There are now twenty-one shows scheduled to open on Broadway during the Spring 2024 season, three of them announced just within the past week.
As Time Out’s Adam Feldman points out, much of the “most exciting work is Off-Broadway” including new plays by John Patrick Shanley, Suzan-Lori Parks, Itamar Moses and Charles Busch; new musicals by Jason Robert Brown, David Yazbeck, Michael R. Jackson, Sufjan Stevens and Taylor Mac; major stars including Laurence Fishburne, Cecily Strong, Cynthia Nixon, Josh Radnor and Taylor Schilling. He picks 25 that seem especially interesting.
In my Spring New York Theater Preview, I single out ten “can’t miss” shows opening on, off and off-off Broadway, by which I mean shows that excite me enough, or at least make me curious enough, that I don’t want to miss them, for reasons I enumerate.
Meanwhile, the January theater festivals are wrapping up (see reviews below), although three (Exponential, Fringe Encores, and Fire This Time) continue for at least another week.
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
“Pride House” frames the somewhat fictionalized story of how Cherry Grove became the gayest summer colony in the world as a kind of American Cherry Orchard. The central character, Beatrice Farrar, explicitly compares herself to Chekhov’s character Lopakhin… For much of the running time of the play, the Q in “LGBTQ…” could stand for quaint. It’s an old-fashioned three-act play, leisurely paced with a large cast…
The Fire This Time Festival at 15
A half-dozen ten-minute plays, half of them queer-themed, are in the fifteenth annual festival, running through January 28, which has gotten greater attention because Jordan E. Cooper’s “Ain’t No Mo,” which was launched at the festival, made it to Broadway.
The current crop — all well-served by a five-member cast — are varied in effectiveness, and also in tone. The relative success of “Ain’t No Mo” hasn’t done for The Fire This Time Festival what the success of “Urinetown” did for the (late, lamented) New York International Fringe Festival – inspire a lot of imitators. “It’s Karen, B***…” is the only one of the six works this year that adopts a similar comic tone,
Prototype:
Terce
There are two ways to appreciate this latest work of musical theater by Heather Christian…One is simply to enjoy the tunefulness of Christian’s compositions, suffused with rousing soul music, soothing folk, and inspiriting hymns which are energetically staged at The Space at Irondale by a cast of some three dozen women…The other way is to take it in as a work of erudition infused with the spiritual and the political… It is a reimagining of a 9 a.m. Mass conducted by cloistered nuns and monks in the 11th century…I don’t know if her liturgical deep dive would beguile non-theologians without Christian’s lovely music and Keenan Tyler Oliphant’s lively direction.
Swann, Vodalities, Whiteness
From the wordless to the wordy, these short worldly works– all three directly or indirectly reflecting the story of race in America; all three intriguing examples of digital theater — were offered for free during the twelve-day run of the eleventh annual Prototype Festival of opera and musical theater
The Week in New York Theater News
“The Patriots,” a play from England by Peter Morgan (The Crown) will open on Broadway’s Barrymore Theater on April 22, starring Michael Stuhlbarg as a Russian oligarch named Boris Berezovsky, who chose as the successor to President Boris Yeltsin In 1991 the little-known deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Putin (Will Keen.) But soon Putin’s ruthless rise threatens Berezovsky’s reign. For more details, check out my Broadway Spring 2024 preview guide.
“Stereophonic,” is transferring to Broadway, opening at the Golden April 19th. The play by David Adjmi chronicles a year of recording studio sessions by the members of a popular (fictional) 1970s rock band as they put together their latest album and have their ups and downs with one another.
Harmony will close on Broadway February 4, after 24 previews and 96 regular performances at the Barrymore.
How to Dance in Ohio will conclude its Broadway run on Sunday, February 11, 2024, after 27 previews and 72 regular performances at the Belasco Theater
In a surprise announcement, Charlotte St. Martin is retiring after eighteen years as president of the Broadway League, the trade association for Broadway producers and theater owners, in February, although she will remain on in an advisory capacity for special events through the 2024 Tony Awards in June. “While there is never a good moment for an executive who has spent a great deal of time in their role to resign, it is the appropriate time for me,” St. Martin said in a statement. “St. Martin’s retirement, effective Feb. 16, comes as Broadway — which is made up of 41 theaters concentrated in and around Times Square — is still struggling to rebound from the lengthy pandemic shutdown. The economics of Broadway have become increasingly challenging as production costs have risen while audience levels remain lower than they were before the pandemic.” (NYTimes)
“..my personal goal for TDF is in reaching out to audiences who don’t feel like they belong in the performing arts, and finding a way to make them feel belong. All our programs, whether it’s the [TKTS] booth or our memberships or our autism-friendly performances—they’re all tools that we can deploy to make sure that we’re achieving our mission — Deeksha Gaur, new executive director of Theater Development Fund, interviewed in American Theatre
The Week in Theater Videos
Apple+ has announced there will be no third season of “Schmigadoon.” Here are some of the Broadway musical parody numbers in Seasons 1 and 2.
