Below is a calendar of theater opening* in April, including twelve shows on Broadway, half of which are adapted from (or inspired by) works of art or entertainment in other media — two movies, two TV series, a classic play, and a comic strip. There are also three well-known musicals (two of which are making their Broadway debuts, the third on its 27th Broadway run); a Sondheim revue, a Bobby Darin jukebox biomusical, and a transfer from Off-Broadway that features an actor portraying a corpse.
Beyond Broadway, there are works by two world-class playwrights, Wole Soyinka and Caryl Churchill, adventurous immersive theater, wide-ranging festivals, and – starting off the month – a “care café” in response to our troubled times.
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 challenges and 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/site-specific: Silver ⬜️ . Concert 🎶 Puppetry: Brown 🟫 Opera: Purple🟪 Free (or “choose what you pay”) 🆓
April 1
🆓🟩No Time for Fools April Care Cafe (La MaMa ETC)
Conceived by artist Lois Weaver in response to how bad things have become politically, “Set up like a conventional café with small tables and chairs, the Care Café acts as a temporary venue for community and conversation with some simple table activities set up within a framework of care.”
April 2
🟧🟨New York City Fringe Festival (Under St. Marks, Wild Project, Chain Theater, The Rat NYC and online)
Sixty-four shows, each offering up to five performances, all an hour or less, and most live-streamed as well as presented in person at one of five venues. My preview of the festival. There are 12 shows opening tonight including “The End of All Flesh by Greg Kotis (Urinetown) and 50pmThe Cruelty-Free Confessions of Hannah Blake, an Edinburgh Fringe favorite
April 2 – 20
April 3
🟥GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK (Winter Garden)
George Clooney makes his Broadway acting and playwriting debut
in a stage adaptation of his 2005 film, about Edward R. Murrow’s television crusade against Senator Joseph McCarthy. Directed by David Cromer
March 12 – June 8
🟪The Threepenny Opera (BAM)
Berliner Ensemble production of the 1928 Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weil popular opera about murderous antihero Mackie Messer (a.k.a. Mack the Knife) who slashes through Victorian London
April 3 – 6
🟧🆓Big Umbrella Festival (Lincoln Center)
Programming over three weekends designed with and for neurodiverse audiences. Theatrical performances include When The World Turns from Polyglot Theatre of Australia; a complete reinvention of “Hamlet” by the Peruvian theater company Teatro La Plaza; and a sample of the current season from New York’s E.P.I.C Players.
April 3 – 20
🟧Short Play Fest (The Brick)
Four plays from The Makers’ Ensemble, featuring works by Brandon Bautista, Caitlin Frazier, Angela Reynoso and Anita Parrott
April 3 – 6
🆓SalOn!: THREE HOLE PUNCH (Brick Aux Studio)
One-night-only gathering of “artists, comedians, chefs, scientists, theologians” or anyone to “share something at the edge of their practice.”
April 4
🟩The Trunk (The Flea)
In this play by John Seresi, a charming curmudgeon recently diagnosed with dementia enlists his best friend’s son to help him sort through the contents of his New York apartment while he can still recall their significance
March 28 – April 12
April 5
🟥BOOP! THE BETTY BOOP MUSICAL (Broadhurst)
A musical about the cartoon flapper from the 1930s: Betty’s dream of an ordinary day off from the super-celebrity in her black-and-white world leads to an extraordinary adventure of color, music, and finding love in New York City. Directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell, it has a book by Bob Martin, music by David Foster and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead.(The official opening is April 5th, but review are embargoed until April 7)
March 11 –
🟦Humpty Dumpty (Chain Theater)
In this play by Eric Bogosian, four friends decide to take a vacation in Upstate New York’s rural ski country, not expecting that the lights go out, their phones stop working, and their comfortable world is turned upside down.
April 3 – May 3
🟦According to Howard (York at Theater of St. James)
A musical that promises an unconventional love story involving eccentric aviator, film producer and massively wealthy business magnate Howard Hughes Jr.
April 5 – 13
April 6
🟥THE LAST FIVE YEARS (Hudson)
Nick Jonas and Adrienne Warren star in Jason Robert Brown’s 24-year-old musical making its Broadway debut, about two New Yorkers who fall in and out of love over the course of five years. Jamie’s story unfolds chronologically, while Cathy’s story unfolds in reverse, from the end of their relationship back to the beginning, with their timelines intersecting at their wedding
March 18 – June 22
April 7
🟦All The Beauty in the World (DR2 Theater)
A new one-man play written and performed by Patrick Bringley based on his memoir about his quitting his job at the New Yorker and becoming a security at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
March 27 – May 18
🟦A Mother (Baryshnikov Arts)
In this play co-conceived by Neena Beber and Jessica Hecht, Hecht recalls her life as a teenager at the end of the 1970s in Miami Beach, and also transitions into scenes from Bertolt Brecht’s 1930’s play “The Mother,” about a working class mother who becomes a revolutionary.
March 29 – April 13
April 8
🟥STEPHEN SONDHEIM’S OLD FRIENDS (MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman)
Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga lead the company in the hit West End tribute to the late Stephen Sondheim
March 25 – June 15
🟨🆓The Other Jack (Lucille Lortel)
A free online reading of a play by Dan O’Brien based on the novel by Charles Boyle about an old, established, male English writer who meets a young, aspiring, female American writer in London cafés to talk about books
April 8 – 22
April 10
🟥SMASH (Imperial Theater)
A musical inspired by the TV series, which ran in 2012 and 2013 about the making of a Marilyn Monroe musical called Bombshell. With music by Marc Shaiman; Lyrics by Shaiman and Scott Wittman, a book by Rick Elice & Bob Martin, choreography by Joshua Bergasse and direction by Susan Stroman
March 11 –
🟦Swamp Dwellers (TFANA at Polonsky Shakespeare Center)
One of Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka’s earliest plays takes place during one day in the life of a Nigerian family, in a hut built on stilts over swamps in a village in the Nigerian Delta. Directed by Awoye Timpo, OBIE Award winner for her staging of Alice Childress’ Wedding Band, the cast includes Ato Blankson-Wood
March 30 – April 20
April 14
🟥JOHN PROCTOR IS THE VILLAIN (Booth)
Sadie Sink stars in this play written by Kimberly Belflower and directed by Danya Taymor that takes place in an English class in a high school in a rural town in Georgia, where the students are studying The Crucible, and begin to question the play’s perspective and the validity of naming John Proctor its hero.
March 20 – July 6
April 15
🟦All The World’s A Stage (Keen Company at Theatre Row)
When an offbeat student enlists his help to win a statewide theater competition, Ricky Alleman, a gay high school teacher in a small town in the 1990s, tangles with the local church, and his carefully compartmentalized life starts to unravel. Adam Gwon’s new musical is directed by Jonathan Silverstein, who is ending his tenure as Keen’s artistic director after 13 years.
March 25 – May 10
🟦Macbeth in Stride (BAM)
The show uses pop, rock, gospel, and R&B to examines what it means to be an ambitious woman through the example of Lady Macbeth, while lifting up contemporary Black female power, femininity, and desire.
April 15 – April 27
April 16
🟦Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp.. (Public)
An evening of four short plays by Caryl Churchill, who at 86 is widely considered one of the world’s greatest living playwrights.: “A girl made of glass. Gods and murders. A pack of ghosts. And a secret in a bottle.”
April 3 – May 4
April 17
⬜️The Death of Rasputin (Governors Island)
Immersive, site-specific theater from the women-lead company Artemis is Burning, set in Petrograd in 1916. “Befriend revolutionaries. Scavenge the palace. Devour the narrative. Where will your allegiance lie?
April 17 – 27
April 18
🟦Ceremonies In Dark Old Men (Theater at St. Clements)
Norm Lewis stars in this revival of Lonne Elder III’s 1969 play as Russell Parker, a ne’er-do-well barber and the widowed father of three adult children, who spends his days playing checkers and reminiscing about his life in vaudeville as a song and dance man….until his family implodes.
April 11 – May 18,
April 19
🟩Rheology (Bushwick Starr)
A memoir written and directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury (playwright of the much-acclaimed Public Obscenities) in collaboration with Bulbul Chakraborty (his mother), who is obsessed with the mystery of sand: how it flows, like a liquid, but then jams into a solid. Her son is obsessed with his mother, and challenges her to a high-stakes experiment. A co-production with HERE and Ma-Yi.
April 15 – May 3
April 21
🟥FLOYD COLLINS (Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont)
The Broadway debut of Adam Guettel and Tina Landau’s award-winning musical based on the true story of a man trapped in a cave in the 1920s, igniting one of the first media storms of the modern era.
March 27 – June 22
🟩Class Dismissed (La MaMa ETC)
Written by Robert Lyons and directed by Daniel Irizarry (the people who presented the fable/cabaret/circus/sensory assault “My Onliness” as the Last Hurrah of New Ohio Theater) now present another wild ride involving your favorite professor as he slides into dementia; while his two grad-students hallucinate a post-capitalist manifesto; and his nemesis performs love poems inspired by her affair in a prestigious artist colony.
April 18 – May 4
April 22
🟥Stranger Things: The First Shadow (Marquis)
A prequel to the supernatural goings-on in the Netflix TV horror series “Stranger Things,” set in 1959 (some three decades before the TV series) and focused on the character Henry Creel (whom you can glimpse in the photo above)
March 28 –
🟦Grief Camp (Atlantic)
In this play by Eliya Smith, half a dozen teenagers gather in a summer camp in Hurt, Virginia to bond and heal, working through their loss. Directed by Les Waters. This show is rescheduled, after having been canceled in January because of a stagehand strike
April 5 – May 11, 2025
April 23
🟦Hold Me in the Water (Playwrights Horizons)
In his solo show, Ryan Haddad (author/star of 2023 “Dark Disabled Stories) tells the story of his first love
April 10 – May 4
April 24
🟥PIRATES: THE PENZANCE MUSICAL (Roundabout’s Todd Haimes )
They’ve altered the name a tad, but this is still the 27th Broadway production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic operetta (albeit the first in four decades), about a pirate ship that docks in jazzy-bluesy New Orleans. Starring Ramin Karimloo and David Hydge Pierce
April 4 – July 27
April 26
🟥JUST IN TIME (Circle in the Square)
Jonathan Groff portrays singer Bobby Darin as if performing in a night club, featuring a cast of 16 and a live on-stage big band performing such Bobby Darin hits as “Beyond the Sea,” “Splish Splash,” “Dream Lover,” and “Mack the Knife.” Developed and directed by Alex Timbers, written by Warren Leight and Isac Oliver
March 31 –
April 27
🟥REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES (James Earl Jones)
First preview: April 12
Opening: April 27
Music and lyrics by Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez
Book by Lisa Loomer with Nell Benjamin
Directed and choreographed by Sergio Trujillo, the musical adopts the 2002 movie and 1990 play by Josefina López, which tells the story of an L.A. teenager, who dreams of college and a career in New York City, but whom her family to stay home and work at their garment factory.
April 12 –
🟥DEAD OUTLAW (Longacre)
A musical with book by Itamar Moses, music by David Yazbek and direction by David Cromer about the bizarre true story of outlaw-turned-corpse-turned-celebrity Elmer McCurdy. My review of Dead Outlaw Off-Broadway, which was an outlier opinion.
April 12 –
April 30
🎶Wonderful Town (NY City Center)
Encores concert treatment of the 1953 Leonard Bernstein musical about two sisters (Anika Noni Rose and Aisha Jackson) who in 1935 who move from Ohio to Greenwich Village to pursue their artistic dreams and maybe find love, but wind up meeting an assortment of colorful characters
April 30 – May 11
*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 April, but officially open next month will be featured in the May 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.
