Below is a calendar of New York theater opening* in October, including three opening on Broadway. “Ragtime” originated at the Encores concert series, “Liberation” had a brief run Off-Broadway; both are transferring with casts intact. “Little Bear Ridge Road” starring Laurie Metcalf, marks the Broadway debut of an Off-Broadway favorite, playwright Samuel D. Hunter. (There’s a fourth Broadway show that’s not opening on Broadway; for explanation, see October 8th)
Beyond Broadway, Andre De Shields takes on Moliere, Stephen Rea does Beckett, Bedlam adapts Jane Austen, and Jordan E. Cooper rewrites the story of Noah’s Ark. Two delectably different musicals return, Heather Christian’s church-like “Oratorio for Living Things” and Douglas Lyon’s country-tinged “Beau the Musical.” There are two plays about antisemitism, one unseen since 1937, the other pretending to be adapted from a 19th century melodrama.
Solo shows in October feature the social media maven Dylan Mulvaney (the face that launched a Bud boycott), Tony winner Ari’el Stachel, teacher turned comedian Abby Wambaugh, and pastor’s kid turned messy podcaster Brandon Kyle Goodman
And what’s a season without a show featuring Mary Testa?
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/cabaret 🎶 Puppetry: Brown 🟫 Opera: Purple🟪 Outdoors:🌲Free (or “choose what you pay”) 🆓
October 1
🟧Flowfest (University Settlement)
The six emerging artist fellows of the year-long Performance Project Fellowship present their final showcase. Timmy Ong’s “Extraordinary Enough” (Oct 2 and Oct 4) examines the US immigration system from the perspective of an international artist navigating the visa process.
October 1 – 4
October 3
🟫Homing (The Brick)
A multimedia puppet play about the flight that U.S. Army carrier pigeon Cher Ami made in France during World War I delivering a message to allied troops detailing the location of almost 200 wayward soldiers. Presented on a double-bill with Light Potion, “a dreamy short film.”
Oct 3 & 4
October 4
🟩The First 3 Minutes of 17 Shows (Dixon Place)†
A solo show written by and starring Abby Wambaugh, who, waking up still high on anesthesia in the hospital following a late miscarriage, made an unexpected decision to become a comedian, and thought of 17 ideas for her first show.
October 1 – 25
October 5
🟦Are the Bennet Girls Ok? (Bedlam at West End Theater)
Emily Breeze adapts Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, focusing the narrative “on the depth, closeness, silliness, dissonance, pettiness—and fierce protectiveness—of the relationships between the Bennet women.” Directed by Bedlam Artistic Director Eric Tucker.
September 14 – October 26
🟦Torera (WP Theater)
In Monet Hurst-Mendoza’s play, Elena María Ramírez was born to be a torera, but for a woman to be a bullfighter in Mexico, she must defy society, her family, and a legendary torero.
September 20 – October 19
October 6
🟩Slaughter City (A.R.T./New York Theatre’s Gural Theatre)
A revival of Natalie Wallace’s drama about life in the meat-packing industry, first produced in 1996.
October 4 – 18
October 7
🟦The Least Problematic Woman in the World (Lucille Lortel)
Dylan Mulvaney, who is best known as a social media maven and the controversial face of Bud Light, makes her Off-Broadway debut in a solo play with original music about self discovery, fame, and life beyond girlhood.
September 20 – November 30
October 8
🟥Beetlejuice (Palace)‡
This third Broadway go-round for this musical based on Tim Burton’s film (the last stop on a national tour) has no official opening date, and will not be inviting critics back to review., nor as of now is it offering lottery or rush tickets. My review of the original 2019 production with a different cast.
October 8 – January 3
October 9
🟦Crooked Cross (Mint Theater at Theatre Row)
The play, written by Sally Carson and based on her 1934 novel Crooked Cross with the same title (which refers to the Swastika, premiered in the U.K. at the Birmingham Rep in 1935 and was staged in London in 1937 but never seen again.
Klugers are a typical middle class Bavarian family in 1932, when Lexa Kluger is engaged to Moritz Weissmann, a Jewish doctor, while Lexa’s brothers, Helmy and Erich, are becoming increasingly involved with the Nazi party
September 20 – November 1
🟦Krapp’s Last Tape (NYU Skirball)
Stephen Rea performs Samuel Beckett’s hour-long play about a man confronting his past through old recordings of himself. Directed by Vicky Featherstone
October 8 – 19
🟩The (Un)Double (La MaMa)
This dialogue and dance theater written and directed by Anthony Nikolchev is inspired by Fyodor Dostoevky’s novella about a man who encounters his identical double, and feels bested by him to the point of mental breakdown.
October 9 – 19
⬜️André De Shields is Tartuffe (the library at House of the Redeemer)
De Shields stars in Ranjit Bolt’s translation of Moliere’s farce about a religious hypocrite who manipulates a wealthy man, Orgon. The production takes place at a Gilded Age mansion on East 96th Street for 100 guests a night. The cast includes Amber Iman and is directed by Keaton Wooden
October 4 – November 23
October 10
🟧Cassandra (Teatro Latea)
The English translation of a Ukrainian poetic drama written by Lesia Ukrainka in 1907 which retells the story of the Trojan war, from Cassandra’s perspective, able to foresee the destruction unfold around her without anybody believing her. The production is part of the month-long Against the Grain Ukrainian Cultural Festival.
October 9 – 19
October 11
🟩Italian American Reconciliation (The Flea)
In a revival of John Patrick Shanley’s comic romance, directed by Austin Pendleton, Huey, enlisting the help of his best friend Aldo, seeks reconciliation with his ex-wife Janice, an intimidating force of nature. Co-starring Mary Testa.
October 3 – 26
October 12
🟦Dreadful Episodes (59E59)
Dark comedic vignettes inspired by the art of Edward Gorey
October 8 – November 2
October 13
🟦Nothing Can Take You From The Hand of God (Playwrights Horizons)
Jen Tullock has co-written and performs all the characters in this play about a best-selling writer who is confronted by a woman who claims her latest book is false.
Oct 2 – Nov 9
October 14
🟦Let’s Love (Atlantic)
Ethan Coen (best known as a filmmaker) has penned this trio of one-act comedies about the messiness of love, featuring a nine-member cast including Aubrey Plaza, Chris Bauer and Noah Robbins with songs by Nellie McKay and direction by Atlantic’s Neil Pepe.
Sept 25 – Nov 9
October 15
🟦Oh Happy Day (Public Theater)
Jordan E. Cooper (Ain’t No Mo’) writes and performs in the reimagined story of Noah’s Ark, relocated to a birthday BBQ in Laurel, MS, with original gospel music composed by Donald Lawrence
October 2 – November 2
🟩Triplicity (Mabou Mines at 122CC)
The latest from Talking Band, the 51-year-old avant-garde theater troupe: Three ordinary New Yorkers whose lives overlap and intertwine in unexpected ways. They are haunted by the music of Calliope, a street singer who sings addictive melodies with cryptic lyrics at all hours of the day and night in an alcove at the Path station on Christopher Street. Written and composed by Ellen Maddow and directed by Paul Zimet.
October 10–26,
October 16
🟥Ragtime (Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater)
Joshua Henry, Caissie Levy, Brandon Uranowitz lead a large cast in the intact Encores concert revival of the Tony Award-winning musical (book by Terrence McNally, songs by Flaherty and Ahrens) based on E.L. Doctorow’s novel about lives and communities clashing at the beginning of the twentieth century. Directed by the new artistic director of Lincoln Center Thater, Lear deBessonet. My review when it was at Encores.
September 26 – January 4
🟦Oratorio for Living Things (Signature)
An encore of Heather Christian’s music-theater piece that in my 2022 review of it in a different venue, I called such a gorgeous, awe-inspiring concert of original music that it feels like a religious experience. Indeed, the music — inflected with Baroque, gospel, blues, pop, and jazz — could work as a church service.”September 30 – November 16
October 17
🟩Drop Dead…Gorgeous (La MaMa)
A multimedia dance performance by Tamar Rogoff that depicts a surreal TV game show competition to win the dream body as a way to critique the lengths to which we go to find happiness in the mirror.
October 17 – November 2
October 19
🟩Heaux Church (Ars Nova)
Each night, former pastor’s kid Brandon Kyle Goodman leads the congregation in a rousing service on the birds, the bees and the booty, inviting us to connect and to unleash our inner heaux (pronounced ho.) Goodman is a writer, actor, host, and sexual/mental wellness advocate, and podcaster of Tell Me Something Messy
October 8–November 8
🟦Other (Greenwich House Theater)
Ari’el Stachel (Tony winner for The Band’s Visit) has written and performs a solo show about his anxious search for belonging.
October 8 – December 6
October 22
🟫 Dimension Zero (HERE)
A “sci-fi puppet-filled anti-capitalist musical theater spectacle” about the end of our planet set in NYC
October 21 – 25
October 24
🟦Did You Eat ? (밥 먹었니?) (Ma-Yi at Public Theater)
Zoë Kim’s autobiographical journey through love’s many forms—how it’s learned, given, and reflected inward.
October 14 – November 16
October 27
🟦Beau the Musical (St. Lukes)
Eight versatile actor-musicians enact the coming-of-age and coming-out story of future country music star Ace Baker, whose life in Nashville changes when he discovers that his grandfather Beau, who plays a mean guitar, is still alive. In my review of the show when it was Off-Off Broadway, I wrote “This sweet, lively and original musical deserves a wider audience.” Now it gets one.
October 13 – December 7
October 28
🟥Liberation (James Earl Jones Theater)
In this Broaway transfer of an Off-Broadway play by Beth Wohl, directed by Whitney White, a group of women in 1970s Ohio gather in the basement of the local Y for a weekly consciousness-raising group, while half a century later, a present-day narrator discovers her mother’s radical past before marriage and motherhood
October 8 – January 11
🟦Romy & Michele: The Musical (Stage 42)
Laura Bell Bundy and Kara Lindsay star in this musical adaptation of the 1997 film Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion
Begins October 14
🟩Jewish Plot (The Brick)
Torrey Townsend play is a fictional adaptation of an imagined Victorian masterpiece about antisemitism in 1880s Europe as a way to explore what it means to be an American Jew today.
October 16 – November 1
October 29
🎶 Bat Boy: The Musical (NY City Center)
Part of the Encores concert series that revives old musicals: In a small West Virginia town, a mysterious creature—half-human, half-bat—is discovered in a cave and taken in by a local family. Named Edgar, the teenage Bat Boy longs for acceptance and struggles to suppress his animal instincts.
Oct 29 – Nov 9, 2025
October 30
🟥Little Bear Ridge Road (Booth)
Laurie Metcalf and Micah Stock portray an aunt and nephew with a painful history between them hunker down together during the pandemic, in this play that marks Samuel D. Hunter’s (long-awaited) Broadway debut, directed by Joe Mantello.
October 7 to February 15
*Opening Night
This selection of works of theater 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. (Those shows that begin in October but don’t officially open until November will be listed in October’s calendar.)
Check out my article: What is Broadway Opening Night? How it’s changed, why it matters.
†The official opening is October 8th, but reviews can run on October 4th — another variation on the changing meaning of “opening night”
‡It’s rare for a Broadway show, even one that’s a stop on a national tour, to eliminate an official opening night
