The shows opening in November, along with the usual complement of stars (Al Pacino, Bruce Willis, George Takei) are unusually diverse – a play about British royalty and another about a lower middle-class midwestern family with a transgender son; a musical about a celebrated Latina musician and another about Japanese-Americans interned in U.S. detention camps during World War II. There are also two separate plays about gay parents.
In the centennial year of his birth, playwright Arthur Miller is represented by two revivals opening this month (and more on the way.)
Below is a selection of the plays, musicals and “immersive” theater pieces opening in November, organized chronologically by opening date. Each title is linked to a relevant website.
Color key: Broadway: Red. Off Broadway: Purple or Blue. Off Off Broadway: Green.
To look at the Fall season as a whole, check out Broadway Fall 2015 Preview and Off-Broadway Fall 2015 Preview.
November 1
King Charles III (Music Box)
A Broadway transfer of the 2015 Olivier award for best new play imagining Prince Charles’ ascent to the throne
The Head Hunter (Dorothy Strelsin Theatre in Abingdon Theater Complex)
A revival of the 15-year-old play by Mark Borkowski about a screenwriter whose cousin, a mobster hit man, gets involved in his career.
November 4
God Is A Verb (The Actors Fund Arts Center in Brooklyn)
Inspired by an actual event organized by R. Buckminster Fuller in 1969, the play tells the story of an eccentric professor who gathers a team of offbeat academics to play a game with one goal: make the world work for all humanity.
November 5
On Your Feet (Marquis)
Singer Gloria Estefan tells the story of her and her husband Emilio.
The Comedy of Errors (The Public Theater)
Shakespeare’s comedy directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah
November 7
Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (New World Stages)
Based on the best-selling book by John Gray, performer Peter Story stars in a one man play about how couples can bridge the interplanetary gulf between the sexes.
November 8
Allegiance (Longacre)
A new musical based on George Takei’s family’s experiences in an American internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II. The 78-year-old Takei is making his Broadway debut. Also starring Lea Salonga and Telly Leung.
Kristine Nielsen
Hir (Playwrights Horizons)
Written by Taylor Mac, the gender-bending theater star of many talents, this comic and dramatic exercise in what Mac calls “absurd realism” features the extraordinary Kristine Nielsen (Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike) as a mother who sees herself as liberated from an oppressive marriage. Her son Isaac, returning from military service, sees her as abusive towards his father (Daniel Oreskes) who’s had a stroke. “Hir” is pronounced “here” and is the pronoun preferred by Isaac’s transgender sibling Max, portrayed by Tom Phelan (The Fosters)
November 9
Dada Woof Papa Hot (Lincoln Center Theater)
In this new play by Peter Parnell (QED), two gay couples who met at a parents group get to know one another and reveal the cracks in their marriages, and that of their straight friends. The cast includes Tammy Blanchard, Patrick Breen, John Benjamin Hickey
Lost GIrls (MCC at Lucille Lortel)
In a new play by John Pollono (Small Engine Repair), a stressed-out retail clerk reunites with her recovering alcoholic ex-husband after their teenage daughter goes missing. Stars Piper Perabo.
November 10
Lord of the Dance: Dangerous Games (Lyric)
Irish dancer Michael Flatley (creator of Riverdance) makes his Broadway debut in his final world tour production as a performer.
November 11
Henry IV (St Ann’s Warehouse)
An all-female production of this Shakespeare history play (combining action from both parts 1 and 2) by the same team that brought us the terrific all-female Julius Caesar, including Dame Harriet Walter
Shear Madness (New World Stages)
The New York premiere of America’s longest running comedy is a whodunit set in an upscale hair salon,
November 12
A View from the Bridge (Lyceum)
This is the fifth production on Broadway of Miller’s Greek tragedy of a play set on a Brooklyn waterfront in the 1950s; the last was in 2010 starring Scarlett Johansson and Liev Schreiber. However, it marks the Broadway debut of the much-praised Belgium avant-garde director Van Hove, who wowed New York audiences just last year with his innovative Off-Broadway productions of Scenes from a Marriage and Angels in America. His View from the Bridge is a transfer from London.
November 14
The King of Chelm (Kraine)
This musical for kids ages 4-12 is about a young boy dreaming about being a super-hero, who one day finds himself magically transported from his own room to the strange and whimsical town of Chelm.
November 15
Misery (Broadhurst)
Bruce Willis makes his Broadway debut with Laurie Metcalf in William Goldman’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a popular writer held hostage by an insane fan
November 16
Incident at Vichy (Signature)
Arthur Miller’s play looks at Vichy, France at the height of World War II, when nine men and a boy are rounded up. As they disappear one by one, they battle over politics, philosophy and how to escape.
Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom (The Flea)
In another cautionary tale about online life by Jennifer Haley (The Nether), the residents of a quiet cul-de-sac cannot control the growing addiction to a new online game, and real life and virtual reality blur dangerously. The play is directed by Joel Schumacher, best-known as a director of films ranging from Batman blockbusters to The Phantom of the Opera.
November 18
Steve (New Group at Signature)
A play by Mark Gerrard, directed by Cynthia Nixon, featuring Mario Cantone. “As Steven, a failed Broadway chorus boy turned stay-at-home dad, celebrates yet another birthday, he finds himself filled with fear and uncertainty. Is Stephen, his partner of 14 years, cheating on him?”
November 19
China Doll (Gerald Schoenfeld)
UPDATE Nov 9: The opening of China Doll has been delayed until December 4, 2015.
Al Pacino stars in David Mamet’s new two-character play about a billionaire, Mickey Ross (Pacino), who has just bought a new airplane for his young fiancée as he prepares to go into semiretirement; on his way he suddenly gets a phone call.
The Illusionists: Live on Broadway (Neil Simon)
A return of the touring magic act.
November 22
Night Is a Room (Signature)
A new play by Naomi Wallace about a middle class couple whose lives are turned upside down by a working class woman
Nora (Cherry Lane)
Austin Pendleton directs Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman’s adaptation of ‘A Doll’s House’ by Henrik Ibsen in its English-language premiere.
November 23
Important Hats of the 20th Century (MTC)
A cutthroat rivalry between milliners in 1930s New York offers an intriguing explanation for the source of one of the fashion designer’s ideas. “Circa 1996: a teenager stoner keeps losing articles of clothing, and a man keeps bursting out of his closet to take them.”
In The Soundless Awe (Access Theater)
The play focuses on Charles Butler McVay III, the wrongly court-martialed and disgraced Captain of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, two decades after only 300 of his 1,200 men survived Japanese torpedoes.
November 30
The Bellagio Fountain Has Been Known to Make Me Cry (Here Arts)
Scratching lottery tickets and dreaming of fountains in Las Vegas, two Floridians indulge in fantastic plans of escape, while a minor problem unfolds: the ground is sinking beneath them.
