Off Broadway shows, reviews, tickets and listings

"Tomorrow" never dies! Thomas Meehan, Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin's beloved 1977 comic-strip musical, last seen on Broadway more than a decade ago, comes back to NYC with the tuneful tale of how a coppertop ragamuffin, her dog and an ultrarich industrialist save each other (and the country) during the Great Depression. For most of the show's holiday stint at Madison Square Garden, EGOT winner and View-master Whoopi Goldberg plays the slatternly, orphan-hating Miss Hannigan. Jenn Thompson, a replacement Pepper in the original Broadway run, directs this touring production.

Dan Butler (Frasier) stars as a middle-aged alcoholic who must get his life together after a DUI arrest in this 12-step comedy by Spike Manton and Chicago radio personality Harry Teinowitz (on whose experience it is loosely based). Jackson Gay directs the Off Broadway premiere of a show that had a successful 2021 run in Chicago under the too-cute title When Harry Met Rehab. Gregg Mozgala, Chiké Johnson, Quentin Nguyễn-duy and Pump Up the Volume's Samantha Mathis play fellow addicts, and Portia is their therapist. 

Marisa Tomei and Arliss Howard play successful music producers whose world is rocked by a new A&R employee, played by Gracie McGraw, who challenges the way things have gone down in their business. Scott Elliott directs the New York premiere of Jessica Goldberg's three-person drama, which marks the beginning of the New Group's 30th-anniversity season. The seasoned alt-rock trio BETTY provides original songs. 

On the high heels of her grand success as Celine Dion in Titanique, the delightful actor-writer Marla Mindelle has created another campy star vehicle for herself: a Schmigadoon!-ish musical about a modern normie who wakes up from a bender to find herself trapped in a 1940s-style Broadway musical. In addition to starring, Mindelle has co-written the book with Jonathan Parks-Ramage and the score with Philip Drennen; her costars include Titanique co-creator Constantine Rousouli as well as Natalie Walker, Paris Nix and the charming SNL alum Alex Moffat. Connor Gallagher serves as director and choreographer.

While Lincoln Center Theater presents Ayad Akhtar's McNeal in its Broadway venue, it is devoting its Off Broadway house to the New York premiere of a play by another recent Pulitzer Prize winner: Katori Hall's 2015 drama about four half-sisters who gather in Georgia to sew a quilt in honor of their late mother, but soon wind up testing the limits of their family bond—especially after the dead woman's will is read. Resident Director Lileana Blain-Cruz (The Skin of Our Teeth) directs a cast of five women: Crystal Dickinson, Mirirai, Adrienne C. Moore, Lauren E. Banks and Susan Kelechi Watson.

The law is a discipline that seems more suited for drama or reality TV, rather than comedy. But Michael Breen and David Rafailedes's Cellino v. Barnes, which follows two real-life personal injury attorneys, will have you howling at the duo’s absurd antics and brash bro-iness. Their famous jingle makes multiple appearances, of course, but what really shines in this dark comedic play is the thoughtful writing and the chemistry of actors Eric William Morris and Noah Weisberg. In an 80-minute show with no intermission, this comedic duo make their case quickly. Our verdict: It’s guilty of being a hilarious success.—Rossilynne Skena Culgan

Irish Rep chieftain Charlotte Moore directs her own concert adaptation of Dylan Thomas's holiday prose poem, buttressed by traditional Irish music, in the company's cozy production, which has become a local yuletide tradition. (It has previously been presented in 2010, 2011, 2015, 2018 and 2022.)

John Kevin Jones goes to the Dickens in this one-hour account of the novelist's classic holiday ghost story, adapted with director Rhonda Dodd. The Merchant's House Museum, formerly the home of a wealthy 19th-century family, provides an atmospheric candlelit setting for Jones's 12th annual engagement. Select performances include a preshow reception at which the audience sips mulled wine and Jones recites Clement Moore's “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”

This hour-long original musical adaptation of Dickens's yuletide fable, created by composer Michael Sgouros and librettist-director Brenda Bell, returns for its 16th year at the West Village's Players Theatre. The updated set is inspired by traditional British panto.

You’ll get a kick out of this holiday stalwart, which still features Santa, wooden soldiers and the dazzling Rockettes. In recent years, new music, more eye-catching costumes and advanced technology have been introduced to bring audience members closer to the performance. But the main attraction remains the Rockettes, whose perfect unison a testament to the disciplined human form. This is precision dancing on a massive scale—a Busby Berkeley number come to glorious life—and it takes your breath away.—Adam Feldman

The Irish Rep presents a second return engagement of its 2016 adaptation of James Joyce's quietly epiphanic short story about a holiday meal in Dublin, staged immersively at an intimate Upper East Side townhouse. Ciarán O'Reilly directs a script by Paul Muldoon and Jean Hanff Korelitz, this time with Christopher Innvar, Kate Baldwin and—as our elderly hostesses, the Morgan sisters—Mary Beth Peil and Úna Clancy.

The witty drag empress Alaska Thunderfuck stars in her own original musical comedy, co-written with Tomas Costanza and Ashley Gordon, about a wigged-out war between a pair of rival drag houses bent on domination. The cast features popular drag performers (Jujubee, Jan Sport, Luxx Noir London, Lagoona Bloo) alongside significant traditional-musical-theater talents (Nick Adams, J. Elaine Marcos, Eddie Korbich, Bre Jackson). Through November 24, the token straight man is played by Joey McIntyre of New Kids on the Block. Prepare to be properly gagged.

Broadway's loyal opposition, Gerard Alessandrini, returns with a new edition of his beloved satirical revue Forbidden Broadway, which has ribbed the Great White Way since 1982. Hell’s Kitchen, The Outsiders, The Great Gatsby, Back to the Future and Merrily We Roll Along are among the targets this time; the cast includes Jenny Lee Stern, Chris Collins-Pisano, Danny Hayward, Nicole Vanessa Ortiz and Fred Barton at the ivories.

Kenneth Lonergan's shaggy but engaging down-home dramedy, about a narcissistic country star whose life falls apart after the death of his mother, got a handsome premiere production at the Atlantic in 2016. Now it returns at the West Village's Lucille Lortel Theatre, directed again by Neil Pepe but with a different leading man: Star Wars baddie and Girls boy Adam Driver, returning to his Off Broadway roots. Three actors from the original cast—Keith Nobbs, Adelaide Clemens and CJ Wilson—are back for another go, this time joined by Heather Burns and Frank Wood. 

Kenneth Branagh plays the foolish title character, one of the great tests of stage mettle—one might say it's the Mama Rose of classical theater—in Shakespeare's great tragedy of being, nothingness and elder abuse. The rest of the cast is made up of fledgling graduates from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; Branagh himself shares directing duties with Rob Ashford and Lucy Skilbeck. As in London last year, the production is set in prehistoric Britain, so expect a lot of fur pelts. 

Kate Hamill has enjoyed considerable success as the star of her own stage adaptations of literary classics including Little Women, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. Now she turns the page from 19th-century novels to delve further back& in history with a bioplay about the Renaissance artist Artemisia Gentileschi, who became a great painter despite the overwhelming obstacle of being a woman in 17th-century Italy. Jade King Carroll directs the play's Off Broadway premiere for Primary Stages, with a cast of six led by Hamill as Artemisia. 

Writer-director John Fisher's musical farce takes us backstage at a campy musical version of Euripides's kill-the-kiddies tragedy, where mayhem ensues when the production's gay star unexpectedly falls in love with his leading lady. Decades after its acclaimed runs in San Francisco and Los Angeles, the show finally makes its New York City debut in an open-ended Off Broadway run with a cast of nine. 

As a companion piece to his production of the harrowing pogrom play Our Class, Arlekin Players Theatre director Igor Golyak sticks around at Classic Stage Company—along with much of that show's cast—with his new adapation of Shakespeare's troublesome Jew-baiting tragicomedy, a cornerstone of literary antisemitism. Richard Topol plays the bloodthirsty usurer Shylock and Alexandra Silber is his nemesis, the high-born and high-minded Portia; they are supported by Class-mates Gus Birney, José Espinosa, Tess Goldwyn and Stephen Ochsner, plus T.R. Knight (Grey's Anatomy) as the titular merchant. 

Vagina dentata! What a wonderful phrase! Vagina dentata ain't no passing craze for the Christian teen played with fearsome abandon by Alyse Alan Louis in this savagely raunchy and gory musical dark comedy, adapted by Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop) and Anna K. Jacobs from the 2007 cult horror flick about a girl with nether regions of doom. After a hit debut at Playwrights Horizons, Sarah Benson's savage production now moves to New World Stages, where supporting actors Will Connolly, Jason Gotay and Jared Loftin are newly joined by Andy Karl.—Adam Feldman

The songs of Québécois nightingale Celine Dion are the stately vessel—or are they the iceberg?—in this campy spoof of James Cameron's 1997 romantic disaster film, written by Marla Mindelle (Sister Act) and Constantine Rousouli (Cruel Intentions) with director Tye Blue. The highly game musical-comedy cast currently includes Dee Roscioli, Michael Williams, Cayleigh Capaldi, Joel Waggoner, Lisa Howard, Tommy Bracco, Brandon Contreras and Marcus Antonio.

Puppet master Jonathan Rockefeller's kaleidoscopic adaptation of Eric Carle’s classic children’s stories is a pure, kid-pleasing joy. The ravenous larva doesn’t appear until the final quarter, but there are plenty of colorful puppets, dancing and music to entrance youngsters until then. Along with the main story, the show dramatizes three other Carle books; a different combo is performed at each show.