Below is a calendar of theater opening* in March, including five shows opening on Broadway, two of them new musical adaptations of popular novels. Jeremy Strong returns to Broadway after 16 years, fresh from his success on “Succession” (albeit his character’s failure); he’s joined by fellow Prestige TV alum Michael Imperioli of “The Sopranos” making his Broadway debut (See March 18.)
But the month is far busier than just Broadway: Call it March madness. There is a new show to see every day. (at least one.) The month begins with the launch of several theater festivals and a half dozen immersive shows. Off Broadway is teeming with new musicals and plays by returning talents – the Pulitzer winner of “Fairview,” the trio behind “The Band’s Visit,” the Tony winner of “Oslo,” the Pulitzer winner of “A Strange Loop” (their new shows opening March 7th, 10th, 11thand 12th, respectively.) Off Off Broadway, Shaw and Shakespeare are meshed together in Bedlam’s playful play (Mardh 17), a shameful chapter of American history is revisited by its heirs (March 18), and Margo Gomez is presenting her 14th solo show (March 29.) And I haven’t even mentioned the puppetry and the opera and the concerts and celebrity stage memoir and the digital theater, all listed below.
The calendar is organized chronologically by opening date*, or (if no official opening) first performance, but we must consider the dates subject to change, because, yes, COVID-19 is still around, and unpredictable (as is theater in general.)
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 and/or Site Specific: Silver ⬜️ .
Puppetry: Brown 🟫
Opera: Purple🟪
Concert: 🎶
Out of town 🇺🇸
March 1
🎶🟨The Leading Lady Club: A Celebration of Women on Broadway and Beyond (54 Below)
The first of this cabaret’s concerts in March (many of them both live in person and live-streamed) in honor of Women’s History Month.
🟧Teatro Fest NYC 2024 (eight venues)
A two month festival of drama, dance, music and conversation, presenting 23 productions at eight venues: Teatro Círculo, IATI Theater, International Arts Relations (INTAR), LATEA Theatre, Pregones Theater / Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, Repertorio Español, Teatro SEA, Thalia Spanish Theater. (A few of the shows in the festival have been running for a while on an irregular schedule.)
The first play in the festival, beginning March 1 and running through March 24, is at Thalia Spanish Theater, in Spanish with English supertitles: “Las Mujeres Lo Hacemos Mejor Que Los Hombes (We Women Do It Better Than Men”), a solo show by Soledad Lopez as a professional psychologist who gives a workshop on personal growth, reliving her own sexual awakening, marriage, divorce, and search for love after fifty.
March 2
⬜️NYC Immersive Weekend (various venues)
Six different immersive and interactive shows in one weekend.
Several of these are ongoing shows (not just this weekend) and can be purchased separately:
⬜️The Order of the Golden Scribe: Initiation Tea from Patchwork Adventures (Caveat) through March 31.
⬜️Tigers Bride from Theater Uzume (Cell Theater) through March 10
⬜️Roaring 20s: Death By Bathtub Gin (The Folly) March 3
⬜️Greater Gotham Challenge: Terminal Time Trial (“secret meeting location”) March 3
⬜️Competitive Winter Picnicking Awards Ceremony from Shadow Traffic
March 3
🟧Eva Luna (Repertorio Espanol)
Part of Teatro Fest, this play by Caridad Svich adapts Isabel Allende’s coming-of-age novel about a woman born into poverty who rises up through the world to find her voice as a storyteller. In Spanish with English subtitles.
Six performances from March 3 to June 6
⬜️The Church of Funderground (Littlefield)
A satirical take on prosperity-gospel megachurches
March 4
🟧Spark Theater Festival (28th Street Theater)
Some 60 productions, including five new musicals, almost all of them works in development. The one completed piece is the solo show, “Use Your Words!,” Karen Eleanor Wight’s one-act comedy—in five wordless scenes—about a new mother struggling with the new responsibility.
March 4 – 24.
March 5
🟧The 16th annual United Solo Theater Festival (Theater Row)
More than fifty solo shows, each getting a single performance (with one exception; see March 8), basically a show a day for the next two months.
March 5 – April 28
🟧🟫Puppetopia: Marooned A Space Comedy (HERE)
The third play in this third annual puppet festival.
March 5 – 10
March 6
🟧🟫Puppetopia: Lectures (HERE)
The fourth and final show in this third annual puppet festival.
March 7
🟥Doubt: A Parable (Roundabout’s Todd Haimes Theater)
The first Broadway revival of John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play about Sister Aloysius (Amy Ryan), the principal of a Catholic school in the Bronx, who suspects an improper relationship between the charismatic priest Father Flynn (Liev Schreiber) and a student. Also starring Quincy Tyler Bernstine and Zoe Kazan.
February 2 – April 14
🟦Illinoise (Park Avenue Armory) A musical based on Sufjan Stevens’ 2005 concept album Illinois, with a narrative co-written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury (Fairview, Marys Seacole) and the show’s director and choreographer Justin Peck (Carousel, Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story), exploring the people, landscapes, and history of Illinois, complete with UFOs, zombies, and predatory wasps.
March 2 – 23.
⬜️The Little Pony (Torn Page)
A play by Paco Bezerra Inspired by the tragic bullying experiences of real-life children in North Carolina, Marissa Ghavamiand Montgomery Sutton play Irene and Daniel, parents grappling with the consequences of their ten-year-old son being bullied for bringing his My Little Pony backpack to school. Torn Page, a private venue located in the Chelsea townhouse of acclaimed actors Rip Torn and Geraldine Page
March 7 – 23
🟪Roméo et Juliette (Metropolitan Opera)
Nadine Sierra and Benjamin Bernheim stars as the star-crossed lovers in Charles Gounod’s opera adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy, directed by Bartlett Sher (See March 11 for another Sher production.)
March 7 – 30
March 8
🟧Guac (Theater Row)
The only show in the United Solo Festival getting more than one performance, “Guac” is co-written and performed by Manuel Oliver, the father of Parkland shooting victim Joaquin Oliver (nicknamed Guac), whose death launched Oliver into activism.
March 8-10
⬜️🟨Space Shipped Online (on Zoom)
From Phoenix Tears Productions: All manner of galactic ruffians (including you) have gathered to celebrate the birthday of Max, the rogue gambler who runs the Wayward Outpost.
March 8 – 16
🟦Oasis of Impunity (NYU Skirball)
Chile’s Teatro La Re-sentida (Theater of Resentment) dramatizes issues based on their investigation of their country’s social unrest after a fare hike on the Santiago subway inspired mass demonstrations and riots
March 8-9
March 9
🇺🇸Rabbit Summer (Mile Square Theater in Hoboken)
In this play written and directed by Tracey Conyer Lee, Claire has just lost her unarmed black husband to the quick trigger of a white cop. This moves her best friend Ruby to push her own husband Wilson, a black police officer, to stop his complacency, while she hatches a secret plan to fix the American gun problem.
March 6-30
March 10
🟦Dead Outlaw (Audible’s Minetta Lane Theater)
A new musica putl together by the same trio who scored with “The Band’s Visit” — composer David Yazbek, librettist Itamar Moses, and director David Cromer, based on the bizarre true story of Elmer McCurdy, an outlaw who was killed by a Western posse, then gained new employment as a mummified side-show attraction, his body winding up after decades in a house-of-horrors ride at an amusement park in Southern California.
February 28 – April 7
March 11
🟦Corruption (Lincoln Center)
This new play by JT Rogers (Oslo, Blood and Gifts), directed by Bartlett Sher, is based on the book “Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation and The Corruption of Britain,” which tells the story of the phone hacking scandal of 2011, which uncovered such illegal acts by employees of Murdoch’s News of the World newspaper as hacking celebrities’ phones and bribing police in pursuit of scoops.
February 15 – April 14
March 12
🟦Teeth (Playwrights Horizons)
A teen’s vagina bites back when men harm her in this new musical by Michael R. Jackson (A Strange Loop) and Anna K. Jacobs, a musical adaptation of the 2007 horror/comedy movie of the same name.
February 21 – April 14
Update: Because of illness in the company, the opening has been delayed until March 19.
March 13
🟦The Effect (The Shed)
In Lucy Prebble’s play, two volunteers (Paapa Essiedu and Taylor Russell) participating in a clinical trial for an anti-depressant fall in love with one another — or at least think they do; it might be a side effect of the drug they’re taking. My review of a previous production.
March 3 – 31
March 14
🟥 The Notebook (Schoenfeld)
In this musical based on Nicholas Sparks 1996 debut novel (which was made into a popular 2004 film), Allie and Noah (portrayed by three pairs of actors at different ages — pictured, Joy Wood and Ryan Vasquez; best-known, Maryann Plunkeet and Dorian Harewood) share a lifetime of love despite the forces that threaten to pull them apart.
First preview was February 6.
March 15
🟨🇺🇸The Club (George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick)
In this play by Chris Bohjalian, three married couples collide in a suburban living room one autumn Sunday in 1968 – which they think is a refuge from the rock ‘n roll turbulence outside their neighborhood – only to discover there’s no escape from the era’s cultural upheaval.
In person Feb 27-March 17. live-streamed March 15-17
🟩🎶Performance of Self (National Sawdust)
Vocalist, composer, and percussionist Jodie Landau fuses memoir (about love, sex, queerness, gender, family, online dating) with concert, cabaret, and music-theater.
March 17
🟩The Assassination of Julius Caesar as Told by William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw (Bedlam at West End Theater)
The title says it all. (The two plays to which Bedlam is playfully responding are Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” and Shaw’s lesser-known “Caesar and Cleopatra.”) Shouldn’t this have opened on the Ides of March?
March 18
🟥An Enemy of the People (Circle in the Square)
Amy Herzog’s adaptation of the play by Henrik Ibsen, directed by Sam Gold (her husband), about a small-town doctor (Jeremy Strong) who tries to warn the town that their spa is poisoned, but the people in power including his brother (Michael Imperioli) try to destroy him.
February 27 – June 16
🟩American Rot (la Mama)
In this play written by Kate Taney Billingsley and directed by Estelle Parsons, two men from historically-linked families meet face-to-face at a diner on the New Jersey Turnpike: one is a descendant of the once-enslaved Dred Scott, the other a descendant of the Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, who wrote the notorious Dred Scott decision that denied enslaved people basic human rights
March 14 – 31
May 20
🟫Epidermis Circus (Soho Playhouse)
A spicy puppet cabaret, hosted by a sassy grandma, performed by Ingrid Hansen, who also puppeteers for Jim Henson Company’s Fraggle Rock.
March 20-24
March 21
🟥Water for Elephants (Imperial Theater)
A musical by PigPen Theatre Co based on the novel by Sara Gruen, about a young man who jumps a moving train unsure of where the road will take him and finds a new home with the remarkable crew of a traveling circus. (A 2011 film was also based on Gruen’snovel.)
First preview was February 24
🟦Like They Do In The Movies (PACNYC)
Written and performed by Laurence Fishburne telling “the stories and lies people have told me. And that I have told myself.”
March 10-31
March 22
🟨🇺🇸I Am Deliverd’t (Actors Theatre of Louisville)
In this comedy by Jonathan Norton, it is Good Friday and the New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church’s Seven Last Words service is in full swing. But outside—in the church parking lot—another resurrection story is taking shape…a battle royale of romantic quagmires.
In person in Louisville, March 13-24. Live streamed, March 22-24
March 23
🟩BATHHOUSE.PPTX (The Flea)
Winner of the Yale Drama Series Prize, this play written by Jesús I. Valles features Sam Gonzalez as a queer latiné student, whose PowerPoint presentation on the history of cleanliness and bathing quickly starts to burst at the seams with appearances from “the ghosts of a bathhouse at the end of the world, A Conquistador! Wearing One of Those Hats!, A Very Real Twink, and even Laura Linney.”
March 19- April 22
🟨🇺🇸The American Truth and Reconciliation Play (URHERE)
James Scruggs’ lnteractive play explores America’s history of enslavement and resulting issues of racism. It will livestreamed online via HERE Arts Center’s digital platform, URHERE, presided over by an entity using A.I. which the audience will create live, in real time. After March 23, the performance will be available online on demand.
March 24
🎶🟨My Favorite Things: The Rodgers & Hammerstein 80th Anniversary Concert
Audra McDonald and Aaron Tveit are among the stars performing, along with a 40-piece orchestra, from the Rodgers and Hammerstein songbook (The Sound of Music, South Pacific, Oklahoma!) in this December 2023 concert at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, now available in an on-demand recording online.
March 24-31
March 25
🎶Come Spirit, Come Charm: A Tribute to the Life and Music of Lucy Simon (Joe’s Pub)
Laura Benanti, Stephen Bogardus and Sierra Boggess are among the Broadway stars performing the songs of Lucy Simon, the composer of Secret Garden and Dr. Zhivago. The concert is a fundraiser for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.
March 26
🟪La Rondine (Met)
Puccini’s bittersweet love story makes a rare Met appearance, with soprano Angel Blue starring as the French courtesan Magda, opposite tenor Jonathan Tetelman in his company debut as Ruggero, an idealistic young man who offers her an alternative to her life of excess.
March 26-April 20
March 28
🟥The Who’s Tommy (Nederlander Theater)
A “reimagined” production of the 1993 Broadway musical that dramatize The Who’s 1969 rock opera album, featuring such familiar tunes as “See Me, Feel Me,” “Sensation” and “Pinball Wizard.” After witnessing his father shoot his rival, the young Tommy Walker is lost in the universe until an innate knack for pinball catapults him from reticent adolescent to celebrity savior.
First preview March 8
March 29
🟩Swimming with Lesbians (La MaMa)
This 14th one-person show written and performed by Margo Gomez is set aboard “The Celesbian” the most notorious cruise ship on the seas.
March 29 – April 7, 2024.
*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 March but don’t officially open until April will be featured in next monh’s calendar.) 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.)
