February ended with a bang, and not just overseas. There were some heavy shows Off Broadway. The six I reviewed just this week are full of sickness and sexism, personal betrayals and public denunciation…And these are almost all comedies! NYC Off Broadway Week continues ro4 ten more days. But March madness will soon take over, in more ways than one.
March 2026 New York Theater Openings
Theater Quiz for February 2026
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
“Night Side Songs” is in part an original musical that tells the story of the terminal illness of a character named Yasmine Holly (portrayed by Brooke Ishibashi.) But it’s also a “kaleidoscope of theatrical experiments” to see illness in general…The score by the Lazours is full of lovely folk songs… But I couldn’t help thinking that the kaleidoscopic quality of “Night Side Songs” dilutes its impact..
Bigfoot’s mother, Francine Foot, explains how her big, kind, hairy monster came to be: “You have sex with a carnie next to a nuclear power plant, you end up with a giant son.” That’s the kind of goofy humor found in abundance in this campy musical comedy
Puppetopia: The Magnificent Ms. Pham
This elaborate, tuneful puppet musical doesn’t just tell the story of the journey of Kim Pham from Vietnamese “hometown girl” riding a water buffalo to young romantic in Saigon to war refugee “boatperson” to mother of four sons in Houston, Texas. It threads the tale with Vietnamese history and mythology, populates it with elephants, lions, dragons and demons, presents it as shadow puppetry and a contemporary downtown spin on traditional Vietnamese water puppetry (complete with a stage-wide pool of water), and accompanies it with sixteen songs from rock to pop to country – all in 60 minutes.
The four power-suited Chinese-American women who work at the same Wall Street bank meet every third Tuesday for lunch at Golden Unicorn in what they call an affinity group. But it doesn’t take long to realize they have little affinity for one another…Much of “Chinese Republicans” provides a deepening and ultimately poignant portrait of four distinct characters, made all the more palpable by a first-rate cast. At the same time, through subplots or brief scenes or just a throwaway line here or there, the play touches lightly on a bracingly wide range of topical issues
The Reservoir” was born out of a commission…to write about dementia. it is instead largely a semi-autobiographical play about an alcoholic’s recovery. What most distinguishes it from the rest of the current spate of plays on the same subject is its attempted parallel focus on the decline of the elderly characters.
There are details in the play that drive home the personal (and self) betrayals inherent in a totalitarian society and the corrupting influence of capitalism; one can even parse the play as a timely analysis of the road toward authoritarian rule. But “Mother Russia” is at its strongest not for its politics but its playfulness — the almost-slapstick routines between Steven Boyer (Hand to God, Kimberly Akimbo) and Adam Chanler-Berat (Next to Normal); the chemistry between him and Rebecca Naomi Jones, and the convoluted comic plot between the three of them
The Week in New York Theater
Extended: The Dinosaurs to March 8; The Reservoir, March 22. Blood/Love to May 10.
Oh, Mary! is offering an in-person ticket lottery of five dollars in celebration of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on March 4.
Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes with Ella Beatty and Hugh Jackman, will return to Minetta Lane March 17 – April 20
“Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) to release the digital album of its original Broadway cast recording on March 20, 2026
On March 24, Netflix will begin streaming a film version of the Broadway solo (+ dog) show “Jeff Ross: Take A Banana for the Ride”
Megan The Stallion, Grammy winning singer-songwriter and actress, will make her Broadway debut March 24 – May 17 in Moulin Rouge The Musical as Harold Ziegler, a part originated by Danny Burstein,
