a row of very good seats is priced at $10 for each performance. 

The Time Square Edition's Paradise Club gives itself over to lunacy in this immersive neocirque extravaganza. Conceived by Lara Jacobs Rigolo, the show combines dance, acrobatics, aerialism, music and visual spectacle to salute 13 ancient goddesses of the moon. Tickets purchased individually at the Medusa level have a $40 drink minimum; the fancier Salome level, available for parties of five to seven, includes a thematically related multicourse preshow dinner curated by John Fraser, formerly of the Michelin-starred restaurant Dovetail.

Zip Zap Circus visits the New Vic with a distinctively South African show that infuses circus arts (such as aerialism, Cyr wheel and juggling) and local dance forms (such as gumboot and pantsula) with the generous communitarian spirit known in Bantu cultures as ubuntu. Founded in 1992, the troupe draws performers from its youth and outreach programs in the Cape Town area. Families can participate in free lobby activities for 45 minutes before every show and 20 minutes after. 

As Agatha Christie's crime novels shift into public domain, we can expect a lot more stage adaptations of her mysteries than the ones she authorized or wrote herself. Here, Brenda Bell tees up 1923's The Murder on the Links, a whodunnit set on a French golf course and featuring the fussy Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Although the book is subpar by Christie standards, perhaps this swing at it will make it work. Shino Frances directs a cast of 12 for Bell's Be Bold! Productions.

Rotating casts of dynamos star in a new comedy by View master Joy Behar that looks at love, marriage and the end of both. The cast through April 20 includes Veanne Cox, Jackie Hoffman, Carolyn McCormick and Andrea Navedo; they'll be followed by Marilu Henner, Marsha Mason, Benji K Thomas and Julia Sweeney (Apr 23–May 18). Behar herself will guest star at Wednesday matinees starting April 30 (when she'll be joined by Whoopi Goldberg).

Julia Barry Bell explores the sixth sense (and, perhaps, The Sixth Sense) in a paranormal family drama about a mother who comes to believe that 10-year-old son can see dead people—inspired, the playwright says, by real events. The cast includes Jenny Strassburg and Brandon Jones as the parents, Appropriate's Lincoln Cohen as the kid and stage vet Brenda Braxton as the psychic who guides them into ESP enlightenment. 

A teenage girl transforms into a superpowered warrior to defend the Earth from a Dark Kingdom queen and her minions in a live musical inspired by the the popular 1990s manga heroine. Written and directed by Kaori Miura, and featuring music by Go Sakabe and the mononymic Kyohei, the show largely hews to the arc of the first season of the Sailor Moon anime series. Live actors in colorful costumes sing and dance in front of animated graphics on large screens, yielding what the production calls "a 2.5D musical experience." (Performances are in Japanese with English subtitles.)

Company XIV's seductive take on Alice in Wonderland is a singular sexcess: a transporting fusion of haute burlesque, circus, dance and song. Impresario Austin McCormick has assembled an array of alluring and highly skilled artists, who look smashing in Zane Pihlstrom's lace-and-crystal-encrusted costumes. With its soundtrack of pop songs, attractive ensemble cast and immersive aesthetics—plus chocolate and specialty cocktails—Queen of Hearts feels like Moulin Rouge! for actual bohemians. Hell, it even has a cancan.—Raven Snook

Warehouse workers reenact legends of their high-school heydays, which loosely correspond to myths from The Iliad, in an original synthwave musical written and composed by Loading Dock Theater's Leegrid Stevens, with an ear to evoking 1980s nostalgia via vintage instruments and tape loops. The gender-fluid cast of 16, directed by Eric Paul Vitale, includes Daphne Always, Deshja Driggs, Arya Grace Gaston, Max Raymond, Jen Rondeau and Loading Dock co-founder Erin B. Treadway (Spaceman). 

Playwright-performers Emma Horwitz (Mary Gets Hers) and Bailey Williams (Buffalo Bailey’s Ranch for Gay Horses, Troubled Teen Girls and Other)—who are also partners in real life—perform a surreal comic lesbian fantasia that involves file boxes, alien abduction and a mysterious visitor to a pet store. Tara Elliott directs the premiere, which is coproduced by Rattlestick Theater and New Georges.

The extraordinary Andrew Scott stars in Simon Stephens's modernized solo adaptation of Uncle Vanya. There's a lot of misery to track in Anton Chekhov's 1897 masterwork, but  Scott, director Sam Yates and designer Rosanna Vize keep everything elegantly sorted; they're unafraid of long silences and negative space. And Scott shuffles the roles with gorgeous finesse; the dexterity of his hand is equaled by the gentleness of his touch. A show like Vanya telescopes the empathy at the core of theater’s appeal: how audience members can see themselves in many different people, and how actors can find many people in themselves.—Adam Feldman

Joshua Harmon (Prayer for the French Republic) reteams with his Significant Other director, Trip Cullman, for a new dark comedy in which original Into the Woods star Joanna Gleason plays a dying woman who asks her young playwright grandson—played by Andrew Barth Feldman, an estwhile Evan Hansen—to write a vicious dramatic exposé of their family. The estimable Jeanine Serralles (Catch as Catch Can) is also in the cast of the play's world premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club.