Seasons don’t have themes. Scores of shows will open this fall from Broadway to Off-Off, but no shadowy organization meets to decree a season message. Even so, it was hard to ignore a certain XX-shaped pattern emerging: women and power. More than half of the shows in our fall preview center around women’s issues (reproductive rights, consent, motherhood) or showcase a powerful female lead (Norma Desmond, Ayn Rand, Mama Rose). It can’t possibly have anything to do with a certain November election, could it? Regardless, women are center stage. (So are avant-garde icons: Richard Foreman, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Builders Association, Elevator Repair Service.) Check out the list and get tickets before the show sells out. Oh, and vote.
Jack Tucker: Comedy Standup Hour at the Connelly Theatre (September 3–13)
If you attend stand-up comedy, you’ve probably seen people bomb. Also, you’ve seen them kill. Jack Tucker, the flop-sweat-spraying alter ego of Zack Zucker, does both. In this superb collision of stand-up and clowning, Tucker is a deliberately pathetic species of male comedian: trying to tread the line between edgy and woke—and stumbling all over it. The fun is watching Tucker spiral into desperate failure amid incredibly dense and funny sound effects (air horns, gunshots, song samples). Every punch line is aimed squarely at his own face.
McNeal at the Vivian Beaumont Theater (September 5–November 24)
MCU MVP Robert Downey, Jr. makes his Broadway debut in the new tech drama by Ayad Akhtar (Disgraced). No stranger to playing cocky, smart, yet flawed men, Downey is Jacob McNeal, a feisty, macho, old-guard novelist (think Philip Roth) who develops an obsession with Artificial Intelligence. Is the literary lion prowling for fresh meat online? We’ll see when the Lincoln Center Theater production, directed by Bartlett Sher, opens.
The Ask at the Wild Project (September 6–28)
Savvy and twisty playwright Matthew Freeman explores the complex politics of giving—like donating wealth to nonprofit organizations—in this two-hander starring stage vet Betsy Aidem (Prayer for the French Republic) and Colleen Litchfield (Leopoldstadt). Aidem is a wealthy Upper West Sider who locks horns with a Gen Z fundraiser from the ACLU visiting her to solicit a big gift. The generational combat is refereed by ace director Jessi D. Hill.
Blood of the Lamb at 59E59 (September 14–October 20)
Abortion has been a divisive topic for decades in America, but with a right-leaning Supreme Court and social conservatives hot to regulate women’s bodies, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Enter Arlene Hutton’s prescient and powerful post-Roe drama, in which two women face off in a Texas airport. One’s pregnant, the other is a court-appointed lawyer representing the woman’s unborn fetus. Margot Bordelon directs the formidable Johanna Day (Sweat) and Meredith Garretson (Syfy’s Resident Alien).
Safety Not Guaranteed at the BAM Harvey Theater (September 17–October 20)
Based on the quirky 2012 film starring Aubrey Plaza and Mark Duplass, this new musical hopes to take audiences on a sci-fi adventure (of sorts). Nkeki Obi-Melekwe plays a journalist investigating a classified ad that seeks volunteers for time travel. Taylor Trensch (Dear Evan Hansen) is the would-be wormholer and Lee Sunday Evans (Dance Nation) directs. Songs are by alt-rocker Ryan Miller (of the band Guster).
Sunset Boulevard at the St. James Theatre (previews September 28; opens October 20)
This is quite the season for radical takes on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s decidedly un-radical musicals. This summer brought CATS: The Jellicle Ball to PAC/NYC, which turned the feline blockbuster into a Queer Ballroom pageant. Now director Jamie Lloyd (Hedda Gabler) applies his Eurochic minimalism to the bombastic adaptation of the Hollywood classic. Ex-Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger wraps herself in the faded glamour of Norma Desmond.
Shit. Meet. Fan. at MCC Theater (October 10–November 17)
Satire isn’t dead in these hypersensitive times; it just needs a vigorous shaking. That’s where writer-director Robert O’Hara comes in. The gifted button-pusher behind Bootycandy and Barbecue has adapted the 2017 Italian film Perfect Strangers for this dinner-party comedy. A group of friends play a game where any text or phone call they receive is shared with the rest of the guests. Cue a flood of embarrassing secrets and explosive betrayals.
Teeth at New World Stages (previews October 16; opens October 31)
After a buzzy run at Playwrights Horizons this spring, this musical horror-comedy about Christianity and female empowerment tries a commercial run. Petite powerhouse Alyse Alan Louis returns in the role of Dawn, a Purity teenager trying to stay chaste for Jesus, who discovers that hanky-panky brings out a fanged monster, um, down there. The catchy and raunchy score is by Anna K. Jacobs (music) and Michael R. Jackson (lyrics). Sarah Benson is also back to restage the gory and blasphemous silliness at New World Stages.
A Woman Among Women at the Bushwick Starr (October 16–November 10)
Form-bending playwright Julia May Jonas had a hit in the fiction world with her subversive campus novel Vladimir; now she’s back with a “response play” bouncing off Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. Turning the focus from guilty white men to women and mothers, Jonas undermines our assumptions about catharsis and tragic heroes. This New Georges and Bushwick Starr coproduction takes place at the Starr’s brand-spanking new space.
Death Becomes Her at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre (previews October 23; opens November 21)
The 1992 F/X-heavy comedy returns as a musical campfest and dual vehicle for Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard, playing a couple of looks-obsessed Hollywood frenemies. Those familiar with the Robert Zemeckis movie (anchored by Meryl Street and Goldie Hawn), will know the twist (and we’re not just talking Madeline’s broken neck): a magical potion that confers eternal life—even if the flesh itself is dead and rotting. Director/choreographer Christopher Gattelli has the task of translating gruesome visual gags to the stage.
Atlas Drugged at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts (October 25–27)
Spectacular video installation + dense social issue: for decades that’s been the basic formula of the Builders Association, the singular multimedia troupe led by director Marianne Weems. This time, the Builders are splicing together game shows, national politics, and Artificial Intelligence—all in service of dissecting Ayn Rand’s fascist-libertarian doorstop, Atlas Shrugged. They’ve even created a composite character running for President: AI Rand. Bring your Republican friend. Bring your technophile friend. Hell, bring them both and argue about the show at a bar after.
King Lear at The Shed (October 26–December 15)
There was no Shakespeare in Central Park this summer, since the Public was renovating the Delacorte. If you’re hard-up for the Bard, get your fix at the Shed, where Kenneth Branagh will headline a new version of the tragedy about a powerful old ruler who won’t let go of power. Apart from Branagh’s crisp and authoritative line readings and Stonehenge-y visuals, this Lear cut (which previously played in London) runs just under two hours.
GATZ at the Public Theater (November 1–December 1)
Speaking of cuts, there’s not a single word omitted from Elevator Repair Service’s now-legendary staging of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Getting close to 20 years old, this astonishing daylong performance returns to the Public, where it made its NYC debut in 2010. Director John Collins and a superb ensemble (led by Scott Shepherd, who memorized the Jazz Age novel) channel the book with a combination of winking literalism and intensely resourceful interpretation, letting Fitzgerald’s glittering prose light up drab modern life.
Gypsy at the Majestic Theatre (previews November 21; opens December 19)
Audra Mcdonald, with six Tony Awards already a legend, makes history as the first Black actress to play Mama Rose. In fact, the entire George C. Wolfe production reconceives the Jule Styne–Stephen Sondheim–Arthur Laurents classic as the story of Black and biracial performers trying to make it in a segregated America.
No President at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts (December 5–7)
Theatrical pranksters of the highest order, the Nature Theater of Oklahoma (headed by Pavol Liška and Kelly Copper) smushes together Tchaikovsky’s effervescent score for The Nutcracker with a demented scenario involving rival security companies who come to blows trying to protect (checks notes) a very valuable theater curtain. One side is formed of ex-actors; the other of ex-ballet dancers. Expect so-bad-it’s-good ballet moves.
Suppose Beautiful Madeline Harvey at La MaMa E.T.C. (December 12–22)
It’s been 11 years since avant-garde titan Richard Foreman presented one of his trademark nightmare dioramas in which everything and nothing makes sense (Old-Fashioned Prostitutes at the Public). Now comes new performance text, but Foreman’s not directing. The company Object Collection ushers in this noirish, absurdist romance, adapted and directed by Kara Feely with original music by Travis Just. Ravishing downtown star Maggie Hoffman takes on the title role, a woman in a café who wonders if she truly exists.
