In the post–World War II U.S.S.R., and in its satellites in Eastern Europe, any way of thinking that did not conform to Communist—that is, Stalinist—ideology was considered treasonous. Suspected traitors were tortured, imprisoned, and executed. The most rudimentary rigged trials were conducted, and the outcomes were predetermined. Laura Zlatos’ Show Trial gives a satirical spin to the actual trial of Milada Horakova, a 50-year-old women’s rights activist and parliamentarian, in 1949.
King of the Yees, playwright Lauren Yee’s most recent play, packs a comic punch that rattles the mind into a state of confusion. If the objective is to pack as much comedy as possible into a two-hour play about a daughter’s appreciation of her father, then well done. However, Joshua Kahan Brody’s direction sets such a frantic pace that one frequently finds oneself asking: What is happening now, and who is that? And because three of the actors play no fewer than six characters each, the production has the feel of a madcap comedy. It is a silly and sentimental story.
No symbol is more overused in the arts than the human heart. Served cold, golden, or on one’s sleeve, it has been the stuff of countless theatrical metaphors, from the plays of Euripides to Larry Kramer. The Roundabout Theatre Company has, nonetheless, doubled down on the image for its plainly named yet surprisingly complex medical musical, The Heart. Happily, it is a gamble that pays off. Kait Kerrigan’s book mostly avoids sentimentality in favor of scientific facts and hard emotional truths, while the husband and wife team of Ian and Anne Eisendrath deliver a pulsating score, anchored in the realm of electronic dance music.
When there is a generation gap, when communication between children and parents goes awry, it often stems from divergent views, sometimes political, sometimes value-based, and sometimes both. Those parents who struggle to ease their children’s lives by providing them with material comforts that they themselves lacked are often disappointed when their kids reject affluence, and risk their financial or physical security for a greater “cause.” That is the case in playwright David Zax’s Aftermath.
If you missed the avant-garde theater scene in New York City during the 1960s and ’70s, The Kick Inside serves as a time capsule, catapulting its audiences back to the heyday of experimental theater. Directed with a steady hand by Nicolás Noreña, this collection of 12 vignettes by a range of playwrights, from Richard Foreman to Penny Arcade, takes its viewers on a madcap linguistic, visual, and physical journey to that era, with an occasional modern touch to the retro material.
Cicely Hamilton’s Phyl, a 1911 comedy that challenges the constraints imposed on women of the early suffragist era, is receiving its New York premiere from the Mint Theater Company. This rarely seen work by Hamilton—a leading British women’s rights activist—introduces a spirited heroine determined to break free from isolation and convention. Under Britt Berke’s direction, Phyl reveals the quiet radicalism of its heroine’s determination to pursue the life she desires.
Eugène Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano, a landmark of the Theatre of the Absurd, transforms the banalities of everyday conversation into a riotous comedy of linguistic confusion and human folly. Under Bradford Cover’s astute direction, the Resident Acting Company brings out the enduring brilliance of this classic, whose absurdist humor continues to resonate in a world where communication too often gives way to cacophony.
Fish, written by Melis Aker and directed by Tatiana Pandiani, is a darkly comic coming-of-age drama inspired by true events about a teenage girl whose search for her missing brother takes a disturbing turn. Set in London in 2016, the play follows 17-year-old Karya as she tests her Turkish mother’s increasingly plausible theory about her brother’s disappearance by launching an online experiment with her best friend, only to discover that some games carry sinister consequences.
In Myth, directed by Becky Baumwoll, Broken Box Mime Theater transports audiences to a distant planet where two moons illuminate an alien world of strange flora, fauna, and unexpected possibilities. Through the expressive power of the body, the adventurous company uses speculative fiction to explore how we remember, revise, and sometimes forget the histories that shape our present.
Nearly two decades after its downtown debut, Joey Arias and Basil Twist’s Arias with a Twist returns with its fusion of cabaret, puppetry, music, and performance art fully intact. Arias remains the show’s magnetic center, while Twist surrounds him with a visual world that proves this exuberant collaboration has lost none of its capacity to surprise.
In How Shakespeare Saved My Life, Jacob Ming-Trent transforms the search for a place to belong into a riveting celebration of the power of language. Directed by Tony Taccone, this solo performance draws on Shakespeare, rap, poetry, and preaching to chart one man’s journey toward reclaiming his life.
In Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love (1997), intellectual brilliance and unspoken longing collide as poet and classical scholar A. E. Housman confronts the love he has carried silently through a lifetime. In this rare revival, Zachary Elkind’s direction and David Greenspan’s mesmerizing performance transform Housman’s final journey into a poignant meditation on love, memory, and the price of keeping desire hidden.
French poet and avant-garde artist Jean Cocteau wrote his 1929 novella Les Enfants Terribles (The Terrible Children) in just 17 days while recovering from an opium addiction at a clinic. In Michael Gardner’s ambitious new stage adaptation, which he also directs, Cocteau’s dark, hypnotic fable explores the dangerous power of imagination, suggesting how unbridled fantasy and obsessive isolation can transform an internal refuge into a destructive prison.
In The Body of Mary: A Play in Three Acts (of God), Katie Cappiello reimagines the Virgin Mary’s origin story to examine the struggle over women’s bodies, reproduction, and who controls the narrative. Written and directed by Cappiello, this comedy brings together three women named Mary whose lives, separated by centuries, illuminate the forces of patriarchal control, violence, and repression.
Molière’s Don Juan takes audiences on a feverish journey from seduction to reckoning, blending farce, tragedy, and the supernatural in a provocative examination of hypocrisy, morality, and the consequences of unchecked desire. In the free outdoor production by Molière in the Park (MIP), this darkly comic masterpiece proves as entertaining as it is unsettling, holding up a mirror to human folly while leaving audiences to determine where they stand.
Although the renowned 20th-century poet W. H. Auden dismissed The Taming of the Shrew as “the only play of Shakespeare’s that is a complete failure,” Laura Lapidus proves there is still plenty of life in the old comedy with To Have and To Hold, her contemporary reimagining that explores sisterhood, romantic love and the difficult business of coming into one’s own. Smartly directed by Zoë Adams and featuring a top-notch ensemble, this 85-minute romp through modern romance is both deliciously entertaining and unexpectedly poignant.
Terence Anthony’s The House of the Negro Insane, set in 1935 inside Central State Hospital, a psychiatric institution built to confine “insane and idiotic negroes,” is a searing drama about confinement, despair, and the possibility of freedom. Structured in seven scenes, the play has a surreal texture that director Daniel Carlton brings to vivid life—a world in which even those resigned to death may dare to imagine freedom beyond the walls.
In John Donnelly’s The Pass, directed by Max Hunter, two rising British soccer stars confront the volatile intersection of masculinity, desire, and celebrity when a hotel-room encounter threatens to upend their carefully constructed futures. Spanning 12 years and three hotel rooms, this provocative drama tackles the high stakes of being young, ambitious, and closeted in a world where the pressure to perform extends far beyond the playing field.
What if men suddenly disappeared from the planet? Melissa Maney’s darkly comic Hungry Women, directed by Daniella Caggiano, imaginatively explores that provocative question across two centuries, using absurdism, macabre humor, and a feminist lens to examine how women might reconstruct society—and what they might ultimately discover they are most hungry for.
After spending decades bringing history’s greatest composers to vivid theatrical life, Hershey Felder turns his storytelling gifts inward in Hershey Felder: The Piano and Me. The result is an intimate and deeply affecting autobiographical portrait that reveals how music shaped not only an extraordinary career but also an extraordinary life.
Family entertainment often settles for amusing the children while asking adults to patiently endure the ride. The Listies: Make Some Noise gleefully defies that formula, delivering an hour of quick-witted comic anarchy in which playwright-performers Richard Higgins and Matthew Kelly prove that silliness, when executed with razor-sharp timing and imagination, can delight audiences from preschoolers to grandparents.
For anyone who has ever believed mathematics belonged exclusively to gifted minds, That Math Show offers a joyful correction. Created and performed by Dr. Arthur Benjamin and directed by Eric Krebs, this lively production reveals the beauty and playfulness of numbers.
Millie, the cheeky British teenage expatriate at the center of Youth in Flames, begins the play drifting contentedly through life. In playwright-performer Mimi Martin’s engaging and deeply affecting solo drama, directed by Jessica Wiley, that carefree detachment is challenged by the turmoil of the 2019 Hong Kong protests, leading to a journey of self-discovery and moral reckoning.
At the newly revitalized Delacorte Theater, Saheem Ali’s stirring production of Romeo and Juliet reimagines Shakespeare’s Verona as a divided community along the U.S.-Mexico border, bringing fresh urgency to the tale of the star-crossed lovers. By allowing Romeo and Juliet to speak to one another in Spanish amid a world of conflict, Ali illuminates both the intimacy of their bond and the forces determined to keep them apart.
Few things are as ripe for satire as the modern wedding industry, and Catherine Weingarten’s I Wanttt a Unicorn Frappe!!! gleefully plunges its horn into the target. This clever world premiere transforms one woman’s engagement anxiety into a satire about desire, denial, and the pressures placed on women to pursue happily-ever-after at any cost.
