Below is a calendar of theater opening* in May, including new musicals from Laura Benanti and Dave Malloy as well as a new opera from David Henry Hwang, all Off-Broadway. Nothing is scheduled to open on Broadway this month, but theatergoers need not spend May simply catching up on the shows of the season just ended, or debating the steady announcements of nominations and awards. There is a range of new theater, including indie, immersive, digital, cutting edge with nontraditional casts.
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 🇺🇸
May 2
⬜️Catching Silhouettes
An immersive performance through the streets of Chinatown, dramatizing the stories that have helped shape Chinatown’s landscape and identity.
May 2 – 18
🟩Fingers & Spoons (Soho Playhouse)
In this play written and performed by Pascale Roger-McKeever, a mother in her forties accepts her husband’s invitation to an open marriage and proceeds with a singleness of purpose no one saw coming.
Through June 2
🟩The Keep Going Songs (LCT3)
The Bengsons’ musical journey exploring life’s cycles, from personal to ecological.
May 2 – 26
🟦I Ought To Be In Pictures (TBTB at Theater Row)
The only professional Off-Broadway theater focused on people with disabilities revives Neil Simon’s 1980 comedy about a West Hollywood screenwriter with writer’s block who receives a surprising visit from his daughter, whom he abandoned along with the rest of his Brooklyn family 16 years earlier. She has her own Hollywood ambitions.
Through May 25
May 3
🟨SHAKESPEARE @ HOME While the Delacorte Theater in Central Park is closed for renovations, The Public Theater expands free access to live recordings of four previous Free Shakespeare in the Park productions, debuting Fridays in May: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING (2019, available from May 3), the premiere of HAMLET (2023, available from May 10), MERRY WIVES (2021, available from May 17), RICHARD III (2022, May 24),
May 3 – June 30
May 5
🟩🟫Shimmer and Herringbone.(Mabou Mines at 122cc)
Closing out Talking Band’s 50th anniversary season, this music-theater work, drawing inspiration from Olivera Gajic’s fantastical costume designs, is a quick-paced farce taking place in a clothing store, with chance encounters, missed encounters, and new connections.
May 1–19
May 8
🟩 🟫Small Acts of Daring Invention (HERE)
One actress and four puppeteers explore the real and unreal inspired by the life and work of Dare Wright, author of the children’s book series The Lonely Doll.
May 1 – June 1
May 9
🟦Nobody Cares (Audible at Minetta Lane)After a three-day run in January, Laura Benanti returns with her autobiographical musical comedy, featuring singers Barrie McLain and Chelsea Lee Williams as her Inner Demons.
May 9 – June 2
May 11
⬜️Third Law (Culture Lab)
Through a digital game board, the audience collaborates with the artists to co-create a performance that’s different each time.
May 9 – 26
May 12
🟦Just Another Day (Theater555)
Written by Dan Lauria (the Dad in the Wonder Years, and the star of the play Lombardi), who is costarring with Patty McCormack, the two-hander features a comedy writer and a poet in their who meet daily on a park bench to exchange wits and barb, and try to remember things.
May 3 – June 30
May 14
🟪An American Soldier (PACNYC)
This opera by David Henry Hwang (M Butterfly) and composer Huang Rotells the story of Chinese-American Army Pvt. Danny Chen , whowas found dead in a guard tower at his base in Afghanistan, based on his story and the ensuing courts-martial of Chen’s fellow soldiers,
May 12 -19
🟦All of Me (The New Group at Signature)
In this classic romcom of boy meets girl by Laura Winters, the boy using a wheelchair, girl a scooter, and they both using text-to-speech technology to connect to the world around them.
Through June 16
May 15
🟦Invasive Species (Vineyard Theater)
This autobiographical play written and performed by Maia Novi follows the journey of an Argentinean actor as she tests the limits of her American dream.
May 7 – June 30
May 18
🟩Julia Masli: Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha (Soho Playhouse)
This solo show from Edinburgh Fringe has no script and lots of problems – individual audience members’ problems, which trained clown Julia Masli solicits and then comes up with solutions.
May 15 – June 8
May 19
🟦Syncing Ink (The Apollo’s Victoria Theater)
Tony nominee Kara Young returns to co-star again in a revival of NSangou Njikam’s play about a student who trains to be a rapper.
May 7 – July 28
May 20
🟦Three Houses (Signature)
A new musical from Dave Malloy (Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812),
Susan is in Latvia. Sadie is in New Mexico. Beckett is in Ireland. All three are alone; all three are haunted by their grandparents; all three hear the Big Bad Wolf scratching at the door. Three Houses is a post-pandemic open mic night parable about magic, madness, and the end of the world.
April 30 – June 9
May 21
🟩The Fires (Soho Rep)
In this first play by prolific choreographer Raja Feather Kelly (A Strange Loop, Lempicka, etc.) three disparate times hauntingly overlap within the same South Brooklyn railroad apartment.
May 8 – June 16
May 28
🎶🟥Ben Platt: Live at the Palace
Part of a concert tour for his new album.
May 28 – June 15
May 31
🟩How To Eat An Orange (LaMaMa)
A new one-woman play written by Catherine Filloux and starring Paula Pizzi about the visual artist and activist Claudia Bernardi, her childhood in Argentina under the military junta, and her subsequent work digging up the past.
May 30 – June 16
*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 May but don’t officially open until June will be featured in next month’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 99 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.)
(Several performing arts venues in New York City, such as The Shed, Little Island, Park Avenue Armory, NYU Skirball and the Perelman Performing Arts Center, technically exist outside these classifications; I list them as Off-Broadway, even though, for most shows, they have more than 500 seats.)
