Below is a selection of theater opening* in New York in October, including five shows on Broadway, four of them revivals (or classics), with starry casts, many of whom are making their debuts or long-awaited returns: Jim Parsons, Ephraim Sykes, Richard Thomas, Zoey Deutch (these first four among the many in “Our Town”), Daniel Day Kim, Juliana Margulies, Nicole Scherzinger, Kit Carson and Rachel Ziegler (these last two in Romeo + Juliet).
October is traditionally one of the busiest months of the season, and this year is no exception. There is an abundance of tantalizing shows beyond Broadway – yes, with lots of fan favorites as week (Adam Driver, Norbert Leo Butz, Victoria Clark, Christopher Fitzgerald, Pascale Armand, Joaquina Kalukango, Joshua Henry, Shaina Taub, Brandon Uranowitz – those last four in the same show.) There are new plays Off-Broadway by acclaimed writers (James Ijames, Dominique Morisseau, Meghan Kennedy, a newly unearthed drama by the writer who inspired “Oklahoma!”, shows about places in the news (Haiti, Palestine,Russia), new pieces for lovers of site specific and puppet theater.
The calendar below 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 both it and theater are 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 and/or Site Specific: Silver ⬜️ .
Puppetry: Brown 🟫
Opera: Purple🟪
Concert: 🎶
Free of charge (or “pay what you can”) 🆓
For a look at the season as a whole, check out my Broadway 2024-2025 Season Preview Guide and Fall Preview: 10 “can’t miss” shows
October 1
🟥 Yellow Face (Roundabout’s Todd Haimes Theater)
Daniel Dae Kim stars in David Henry Hwang’s 2007 comedy, which finally makes it to Broadway, a semi-fictionalized dramatization of three events in the playwright’s life: his protest against the performance of a non-Asian actor as an Asian character (a practice referred to as yellowface) in Miss Saigon; the failure of his 1993 play, “Face Value”; and a Senate investigation that targeted Asian Americans including his father.
September 13 – November 24
🟦Good Bones (Public Theater)
In this play by James Ijames (Fat Ham), urban planner Aisha moves back to her old neighborhood with her chef husband in tow, planning to renovate their dream home. But their local contractor who never left the area reminds her that revitalization is in the eye of the beholder
September 19 – October 13
October 3
🟦 Safety Not Guaranteed (BAM)
A musical adaption of the 2012 movie that tells the story of Darius, a young journalist who sets out to make her name by digging into an outrageous classified ad seeking someone willing to travel back in time.It stars Nkeki Obi-Melekwe(Tina: The Tina Turner Musical) and Taylor Trensch (Dear Evan Hansen) Sept 17 – Oct 20
🟦Distant Thunder: A New American Musical (Amas at A.R.T./New York Theaters)
Billed as the first mainstream indigenous musical in New York City, the story focuses on a child taken from his Blackfeet tribe who returns as a young attorney with an opportunity that unwittingly sets off a firestorm. Pop-rock merges with Native drumming and dancing.
September 25 – October 27
October 6
🟦Dirty Laundry (WP Theater)
After the woman who connected them dies, three people grapple with love, loss, lust…and household chores.
September 21 – October 20
October 7
⬜️The Wind and the Rain: A Story about Sunny’s Bar (Engarde Arts at the Waterfront Museum)
A site-specific, multimedia theatrical experience that rock-skips across the decades, beginning at the Waterfront Barge Museum and ending at Sunny’s Bar, which has been run by one family for over a hundred years
September 28 – October 27, 2024
October 9
🟦The Counter (Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theater)
Every morning at the local diner in a small town, a waitress refills a regular’s coffee. An unlikely friendship develops and keeps him coming back for more. But when he asks for a shocking favor, it brings to light both of their deepest secret. Written by Meghan Kennedy (Too Much, Too Much, Too Many and Napoli, Brooklyn) and starring Anthony Edwards and Amy Warren.
September 20 – November 17
October 10
🟥Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (Ethel Barrymore)
The sixth Broadway production of one of America’s best-known plays is directed by Kenny Leon and features a starry cast including Jim Parsons, Zoey Deutch, Katie Holmes, Billy Eugene Jones, Ephraim Sykes, Richard Thomas, Michelle Wilson, Julie Halston
September 17- January 19
🟦Sumpn Like Wings (Mint Theater at Theater Row)
Headstrong 16-year-old girl rebelling against her family’s—and society’s—expectations in 1913 Oklahoma. Written by Lynn Riggs, whose play Green Grow the Lilacs inspired the musical Oklahoma! September 21 – November 2
🟦Deep History (Public Theater)
Writer and performer David Finnigan incorporates what he sees as the six turning points that have transformed and trashed our planet over the ages with the more personal tale of the 2019-2020 Australian bushfires, which scorched 59 million acres, killed 1 billion animals and put his hometown of Canberra in peril.
October 5 – November 10
October 11
🟩The Mulberry Tree (LaMaMa ETC)
As 1948 approaches, a Palestinian boy and his beloved neighbor, the village Rabbi, struggle to maintain their friendship in a village of Jews and Arabs trying to go about life as usual – until it becomes impossible. Written by Hanna Eady (who was born in Palestine) and Edward Mast
October 10 – 20
October 15
🟦Vladimir (MTC at NY City Center)
An independent journalist in Moscow during Putin’s first term faces the daunting task of balancing morality with personal safety, in this play written by Erika Sheffer, directed by Daniel Sullivan and starring Francesca Faridany and Norbert Leo Butz.
September 24 – November 10
October 16
🟦Hold Onto Me Darling (Lucille Lortel)
Adam Driver stars in this revival of Kenneth Lonergan’s play about a country music superstar who, upon learning of his mother’s death, moves back to his hometown in Tennessee to try to live the simple life. The tickets are astonishingly expensive, yet the show’s run is already almost all sold out. (There is a lottery, and a digital cancellation line.)
September 24 – December 22
October 17
🟩Franklinland (EST)
A comedy by Lloyd Suh about growing up as the only son of Benjamin Franklin.October 9 – November
October 18
🟩Ashes & Ink (AMT)
Molly, a widow, gives up on new love in the face of her daughter Quinn’s deepening addiction and her sister’s new diagnosis.
October 16 – November 3
October 19
🟩A Woman Among Women (Bushwick Starr)
A riff off of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” – “challenging the audience to participate in the making of a tragic hero, experience her Aristotelian fall from grace, and interrogate the meaning of collective catharsis.” The first show to open in the Bushwick Starr’s new permanent home, this is one of writer Julia May Jonas’s five plays that reimagine male-dominated classic dramas largely from a female perspective.
October 15 – November 3.
🟦Medea A Musical Comedy (Actors Temple Theater)
A backstage comedy about a campy musical version of Euripides’ tragedy.
Starts October 10
October 20
🟥Sunset Boulevard (St. James)
Nicole Scherzinger, formerly of the once explosively popular girl group The Pussycat Dolls, makes her Broadway debut, in this third Broadway production of the musical, which is an adaptation of the 1950 classic film that starred Gloria Swanson as an aging silent film queen. The transfer from the West End marks the return of Andrew Lloyd Webber to Broadway after more than a year (the first such gap in more than four decades)
Started September 28′
🟦🟫The Beastiary (Ars Nova at Greenwich House)
Medieval meets modern in this puppet pageant of consumption, corruption and the end of human-kind.
October 7 – November 9
October 21
🟧Breaking the Binary Theater Festival (Littlefield and Playwrights Horizons)
Seven works of theater, offered for free, presented by seven teams of transgender, non-binary, and Two-Spirit+ (TNB2S+) theater artists. In “Fireside Dances” on October 24, by MJ Kaufman, 16-year-old Em from rural Oregon moves in with distant relatives in Portland in order to go to high school there, which results in a culture clash.
October 21 – 27
October 23
🟥Left on Tenth (James Earl Jones)
Juliana Margulies and Peter Gallagher star in this play based on Delia Ephron’s memoir of finding new love
September 26 – February 2
October 24
🟥Romeo + Juliet (Circle in the Square)
Director Sam Gold’s production of Shakespeare’s tragedy, with music by Jack Antonoff and movement by Sonya Tayeh, featuring Kit Connor (“Heartstopper”) and Rachel Zegler (Spielberg’s West Side Story) both making their Broadway debuts.
🟧🟫La MaMa Puppet Festival (La MaMa ETC)
On its 20th anniversary, the festival offers eight shows, starting with its annual “Jump Start,” presenting works in progress.
October 24 – November 17
October 28
🟦Bad Kreyol (MTC and Signature at Signature)
In the latest play by Dominique Morisseau (Skeleton Crew, etc.), Simone, a first-generation Haitian American returns to Haiti to fulfill her grandmother’s dying wish for her to reconnect with her cousin Gigi, who was born and raised in Haiti. The cousins confront their differing worldviews
October 8 to December 1
October 29
🟦 In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot (Playwrights Horizons)
As the oceans rise, a band of queer warehouse workers travel from job to job, running from the encroaching coastline. The winner of the 2023 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize is written by Sarah Mantell. and directed by Sivan Battat
October 10 – November 17
🎶Strike Up The Band (Carnegie Hall)
Master Voices presents a one-night only concert of this pointed satire about America’s increasing love of money, fear of foreigners, and penchant for war, which features a lush Gershwin score with songs like The Man I Loveand I’ve Got a Crush On You. The cast features such Broadway luminaries as Victoria Clark, Claybourne Elder,Bryce Pinham, and Christopher Fitzgerald.
🟦Another Shot (at Signature)
A dark comedy co-written by Harry Teinowitz based on his life, about a sports radio host who confronts his alcoholism and life’s unraveling truths.The cast is led by Dan Butler
October 15 – January 4
October 30
🎶 Ragtime (New York City Center)
A star-studded two week run of this musical adaptation of E.L Doctorow’s novel that follows three families in turn of the century New York City:Joaquina Kalukango as Sarah, Joshua Henry as Coalhouse Walker Jr., Caissie Levy as Mother, Shaina Taub as Emma Goldman, Brandon Uranowitz Tateh
Oct 30 – November 10
*Opening Night
This selection of plays 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 (although it is the same for festivals and most Off-Off Broadway shows ) For 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 October but don’t officially open until November 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 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.)
(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.)
