Below is a calendar of selected theater opening* in February, including a single Broadway show, “Redwood,” starring Idina Menzel, and plenty of star power Off Broadway: Rainn Wilson, Jordan Fisher, Melissa Gilbert, Paul Sparks, Matt Doyle, Christian Slater and Calissa Flockhart, to name a few.
Many of the shows celebrate February, for better or for worse, as a month of love, by playwrights ranging from Nobel laureate Jon Fosse to comedian Joy Behar. But it is also a month of presidents, and there are plays about politicians, including one unearthed from 1919, and politics. There are new plays by playwrights with terrific track records: Jordan Harrison, Samuel D. Hunter, Bess Wohl, Rajiv Joseph
The calendar below is organized chronologically by opening date*, or first performance, but we must consider the dates subject to change, thanks to the continuing vagaries of COVID-19, and the normal serendipity of live theater.
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 ⬜️ . Concert 🎶
Puppetry: Brown 🟫 Opera: Purple🟪 Free 🆓
February 4
🟦The Antiquities (Playwrights Horizons)
At the Museum of Late Human Antiquities, the curators are fiercely committed to bringing a lost civilization to life again: What were humans really like? Jordan Harrison’s The Antiquities, directed by David Cromer and Caitlin Sullivan and co-produced by Playwrights Horizons, Vineyard Theatre, and Goodman Theatre,
Jan 11 – Feb 23
February 5
🎶Urinetown (NY City Center)
The Encores concert version of the wild satire, which began at the New York Fringe Festival and wound up a 2002 Tony winner on Broadway, Set in a dystopian world where water is scarce, all citizens must now pay a fee for “The Privilege to Pee” at one of the public facilities controlled by selfish tycoon A starry cast including Jordan Fisher, Rainn Wilson, Keala Settle and Christopher Fitzgerald.
Feb 5 – 16
🟩Mrs. Loman (Theatre Row)
A satirical look at Linda Loman’s life after her husband Willy Loman dies in “Death of a Salesman.”
January 31 – February 15,
February 6
🟧Chain Theater One-act Festival
More than 90 new plays spread out over 25 programs, some of which are also livestreamed. Program # 1 (which is presented on five different dates) is the headliner here, with three plays: “By the Look of Her” by Tony Award winning playwright David Rabe (Sticks and Bones), “Brothers” by Lyle Kessler (Orphans), and “The Robot, The Spy, and the Love of AI<” which includes actual robotics, written by John Arthur Lon
February 6 – March 2
🟦Still (Sheen Center)
Starring Melissa Gilbert (“Little House On The Prairie,) and Mark Moses (“Desperate Housewives), this play by Lia Romeo catches up on Helen and Mark who broke up thirty years ago, but never completely forgot one another. Now, they are getting a second chance at first love.
January 28 – March 23
🟦Henry IV (Theatre for a New Audience)
Dakin Matthews’ adaptation of two of Shakespeare’s history plays into one – 3 hours and 45 minutes (with two intermissions), which is half the length of the two separate plays.
January 30 – March 2
🟦My First Ex-Husband (MMAC Theater)
Joy Behar’s play is a compilation of stories about relationships, with a rotating cast that begins with Behar, Susie Essman , Tovah Feldshuh and Adrienne C. Moore
January 29 –
🟩No Reservation (La MaMa)
Global goddesses crash a dinner party celebrating false gods.
Feb 6 – 23
February 7
🟩How is it That We Live, or Shakey Jake + Alice (Tent Theater at ART/NY Theaters)
Two lifelong lovers, who move in and out of each other’s lives.
February 3 -22
February 8
🟩Slamdance garage (Bushwick Starr)
Created and performed by Ian Andrew Askew, who “hurdles through an hour of music, movement, and text celebrating the absurdity of explaining Black people’s participation in their own culture,” using texts from Nina Simone, Audre Lorde and others.
February 5 – 22
🟩Night Sings Its Songs (New Light Theater at Theater Row)
In this English translation of a play by 2023 Nobel Laureate Jon Fosse, a young couple are caught in a cycle of love, loss, and intense need,
February 7 to March 1, 2025
🟫Anywhere (HERE)
The fallen Oedipus appears in the form of an ice puppet that gradually turns into water then into mist and disappears in the Erynian Forest,
February 6 – March 2
February 10
🟩B*TCHCRAFT: A Musical Play (The Wild Project)
Performance artist and “queer music icon” Bitch tells the story of her life
February 7 – March 1
February 12
🟦My Man Kono (Pan Asian Rep at ART/NY Theaters)
Philip W. Chung’a play explores the life of Toraichi Kono born in 1895 – who in pursuit of the American Dream became a target of anti-Asian hate
February 6 – March 9
February 13
🟥Redwood (Nederlander)
Idina Menzel (who co-conceived the show) portrays a woman experiencing a life altering event that drives her far from everyone and everything she knows — winding up at the foot of the redwoods in Northern California. Tina Landau directs, helped conceive the show, wrote the libretto, and co-wrote: the lyrics with composer Kate Diazali. Menzel has said she was inspired by the true story of Julia “Butterfly” Hill who at age 23 lived in a tree for two years; she did this to protest the clear-cutting of ecologically significant forests. Menzel’s character does so out of grief.
First preview was January 24.
February 14
🟩The Barbarians (La MaMa)
A group of scientists gum up the linkage between language and political power, much to Madam President Fake President’s chagrin
Feb 14 – March 2
February 20
🟩Garside’s Career (Mint Theater at Theater Row)
The New York premiere of this political satire written in 1919 by Harold Brighouse tells the story of Peter Garside’s soaring flight from working engineer to member of Parliament, propelled by a ‘silver tongue’ and an insatiable fascination with his power to persuade.
Feb 1 – March 15
🟦Liberation (Roundabout’s Laura Pels)
Written by Bess Wohl (the inventive playwright of “Small Mouth Sounds” and Grand Horizons), directed by Whitney White (Jaja’s African Hair Braiding). Six women in 1970 meet in a basement gym to change their lives and world. Half a century later, one of their daughters, faced with the same questions, tries to piece together what happened.
January 31 – March 30
February 24
🟦Grangeville (Signature)
Samuel D Hunter’s play takes its title from the remote Idaho town of the same name. Across a void of thousands of miles and oceans of hurt, two half-brothers tentatively reconnect over the care of their ailing mother. Paul Sparks plays Jerry, the older sibling—belligerent as a teenager, sensitive as an adult—who still lives in Grangeville, while Brian J. Smith plays Arnold, an artist now living in Rotterdam, drawn back into his past.
February 4 – March 16
🟦Conversations with Mother (Theater 555)
Matthew Lombardo’s semi-autobiographical comedy traces the relationship between Italian matriarch Maria Collavechio (Caroline Aaron) and her gay son (Matt Doyle) spanning the course of five decades. February 7 – May 11
🟦Forty-Eight Hours in El Bronx (Harlem9 and Pregones/PRTT at Pregones Theater)
This sixth edition of this one night only event brings together a roster of Latinx theater artists for an intensive theater-making marathon, creating six new short plays from conception to production in (as the title explains) 48 hours.
February 25
🟦The Curse of the Starving Class (The New Group at Signature)
Christian Slater and Calista Flockhart are among the stars of this revival of Sam Shepard’s play about the Tate family, whose family home is on the verge of collapse, whose creditors closing in, and who must claw their way out of the past towards a better future.
February 26
🟦On the Evolutionary Function of Shame (Second Stage at Signature)
In the beginning, two people got kicked out of a garden for eating fruit. Many years later, Adam—a transgender man expecting a child—meets with his twin sister, Eve, a pioneering scientist.
February 12 – March 9
February 27
🟦Dakar 2000 (MTC at City Center)
A new play by Rajiv Joseph (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo) about a Peace Corps volunteer and a State Department operative whose secrets collide in Senegal on the eve of Y2K. The play stars Abubakr Ali and Mia Barron, and is directed by May Adrales.
Feb 4 – March 23
*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 February, but officially open next month will be featured in the March 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. Off-Off Broadway tends to have shorter runs and much lower ticket prices
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.
