February 2017 NY Theater Openings
February 1, 2017 Leave a comment
Broadway this month will see the opening of two starry musical revivals by two of the reigning composers of musical theater — Stephen Sondheim (86) and Andrew Lloyd Webber (68) — while Off-Broadway pays tribute to Jerry Herman (85) and Kurt Weill (1900-1950), and presents a new musical by John Kander (89.)
Meanwhile, Off-Off Broadway is showcasing the work of one of New York’s hottest musical composers, Dave Malloy (41), best-known for the hit Broadway musical Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812., which also started Off-Off-Broadway.
The month will also see the opening of new plays by (among others) Brandon Jacob-Jenkins, David Mamet, Tanya Saracho,and Will Eno, and new productions of plays by Tracy Letts and Wallace Shawn.
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
February 1
Georgie: My Adventures with George Rose (Davenport)
Ed Dixon recounts how he came to know and admire character actor George Rose, who acted with such luminaries as Katherine Hepburn and Noel Coward.
February 8
Jonah and Otto (Lost Tribe at Theater Row)
Over the course of a single day, two men – one 26, the other 62; different in every way – share their solitude and unfold their secrets.
Fade (Primary Stages at Cherry Lane)
A comedy by Tanya Saracho about the burgeoning friendship between Lucia and Abel, two Latinos of Mexican descent working at a ruthless Hollywood studio
Big River (Encores at City Center)
The Encores concert version of the Tony-winning musical based on Mark Twain’s novel “Huck Finn.”
February 9
The Mother of Invention (Abingdon at June Havoc)
James Lecesne’s unflinching and comedic look at how one family deals with the effects of Alzheimer’s.
Sunset Boulevard (Palace Theatre)
Glenn Close stars in a revival of the 1994 musical based on the 1950 Billy Wilder movie about a faded Hollywood silent film goddess who tries to make one last comeback. This production was seen in a spring 2016 revival in London.
The Object Lesson (New York Theatre Workshop)
In what’s becoming its signature activity, NYTW has physically transformed their theater once again, this time turning it into a giant storage facility. allowing audiences to roam and poke through the clutter.
February 10
Crackskull Row ( Irish Rep)
Rasher Moorigan has a secret that only his mother knows. Tonight – for the first time in over thirty years – mother and son spend May Eve together in a wreck of a house down the backlanes of Dublin
February 12
Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill: (York)
Beardo (Pipeline)
Beardo, which takes place in St. John’s Lutheran Church in Greenpoint, is a “Russian indie rock musical” with music by Dave Malloy ( Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812.) “This New York premiere explodes the mad inner workings of Rasputin, the infamous mystic who sexed his way to the fall of the Russian monarchy.”
Ring Twice For Miranda (NY City Center Stage II)
A man known only as Sir rules with a vengeance, but it’s Miranda, a chambermaid, who adds intrigue to his life. When Elliot, the butler, is fired, she flees with him in defiance onto the frightening streets. All must soon make critical decisions with imperfect facts to guide them, since little in their world is as it appears.
February 15
Man From Nebraska (Second Stage)
A revival of the play by Tracey Letts, directed by David Cromer, starring Reed Birney (The Humans) as Ken, a middle aged man from Nebraska, who suddenly finds he’s lost his faith, along with his sense of purpose. He goes on a wild adventure to find it. Along the way he encounters a world vastly different from his own, filled with chance meetings and romantic encounters that shake him to the core.
February 16
Wallace Shawn, from the National Theater production.
Evening at the Talk House (New Group at Signature)
The New Group at Signature) by Wallace Shawn with Matthew Broderick, Jill Eikenberry, John Epperson, Larry Pine, Wallace Shawn, Claudia Shear, Annapurna Sriram, Michael Tucker. Shawn takes on theater itself with this acerbic and stealth political comedy about theater artists who have a reunion at their old hangout, the Talk House, to reminisce about the show they made a decade ago — except most are no longer theater artists. There’s been “a decline in the theatergoing impulse.”
February 19
On The Exhale (Roundabout)
A play by Martin Zimmerman (Netflix’s Narcos) starring Marin Ireland as a liberal college professor inexplicably drawn to a weapon used in a senseless act of violence.
February 21
Everybody (Signature)
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s new play is a modern version of Everyman, a famous morality play about Christian salvation from the 15th century. I have no idea what he’s doing with it, but he was very clever in a play called Octoroon, which was his take on an 19th century melodrama, and both provocative and thoughtful in his play Gloria
February 22
If I Forget (Roundabout)
A new play by Steven Levenson (“The Language of Trees,” “The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin”) that tells the story of the bickering reunion of liberal Jewish studies professor Michael Fischer with his two sisters to celebrate their father’s 75th birthday shortly before 9/11.
DC production of Kid Victory
Kid Victory (Vineyard)
The latest collaboration between John Kander and Greg Pierce. “Seventeen-year-old Luke returns to his small Kansas town after a wrenching one-year absence. As his friendship grows with the town misfit, Emily, his parents realize that in order to truly find their son, they must confront some unnerving truths about his disappearance.”
February 23
Sunday in the Park with George (Hudson Theater)
Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford star in this
transfer of the New York City Center‘s fall 2016 concert version of the Pulitzer-winning Sondheim and Lapine 1984 musical about pointillist painter George Seurat. It marks the re-launching of the Hudson Theater (built in 1903) as the 41st Broadway house.
Linda (MTC at City Center)
Penelope Skinner’s play is about a successful woman whose pitch to change the way the world looks at women of a certain age winds up making her fight for her own relevance.
February 24
The View UpStairs (Lynn Redgrave Theater)
A young fashion designer from 2017 buys the abandoned space that was the UpStairs Lounge, a vibrant ’70s gay bar in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
February 26
Dear World (York)
Tyne Daly stars in the York’s “Musical in Mufti” (short run) of Jerry Herman’s musical based on the Madwoman of Chaillot.
February 27
Wakey, Wakey (Signature)
Will Eno’s play “challenges the notion of what really matters and recognizes the importance of life’s simple pleasures.” The downtown playwright who made his Broadway debut recently with the abstruse The Realistic Joneses has his admirers; I’m not yet one of them.
The Penitent (Atlantic)
A new play by David Mamet. “A renowned psychiatrist is asked to testify on behalf of a young patient. When he refuses, his career, ethics and faith are thrown into question.”
Nibbler (The Amoralists at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre)
A play by Ken Urban that takes place in the summer of 1992 in Medford, New Jersey, when Adam and his gang of friends face life after high school. But then the fivesome encounter a mysterious visitor from another world, and their lives are forever changed
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.
February 28
A Gravediggger’s Lullaby (TACT at Theatre Row)
A new play by Jeff Talbott about the life of Baylen, an honest, hard-working gravedigger who sweats and bleeds to support his small family
The Present
Theater: MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman
Sunset Boulevard
Theater; Hudson
Theater: Booth
Theater: John Golden
Theater: Roundabout’s American Airlines
Theater: Broadway
Theater: Studio 54
Theater: Lyceum
Theatre: Walter Kerr
Theater: St. James
Oslo
Theater: August Wilson
Theater: Barrymore
Theater: Cort
Theater: Shubert
Theater: Lunt-Fontanne
Theater: Broadhurst
Theater: Bernard Jacobs
Theater: Golden
This is Our Youth
Brooks Atkinson Theater
You Can’t Take It With You
The Country House
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night
It’s Only A Play
On The Town
Disgraced
The Last Ship
The Real Thing
The River
Side Show
A Delicate Balance
The Illusionists
Booth Theater
Honeymoon in Vegas
Jake Gyllenhaal will make his Broadway debut in “Constellations” by Nick Payne, the same playwright who wrote “If There Is I Haven’t Found it Yet,” the play in which Gyllenhaal made his New York stage debut in 2012. Constellations is described as telling the story of two strangers who continue to meet by chance under the parallel universe framework of string theory. It opens January 13 at MTC’s Sam Friedman Theater, a couple of months after his sister Maggie is scheduled to make her Broadway debut opposite Cynthia Nixon and Ewan McGregor in a revival of Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing.”
Like the acting in Orange is the New Black? As it turns out,
