Off Broadway shows, reviews, tickets and listings

Steve Cohen, billed as the Millionaires’ Magician, conjures his high-class parlor magic in the marble-columned Madison Room at the swank Lotte New York Palace. Sporting a tuxedo and bright rust hair, the magician delivers routines that he has buffed to a patent-leather gleam.—Adam Feldman

Five classically trained actors gather to perform a Shakespeare play, but this dramatic cocktail is served with a twist: One of them gets boozed up before the show—in the vein of Comedy Central's Drunk History—and hilarity ensues as the four sober cast members try to keep the script on track. 

The prolific Bob and Tobly McSmith, who specialize in silly musicals based on nostalgia objects like Saved by the Bell and Beverly Hills 90210, take a shot at America's favorite six 1990s white people. Assaf Gleizner, who wrote music for the McSmiths' The Office! A Musical Parody, is there for them like he's been there before, and Ryan David Barto directs.

Self-described “bubble scientist” Fan Yang's blissfully disarming act (now performed in New York by his son Deni, daughter Melody and wife Ana) consists mainly of generating a dazzling succession of bubbles in mind-blowing configurations, filling them with smoke or linking them into long chains. Lasers and flashing colored lights add to the trippy visuals.—David Cote

The Canadian performer Katsura Sunshine, billed as the only Western master of the traditional and rigorously trained Japanese comic stortellying art of Rakugo, performs a monthly show at New World Stages. In keeping with the genre's minimalist practice, Sunshine performs in a kimono using only a fan and a hand towel for props. 

Nicholas Christopher and Sherie Rene Scott star in the latest revival of this dark, tuneful and utterly winsome 1982 horror-camp musical about a flesh-eating plant who makes dreams come true for a lowly flower-shop worker. Composer Alan Menken and librettist Howard Ashman wrap a sordid tale of capitalist temptation and moral decay in layers of sweetness, humor, wit and camp. Michael Mayer directs the feeding frenzy in this deeply satisfying revival.—Adam Feldman

This proudly old-school series offers a different lineup of professional magicians every week: a host, opening acts and a headliner, plus two or three close-up magicians to wow the audience at intermission. In contrast to some fancier magic shows, this one feels like comfort food: an all-you-can-eat buffet to which you’re encouraged to return until you’re as stuffed as a hat full of rabbits.—Adam Feldman

The boys are back in town! Five nice-looking men take it all off and vocalize in this collage of musical vignettes on gay themes, revamped since its 1999 debut with new jokes and more up-to-date references. Although sex is central to most of the numbers, the goofy nudism has no erotic charge (and when the show tries to be serious, it's sometimes hard to watch). After a hiatus of several years, NBS has returned to NYC at a new venue in 2023.

Having already created goofy musical spoofs of shows including Saved by the Bell and Beverly Hills 90210, Bob and Tobly McSmith—joined again by composer Assaf Gleizner, who wrote the score for Friends! The Musical Parody—take on yet another TV institution. Donald Garverick directs a cast led by Caleigh Lozito, in male drag, as paper tiger Michael Scott.

A wily cop tries to psych out a possibly homicidal shrink in Warren Manzi’s moldy, convoluted mystery. The creaky welter of dime-store Freudianism, noirish attitude and whodunit gimmickry is showing its age. (Catherine Russell has starred since 1987.)—David Cote

Ah, the joy of watching theater fail. The possibility of malfunction is part of what makes live performance exciting, and Mischief Theatre’s farce takes that notion to extremes as amateur British actors perform a hackneyed whodunnit amid escalating calamities. Depending on your tolerance for ceaseless slapstick, the show will either have you rolling in the aisles or rolling your eyes. Directed by Mark Bell, the mayhem goes like cuckoo clockwork on Nigel Hook’s ingeniously tumbledown set.—Adam Feldman 

Four single and neurotic New Yorkers get up to no good in this long-running section of the Theatre Center's must-stage-TV repertory lineup, which also includes shows inspired by Friends and The Office. Like those, Singfeld! has a libretto by Bob and Tobly McSmith; the music in this case is by fellow musical spoof artist Billy Recce (A Musical About Star Wars). Marc David Wright directs.

Hosted by Todd Robbins, who specializes in mild carnival-sideshow shocks, Speakeasy Magick is a moveable feast of legerdemain; audience members, seated at seven tables, are visited by a series of performers in turn. Robbins describes this as “magic speed dating.” One might also think of it as tricking: an illusion of intimacy, a satisfying climax, and off they go into the night.—Adam Feldman

D.A. Mindell's play juxtaposes Adam and Eve in the aftermath of their expulsion from Eden with the dilemma of a modern-day pregnant transgender man and his twin sister, a genetic scientist who has made an important discovery about gender dysphoria. Jess McLeod directs the world premiere for Second Stage, which has recently been cast out of its own little corner of heaven—midtown's Tony Kiser Theater—but has found shelter at the Signature Theatre complex.

Back in 2018, the oral historian and producer Jennifer Ashley Tepper—a gale force of musical-theater fandom—created a series of concerts at 54 Below devoted to airing unheard songs from the trunk of Jonathan Larson, who died suddenly on the eve of his breakthrough with Rent. Now that project has been expanded into an Off Broadway revue with a very talented cast: Adam Chanler-Berat, Taylor Iman Jones, Lauren Marcus, Andy Mientus and Jason Tam. John Simpkins directs; the orchestrations are by Charlie Rosen, co-arranged with Natalie Tenenbaum. 

Julián Mesri, who co-adapted last year's Comedy of Errors for the Public Theater's Mobile Unit, satirizes the conventions of magical realism and the practice of economic imperialism in Latin America through this farcical tale of a woman left to run her husband's factory, an outpost of a multinational corporation called Cantilever—in a surrealistic jungle. Kathleen Capdesuñer directs INTAR Theatre's world-premiere production, whose cast includes include Octavia Chavez-Richmond, Reece dos Santos, Dario Ladani Sanchez, Keren Lugo, Lilian Rebelo and Katie Rodriguez.

The Village Theater Group revives Arthur Miller's 1968 family drama, in which estranged brothers sift through their dead father's belongings and weigh their value, ethical and otherwise. Noelle McGrath directs the cast of four: Bill Barry as the loyal cop Victor, Janelle Farias Sando as his dissastisfied wife, Cullen Wheeler as his wealthy brother and Michael Durkin as Solomon, a very old but still savvy appraiser. 

A young wrestler begins physical and spiritual training at a Tokyo sumo facility in this weighty new drama by Lisa Sanaye Dring, whose New York premiere is directed by Ralph B. Peña for Ma-Yi Theater Company and the Public Theater. The cast includes Scott Keiji Takeda, Red Concepción, Michael Hisamoto, Ahmad Kamal, Earl T. Kim and David Shih.

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.

This ensemble play by Abe Koogler (Fulfillment Center), about nature lovers in the Pacific Northwest investigating the disappearance of an orca pod, was a highlight of the 2023 Summerworks festival. Now Clubbed Thumb brings it back for a longer encore run at the Public, directed once again by Arin Arbus (Waiting for Godot). Returning original cast members—including Crystal Finn, Jan Leslie Harding, Armando Riesco and stage treasure Maryann Plunkett (The Notebook)—are joined by newbies Miriam Silverman, Mia Katigbak, Arnie Burton, Ryan King and Carmen Zilles.

Jahua 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 Serralls (Catch as Catch Can) is also in the cast of the play's world premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club. 

Soho Rep, having recently been squeezed from its longtime home on Walker Street, begins a several-year residence at Playwrights Horizons with the U.S. premiere of Nia Akilah Robinson's debut play: an ambitious exploration of the treatment of black bodies in America that moves between 1830s Philadelphia—when grave robbery for medical research was not uncommon—and a modern summer camp on the same location. The implacable Crystal Lucas-Perry (Ain't No Mo') and current Juilliard student Clarissa Vickerie play the central mother-daughter pairs in both parts of the play, joined by Miles G. Jackson and the mononymic Holiday as men they encounter. Off Broadway newcomer Evren Odcikin directs. 

The Irish stage and screen actor and international lust object Paul Mescal, who beefed up to star in Gladiator 2, now plays the most famous sexy brute in dramatic history: Stanley Kowalski, the role that made Marlon Brando a star in Tennessee Williams's steamy 1947 masterwork. Patsy Ferran co-stars as the cracked belle Blanche DuBois; Anjana Vasan is Stanley's wife, Stella, and Dwane Walcott is his poker pal Mitch. This revival, which premiered at London's Almeida Theatre in 2022, is directed by Rebecca Frecknell, who also guided the misguided Broadway revival of Cabaret, so be prepared for some wildly stylized choices. Tickets through BAM have already sold out, so if you want to get your hot hands on a ticket, you'll have to depend on the kindness of scalpers.

59E59's second annual Amplify Festival, devoted to the work of playwright Chisa Hutchinson (Somebody's Daughter), concludes with the NYC premiere of this fraught drama about a rural Marylander whose desire to join a white supremacist group is at odds with the results of his ancestry test. Jade King Carroll directs the production for Primary Stages, which helped develop the play and featured it in the 2018 edition of its Fresh Ink Reading Series. Daniel Abeles, Molly Carden, Luke Robertson, Tobias Segal, Andrea Syglowski, Amber Reauchean Williams and Victor Williams form the cast.

LaChanze, who shone in the overdue 2021 Broadway premiere of Alice Childress's Trouble in Mind, makes her directorial debut with another work by the pioneering playwright: a 1969 drama, set against the backdrop of the 1964 Harlem riot, that she originally wrote for the Boston public-television series On Being Black. Grantham Coleman plays a painter working on a triptych about Black womanhood, and Olivia Washington—the daughter of Denzel and sister of John David—plays a downtrodden woman he thinks would be a good model for the unflattering final panel.

The excellent Andrew Scott, who has played the wicked Moriarty on Sherlock and the titular sociopath on Ripley but will always be Fleabag's Hot Priest in our hearts, assumes every role in this solo version of Anton Chekhov's 1897 masterwork Uncle Vanya, a bitterly comic meditation on the wages of self-sacrifice. The piece—which Scott co-created with adaptor Simon Stephens, director Sam Yates and designer Rosanna Vize—was received ecstatically in London in 2023. Now it comes to the West Village's venerable Lucille Lortel Theatre for an eight-week run. 

Elizabeth A. Davis (Once) and Dan Amboyer (Younger) play a couple whose marriage is sorely tested when she disappears into the bathroom of their mobile home and refuses to come out—not in a cute Plaza Suite kind of way, but in a major depressive episode kind of way. The Off Broadway premiere of Max Mondi's two-hander is directed by Chad Austin for his Abingdon Theatre Company. (The play made its New York debut in the 2015 edition of the much-missed Fringe Festival.)

Designer-director Hamid Rahmanian's dazzlingly cinematic multimedia epic, set in ancient Persia, uses hundreds of handmade shadow puppets to cast the tale of a brave young woman who must escue the man she loves and prevent an imminent war between the kingdoms of Iran and Turan. The story is adapted by Rahmanian and Melissa Hibbard from a section of Ferdowsi's seminal 10th-century poem Shahnameh. Having made its U.S. debut with three performances at BAM for Kids in 2023, it now reveals its treasures again in a brief encore run at the New Vic. 

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.

Kaci Walfall (Naomi) and Emily Carey (House of the Dragon) play high school track teammates who try to outrun old feelings when reunite the year after they graduate. Knud Adams (English) directs the world premiere of Liana Sonenclar's coming-of-age drama; the supporting cast comprises Melanie Nicholls-King, Arjun Biju, Ella Stiller and the imposing Pete Simpson (Gatz) as the young women's coach.

As half of the Coen Brothers, Ethan Coen has been one of the cinematic auteurs behind such classics as Fargo, The Big Lebowski and No Country for Old Men—but in his spare time, he likes to write short comedies for the stage. Neil Pepe has already directed two collections of them for his Atlantic Theater Company (2008's Almost an Evening and 2011's Happy Hour) and was set to bring in a third, A Play Is a Poem, in 2020 before Covid interfered. The company has been mum about the contents of this latest trio of playlets, except to say that their subject is love. The cast has not yet been announced, now do we know if any or all of the three pieces were originally part of the 2020 project. Your guess is as good as ours!

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). 

Nina Hoss, who gave a riveting performance in 2018's Returning to Reims, is now returning to St. Ann's Warehouse to star in writer-director Benedict Andrews's new adaptation of Anton Chekhov's 1903 tragicomedy about a family on the edge of ruin in a country on the brink of revolution. Hoss plays the profligate Ranevskaya, an aristocrat stymied by nostalgia, and Adeel Akhtar is the rich but lower-class merchant with designs on her family estate. The production arrives at St. Ann's on the heels of a highly acclaimed U.K. run at the Donmar Warehouse (no relation).

City Center's invaluable concert-staging series Encores! continues its 2025 season with this 1948 rarity by Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner, directed by Victoria Clark. Kate Baldwin and Nicholas Christopher star in this high-concept tale of an American family that, à la The Skin of Our Teeth, spans 150 years of American history without aging. The score includes "Here I'll Stay" and "I Remember It Well" (which Lerner later repurposed for Gigi); Rob Fisher conducts the orchestra.

The Chicago collective Manual Cinema (Ada/Ava) combines live actors and musicians with puppetry, overhead projectors and filmic techniques to create virtuosically handmade theater experiences. The company visited the New Vic in 2022 with Leonardo! A Wonderful Show About A Terrible Monster, which was aimed at very young kids. This time, it aims a little older with a reprise of its first show for family audiences: its 2017 adaptation of Edith Nesbit’s 1910 novel about a girl who finds herself trapped inside the miniature metropolis she has been building out of household objects to avoid the annoyances of real life. 

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. 

Awoye Timpo, who directed Theatre for a New Audience's beautiful 2019 revival of Alice Childress's Wedding Band, returns to TFANA with another overlooked work of Black drama: The first major play by Nigeria's Wole Soyinka, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. This 1958 one-act tells the story of a young man from the flooded Niger delta who is mistreated by his rapacious twin brother and disappointed by the overfed Yoruba priest of the Serpent of the Swamp. 

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.

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