May 2017 New York Theater Openings

May is a month when Broadway is on the brain, but not on the stage. Theatergoers focus on the Tonys and many other theater awards, but there are more than a dozen Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway shows opening this month.

George Takei in Pacific Overtures at CSC

Charlie Murphy in Arlington

Zanab Jah as Venus at Signature

Zosia Mamet in The Whirligig at The New Group

Robert Schenkkan, author of Building the Wall

Arian Moayed as Hamlet

Below is a schedule of May theater openings organized chronologically by opening date. Each show title is linked to a relevant website.

Color key: Broadway: Red. (none this month)  Off Broadway: Purple, blue or black. Off Off Broadway: Green.

May 1

Baghdaddy (St. Luke’s Theater)

Inspired by a true story, Baghdaddy? is a new musical comedy, presented as a support group for the mid-level spies who started the Iraq War.

It has mercifully shortened its title since the time I saw the 2015 production (“Who’s Your Baghdaddy, or How I Started the Iraq War.”)

May 2

Ski End (Piehole at Ohio Theatre)

An abandoned ski shop becomes the center of the universe. A group of urbanites finds itself stuck in a flood-damaged building with a makeshift skate ramp, dead birds, and the tattered banner of a final blowout sale. From these clues they ritualistically reanimate a bygone world of Ski, until they incite a cosmic force

May 4

Pacific Overtures (Classic Stage Company) 

George Takei stars in a revival of the musical by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman about a samurai and a fisherman who are caught up in the westernization of the East, at a time when Commodore Matthew Perry sailed to Japan on a U.S. mission to open trade relations at any cost.

Marry Harry (The York Theater Company) 

A new musical. “On a block in the East Village where graffiti comes to life, mannequins dance, and angels sing, big-dreaming cook Harry and frustrated real estate agent Sherri meet — and sparks fly.”

Happy Days (Theatre for a New Audience)

The Yale Rep’s production of Beckett’s play, starring Dianne Wiest

May 7

Ernest Shackleton Loves Me (Second Stage at Tony Kiser)

A musical about a sleep-deprived single mom who struggles to work as a video game music composer. Unexpectedly, she is contacted across time by the famous polar explorer, Ernest Shackleton. Inspired by her music, he shares his epic Antarctic journey with her in video and song

May 10

Arlington (St. Ann’s Warehouse)

A “strange and tender love story” written and directed by Enda Walsh (best-known in New York for Once and Lazarus.) “Isla waits in a waiting room in a tower as a man watches her, documents her every move and pulls her dreams from her.”

a previous production

Seven Spots on the Sun (Rattlestick) 

This play by Martin Zimmerman tells the story of a doctor of a war-torn and plague-ravaged village who discovers that his touch can cure the plague. A meditation on mourning, redemption, and revenge.

May 15

Venus (Signature) 

A revival of Suzan-Lori Parks’ play based on the true story of Saartjie Baartman, who left her home in southern Africa for a better life, and became a star on the 19th century London freak show circuit for the size of her posterior.

May 16

Chinasa Ogbuagu as Abasiama; Hubert Point-Du Jour as Ukpong in Sojourners (from earlier production)

Sojourners/Her Portmanteau (New York Theatre Workshop) 

Performed in repertory, these two chapters of Mfoniso Udofia’s sweeping, nine-part saga, The Ufot Cycle, chronicle the triumphs and losses of the tenacious matriarch of a Nigerian family. Directed by Ed Sylvanus Iskandar. Here’s my review of Soujourners when it was produced by Playwrights Realms, in which I write “Given the promise of such an ambitious and potentially exciting project, one makes allowances for some of the awkwardness of this first production, which would have been more effective with a clearer and more streamlined unfolding of the essential story…”

Derren Brown: Secret (Atlantic) 

Mind-reading, suggestion and psychological illusion at the hands of UK’s Derren Brown.

May 21

Hamlet (Sheen Center)

The play stars Arian Moayed (The Humans, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo), and is accompanied by an original score.  “Set in Persia a hundred years ago, on the eve of World War I, Waterwell’s Hamlet weaves passages of Farsi translation into the English of Shakespeare’s masterpiece of crisis and identity. In it, a traditional way of life is being threatened by an evolving world, the land is being threatened by encroaching foreign interests, and a young man finds himself uprooted and torn between opposing customs, values and codes.”

Building the Wall (New World Stages)

A play by Pulitzer winner Robert Schenkkan (The Kentucky Cycle, All The Way, the movie Hacksaw Ridge) says of his anti-Trump play: “I wrote this in a white-hot fury. We no longer live in a world that is business as usual — Trump has made that very clear —and if theater is going to remain relevant,we must become faster to respond. We cannot hope to be useful if we can’t respond until 18 months after the fact. It is not a crazy or extreme fantasy. It’s very solidly grounded in current American law, and Trump’s rhetoric, and his most recent executive orders.”

cast and playwright

The Whirligig (New Group at Signature) 

Written by Hamish Linklater and featuring a cast that includes Norbert Leo Butz, Zosia Mamet and Jonny Orsini. When, after much time away, Kristina is back in Berkshire County, word spreads fast that she and her ex-husband are caring for their estranged, ailing daughter Julie. Broken-hearted and giddy with love and confusion, surprising visitors from Julie’s complicated past practically trip over each other to reach the young woman they thought they’d lost years before

May 23

cast

Can You Forgive Her? (Vineyard)

A play by Gina Gionfriddo (Becky Shaw; Rapture, Blister, Burn) about Miranda, drowning in debt and on the run from a date threatening to kill her, who is offered a safe haven by a couple on Halloween night.  “But is the promise of a better life a treat or a trick?”

May 25

The Boy Who Danced on Air (Abingdon) 

A new musical of a modern-day love story set in rural Afghanistan.

March 2017 NY Theater Openings

Sweeney Todd

Sally Field

Danny DeVito

Lynn Nottage

Tennessee Williams

David Byrne

Eugene O’Neill

Arthur Miller

John Leguizamo

Six shows are opening on Broadway in March, more than a dozen Off-Broadway, and plenty Off-Off Broadway as well, with a mix of exciting new work — by John Leguizamo, Lynn Nottage, and David Byrne, among others — and plays and musicals familiar enough to be called classics — by Sondheim, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and two each by William Inge and Eugene O’Neill, as well as a timely adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Enemy of the People.  Indeed, there are several starkly relevant plays about issues — an oil spill, an economically challenged community, a community responding to tragedy,  a politician in trouble, a martyr, and a dictator.

Fan favorites such as Sally Field,  Danny DeVito, Bobby Cannavale, Abigail Breslin and Lindsay Mendez are gracing New York stages in shows opening in March.

Below is a list, organized chronologically by opening date, with descriptions. Each title is linked to a relevant website.

Color key: Broadway: Red. Off Broadway: Purple or Blue. Off Off Broadway: Green.

To look at the Spring season as a whole, check out my Broadway Spring 2017 Preview Guide and my Off Broadway Spring 2017 Preview Guide

March 1

Sweeney Todd (Barrow Street)

This intimate staging of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s gory musical originated in Harrington’s, London’s oldest working pie and mash shop. The Barrow Street Theatre has been transformed to replicate the pie shop – theatergoers can even order a meal before the show.

 
All the Fine Boys (New Group at Signature)

Fourteen-year-old best friends Jenny (Abigail Breslin) and Emily (Isabelle Fuhrman) are hungry for knowledge and experience, and in suburban South Carolina in the late ’80s, experience is readily found with older boys

Bull in a China Shop (LCT)

A comedy by Bryna Turner that follows Mary Woolley and her partner Jeannette Marks through 40 years in a New England seminary as they reform and revolutionize women’s education at the height of the suffrage movement.

Dolphins and Sharks (Labyrinth Theater at Bank Street)

Pernell Walker of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” stars in this play by James Anthony Tyler about a group of workers in a Harlem print shop struggling for a living wage and a dignified life.

March 2

Significant Other (Booth)

Gideon Glick, Barbara Barrie and Lindsay Mendez star in this transfer of the Roundabout Theatre Company’s 2015 Off-Broadway hit about a gay bachelor looking for love in the big city, watching as one (female) friend after another gets married.

March 8

The Outer Space (The Public Theater)

At Joe’s Pub. Ethan Lipton tells the musical story of two human beings who buy an old spaceship, leaving the noise, pollution and overpriced rents of Earth for the vast beauty and treacherous terrain of the final frontier.

March 9

The Glass Menagerie (Belasco)

Sally Field, Joe Mantello, Finn Witrock, Madison Ferris star in the eighth production of Tennessee Williams play on Broadway.

The Moors (Playwrights Realm at The Duke)

Jen Silverman’s new play about 19th-century novel-writing sisters.

March 12

Come from Away (Schoenfeld)

A new musical that explores the lasting connection forged between a group of travelers whose planes were diverted to a small Newfoundland town on Sept. 11, 2001.

The Emperor Jones (Irish Rep)

Eugene O’Neill’s play about Brutus Jones, who, following a prison break in the United States, sets himself up as monarch of a Caribbean island. When the Natives rebel after years of exploitation, Jones journeys into darkness.

March 13

The Light Years (Playwrights Horizons)

From the theater company The Debate Society: “Behold The Spectatorium: an audacious, visionary 12,000-seat theater designed for the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 by Steele MacKaye, the now-forgotten theatrical impresario around whom this haunted, 40-year love story spins.”

Enemy of the People (The Barrow Group)

This adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s classic gains new currency thanks to the president’s recent remarks. The play is about a scientist who discovers an environmental catastrophe in his town that nobody wants to hear about.

March 14

Sundown, Yellow Moon (Ars Nova/WP at McGinn/Cazale)

While navigating the unsettling waters of young adulthood, twin sisters return home to find their father in a moment of crisis. Featuring songs by Brooklyn indie-rock duo The Bengsons.

March 15

Joan of Arc: Into the Fire (Public)

A rock concert version of the French heroine by David Byrne, directed by Alex Timbers, the team that put together Here Lies Love.

March 16

The Price (Roundabout at AA)

A revival of Arthur Miller’ 1968 drama about two estranged brothers who reunite to sell their the remainder of their parents’ estate. Danny DeVito makes his Broadway debut in a four-member cast that includes Mark Ruffalo, Jessica Hecht and Tony Shalhoub

Spill (Ensemble Studio Theater)

A theatrical exploration of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest oil spill in history, based on over 200 hours of interviews

March 19

Cry Havoc (Bedlam at New Ohio)

A solo performance piece by Stephan Wolfert, whorecounts his own experiences of military service, weaving his personal narrative with lines from some of Shakespeare’s most famous speeches.

March 20

How to Transcend a Happy Marriage (LCT/Mitzi Newhouse)

A new play by Sarah Ruhl:  Two married couples discuss a younger acquaintance–a polyamorous woman who also hunts her own meat. Fascinated, they invite this mysterious woman and her two live-in boyfriends to a New Year’s Eve party, which alters the course of their lives.

Church and State (New World Stages)

A “serious comedy” by Jason Odell Williams: Three days before his bid for re-election in North Carolina, a Republican US senator makes an off-the-cuff comment to a blogger that calls into question the politico’s belief in God

March 23

Miss Saigon (Broadway)

The first Broadway revival of the 1991 musical.An American soldier named Chris marries Kim in Vietnam before departing for the US. Three years later, he returns to find Kim still alive and raising Tam, a boy he fathered. With the Viet Cong closing in on the city and two women wanting the only place in his heart, Chris has big decisions to make.

Angry Young Man (Urban Stages)

A British comedy by Ben Woolf about a Middle Eastern surgeon who immigrates to London, running afoul of both white nationalists and liberal hypocrites.

March 26

Sweat (Studio 54)

Broadway transfer of the hit Public Theatre production of Nottage’s drama about blue-collar workers facing economic meltdown in Reading, Pennsylvania

Come Back, Little Sheba/Picnic (Transport Group at The Gym at Judson)

Two plays by William Inge in repertory

Picnic: When a gorgeous drifter Hal arrives in a small Kansas town, no one is prepared. He brings with him the possibilities and promises — some true some false — of a life with real options.

Come Back, Little Sheba  In an old and cluttered house in the middle west in their middle age, a couple lives one day to the next: Lola, breathless with fear of silence and solitude, and Doc a recovering alcoholic. Into their tired lives comes Marie, their boarder, so flush with the riches of her youth that they can no longer deny how they spent their own.

March 27

Latin History for Morons (Public)

Inspired by the near total absence of Latinos in his son’s American history class, John Leguizamo embarks on a frenzied search through 3,000 years of history  to find a Latin hero for his son’s school project

March 30

The Hairy Ape (Park Avenue Armory)

Bobby Cannavale stars as Yank in this 1921 play written by Eugene O’Neill.