Check out listings for the holidays

 

Below is a selection of New York theater openings* in December, organized chronologically by opening date. Starry casts feature in several revivals, such as Phylicia Rashad in  “Night of the Iguana” (Dec 2)  the original casts of both  “Time Stands Still”  (Dec 3). and “Cock” (Dec 12), and Laurie Metcalf in “Barbecue” (Dec 10.) The cast of Jagged Little Pill will reunite for a concert Dec 13.

This is the month for holiday shows,  some of them decidedly NOT for children (like Taylor Mac’s on Dec 12),  although James Monroe Iglehart makes a kid-friendly Santa along with Telly Leung as Head Elf all month, and there are of course A Christmas Carols up the wazoo, as well as a celebrity-studded Chanukah special on Dec 8 .

I’m also listing shows that in any previous year I might not have —  Netflix film adaptations of Broadway shows “The Prom” (Dec 11) and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” (Dec 18); as well as NBC’s “One Night Only” (Dec 10) featuring performances from past and future Broadway musicals.

The Irish Repertory Theater has two intriguing shows this month, very different in tone from one another (“Plaguey Hill” on Dec 1 and Meet Me In St. Louis Dec 11)

And then there are the usual suspects,  series that have been consistent in quality and reliable in output, most of them newly created during the pandemic, or reinvented for this moment.

Theater of War Productions (Dec 3, 6, 8)  uses classic plays to drive community discussions of urgent issues — long a useful company, now crucial when it’s gone online and the issues it illuminates include health and death and tyranny.

Play-PerView   (December 12, 19) offers live Zoom readings of contemporary plays, often with the original casts.

Viral Monologues from 24 Hour Plays  presents 10 short new monologues almost every Tuesday. The first Tuesday, December 1, is its 20th annual “Broadway Gala”

Manhattan Theatre Club last month launched its  Fall reading series (December 1, 8, 15) which promises some meaty original plays by emerging playwrights.

 Stars in the House, Seth Rudetsky and James Wesley’s daily variety and talk show since the pandemic began, fairly reliably presents Plays in the House — Zoom readings of well-known plays, often classics — on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons…and a Sunday matinee for teenagers. (They usually choose the specific titles with little advance notice.)

And these shows are just what we know about now. Since physical theaters were shut down in March, many shows are put together at the last minute, sometimes not even announced until the very day of their launch. (And there have been last-minute cancellations too.)

That’s why  I will be updating this preview guide every day, and highlighting the offerings each new day with a new link up top. This calendar as of this moment offers a glimpse of what’s in store. Come back day by day for a better look. (Some of the plays listed do require advance reservation.)

A reminder that this calendar lists only when the shows “open.” Some are live and available only for that one performance. Some are repeated live over several dates. Other shows are available as recordings for four days, or a week, or longer.  (I’ll put down how long they’re available, if I know.)

*My definition of theater for the purposes of this calendar generally does not extend to variety shows, cast reunions, concerts, galas, panel discussions, documentaries, classes, or interviews — of which there are plenty, many worth checking out. My focus here is on creative storytelling in performance. (I make an occasional exception for a high-profile Netathon,involving many theater artists, or a novel event.)

Tuesday, December 1

Ball Change
MTC
2 p.m. available for four days
In this play by Brittany K Allen, that’s part of the MTC Fall reading series, the celebrity answering service “Chimes” is all glam and good fun in the swinging Sixties, but fifty years of economic, social, and technological upheaval sure leave their mark on a girl

Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens
Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS
5 p.m.
Fifty performers mark World AIDS Day

The Nice List
7 p.m. available through December 31st
In this new play starring James Monroe Iglehart as Santa, Santa’s Head Elf, Chestnut (Telly Leung), has convinced the whole North Pole to adopt modern technology and go virtual.

Puppet Slam
La MaMa
7 p.m.
Returning this year virtually with new short works by ten theater companies and individual puppet artists curated by Jane Catherine Shaw

Plaguey Hill
Irish Rep
7 p.m.
A new work by Paul Muldoon read by Liev Schreiber about life in upstate New York during the COVID-19 crisis while harking back to a cholera epidemic in Belfast in the 1830s

Verdi’s Aida
Metropolian Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
Starring Leontyne Price, Fiorenza Cossotto, James McCracken, and Simon Estes, conducted by James Levine. From January 3, 1985.

Lip Service
Planet Connections
7:30 p.m.
short plays and a performance monologue, these pieces deal with issues of race, primarily Tokenism

The Broadway Gala
24 Hour Plays
8 p.m.
$30
Although they’ve been presenting a collection of short monologues nearly every week during the pandemic, tonight marks their 20th annual fundraising gala, Six plays written, rehearsed and performed in 24 hours, with a starry cast.

Wednesday, December 2

Night of the Iguana
48-hour video rental available through December 7
La Femme Theatre
Tennessee Williams play about a disenchanted former priest who leads a tour group of women through Mexico in the 1940s. Directed by Emily Mann, with Dylan McDermott as Reverand Shannon, Phylicia Rashad as Maxine, Roberta Maxwell as Miss. Fellowes, Austin Pendleton as Nonno, Jean Lichty as Hannah

Wagner’s Parsifal
Starring Katarina Dalayman, Jonas Kaufmann, Peter Mattei, Evgeny Nikitin, and René Pape, conducted by Daniele Gatti. From March 2, 2013.

Revelations Reimagined
Alvin Ailey’s opening night gala benefit at the start of its first virtual month-long season

Thursday, December 3

Antigone in Ferguson
Theater of War Productions
6:30 p.m.
A reading of Sophocle’s play about a teenage girl who wishes to bury her brother over the objections of her king, as a prompt to talk about race and police violence.

 

Lockdown
Rattlestick
7 p.m. available through December 7
The reading of Cori Thomas’ play inspired by her conversations with people serving life sentences at San Quentin Prison will reunite cast members and director Kent Gash.

Old Friends New Works
Manhattan Theater Club
7 p.m. through December 7
The hour-long program includes Edie Falco performing a monologue by Simon Stephens; Laura Linney reprising her Tony-nominated turn as Lucy Barton in a follow-up monologue by Elizabeth Strout; Jeremy Pope singing a new song by Jason Michael Webb and Joshua Boone in a new work by high school senior Em Savarese. Captions available

Verdi’s Macbeth
Met Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
Starring Anna Netrebko, Joseph Calleja, Željko Lučić, and René Pape, conducted by Fabio Luisi. From October 11, 2014.

Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol.
8 p.m. available through December 20th.
A live-streamed performance of Dickens classic with hundreds of paper puppets, miniatures, silhouettes, and a live original score.

 

Time Stands Still
8 p.m. available for 96 hours
Spotlight on Plays
Pulitzer Prize winner Donald Margulies’ play about a photojournalist and a foreign correspondent trying to find happiness in a world that seems to have gone crazy. Laura Linney, Alicia Silverstone, Eric Bogosian, and Brian d’Arcy James return to the roles they originated on Broadway.

Friday, December 4

42nd Street
The Shows Must Go On
2 p.m. available for 48 Hours
The backstage musical about the starry-eyed chorus girl fresh off the bus from small town USA who becomes a star when the leading lady is injured. This is a recording of the 2018 West End production.

The Merit System
Long Wharf Theater
7:30 live
Edwin Sanchez’s play about the challenges of an immigrant is the first of this New Haven Theater’s New Works Festival this weekend.

Ars Nova Forever Telethon
6 p.m.
This continuous 24-hour marathon will feature highlights from the theater’s most popular shows, including The Great Comet (at 8 p.m)  and KPOP (at noon tomorrow), with Rachel Chavkin, Sakina Jaffrey, Dave Malloy, Isaac Oliver, Larry Owens, and Natalie Walker

Bizet’s Carmen
Starring Barbara Frittoli, Elīna Garanča, Roberto Alagna, and Teddy Tahu Rhodes, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. From January 16, 2010.

Human Resources
8 p.m. repeated 3 more times through December 12
An unemployed woman in post-COVID New York City takes a job with the Greener Pastures health food empire in what the creative team calls an R-rated B-Horror musical comedy.

Saturday, December 5

Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos
Starring Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Tatiana Troyanos, and James King, conducted by James Levine. From March 12, 1988.

Oscar & Walt
New Works Virtual Festival
8 pm
The first of 21 plays in this new festival, with a new one every evening until Christmas. This play by Donald Olson celebrates the enduring literary legacies of Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman by re-creating an actual encounter that took place in 1882 between the 62-year-old Whitman and a 28-year-old Oscar Wilde. Judy Kuhn will star with John Rubinstein and Sam Underwood portraying Whitman and Wilde, respectively.

Check out the full schedule of the festival.

Sunday, December 6

A Celebration of Light
On Stage at Kingsborough
10 a.m. available until December 20
Eleanor Reissa and Zalmen Mlotek sing Yiddish songs in celebration of Hanukah.

La MaMa: Last Gasp WFH
La Mama
2 p.m.
from $5
Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver of Split Britches perform a series of verbal and physical essays looking for ways we might catch our breath in these times of global uncertainty, considering our ‘last acts’, whether personal, political or environmental.

Hurt Village
Cast Black Talent
3 p.m. and 7 p.m. available through
In a new, starry production of Katori Hall’s play, it’s the end of a long summer in Hurt Village, a housing project in Memphis, Tennessee. A government Hope Grant means relocation for many of the project’s residents, including Cookie, a thirteen-year-old aspiring rapper (Stranger Things’ Priah Ferguson), along with her mother, Crank (Slave Play Tony nominee Joaquina Kalukango), and great-grandmother, Big Mama (Loretta Devine.). The cast includes Snoop Dogg

This Is Who I Am
Woolly Mammoth and Playco
4 p.m. available through January 3, 2021
Amir Nizar Zuabi’s new play, Ramsey Faragallah and Yousof Sultani portray an estranged father and son who reunite via Zoom from their respective kitchens in Ramallah and New York City, recreating a cherished family recipe.

The Book of Job Project
Theater of War Productions
6 p.m.
Bill Murray, Frankie Faison et al read the Hebrew poem as a catalyst for powerful, guided conversations about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic upon individuals, families, and communities.

Puccini’s Tosca
Starring Shirley Verrett, Luciano Pavarotti, and Cornell MacNeil, conducted by James Conlon. From December 19, 1978.

Secret Hour
New Works Virtual Festival
The second play in this new festival, with a new one every evening until Christmas. This one, by Jenny Stafford, follows a professor of Ethics, with only one rule for her students; that they never lie to her – though when she and her husband struggle to have a baby, she finds herself in an ethical dilemma of her own. The cast features Kate Loprest, Vincent Rodriguez III, and Kevin Pollack.

Monday, December 7

A Christmas Carol in Harlem
Classical Theater of Harlem
Available through the month of December
Scrooge in this adaptation by Shawn René Graham is a real estate mogul in Harlem. A free streaming of the theater’s 2019 production.

To The Bone
7 p.m.
A benefit reading of the play by Lisa Ramirez about immigrant workers in the poultry processing plants of upstate NY. I loved this play when I saw it Off-Broadway. (My review.)

 

 

Jule Styne and his many lyricists: Distant Melody
Lyrics and Lyricists
92nd Street Y
7 p.m. Available through Dec 31
$15
The usual featured singers perform songs from the composer of some 1,500 songs, including the scores of Gypsy and Funny Girl, and tell stories of his collaboration with such lyricists as Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Leo Robin, Bob Merrill, and Stephen Sondheim.

Broadway Up Close: Stephen Schwartz
Kaufman Music Center
7 p.m.
Host Sean Hartley relates Schwartz’s inspiring story while Nikki Renee Daniels and Gabrielle Stravelli perform music spanning his entire career – including songs from Pippin, Pocahontas, The Baker’s Wife and Wicked.

Thomas Adès’s The Tempest
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 available for 23 hours.
Crafting incisive portraits of the Bard’s inimitable characters—from the usurped Milanese duke Prospero to the enslaved “monster” Caliban to Ariel, Prospero’s Tinkerbell— this modernist opera creates an ever-shifting musical language matched by Robert Lepage’s kaleidoscopic production.
Starring Audrey Luna, Isabel Leonard, Iestyn Davies, Alek Shrader, Alan Oke, William Burden, Toby Spence, and Simon Keenlyside, conducted by Thomas Adès. Originally broadcast November 10, 2012.

Bloomer Girls
New Works Virtual Festival
8 p.m.
The play by Emily Brauer Rogers focuses on female baseball players in the late 1800s, with Brynn Williams, Mary Chieffo, L Morgan Lee, Adrienne Walker, Leigh Ann Larkin, Christy Carlson Romano, Megan Cavanagh, Zo Tipp, Sharone Sayegh, Kate Loprest, Kevin Pollack, and Jim Auld.

The Prompter
Plays in the House
8 p.m.
A play written and starring Wade Dooley synthesizing his experiences cueing actors on their lines and stage directions, with Julia Moytka, Adam Petherbridge and Brenda Vaccaro.

Tuesday, December 8

Theater of War for Frontline Medical Workers
noon
A reading of Sophocles’ Philoctetes and Women of Trachis to create a vocabulary for discussing themes such as personal risk, death/dying, grief, deviation from standards of care, etc.

As Is
Manhattan Theatre Club
2 p.m.
This play by Stacey Rose that’s part of the MTC Fall reading series tells the story of four Big Beautiful Black Women living the everyday struggle of trying to lose a few pounds and navigating their Big Black Womeness in the confined spaces of their lives.

Chanukah Spectacular
National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene
7 p.m. available through December 12
Stories and songs, including Carol Burnett, Mayim Bialik, Billy Crystal, Tovah Feldshuh, Beanie Feldstein, Joel Grey, Jackie Hoffman, Carol Kane, Barry Manilow, Mandy Patinkin, Itzhak Perlman, Neil Sedaka, Dr. Ruth Westheimer and Jerry Zaks,

The Gett: A Young Wife’s Tale
Rattlestick
7 p.m.through December 12
Liba Vaynberg’s play about the ancient ritual of religious Jewish divorce.Tovah Feldshuh, Peter Mark Kendall, Alfredo Narciso and Miriam Silverman.

Three Sisters
Bedlam
7 p.m.
This reading of Chekhov’s play stars Kathryn Tkel, Lauren Modica and Jessica Frey

John Adams’s Doctor Atomic
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 available for 23 hours.
The birth of the nuclear age through the eyes of one of its most important midwives, Robert Oppenheimer.

David and Julie are Stuck in a Tree etc.
Playing on Air
8 p.m.
The play by Mallory Jane Weiss actually has a much longer title, and is serving as a benefit for this reliable audio theater company, featuring a starry cast led by Danny DeVito and Lucy DeVito

QOL Mandate
New Works Virtual Festival
8 p.m.
In this play by Hope Villanueva!, it is a post COVID-19 America,and all young men are forced to undergo vasectomies for population control. One Mexican-American single mother secretly defies the procedure for her teenage son. Cast: Rebecca Brooksher, Olivia Coronel, Nataschia Diaz, Eliazar Jiminez, Genny Lis-Padilla, Mateo Lizcano, Francis Mateo, Mavis Simpson-Ernst, and Michael Yeshion

Wednesday, December 9

International Puppet Parlor
Here Arts
7 p.m.
$5-$50
Puppet artists from all over the world, including Théâtre d’Illusia, Silencio Blanco, Plexus Polaire, Rasputin Marionettes, Yumiko Tanaka, and Basil Twist.

The Bestest Office Christmas Party Eve
New York Theater Barn
7 p.m.
A 35-minute excerpt from an original musical comedy sendup of office Christmas party culture, by book writer and co-lyricist Drew Larimore and songwriter Billy Recce. Cast: Raji Ahsan, John Higgins, Peachez Iman Cummings, Deb Radloff, Amanda Robles and Phil Sloves

An Evening with Audra McDonald
New York City Center
7 p.m.
$35
In this benefit concert for City Center, the six-time Tony winner (a record!) performs favorites from Broadway and the Great American Songbook, joined by music director Andy Einhorn.

Britten’s Peter Grimes
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m available for 23 hours
Based on a collection of poems by George Crabbe, Benjamin Britten’s opera is the story of an enigmatic fisherman, the deaths of two of his young apprentices, and the judgments made about him by the close-knit community. IStarring Patricia Racette, Anthony Dean Griffey, and Anthony Michaels-Moore, conducted by Sir Donald Runnicles. Originally broadcast March 15, 2008.

 

Thursday, December 10

 

How to Play Dreidel with Judah Maccabee
Untitled Theater Company #61
$20
A 20-minute live show between 6pm – 9pm every night of Hanukkah, December 10 – 17, in which an actor from the company (Yael Haskal, Alyssa Simon, or Maxwell Zener).connects with you — via Skype, or Zoom or telephone — and tell you a tale about a kid who travels back through time in order to meet Judah Maccabee (the hero of the Hanukkah story.)

One Night Only: The Best of Broadway
NBC
8 p.m.
Presided over by host Tina Fey, the TV special will feature cast members from Ain’t Too Proud–The Life and Times of The Temptations, Chicago, Jagged Little Pill, Diana: The Musical, Jersey Boys, Mean Girls, and Rent—taking over the streets of Manhattan for their performances.There will also be a sneak peek at shows scheduled arrive next year. Plus Barbra Streisand, Antonio Banderas, and Sutton Foster.

Love Alone, Elegies for Rog
a solo play adapted and performed by Scott Mendelsohn based on Love Alone: 18 Elegies for Rog by Paul Monette, directed by Shelley Wyant. In 1986, Paul Monette lost Roger Horwitz, his partner of 12 years, to AIDS. In the five months that followed, Monette wrote a cycle of poems that traces a journey full of grief, rage, humor, and love.

Thomas Adès’s The Exterminating Angel
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 available for 23 hours.
Based on Luis Buñuel’s surrealist film about an invisible force that prevents the attendees of a dinner party from leaving, it is a powerful exploration of isolation and confinement that feels particularly relevant today. Starring Audrey Luna, Amanda Echalaz, Sally Matthews, Sophie Bevan, Alice Coote, Christine Rice, Iestyn Davies, Joseph Kaiser, Frédéric Antoun, David Portillo, David Adam Moore, Rod Gilfry, Kevin Burdette, Christian Van Horn, and John Tomlinson. conducted by Thomas Adès. Originally broadcast November 18, 2017.

Barbecue
Spotlight on Plays
8 p.m.
The trickster play by Robert O’Hara is about a picnicking family gathered in the park and that’s all I can say. The cast features: Colman Domingo, S. Epatha Merkerson, Tamberla Perry, Kimberly Hebert Gregory, Heather Simms, Laurie Metcalf, Carrie Coon, David Morse, Kristine Nielsen and Annie McNamara.

All Is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914
PBS

 

Friday, December 11

The Prom
Netflix
An adaption by Ryan Murphy of the Broadway musical. (My review.)

Ruthless!
The Shows Must Go On
2 p.m. available for 48 hours
Joel Paley and Marvin Laird’s musical about an angel-faced little girl who’ll do anything to become a star

 

Meet Me in St. Louis
Irish Rep
7 p.m. available through January 2
A holiday musical based on the MGM movie, starring Melissa Errico, Shereen Ahmed, Max Van Essen.

Hysteria
New York Live Arts
7 p.m.
$10
Choreographer, director, and dancer  Raja Feather Kelly performs in this solo dance theater/installation that looks like a holiday show, but doesn’t sound like one (Raja “re-situates himself as a glamourous, extraterrestrial entity—both alien to the world and wholly consuming its pop-culture products.”) “If you happen to be in the neighborhood tomorrow Dec 10 or Friday Dec 11 @ 7pm EST, pass by Live Arts to see Raja activating the installation from behind our street facing building window.”

The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 available for 23 hours.
The first production at the Met of this American opera in 30 years. Gershwin explores the Gullah music of Tidewater Carolina, melding it seamlessly with the then-contemporary language of jazz.Starring Angel Blue, Golda Schultz, Latonia Moore, Denyce Graves, Frederick Ballentine, Eric Owens, Alfred Walker, and Donovan Singletary, conducted by David Robertson. Originally broadcast February 1, 2020.

Breathe
8 p.m.
Philicia Saunders wrote and stars in this hour-long autobiographical solo show that touches on her life as a student, an artist and an activist.

The Night Before Christmas
Stars in the House
8 pm
John Lithgow reads the Clement Clarke Moore poem accompanied by music composed by Aaron Dai and played by the Chelsea Symphony

Now You See it, Now You Don’t
New Works Virtual Festival
8 p.m.
This play by Mike Gingerella follows a 10-year old aspiring magician. Cast: Anthony Crivello, Jackie Hoffman, Patrick Oliver Jones, Connor Mills, Thom Sesma, and Adrienne Walker.

Who’s Holiday
8 p.m. available through December 15
Lesli Margherita stars as a middle-aged Cindy Lou Who in Matthew Lombardo’s satirical solo show skewering of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas. A free livestream of the 2017 Off-Broadway hit that is too raunchy for kids.

Saturday, December 12

Shoshana Bean: Sing Your Hallelujah
Apollo Theater
4 a.m. 3 p.m. 9 p.m.
$30
For the third year in a row, this time virtually, the Broadway star (Wicked, Waitress) and recording artist returns to the Harlem venue for a holiday concert, along with Gavin Creel, Jeremy Jordan, Shayna Steele and Daniel J. Watts, and others.

 

A Christmas Carol
Old Vic
2 p.m. available until December 24
This is the adaptation by Jack Thorne and directed by Matthew Warchus that I saw (with a different cast) last year on Broadway (my review), which I found charming if a tad overlong and extraordinarily well-designed. They worked so hard at making it a live experience — assaulted by snow and food — that I wonder how it will translate.

Taylor Mac’s Holiday Sauce… Pandemic!
2, 7 and 10 p.m.
The extravagantly talented performance artist’s annual holiday extravaganza reimagined for 2020, a “virtual vaudeville.”

Pen/man/ship
Moliere in the Park
2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Co-Presented by French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF), the Moliere theater’s first new, non-Moliere play, by Christina Anderson, takes place just after the Supreme Court has upheld the Separate but Equal Doctrine in 1896, when a Black American surveyor boards a ship to lead a mysterious expedition bound for Liberia.

Cock
Play-PerView
7 p.m. available through December 16
The play by Mike Bartlett about an unusual threesome features its original cast led by Cory Michael Smith under the direction of James MacDonald.

Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 available for 23 hours.
Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht fashion a cynical tale of an imaginary yet plausible boom town peopled by fortune seekers, prostitutes, and shady businessmen (and women) where absolutely anything goes—except having no moneStarring Teresa Stratas, Astrid Varnay, Richard Cassilly, and Cornell MacNeil, conducted by James Levine. Originally broadcast November 27, 1979.

Broadway Princess Holiday Party
Feinstein’s/54 Below
8 p.m. Available on demand through December 26
$28.50
A concert featuring host Laura Osnes, Susan Egan, Courtney Reed along with musical director Benjamin Rauhala, Adam J. Levy and Aisha Jackson.

Christmas is Not Canceled
Livestreamed 8 p.m. and 11 p.m., repeats Sunday at 2
$20
Drag icon Jackie Beat’s 22nd annual holiday show, this time virtual, features Alan Cumming, Parker Posey, Michael Urie, Margaret Cho, Ross Mathews, Jackie Hoffman, Peppermint, Kate Flannery

Sunday, December 13

School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play
MCC
3 p.m.
This popular play by Jocelyn Bioh will be directed by Kamilah Forbes (Executive Producer, Apollo Theater) and feature a starry cast including Cynthia Erivo and Amber Riley.

John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 available for 23 hours.
Commissioned by the Met in 1980, John Corigliano’s opera takes as its jumping-off point Beaumarchais’s La Mère Coupable (The Guilty Mother), the final entry in the trilogy of plays that began with The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro. But in a triumph of imagination, Corigliano and librettist William M. Hoffmann set their scene in an otherworldly version of Louis XVI’s court, populated by the ghosts of familiar figures such as Marie Antoinette, Count Almaviva, Figaro and Susanna, and Beaumarchais himself.Starring Teresa Stratas, Håkan Hagegård, Gino Quilico, Graham Clark, Marilyn Horne, and Renée Fleming, conducted by James Levine. Originally broadcast January 10, 1992.

Jagged Live in NYC
A Broadway Reunion Concert
8 p.m.

A message from the king! Don’t miss the original Broadway cast getting back together for “History is Happening in Georgia: A #HamFam Holiday Celebration in support of @ReverendWarnock and @Ossoff“. December 13th | 8:30PM ET RSVP today: https://t.co/B6SXhmALmN pic.twitter.com/ygMk34J7bN

— Hamilton (@HamiltonMusical) December 11, 2020

A #HamFam Holiday Celebration
8:30 p.m.
The original Broadway company of Hamilton presents a virtual holiday celebration to raise funds for the Democratic Senatorial candidates in the Georgia runoff. Featuring performances by Lin Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Phillipa Soo, Christopher Jackson, Jonathan Groff, Sasha Hutchings

Monday, December 14

#ENOUGH: Plays to End Gun Violence
Mile Square Theater
7 p.m.
Eight years after the shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, some 50 theaters throughout the country (including Mile Square Theater in Hoboken) will present free readings of the seven plays by high school students who won a national contest

I Am Sending You the Sacred Face
Theater in Quarantine
7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Also on Dec 16 and 18
Written by Heather Christian and performed by Joshua William Gelb in drag live from his 2’ x 4’ x 8’ East Village closet, this new one-act musical charts the spiritual journey of nun and missionary Mother Teresa

The Theme From….Songs Written for Film
Lyrics and Lyricists
92nd Street Y
Narrated by Beth Malone, and featuring performances by Nikki Renée Daniels, Brandon Victor Dixon, Kara Lindsay, and Julia Murney

Tuesday, December 15

Friendly Monsters
MTC
2 p.m.
In this play by Penelope Skinner, which is part of the MTC Fall reading series, Zoe has just moved in with her older boyfriend, Simon, who is everything she could dream…But when Zoe becomes curious about Simon’s history with his next-door neighbor, the solid ground beneath her begins to shift

 

Home for the Holidays
8 p.m. — available through December 19
The promised lineup:  Carolee Carmello, Alan Cumming, André De Shields, Lena Hall, Heather Headley, Ramin Karimloo, Karen Olivo, Jelani Remy, Conrad Ricomora, Jennifer Sanchez and the Grammy Award-winning Broadway Inspirational Voices.

Wednesday, December 16

Encores! Inside the Revival: Tap Dance Kid
New York City Center
Direct Kenny Leon (A Raisin in the Sun) dives into the 1983 Tony-nominated musical The Tap Dance Kid, centered around the life of an upper-middle class Black family and a ten-year-old’s dream of being a professional tap dancer despite the challenges posed by his lawyer father and society. Leon, alongside book adapter Lydia Diamond, will give audiences an up-close look at the percussive heart of the story with the help of choreographer Jared Grimes and cast member from the original Broadway production Dulé Hill.

Virtual Impossibilities
Wild Project
Magician and mentalist Eric Walton

Thursday, September 17

Between The Two Humps
MCC
6:30 p.m.
$7
Joseph and Mary are at each other’s throats. Giving birth to the Messiah is, like, important and stuff but is it worth this trek to Bethlehem through the desert on a camel? The latest MCC Livelabs one-act is written by Halley Feiffer and stars Noah Robbins and Kara Young as Joseph and Mary, Peppermint as Gabriel and Portia as God.

Friday, December 18

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Netflix
An adaptation of the play by August Wilson about a blues singer, featuring Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman in his last film performance. (my review)

Trees
The Wild Project
available on demand through Dec 24
$15
Inspired by the Hidden Life Of Trees ​by Peter Wohlleben, the new musical by the visual and performance artist Mur gives a dystopian future through the voices of the last remaining Trees on Earth. Featuring: Mur, Aisha Karensa, Haley Fortune, Jade Litaker & Nyah Raposo

Miracle on 34th Street
Chain Theatre
Available through Dec 21
$11
A radio play about a single mother raising her daughter in New York City who soon has her world turned upside down by a curious man who claims he is Santa Claus. It will also include appearances by City Council Corey Johnson and State Senator Jose Serrano, both arts advocates.

Saturday, December 19

proud revengeful ambitious
Play-PerView
available through December 23
In this new play by Talene Monahon featuring Vella Lovell,two young men vie to be the next great method actor of their generation. “A play about obsession and sex and competition and sex and trophies and sex.”

December 20

Fancy Nut Mix
7 p.m.
American Ballet Theatre principal dance James Whiteside presents an online holiday benefit of Nutcracker excerpts featuring a cast of leading American dance stars

Monday, December 21

Broadway’s Great American Songbook: The Holiday Gala
York
7 p.m.
$30 +
All of the singers from the seven-week song series gather together, including Ben Vereen, Lillias White, George Abud, Klea Blackhurst, Robert Creighton, Karen Mason, Lee Roy Reams and Alton Fitzgerald White

The Magic Flute
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours.

Cud’n Helen Ain’t Got No Color
New Works Virtual Festival
8 p.m.
In this new play by Sharon Harris Warrick.Helen Laverne is a very fair-skinned, pretty African-American woman in her late 20s who grew up in a family of darker skinned people and experienced both privilege and ostracism because of her different complexion – and must face it again when her beloved grandmother dies and she travels from California to Mississippi to attend the funeral.

Intelligence
Stars in the House
8 p.m.
A drama by Jacqueline E. Lawton based on the true story of a CIA operative whose cover is blown in the post-9/11 world.

Check out:

Holiday Shows 2020 Guide:  All the Nutcrackers, A Christmas Carols and Other Annual Traditions You Love, This Year Online

Tuesday, December 22

Massenet’s Cendrillon
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours

March 9, 1965
New Works Virtual Festival
8 p.m.
This play by Stanley Hathaway, set during the Civil Rights Movement in Selma Alabama, explores the relationship between a Black woman and White officer of the law. The cast includes Robert Cuccioli and tMia Moravis as well as Taylor Blackman, Carrie Compere, Samson Dube, Ellis Gage, Tyler Hardwick, Rachel Elise Johnson, David Josefsburg, Oyoyo Joi, Luka Kain, Jamie LaVerdiere, Lindsay I. Ryan, Laura Schein, Miles Phillips, Michael Tourek, and Nik Walker.

Endurance
The Tank
8 p.m.
In 1914 Earnest Shackleton and the Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition set out aboard the Endurance to set their mark in history. They would do so, though not as they expected. Marooned by the elements and with the floes closing in the expedition faced trials beyond the pale of preparation or precedent.
With a bath, ice, and a lifelong love of cold, this piece traces The Endurance’s journey from the Antarctic continent to a changed world.

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Holiday Shows 2020 Guide:  All the Nutcrackers, A Christmas Carols and Other Annual Traditions You Love, This Year Online

Wednesday, December 23

Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours

A Man with No Opinion
New Works Virtual Festival
8 p.m.
Kevin Wiczer’s farce set in the 1950s is about a secretary who meets the man of her dreams, but struggles to overcome the meddling of his manipulative, unimpressed mother. It stars Kathleen Turner, Christy Carlson Romano, and Daniel Jenkins as well as Krystina Alabado, Alan H. Green, Tyce Green, and Richard White.

Check out:

Holiday Shows 2020 Guide:  All the Nutcrackers, A Christmas Carols and Other Annual Traditions You Love, This Year Online

Thursday, December 24

Puccini’s La Bohème
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours

Frontiers
New Works Virtual Festival
8 p.m.
A play by Andrew Apollo. Starring Andy Karl, Orfeh, Ted Louis Levy, Glenn Morshower, Dan Lauria, Jonah Platt, Zane Carney, Edred Utomi, James Wesley, Travis Cloer , Bart Shatto, Ray Shell, Deanna Reed-Foster, Mia Moravis, Aaron Reese Boseman, Jim Auld.

Check out:

Holiday Shows 2020 Guide:  All the Nutcrackers, A Christmas Carols and Other Annual Traditions You Love, This Year Online

Friday, December 25

Save West Bank Cafe Virtual Telethon
noon
Performers include (so far) Betty Buckley, Debra Messing, Alice Ripley, Megan Hilty, Kerry Butler, Telly Leung, Leslie Kritzer.

Farce Day of Christmas
New Works Virtual Festival
4 p.m.
A play by Ken Levine. To keep her religious mother from knowing she’s divorced, Wendy pays her ex to pose as her husband and go home for the holidays. Havoc ensues.

Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours

Christmas Show
Stars in the House
8 p.m.

Check out:

Holiday Shows 2020 Guide:  All the Nutcrackers, A Christmas Carols and Other Annual Traditions You Love, This Year Online

Saturday, December 26

Lehár’s The Merry Widow
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours

Sondheim Unplugged
Feinstein’s/54 Below
8 p.m. On Demand through January 9
$28.50
Six performers sing 14 songs from six Sondheim musical and one movie score. My review

Sunday, December 27

Kwanzaa Celebration: Regeneration Night
Apollo Theater
7 p.m.
Featuring Abdel R. Salaam’s Forces of Nature Dance Theatre

Verdi’s Falstaff
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours

Celebrity Autobiography
Act Blue
8 p.m.
A fundraiser for the Democratic candidates of the Georgia Senate runoff elections, following the format of this popular show where celebrities make fun of other celebrities’ memoirs, by reading passages from them. Performers include Matthew Broderick, Billy Crystal, Rachel Dratch, Whoopi Goldberg, Tony Hale, John Leguizamo, Andrea Martin, Mandy Patinkin, Rosie Perez, Rob Reiner, Martin Short, Cecily Strong, Kenan Thompson, Michael Urie

Check out:

Holiday Shows 2020 Guide:  All the Nutcrackers, A Christmas Carols and Other Annual Traditions You Love, This Year Online

Check out

New Year’s Eve 2021 in New York City: Last Minute Plans