Below is a selection of New York theater opening in November, organized chronologically by opening date, including five on Broadway – a much anticipated epic gay play, a blockbuster musical (both originally staged in London), and three holiday shows.
Off-Broadway this month, there will be a revivals or revisals of plays by Tony Kushner (his first!), Horton Foote (his Pulitzer-winner), Anna Deavere Smith (her most New York) and María Irene Fornés (her best known), as well as of one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s most popular musicals. Peter Dinklage returns to the stage for a new musical version of Cyrano.
Brooklyn is bopping this month with new and experimental theater. (I could probably write that every month.) Jeremy O. Harris, whose “Slave Play” is on Broadway, will be performing at The Bushwick Starr.
Each title below is linked to a relevant website. (A reminder that the opening date is often not the same as the first performance for the public; most shows have a preview period, before an official opening.)
Color key: Broadway: Red. Off Broadway: Purple, blue or black.Off Off Broadway: Green.Theater festival: Orange.Puppetry: Brown. Immersive: Magenta.
Check out the whole 2019-2020 Broadway season and the Fall 2019 Off Broadway offerings.
November 1
An Enchanted April (Theatre Row)
A musical based on the classic book by Elizabeth Hansen: Four world-weary women, desperate to escape their memories of WWI and the repression of London, dare to rent a villa in Italy for a month.
November 5
Dr. Ride’s American Beach House (Ars Nova at Greenwich House)
It’s 1983, the evening before Dr. Sally Ride’s historic space flight. Hundreds of miles from the launch, a group of women with passionate opinions and no opportunities sit on a sweltering St. Louis rooftop watching life pass them by.
November 6
Reparations (Billie Holiday Theater)
In this play by James Sheldon, a recently widowed white book editor invites a younger black writer to her apartment, only to find that a night of passion turns into a tumultuous morning-after.
Black Exhibition (Bushwick Starr)
.”By asking the audience to be explicit voyeurs of an artist’s exhibitionism, @GaryXXXFisher through a mining of transgressive texts both found and written hopes to awaken his audience to the true price of exposing oneself.” It’s now been revealed that @GaryXXXFisher is Jeremy O. Harris, playwright of Slave Play.
User Not Found (BAM at Greene Grape Annex)
An immersive play exploring what happens to our digital identities after we die. Performed in cafés to authentically examine the public/private divide inherent in screen technology, User Not Found supplies audience members with a smartphone and headphones. The phones are all synced so that audience members can view the protagonist’s own private phone experience
November 7
Tina (Lunt-Fontanne)
A musical about the life of pop star Tina Turner, portrayed by Adrienne Warren, with a book by Katori Hall, directed by Phyllia Lloyd. A hit on the West End
Cyrano (New Group at Daryl Roth)
Peter Dinklage (“Game of Thrones”) stars in this new musical version of the classic tale of unrequited love and ghostwritten letters.
BrandoCapote (The Tank)
A multimedia dance theater piece inspired by a 1957 New Yorker magazine profile of the actor by Truman Capote.
November 10
Broadbend, Arkansas (Transport Group at the Duke)
Spanning nearly half a century, three generations of an African-American family grapples with decades of inequality, violence, and suppression in the South.
The Black History Museum….(HERE Arts)
satirical visual art, theatrical performance, sound installation, and dance
November 11
Fires in the Mirror (Signature)
Michael Benjamin Washington takes on the 26 characters on all sides of the Crown Heights riots of 1991 in this revival of Anna Deavere Smith’s documentary play (which until now she starred in herself.)
November 13
Evita (NY City Center)
A reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock-opera about Eva Perón, the first lady of Argentina, until her untimely death at age 33.
November 14
Slava’s Snowshow
The return to Broadway of a master clown’s surreal take on the world.
The Rise of Mediocrity (Chain)
On the eve of a novelist’s book release, a casual evening with friends gets turned on its ear when a young man from her past arrives and starts asking questions.
November 17
The Inheritance (Barrymore)
Written by Matthew Lopez, winner of the 2019 Olivier Award for Best New Play, this queer-themed, two-part play is loosely inspired by E. M. Forster’s Howards End. Set in New York City a generation after the HIV/AIDS crisis of the ‘80s and ‘90s, the play follows a group of gay men as they struggle to connect to the past and maintain a sense of history.
November 18
History of Violence (St Ann’s Warehouse)
German-language stage adaptation of Édouard Louis’s autobiographical novel about a traumatic event that began in desire. Louis is also the basis for BAM’s The End of Eddy.
The End of Eddy (BAM)
A stage adaptation of the autobiographical novel by Édouard Louis, written when he was 21 years old, about being bullied for being gay. Part of a series of events celebrating Édouard Louis in collaboration with St. Ann’s Warehouse
November 19
The Half-Life of Marie Curie (Minetta Lane)
Lauren Gunderson’s play about the scientist Marie Curie and radical engineer Hertha Ayrton—and the friendship that strengthened their resolve to pursue their ambitions.
November 20
A Christmas Carol (Lyceum)
Written by Jack Thorne (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), gased on the novel by Charles Dickens
Confidence and the Speech (Theatre Row)
A play about Jimmy Carter with an African American actress, Denise Burse, playing the former president
November 21
The Underlying Chris (Second Stage)
Will Eno looks at how a person comes into their identity
November 22
Anna Karenina a riff (Notch at The Flea)
Comedic reimagining of Leo Tolstoy’s novel complete with a folk-punk score.
November 24
Young Man from Atlanta (Signature)
Revival of Horton Foote’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of an aging couple in 1950s Atlanta still reeling from the death of their only child.
Fefu and Her Friends (TFANA)
María Irene Fornés celebrated but rarely produced play about a group of articulate, idiosyncratic women gather in Fefu’s New England country house in 1935 to rehearse for a charity event
November 25
A Bright Room Called Day (Public)
A revival of this 1985 play by Tony Kushner, which was his first, and which he partially rewrites. Agnes, an actress in Weimar Germany, and her cadre of passionate, progressive friends, are torn between protest, escape, and survival as the world they knew crumbles around them. Her story is interrupted by an American woman enraged by the cruelty of the Reagan administration, and a new character, facing the once unthinkable rise of authoritarianism in modern America.
November 29
The Illusionists: Magic of the Holidays (Neil Simon)
The return of the magic acts of seven illusionists.
