Features:
Bullets Over Broadway
Mary-Louise Parker returns to the stage with the hit-man farce Reckless.
Politics Is Everywhere
Four politically-inclined plays.
Edie Falco Takes Back ’night, Mother
Edie Falco in the first Broadway revival of Marsha Norman’s dark 1983 Pulitzer winner.
August Presence
One season after her Tony win, Phylicia Rashad turns mystical with August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean.
Neil LaBute’s Nastygram From Boys’ Town
This new season, we’ll get the latest misanthropic tale: Fat Pig, at the Lucille Lortel.
Crowning Glory
Peter Dinklage psychoanalyzes Shakespeare’s Richard III.
Bryony Lavery And John Patrick ShanleyDish About Religion.
He’s a combative guy’s guy from the Bronx. She’s a polite British divorcée who came out as a lesbian late in life.
Stranger In Town
Matthew Broderick goes Off Broadway in a revival of Larry Shue’s The Foreigner.
Once Bitten
What’s next in a musical season that opened with Dracula?
Sam Shepard, the Silent Type
Q&A with the actor about his new leading role.
What are you looking forward to this fall?
Ask an usher.
Steffi Wallis, Second Stage house manager and Off Broadway volunteer usher
Taste Eclectic. I like classics—Shakespeare and Shaw—musicals, satire, modern drama, and comedies. I saw the original My Fair Lady. The original Damn Yankees. That’s how I got interested and involved.
Looking Forward To The Roundabout’s Pacific Overtures; it’s an unusual topic, it’s got Commodore Perry’s entry into Japan—and it’s Sondheim! I’m a Sondheim person, so that’s a given. Also, Dirty Tricks at the Public Theater. Judith Ivey as Martha Mitchell? Oh, my goodness! I saw her play twelve characters in a one-woman show called Women on Fire at the Cherry Lane last year. She’s fantastic.
Wish List The original eight-hour Nicholas Nickleby because I missed it the first time around.
Best Of The Rest
Broadway
Twelve Angry Men
Reginald Rose’s earnest play gets to Broadway, starring Philip Bosco, Larry Bryggman, Boyd Gaines, and nine others.
American Airlines Theater; in previews October 1 for an October 28 opening.
The Good Body
Vagina Monologues creator Eve Ensler diversifies her subject matter in a follow-up exploring other politically significant parts.
Booth Theatre; in previews October 22 for a November 15 opening.
Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance
The Tony-winning Australian drag queen who’s become about as mainstream as a transvestite can be returns for a Broadway run.
Music Box Theatre; in previews November 5 for a November 21 opening.
Whoopi
Her edgy rep restored after her politics proved too potent for Slim-Fast, our latter-day Lenny Bruce reprises the one-woman show that launched her career—not to be confused with the canceled sitcom.
Lyceum Theatre; in previews November 6 for a November 17 opening.
700 Sundays
Billy Crystal wrote and stars in a one-man multicharacter extravaganza about his New York upbringing.
Broadhurst Theatre; in previews November 12 for a December 5 opening.
Little Women
Tony winner Sutton Foster (Thoroughly Modern Millie) brings everyone’s favorite young-adult classic to sonorous life.
Virginia Theatre; in previews December 2 for a January 23 opening.
Good Vibrations
A new musical features 30 Beach Boys songs—though, alas, the plot will be unrelated to the band or its sordid, well-documented history.
Eugene O’Neill Theater; in previews December 4 for a January 13 opening.
Off Broadway
Symphonie Fantastique
Avant-garde puppeteer Basil Twist’s abstract, Berlioz-scored underwater fantasia calls a new fish tank home. Dodger Stages; opens September 16. Rose rageIn the season’s most intense (or at least longest) production, Shakespeare’s Henry VI trilogy is condensed to a lean five and a half hours, and reset in a Victorian slaughterhouse. Real meat will be sliced and diced—the Wars of the Roses were bloody, you see—which should set the right mood for the dinner break.
The Duke on 42nd Street; opens September 17.
Kiki & Herb Will Die For you
A one-shot appearance from the dynamic duo, whose Coup de Théâtre turned cabaret into the next big thing, reprise their show in what’s being billed as their final New York appearance. Probably.
Carnegie Hall; September 19.
The Bald Soprano and The Lesson
Tina Howe’s new translations of two one-acts by the French absurdist Eugène Ionesco restore their zany playfulness and preserve their stunning incoherence.
Atlantic Theater; opens September 19.
White Chocolate
On the day an Upper East Sider is to become director of the Met, he and his wife become black, in a satire by William Hamilton. Century Center for the Performing Arts; in previews September 21 for an October 6 opening.
People Be Heard
A stripper gets appointed to the local school board. While some camp does ensue (this is, after all, directed by Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical’s Erica Schmidt), there’s political subtext in a debate over teaching evolution.
Playwrights Horizons; opens September 23.
Dirty Tricks
In a one-woman one-act production, two-time Tony winner Judith Ivey plays Martha Mitchell, the loose-cannon wife of the attorney general, who, in her inimitable way, helped bring down Nixon, on the 30th anniversary of Watergate.
Public Theater; in previews October 5.
The Immigrant
Steven Alper’s musical adaptation of Mark Harelik’s turn-of-the-century Russian-American dream tale with a twist—it’s set in Galveston, Texas.
Dodger Stages; in previews October 19 for a November 4 opening.
Five by Tenn
Kathleen Chalfant leads an ensemble cast in bringing out five recently rediscovered Tennessee Williams one-acts.
Manhattan Theatre Club Stage II; in previews October 19 for a November 11 opening.
Belle Epoque
Martha Clarke directs (and co-wrote, with Charles Mee) a bio-musical on Toulouse-Lautrec in Montmartre using numbers from Satie and Debussy. Call it a gentler Moulin Rouge.
Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater; in previews October 28 for a November 21 opening.
A Second Hand Memory
Michael McKean, Martha Plimpton, and Dominic Chianese lend their bankable names to Woody Allen’s play set in fifties Brooklyn.
Atlantic Theater; in previews November 3 for a November 22 opening.