This post was originally published on Playbill - News
Written by: Natan Zamansky
• New World Stages Stage 1
• First Preview: July 1, 2024
• Opening: July 11, 2024
• Book, Music, and Lyrics: Caroline Sherman & Robert Hull
• Director: Cady Huffman
• Cast: Danny Iktomi Bevins, Monique Candelaria, Devin Cortez, Morgan Cowling, Kaitlyn Davidson, Joel Douglas, Joseph Fierberg, Alexandra Frohlinger, Matt Gibson, Albert Guerzon, Julia Louise Hosack, Kiana Kabeary, Howard Kaye, TJ Newton, April Ortiz, Kennedy Perez, Paul Salvatoriello, J Savage, Robbie Serrano, Ethan Saviet
Told through the lens of three generations of dreamers and doers spanning New York City in the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and the Bicentennial Year of 1976, this original story shines new light on one of history’s greatest feats of will and desire. With a desperate city pinning its hopes on this seemingly impossible project, only skyscraper-high levels of grit and determination can keep it climbing. Discover the dramatic tales of derring-do through spectacular choreography, foot-tapping music, and colorful, timeless characters. Take the thrilling ride to the sky with the brave Mohawk Skywalkers, industrialist visionaries, and can-do immigrants, all of whom had the guts to go up when everyone else was down. Witness the extraordinary resilience and optimism that built a landmark that still inspires today.
THE JOURNALS OF ADAM AND EVE
• Sheen Center
• First Preview: July 10, 2024
• Opening: July 11, 2024
• Playwright: Ed. Weinberger
• Director: Anders Corcoran
• Cast: Hal Linden, Marilu Henner
Inspired by the Biblical characters and the work of John Milton and Mark Twain, The Journals of Adam and Eve follows the famous first couple, allowing them to tell their own story in their own words for the first time.
ON BECKETT
• Irish Repertory Theatre
• First Preview: July 10, 2024
• Opening: July 11, 2024
• Conceived and Performed by Bill Irwin
Bill Irwin can’t escape Samuel Beckett. He has spent a lifetime captivated by the Irish writer’s language. In this intimate 90-minute evening, Irwin will explore a performer’s relationship to Beckett, mining the physical and verbal skills acquired in his years as a master clown and Tony Award–winning actor. Irwin’s approach to the comic, the tragic, to every side of Beckett’s work—including Waiting for Godot, Texts for Nothing, and more—will allow audiences to experience the language in compelling new ways. Whether you’re encountering the Nobel Prize winner’s writing for the first time, or building on a body of Beckett knowledge, this dynamic showcase is not to be missed.
CELLINO V. BARNES
• The Asylum Theatre
• Opening: July 23, 2024
• Playwright: Mike B. Breen and David Rafailedes
• Director: Wesley Taylor and Alex Wyse
• Cast: Eric William Morris, Noah Weisberg
Cellino v. Barnes is a darkly comic play following the tumultuous partnership between infamous lawyers Ross Cellino and Steve Barnes, documenting their rise and fall as the top injury attorneys in the country. Through the ’90s, 2000s, and 2010s, we witness our pals navigate the ethical ambiguities of the law, grapple with personal demons (and fax machines), and aspire to world domination. They’re a couple of bros with big dreams and loose morals, trying to make it in the cut throat world of ambulance chasing.
SIX CHARACTERS
• Lincoln Center Theater/Claire Tow Theater
• First Preview: July 13, 2024
• Opening: July 29, 2024
• Playwright: Phillip Howze
• Director: Dustin Willis
• Cast: CG, Will Cobbs, Seven F.B. Duncombe, Claudia Logan, Julia Robertson, Seret Scott
When some trifling citizens storm a renowned cultural center where they’re not meant to be, all hell breaks loose. Wigs go flying. Wounds get opened. An archive explodes. Will the audience make it out alive?
SOMEONE SPECTACULAR
• The Pershing Square Signature Center/Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
• First Preview: July 17, 2024
• Opening: July 31, 2024
• Playwright: Domenica Feraud
• Director: Tatiana Pandiani
• Cast: Gamze Ceylan, Alison Cimmet, Delia Cunningham, Marcus Gladney Jr., Ana Cruz Kayne, Damian Young
Once a week, six recently bereaved strangers gather for group therapy. It’s a stable routine — until one day, their grief counselor is inexplicably MIA. The group’s typical session quickly goes off the rails, offering an open-ended meditation on loss, with revelations that are at once beautiful, funny, and heartbreaking.
THE MEETING: THE INTERPRETER
• Theatre at St. Clements
• First Preview: July 29, 2024
• Opening: August 4, 2024
• Playwright: Catherine Gropper
• Director: Brian Mertes
• Cast: Frank Wood, Kelley Curran
Set against the backdrop of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, the play tells the story of an international interpreter thrown up against government systems, catapulting him into circumstances beyond his control.
• The Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space/Susan & Ronald Frankel Theater
• First Preview: August 14 2024
• Opening: TBA
• Playwright: Douglas Lyons
• Director: Zhalion Levington
• Cast: Kara Young, Biko Eisen-Martin, Michael Rishawn
If your ex wanted to meet up again, would you? Previously engaged, Jada and Dallas reunite for dinner to hash out the good, the bad, and the ugly from their romantic past. Despite the intrusion of sassy waiters, complicated memories, and their best efforts to keep things casual, the estranged couple find themselves cornered by the truth.
FORBIDDEN BROADWAY: MERRILY WE STOLE A SONG
• Theater 555
• First Preview: August 23, 2024
• Opening: September 12, 2024
• Created by Gerard Alessandrini
• Director: Gerard Alessandrini
• Cast: Chris Collins-Pisano, Jenny Lee Stern
Merrily We Stole a Song will parody current Broadway shows, including Hell’s Kitchen, Stereophonic, The Outsiders, The Great Gatsby, Back to the Future, The Wiz, and Merrily We Roll Along. Attendees can also expect sendups of Roger Bart, Patti LuPone, Daniel Radcliffe, Ariana DeBose, Jeremy Jordan, and the the 2024 Tony Awards as well as selections from Alessandrini’s recent Forbidden Sondheim.
COUNTING AND CRACKING
• NYU Skirball Center
• First Preview: September 6, 2024
• Opening: September 12, 2024
• Playwright: S. Shakthidharan
• Director: Eamon Flack
• Cast: Rodney Afif, Prakash Belawadi, Antonythasan Jesuthasan, Nadie Kammallaweera, Ahi Karunaharan, Abbie-Lee Lewis, Gandhi MacIntyre, Radhika Mudaliyar, Shiv Palekar, Dushan Philips, Sukhbir Singh Walia, Nipuni Sharada, Kaivu Suvarna, Raj Velu, Sukania Venugopal
The multi-generational journey of a Sri-Lankan Australian family from 1956-2004. Radha fled Sri Lanka with her unborn child as the nation struggled with conflict. Two decades later, her son Siddhartha, now an Australian man who knows little of his family’s background, receives a call from the past that changes everything he thought he knew, and who he thought he was.
OUR CLASS
• Classic Stage Company/Lynn F. Angelson Theater
• First Preview: September 12, 2024
• Opening: TBA
• Playwright: Tadeusz Slobodzianek
• Director: Igor Golyak
• Cast: Gus Birney, Andrey Burkovskiy, José Espinosa, Tess Goldwyn, Will Manning, Stephen Ochsner, Alexandra Silber, Richard Topol, Ilia Volok, Elan Zafir
Ten Polish classmates — five Jewish and five Catholic — grow up as friends and neighbors, then turn on one another with life and death consequences. Inspired by real life events surrounding a horrific 1941 pogrom in a small Polish village, this shocking, timely story follows their lives from childhood through eight decades.
THE GHOST OF JOHN MCCAIN
• SoHo Playhouse
• First Preview: September 3, 2024
• Opening: September 24, 2024
• Book: Scott Elmegreen
• Music and Lyrics: Drew Fornarola
• Director: Catie Davis
• Cast: TBA
When John McCain, the late solider-turned-senator awakens in the afterlife, he finds himself trapped inside the mind of President Donald Trump, alongside a quasi-Greek Chorus of other public figures, including Hillary Clinton, Roy Cohn, Eva Perón, Teddy Roosevelt, Robert Jordan, and Lindsey Graham. In order to escape, the motley crew is forced to engage in a high-stakes debate over life, legacy, and ‘American values.’
VLADIMIR
• Manhattan Theater Club @ New York City Center Stage I
• First Preview: September 24, 2024
• Opening: TBA
• Playwright: Erika Sheffer
• Director: Daniel Sullivan
This haunting world premiere unfolds in Moscow, where an independent journalist covering Putin’s first term struggles to maintain sanity and hope in increasingly hostile circumstances. She finds herself on the brink of an explosive story — but as danger mounts for her and her sources, she questions whether her bravery will make any difference at all.
THE BIG GAY JAMBOREE
• Orpheum Theatre
• First Preview: September 14, 2024
• Opening: October 1, 2024
• Book: Marla Mindelle, Jonathan Parks-Ramage
• Music and Lyrics: Marla Mindelle, Philip Drennen
• Director: Conor Gallagher
• Cast: TBA
Stacey wakes up after a night of heavy drinking and finds herself trapped in an Off-Broadway Golden Age musical. Forced to put her musical theatre degree in action, Stacey has to figure out how to escape this singing and dancing prison in front of a live audience.
GOOD BONES
• The Public Theater
• First Preview: September 19, 2024
• Opening: October 1, 2024
• Playwright: James Ijames
• Director: Saheem Ali
• Cast: TBA
A work opportunity to revitalize the blighted neighborhood she grew up in has led Aisha and her chef husband Travis to buy and renovate a charming old house. But as everyone knows, renovation is expensive and stressful—both for buildings and the communities that surround them. Aisha’s young contractor Earl grew up in the area too, but his memories are of more than just dangerous streets and hollowed-out homes. When their purely professional relationship gives way to heated debate about who gets to stay and who must go, Aisha is forced to reckon with the choices she’s made to get ahead and the painful, joyful, complicated ghosts that haunt her dreams… and her dream house.
THE COUNTER
• Roundabout Theatre Company / Laura Pels Theatre
• First Preview: September 19, 2024
• Opening: October 9, 2024
• Playwright: Meghan Kennedy
• Director: David Cromer
• Cast: TBA
Every morning at the local diner in a small town, a waitress refills a regular’s coffee. An unlikely friendship develops and keeps him coming back for more. But when he asks for a shocking favor, it brings to light both of their deepest secrets. The Counter is a funny, surprising, and moving meditation on the everyday connections that can change our lives.
DEEP HISTORY
• The Public Theater
• First Preview: October 5, 2024
• Opening: October 10, 2024
• Playwright: David Finnigan
• Cast: David Finnigan
At the end of 2019, in the English countryside, Australian playwright David Finnigan began writing a play about the six turning points that have brought us to this moment in time—our ecosystems transformed, our planet on the brink of unthinkable climate disaster. But then Finnigan’s hometown of Canberra was hit by bushfires. As an area the size of England burned and one billion animals perished, he started to receive texts from loved ones racing to evacuate amid the devastation. In a performance that interweaves 75,000 years of humanity with the incredibly personal account of his best friend’s escape, Finnigan calls on scientific research, phone footage, and a very personal story to illuminate the transforming planet and how we’ve arrived here.
DRAG: THE MUSICAL
• New World Stages – Stage III
• First Preview: September 30, 2024
• Opening: October 21, 2024
• Book, Music, Lyrics: Justin Andrew Honard, Tomas Costanza, Ashley Gordon
• Cast: Alaska, Lagoona Bloo, Jujubee, Jan Sport, J. Elaine Marcos
Two Drag Houses, both alike in indignity, vie for supremacy in a wig-snatching journey of fashion, family, and forgiveness. After a bitter split, two estranged queens bring their already simmering tensions to a boiling point when they open competing clubs. In this queen-eat-queen tale of spite and survival, there’s only one rule: No Lip Synching Allowed.
GATZ
• The Public Theater
• Opening: November 1, 2024
• Playwright: Elevator Repair Service
• Director: John Collins
• Cast: Laurena Allan, Jim Fletcher, Ross Fletcher, Maggie Hoffman, Mike Iveson, Vin Knight, Aaron Landsman, Annie McNamara, Scott Shepherd, Pete Simpson, Susie Sokol, Tory Vazquez, Ben Jalosa Williams
One morning in the office of a mysterious small business, an employee finds a copy of The Great Gatsby in the clutter of his desk. He starts to read it out loud and doesn’t stop. At first his coworkers hardly notice. But after a series of strange coincidences, it’s no longer clear whether he’s reading the book, or the book is transforming him.
KING LEAR
• The Shed
• First Preview: October 26, 2024
• Opening: November 14, 2024
• Playwright: William Shakespeare
• Director: Kenneth Branagh
• Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Mara Allen, Deborah Alli, Raymond Anum, Melanie-Joyce Bermudez, Doug Colling, Dylan Corbett-Bader, Eleanor de Rohan, Chloe Fenwick-Brown, Joseph Kloska, Corey Mylchreest, Caleb Obediah, Hughie O’Donnell, Jessica Revell
Kenneth Branagh plays the title role in a new production of William Shakespeare’s King Lear, set in the barbarous landscape of Ancient Britain. Featuring a cast of rising stars from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art directed by Branagh, this production releases the play’s power and turmoil in a fast-paced staging.
THE BLOOD QUILT
• Lincoln Center Theater/Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre
• First Preview: October 30, 2024
• Opening: November 21, 2024
• Playwright: Katori Hall
• Director: Lileana Blain-Cruz
• Cast: TBA
Gathering at their childhood island home off the coast of Georgia, four disconnected sisters meet to create a family quilt to honor their recently deceased mother. When their reunion turns into a reading of their mother’s will, everyone must grapple with a troubling inheritance. Stitched with history, ritual, laughter and tears, will their “blood quilt” bind the family together or tear them apart forever?
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
• Classic Stage Company/Lynn F. Angelson Theater
• First Preview: November 22, 2024
• Opening: TBA
• Playwright: William Shakespeare
• Director: Igor Golyak
• Cast: Richard Topol, Alexandra Silber, Gus Birney, José Espinosa, Tess Goldwyn, Stephen Ochsner
The most excellent historie of the Merchant of Venice
with the exxtreame cruelitie of Shylocke the Jewe
This highly entertaining adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, directed by Ukrainian-born, Jewish theater artist Igor Golyak, is a wild ride that takes a startling and tragic turn, leaving the audience stunned and unable to stop the inevitable and unbearable consequences.
LIBERATION
• Roundabout Theatre Company / Laura Pels Theatre
• First Preview: January 31, 2025
• Opening: February 20, 2025
• Playwright: Bess Wohl
• Director: Whitney White
• Cast: TBA
It’s 1970: somewhere in Ohio, six women meet on a basement basketball court, determined to shake up their lives and change the world. Fifty years later, one of their daughters tries to understand where things fell apart. A provocative, wildly theatrical world premiere that poses vital questions about friendship, legacy, and the true meaning of liberation.
GHOSTS
• Lincoln Center Theater/Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre
• First Preview: February 13, 2025
• Opening: March 10, 2025
• Playwright: Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Mark O’Rowe
• Director: Jack O’Brien
• Cast: TBA
After several years abroad, Helena Alving’s son has returned home. He carries with him a terrifying secret. Ibsen’s Ghosts is a devastating moral thriller in which ideas of love, duty and family are mercilessly put to the test.
