Three of the four Broadway openings in November are for shows, with limited (holiday) runs, are rightly categorized more as entertainments than theater. Ah, but the fourth…
The month offers new stage adaptations of two beloved movies, a rap take on Othello, Off-Broadway revivals of two big-time tuneful musicals, and several exciting wholly original works of theater.
Color key: Broadway: Red. Off Broadway: Purple, blue or black. Off Off Broadway: Green.
For a look at the entire season, check out Broadway Preview Guide 2016-17 and Off Broadway Fall 2016 Guide
November 2
Notes From The Field: Doing Time In Education (Second Stage)
Drawn from interviews with more than 200 people, Anna Deavere Smith explores the personal accounts of students, parents, teachers and administrators caught in America’s school-to-prison pipeline, which pushes minors from poor communities out of the 
classroom and into incarceration,
Kingdom Come (Roundabout Black Box)
Jenny Rachel Weiner’s comedy about two people who meet from an online dating site, who are both pretending to be somebody else.
My Love Letter to Broadway (Lunt-Fontanne)
Kristin Chenoweth in concert, for 12 performances.
November 3
Ultimate Beauty Bible (Page 73 at New Ohio)
Workaholic Danielle is forced to face her mortality,
Sweat (Public Theater)
The much-praised play by Lynn Nottage, getting its New York premiere, about a group of friends who have spent their lives sharing drinks, secrets and laughs while working together on the line of a factory floor. But when layoffs and picket lines begin to chip away at their trust, the friends find themselves pitted against each other in the hard fight to stay afloat. “Sweat,” winner of this year’s prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for a play by a woman, is the result of two years of research in Reading, Pennsylvania, which the U.S. Census Bureau proclaimed the poorest city in America.
November 6
Finian’s Rainbow (Irish Rep)
Melissa Errico stars in a reprised revival (translation: the Irish Rep has done it before) of this 1947 musical by Burton Lane and Yip Harburg about an Irishman who steals a leprechaun’s pot of gold and escapes with his daughter to the Jim Crow South. The creative team intended this musical to be politically on the left, but its message feels nowadays something of an outdated muddle. The tunes, however, are terrific.
Homos, or Everyone In America (Labyrinth)
Michael Urie and Robin De Jesús star in a play about an everyday couple confronted by a vicious crime.
November 7
“Master Harold”….And The Boys (Signature)
A revival of Athol Fugard’s play, directed by the playwright, about two black men and a young white boy who joke and dance together, “defying the brutalities of apartheid through their joyous love. But festering issues of family, race, and power are not so easy to ignore…”
November 8
Women of a Certain Age (The Public Theater)
The third play, and culmination of, “The Gabriels” trilogy, which will be both set and open – and which the playwright will finish writing – on Election Day.
November 13
The Portal (Minetta Lane)
A man journeys through the desert and mountains on a path to personal discovery.
The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (Signature Theatre)
Subtitled, “AKA The Negro Book of the Dead,” Suzan-Lori Parks begins her Signature residency with a play that “explores and explodes archetypes of Black America.”
November 14
Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 (Imperial)
Josh Groban and Denee Benton star in this Broadway production of a much-praised musical adapting a sliver of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. My review when it was in its own home in the hip Meatpacking District.
November 15
Party People (Public Theater)
The complicated legacies of the original Black Panther Party and the Young Lords are explored in a play developed and directed by Liesl Tommy (Eclipsed), and starring the ensemble known as Universes (Steven Sapp, Mildred Ruiz-Sapp and William Ruiz aka Ninja), in their Public Theater debut.
November 16
Terms of Endearment (59E59)
Molly Ringwald stars in a play based on the novel by Larry McMurtry and the film by James L. Brooks about the relationship between a highly opinionated mother and her feisty daughter.
Othello: The Remix (The Westside Theater)
An 80-minute spin on Shakespeare’s tragedy by the Q Brothers, rappers GQ and JQ.
November 17
The Dead Poets Society (CSC)
(
)
Academy Award-winner Tom Schulman adapts his own screenplay of the Robin Williams/Robert Sean Leonard film for this play about an inspiring boarding school teacher, starring Jason Sudeikis.
A Taste of Things To Come (York)
Four women enter a Betty Crocker cooking contest in the hopes of changing their lives.
November 20
Sweet Charity (New Group at Signature)
Sutton Foster stars in this revival on its 50th anniversary of the musical by Neil Simon, Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields. Charity Hope Valentine, the dancehall hostess, is a role famously associated with Gwen Vernon and Shirley MacLaine.
November 21
This Day Forward (Vineyard Theatre)
A comedy by Nicky Silver (The Lyons) about a woman who made a surprising confession on her honeymoon, causing all plans to fall apart. “Nearly 50 years later, her children wrestle with their past and a mother whose secrets are quickly fading along with her memory.”
November 22
Alton Brown Live: Eat Your Science (Ethel Barrymore)
Broadway is just one stop on the 50-city tour for this veteran anchor of TV cooking shows, who promises comedy, talk show antics, multimedia presentations, music and puppets.
November 27
The Pigeon in the Taj Mahal (Irish Rep)
A dark comedy about a lonely outsider forced to live on an abandoned campsite that is discovered one day by a lost bachelorette party.
