Below is a day-to-day list of theater that is opening between March 22 to March 31, a starry ten days that includes World Theatre Day!
Monday, March 22
BKLYN
Stream Theatre
3:30 p.m. ET available through April 4
£18
A musical by Mark Schoenfeld and Barri McPherson in which talented street performers share a story from their lives of a young girl who comes to the U.S. to find the father she never knew
The Reservoir
Ensemble Studio Theater
4 p.m.
In this play by Jake Brasch (“Hail Elisha“),a lost, queer, neurotic mess in his twenties moves home to get sober. Struggling with memory loss, he finds unlikely allies in his four unpredictable grandparents.
Home and Sense of Place
Irish Rep
7 p.m. available through May 2
The first of three films in the series Poetic Reflections: Words Upon The Window Pane that will be available as a display in the windows of the Irish Rep building, as well as online. This one explores the idea of home, the experience of migration, and the importance of place through seven poems by W. B. Yeats, Selina Nwulu, J. M. Synge, Denice Frohman, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Seamus Heaney, and Kayo Chingonyi.
Love N’ Courage Benefit
Theater for the New City
7 p.m.
$200
The 18th annual fundraising gala celebrating the 50th anniversary of Theater for the New City features performances and appearances by stars who got their start Off-Off Broadway: David Amram, F. Murray Abraham, Phoebe Legere, Vinie Burrows with Nelson Lucena on Percussion, Robert Gonzales, Jr., Charles Busch, Tim Robbins
Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
Starring Danielle de Niese, Heidi Grant Murphy, and Stephanie Blythe, conducted by James Levine. Production by Mark Morris. From January 24, 2009.
Baton
San Diego Rep
8:30 p.m. ET
In this play by Deneen Reynolds-Knott, which is part of San Diego Rep’s Black Voices 2021 Play Reading Series, a black couple named Ava and Tim are on a date interrupted by news of unrest in Baltimore after the funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African American who was killed by the Baltimore Police Department after being arrested over possessing a knife. When Ava reveals her past engagement to a white cop, it sparks a night of accusations, interrogations, and confessions.
Tuesday, March 23
Two collective conversations today:
from the National Endowment for the Arts: The Art of Reopening: A Virtual Conversation on Reengaging Arts Audiences in Physical Spaces, with Dr. Anthony Fauci, 3 p.m.
from Be An #ArtsHero: Arts Education Town Hall, 8 p.m.
Fully Committed
George Street Playhouse
Available through April 11
$33
Maulik Pancholy portrays some 40 characters in a hot restaurant where patrons will stop at nothing to secure a reservation
Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
Starring Susan Graham, Marcello Giordani, and John Relyea, conducted by James Levine. Production by Robert Lepage. From November 22, 2008.
Wednesday, March 24
Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
Starring Susan Graham, Plácido Domingo, Paul Groves, and Gordon Hawkins, conducted by Patrick Summers. Production by Stephen Wadsworth. From February 26, 2011.
Thursday, March 25
Walking with Bubbles
Irondale
7:30 p.m. Available through March 28
$15
Broadway veteran Jessica Hendy performs a one-woman show as part of the On Women Festival, based on her memoir of her seemingly perfect New York City life until her husband begins to suffer an inexplicable mental decline
Strauss’s Elektra
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
Starring Nina Stemme, Adrianne Pieczonka, Waltraud Meier, and Eric Owens, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. Production by Patrice Chéreau. From April 30, 2016.
Prometheus Bound
The Tank
8 p.m. Available through April 11th
The late Howard Rubenstein’s adaptation of Aeschylus’ play about the punishment the gods meted out to Prometheus for giving fire to human beings.
The Thanksgiving Play
Spotlight on Plays via Stellar
8 p.m. available through March 29
$10 before 3/23
Bobby Cannavale, Keanu Reeves, Heidi Schreck and Alia Shawkat star in Larissa Fasthorse’s play about four “teaching artists” devising a new play about Thanksgiving for an elementary school. In my review of the 2018 production at Playwrights Horizons, billed as a satire, I wrote “One could easily take as its message (surely not what the playwright intends) that the effort to be culturally sensitive to Native Americans about Thanksgiving is political correctness run amok, and that the people who advocate it are ridiculous.”
The Last Act is a Solo
CVRep
10 p.m. ET
In this play by Robert Anderson, Laura Cunningham, once a star, lives amid costumes, props and memories of her career. Too frail to act, she remains fiercely independent and resists her nephew’s attempts to move her to the country where she can be cared for
Friday, March 26
Arts Incubator Short Play Fest
Irvington Theater
through March 28
$12
Four short works: Rachel Yong’s Guilt Is a Mother, composer Eliza Randall and lyricist-playwright Sam Norman, The Yellow Wallpaper, Samuel Harp’s Black and Blue, Alli Hartley-Kong’s The Waiting Room,
Matthew Bourne’s Romeo and Juliet
New York City Center
6 p.m. available on demand through April 4
$15
A dance-theater reimagining of Shakespeare’s love story set in the not-too-distant future at The Verona Institute where ‘difficult’ young people are mysteriously confined . Starring Cordelia Braithwaite as Juliet, Paris Fitzpatrick as Romeo, Dan Wright as Tybalt, and Ben Brown as Mercutio.
All We Need Is Us
Keen Company
7 pm
An audio play by James Anthony Tyler that takes place in Summer 2020, when the pandemic is raging through New York City, and eviction is looming for Lymere and Halen while their first baby is on its way.. Starring MaameYaa Boafo, Ronald Emile, and Ari’el Stachel.
Mozart’s Idomeneo
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
Starring Hildegard Behrens, Ileana Cotrubas, Frederica von Stade, Luciano Pavarotti, and John Alexander, conducted by James Levine. Production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. From November 6, 1982.
Saturday, March 27
World Theater Day
A full-day streaming on 27 March of performance videos submitted from all over the world
Mozart’s Don Giovanni
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
Starring Renée Fleming, Solveig Kringelborn, Hei-Kyung Hong, Paul Groves, Bryn Terfel, Ferruccio Furlanetto, and Sergei Koptchak, conducted by James Levine. Production by Franco Zeffirelli. From October 14, 2000.
Sunday, March 28
Pafko at the Wall
92nd Street Y
through March 30
$10
Billy Crudup, Zachary Levi and Tony Shalhoub give a reading of Don DeLillo’s classic baseball novella about Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ’Round the World” — the day at the Polo Grounds in October 1951 when the New York Giants beat the Brooklyn Dodgers — to celebrate the start of the baseball season.
Easter Passion
Fellowship for Performing Arts
Nine scenes and songs from The Gospel of Mark in 45 minutes, featuring a nine-member Broadway cast include Nikki Renee Daniels and Telly Leung.
Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
Starring Anja Kampe, Mihoko Fujimura, Sergey Skorokhodov, David Portillo, Evgeny Nikitin, and Franz-Josef Selig, conducted by Valery Gergiev. Production by François Girard. From March 10, 2020.
Squeaky
Guild Hall
7:30 p.m.
Jessica Hecht, Marc Kudisch, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Ben Shenkman, and Harris Yulin star in Jeff Cohen’s comedy about his eccentric dad, Stan “Squeaky” Cohen.
Monday, March 29
Billy Reece
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
5:30 p.m.
The music of this singer-songwriter as part of the library’s series, Songbook: Arts and Artists of Tomorrow
Amplify
7:00 p.m.
A benefit concert for Maestro Music featuring performances from Ashley Park, Nikki M. James, Brandon Victor Dixon, Tanya Birl, Kenita Miller, Shelley Thomas, Eva Noblezada, and Reeve Carney, along with appearances from some dozen more, including Anais Mitchell and Bernadette Peters.
Bellini’s Norma
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
Starring Sondra Radvanovsky, Joyce DiDonato, Joseph Calleja, and Matthew Rose, conducted by Carlo Rizzi. Production by Sir David McVicar. From October 7, 2017.
Mud Row
San Diego Rep
8:30 p.m. ET
Two generations of sisters protect and defy the legacy of their foremothers in this play by Dominique Morisseau that’s part of the theater’s Black Voices Play Reading Series
Trouble in Mind
American Conservatory Theater
9 pm ET available through April 4
Alice Childress’s play would have been the first by a Black woman produced on Broadway if she had agreed to the producers’ demands that she soften its message. Time: 1957. Place: New York City. Six actors gather in a Broadway theater to rehearse an anti-lynching play, written and directed by white artists. Tensions run high, eventually reaching a point of no return.
Tuesday, March 30
Broadway Backwards
8 p.m.
Stephanie J. Block, Lea Salonga, Matt Bomer, Darren Criss, Cynthia Erivo, and Joshua Henry are among the stars in this virtual edition of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS’s annual concert in which the performers sing songs in roles for which they would never be cast, with often amusing, sometimes moving results. Free on BCEFA’s YouTube page.
Strauss’s Capriccio
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
Starring Renée Fleming, Sarah Connolly, Joseph Kaiser, Russell Braun, Morten Frank Larsen, and Peter Rose, conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. Production by John Cox. From April 23, 2011.
Wednesday, March 31
Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
Starring Sondra Radvanovsky, Elīna Garanča, Matthew Polenzani, and Mariusz Kwiecień, conducted by Maurizio Benini. Production by Sir David McVicar. From April 16, 2016.
