Below is a calendar of theater opening* in February, including a single Broadway show — a revival of a Tony and Pulitzer winner by John Patrick Shanley opening on Leap Year Day. But a new play by Shanley is also opening the day before, Off-Broadway — of many tantalizing offerings, including new marathon theater concert from the team behind the once-in-a-lifetime A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, a collaboration between two beloved avant-garde theater companies a generation apart; a posthumous premiere of the last play by Tina Howe; a play about campus politics from a Jewish perspective; a play from the Russian invasion from Ukrainian perspective, and another from the Russian perspective (sort of; it’s a satire.) Those last two plays switched platforms; the Russian one was livestreamed during the pandemic; now it’s being presented in person; the Ukrainian one was in person; now it’s being livestreamed.
The calendar is organized chronologically by opening date*, or first performance, but we must consider the dates subject to change, because, yes, COVID-19 is still around, and unpredictable.
Each title below is linked to a relevant website.
Color key: Broadway: Red 🟥. Off Broadway: Blue 🟦. Off Off Broadway: Green 🟩.
Digital or Hybrid Theater: Yellow 🟨 Theater festival: Orange 🟧. Immersive: Silver ⬜️ .
Puppetry: Brown 🟫 Opera: Purple🟪
February 1
🟦Jonah (Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theater)
Gabby Beans (The Skin of Our Teeth) plays a scholarship student who falls for a seemingly perfect classmate at her boarding school in a twisty coming-of-age story by Rachel Bonds.
Jan 11 – March 10
February 6
🟦Bark of Millions (BAM)
A four-hour rock opera meditation on queerness by the team that produced the 24-hour “24 Decade History of Popular Music.” This comparatively mini marathon will feature 55 original songs by Taylor Mac and Matt Ray and a bevy of costumes by Machine Dazzle,
February 5 – 10
🟦The Following Evening (PACNYC)
A collaboration between two theater-making couples a generation apart: fo600 Highwaymen (Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone) for Talking Band. Ellen Maddow and Paul Zimetan intimate portrait of four artists set against the landscape of New York, a city of perpetual loss and renewal.
Feb 1 -18
February 8
🟦Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy (Vineyard)
Sarah Gancher’s scary satire is inspired by the real-life trolls of Russia’s Internet Research Agency, whose job was to manipulate social media in order to sabotage the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. One of the comic conceits is that the workers treat it like any other job, with conventional office dynamics and petty intrigue. Christine Lahti is one of the five cast members this in-person version of one of the best digital theater plays I saw during the pandemic.
January 25 – February 25
🟦Oh, Mary (Lucille Lortel Theater)
A dark comedy written and starring Cole Escola as a miserable, suffocated Mary Todd Lincoln in the weeks leading up to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.
January 26 – March 24
February 9
🟨My Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion (Wilma Theater)
Playwright Sasha Denisova’s 82-year-old mother has lived in Kyiv her whole life. When Russia invades Ukraine in 2022, Sasha copes with her fears by imagining her mother in increasingly fantastical situations: strategizing with President Zelenskyy, striking Russian drones with jars of pickles, and even debating with God. Wilma Tehater is in Philadelphia, but New York theatergoers can see it livestreamed from February 9 – 11.
February 11
🟦Eddie Izzard’s Hamlet (Greenwich House Theater)
January 25-March 10
February 13
🟦Between Two Knees (PAC NYC)
The play centers on one family’s story of love, loss, and resilience spanning the eight decades between the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, and the American Indian Movement occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973. The show is created by the 1491s, an intertribal Indigenous sketch comedy troupe whose founding member Sterlin Harjo is one-half the duo that created one of my favorite recent TV series, “Reservation Dogs.”
February 3 – 24
🟦The Apiary (Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater)
In this play written by Kate Douglas with a cast that includes Taylor Schilling, it is 22 years in the future, tand wo lab assistants hatch a plan that could change the world. All they need are a few volunteers.
Jan 31 – Feb 25
February 14
🟩Where Women Go (Tent at HERE)
The late Tina Howe’s last play, comprised of three one-acts for a diverse cast of women of various ages. It tracks the journey of a recently widowed New Yorker
Feb 9 – 25
🟦Warrior Sisters of Wu (Pan Asian at A.R.T/New York Theatres)
Adapted from the classic Chinese epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms and inspired, in part, by Pride and Prejudice, the play follows the romantic exploits and comic misadventures of two young couples, pitting two strong female warriors against two high-ranking military men. T
Feb 7 – Mar 10.
🟩On Set With Theda Bara (Transport Group at The Brick)
David Greenspan stars in Joey Merlo’s one-person play about a genderqueer teen who goes missing and their gay detective father coming face-to-face with the supernatural and consciousness-devouring Theda Bara, the real-life vamp and silent film star of the 1910s.Feb 6 – March 9
🟩Doing Alright (Soho Playhouse)
Nicole Travolta’s solo show about her life as a compulsive shopper who freed herself from debt and shame and the weight of a famous last name (John is her uncle) by a bizarre, real-life journey through the world of spray tanning.
Feb 14-24
February 19
🟦Five, the Parody Musical (Theater 555)
A musical that used “Six” about King Henrys wives, to tell the story of the women linked to our disgraced 45th president.
Feb 15 – March 10
February 20
🟦Sunset Baby (Signature Theater)
A revival of the play by Dominique Morisseau about a Black revolutionary’s fraught reunion with his adult daughter
Jan 30 – March 10
February 21
🎶Jelly’s Last Jam (Encores at NY City Center)
Billy Porter, Joaquina Kalukango and Leslie Uggams are among the performers in this concert version of a musical exploring the legacy of jazz pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton’. Written by George C Wolfe, directed by Robert O’Hara.
Feb 21 – March 3
February 22
🟦A Sign of the Times (York at New World Stages)
A new musical featuring the 1960s pop hits of Petula Clark, Lesley Gore, Dusty Springfield, such as Downtown,” “Gimme Some Lovin’,” “Rescue Me,” and “I Know A Place,” threaded through a story about a young photographer in 1965 trying to make her way amid the changing times that defined an era.
Feb 7 – June 2
February 25
🟦The Hunt (St Ann’s Warehouse)
Adapted from the 2012 movie Jagten, the play features Tobias Menzies (The Crown, Game of Thrones) making his U.S. theater debut in a story set in a rural hunting community that goes mad when a teacher is accused of misconduct by a 6-year-old child.
February 16 – March 17
February 26
🟦Seven Year Disappear (New Group at Signature)
Cynthia Nixon plays a celebrated performance artist who vanishes for seven years—then reappears just as mysteriously with a big request for her son, played by Taylor Trensch (Dear Evan Hansen)—in a play byJordan Seavey (Homos, or Everyone in America). Scott Elliott directs
February 6 – March 24
February 27
🟦The Ally (Public Theater
When college professor Asaf (Josh Radnor) is asked by a student to sign a social justice manifesto, what seems at first like a simple choice instead embroils him in an increasingly complex web of conflicting agendas that challenge his allegiances as a progressive, a husband, an artist, an academic, an American, an atheist, and a Jew.
Feb 15 – March 10
February 28
🟦Brooklyn Laundry (MTC at New York City Center)
John Patrick Shanley’s latest play, which he directs himself, tells the story of three sisters and the owner of their local laundromat, starring Cecily Strong, David Zayas, Florencia Lozano, Andrea Syglowski
February 6 – March 31
February 29
🟥Doubt: A Parable (Roundabout’s Todd Haimes Theater)
Update: The opening of “Doubt” has been moved to March 7th, and Tyne Daly replaced by Amy Ryan because of illness.
The first Broadway revival of John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play about Sister Aloysius, the principal of a Catholic school in the Bronx, who suspects an improper relationship between the charismatic priest Father Flynn and a student. Starring Tyne Daly, Liev Schreiber, Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Zoe Kazan
February 2 — April 14
I also put together a Spring Preview of ten shows I don’t want to miss (seven of which are opening after February.)
*Opening Night
This selection of plays in this month is organized chronologically by opening night, but includes the dates when a show’s run starts and ends (when available.)
Opening night is usually not the same as the first performance on Broadway and Off-Broadway. There is usually a “preview period” that can last days or weeks, sometimes months. But professional reviews are forbidden from being published until opening night, which is why I organize this calendar by opening night (when it exists and when I can find it) rather than first performance, as a way to support the continuing relevance of theater reviewing. (Shows that begin previews in February but don’t officially open until March will be featured in next monh’s calendarwee.) Check out my essay: Broadway Opening Night. What It Means. How It’s Changed. 7 Facts to Clear Urp The Confusion and Crystallize the Outrage.
What Is Broadway 🟥, Off Broadway 🟦 and Off-Off Broadway🟩?
Off-Broadway theaters, by definition, have anywhere from 100 to 499 seats. If a theater has more seats than that, it’s a Broadway house. If it has fewer, it’s Off-Off Broadway. (There is a more sophisticated definition, having to do with contracts, and more elaborate distinctions, having to do with ticket prices, number and location of theaters, length of runs, willingness to take artistic risks, etc.)
(Lincoln Center has separate Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway theaters. Several of the city’s performing arts centers, such as The Shed, Little Island, Park Avenue Armory, NYU Skirball, and now PAC NYC at the World Trade Center site technically exist outside Broadway/Off-Broadway/Off-Off Broadway classifications; I list them as Off-Broadway, even though most have more than 500 seats.)
