Off Broadway shows, reviews, tickets and listings

Studio Seaview takes possession of the Tony Kiser Theatre—until recently home to Second Stage—with a high-profile inaugural offering. The Office's supremely likable John Krasinski stars in the New York debut of a 2018 monodrama by the U.K.'s Penelope Skinner, which charts what happens when a seemingly affable fellow who falls into a snake pit of online men's-rights activism and incel rage. The production reunites Skinner with director Sam Gold (An Enemy of the People), who directed her dark sex comedy The Village Bikein 2014.

New York's Irish Rep and Dublin's Fishamble: The New Play Company join hands across the water to present a solo work written and performed by Kwaku Fortune. The show explores the experience of darkness both on the outside (as a mixed-race person in Ireland) and the inside (dealing with feeling whose expression is discouraged). Nicola Murphy Dubey directs the world premiere.  

Designers Adam Rigg and Anton Volovsek transform the Vineyard Theatre's proscenium playing space into an elevated, in-the-round layout for the world premiere of writer-director Nazareth Hassan's play, which includes live skateboarding and original music by Free Fool. Essence Lotus and Oghenero Gbajge play two friends bonding at a skateboard park as they try to find the right name for their rap group. Felicia Curry completes the cast of three in this coproduction of the Vineyard and National Black Theatre (in association with the New Group).

Classic Stage Company, Transport Group and the National Asian American Theatre Company (NAATCO) pool their resources for a revival of William Inge's 1955 dramedy about a rural Kansas diner where bus riders are forced to spend the wee hours during a snowstorm. Inge's Midwestern-Tennessee-Williams energies come to somewhat happier expression here than in his other most famous plays: Picnic, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs and Come Back, Little Sheba. Jack Cummings III directs a cast composed entirely of Asian-American actors, including Midori Francis as the sexpot chanteuse once played by Kim Stanley (and Marilyn Monroe in the film version) and Cindy Cheung in the Elaine Stritch role of the diner's fiesty proprietor. Michael Hsu Rosen, Rajesh Bose, David Shih, Delphi Borich, David Lee Huynh and Moses Villarama round out the cast. 

National Black Theatre sets sail at the Flea with the NYC premiere of a nautical expedition by the late Aishah Rahman, a playwright and author associated with the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The play looks at colorism within the Black community, as manifested on a singles cruise—stewarded by an incranation of the African trickster spirit Papa Legba—on which all the men are considered undesirably dark-skinned. Abigail jean-baptiste directs a cast that includes Paige Gilbert, Ebony Marshall-Oliver, Lance Coadie Williams, Sidney DuPont, Gayle Samuels, Abenaa Quïïn and TL Thompson. (A limited number of "Pick Your Price" tickets, ranging from $5 to $25, are available at each performance.)

Writer-director Gail Kriegel's world-premiere drama depicts a teenager who manifests severe mental illness and the toll that her ordeal exacts from the family that loves her. Katherine Reis plays the interrupted girl; the cast of 11 also includes Pamela Bob and Bart Shatto as her parents, Paul Castree as her uncle and Blaire Dimisa as her kid sister. 

The Signature gives Hadestown a run for its money with a different reworking of the classic Greek myth of underworld journeys: Sarah Ruhl's 2003 drama, which shifts the story's emphasis from Orpheus's disastrous restrospection to focus on Eurydice's relationship with her dead father. Famous daughter Maya Hawke plays the title role, joined by Brian d'Arcy James, Caleb Eberhardt and T. Ryder Smith in the other principal roles and a trio of three-named actors—Maria Elena Ramirez, David Ryan Smith and Jon Norman Schneider—as the chorus of stones. Les Waters (Dana H.), who directed the original production, returns to take a look back.

The supreme Elizabeth Marvel returns plays a fashion photographer on a disastrous shoot for the cover of Vogue in a new dark comedy by Caitlin Saylor Stephens, set on a European estate after the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Di. Morgan Green directs the play's world premiere at Lincoln Center Theater's intimate Claire Tow space, with an all-female cast that also includes Stella Everett, Maia Novi, Britne Oldford, Sarah Marie Rodriguez and Madeline Wise.

NSangou Njikam's solo hip-hop theater show was part of the Atlantic's 2023 readings series (Writ)ual MixFest and was slated to premiere at the theater last fall before getting bumped by a schedule change. Now Njikam finally brings what is billed as "a mix of poetry, ministry, and magic" to the stage, joined by DJ Monday Blue, in a production directed by Dennis A. Allen II.

Red Bull Theater, which pumps new blood into the classics, takes charge of Molière's classic 17th-century farce about a serial hypochondriac at the mercy of opportunistic quacks. Mark Linn-Baker (Perfect Strangers) plays the title role—which, ironically enough, Molière himself played when he was actually fatally ill—joined by Sarah Stiles, Arnie Burton, Manoel Felciano, Emily Swallow, Russell Daniels, Emilie Kouatchou and John Yi. Red Bull honcho Jesse Berger directs the world premiere of Jeffrey Hatcher's adaptation (from a new translation by Mirabelle Ordinaire). 

Writers Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley and director Rory Pelsue are the Fake Friends gang behind 2020's uproarious Circle Jerk, a Charles Ludlam–style satirical farce about technology and white supremacy that was a surprise finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Expect wild things from their follow-up at the New Group: an original musical that envisions a trio of Gen Zers on a quest to track down a missing pop star from the 2000s. The cast of the world premiere includes Sara Gettelfinger, Natalie Walker, Patrick Nathan Falk, Keri René Fuller, Luke Islam and the distinctive Milly Shapiro, who shared an honorary 2013 Tony Award for Matilda and famously lost her head in Hereditary.

Coming off two successive Oscar nominations for acting in film, Colman Domingo returns to his stage roots as the co-author—with director Patricia McGregor—of a biodrama that examines a pivotal night in the life of the pioneering Black recording artist and TV star Nat "King" Cole. Dulé Hill (The West Wing) plays Cole and Daniel J. Watts (Tina) plays Sammy Davis Jr.; the ace supporting cast includes Krystal Joy Brown, Kenita Miller, Kathy Fitzgerald, Christopher Ryan Grant, Ruby Lewis, Elliott Mattox, Mekhi Richardson and Walter Russell III. Cole standards such as “Nature Boy,” “Smile” and “Unforgettable" are newly arranged by musical supervisor John McDaniel, and Edgar Godineaux and Jared Grimes step in as the choreographers.

In this gentle two-hander by Donald Margulies (Dinner with Friends), longtime New York stage favorites Reed Birney and Lisa Emery play septuagenarian Kentucky spouses looking up the heavens and back on their lives—including some parts that have long been cast in shadow . Kate Whoriskey directs the New York premiere for Second Stage Theater.

Nearly three decades after its brief orginal run in the West End, this British musical about the American film industry gets a second life—not unlike its main character, a would-be starlet of the silent-film era who dies en route to a screen test but returns as a ghost half a century later to possess the woman who now inhabits her old apartment. Stephen Keeling wrote the music; Shaun McKenna wrote the lyrics and co-wrote the book with Steven Dexter. Andrew Winans directs and choreographs this modest production, which stars Kelly Maur in the title role. 

You can head to Central Park to see Shakespeare in the Park's Twelfth Night in August, courtesy of the Public Theater. First, though, the Public is taking Shakespeare to you as its Mobile Unit travels through all five boroughs with a stripped-down and musicalized version of Shakespeare's war-of-the-sexes comedy Much Ado About Nothing, in which sparks fly between a pair of witty enemies who clearly have the hots for each other. This accessible Latin-flavored version, which incorporates some Spanish, represents the third straight Mobile Unit collaboration between director Rebecca Martinez and songwriter Julian Mesri; Nathan M. Ramsey and Keren Lugo play the squabbling wits. The tour begins at Astor Place (May 29–31) and Bryant Park (June 3–8) before wending its way through the rest of the city; a full schedule is on the Public's website.

Six sexually nonconforming performers imagine life under queer royal rule in a counterfactual metatheatrical comedy by Canada's Jordan Tannahill, directed by the very busy Shayok Misha Chowdhury (Public Obscenities) for Soho Rep at Playwrights Horizons. The ensemble cast comprises K. Todd Freeman, John McCrea, Rachel Crowl, Mihir Kumar, N’yomi Allure Stewart and recent New York Drama Critics' Circle Award lifetime-achievement honoree David Greenspan. 

Company XIV's seductive take on Alice in Wonderland is a singular sexcess: a transporting fusion of haute burlesque, circus, dance and song. Impresario Austin McCormick has assembled an array of alluring and highly skilled artists, who look smashing in Zane Pihlstrom's lace-and-crystal-encrusted costumes. With its soundtrack of pop songs, attractive ensemble cast and immersive aesthetics—plus chocolate and specialty cocktails—Queen of Hearts feels like Moulin Rouge! for actual bohemians. Hell, it even has a cancan.—Raven Snook

Are you, like Molly Bloom in James Joyce's Ulysses, aroused by the idea of "what a man looks like with his two bags full and his other thing hanging down out of him or sticking up at you like a hat rack"? If the answer is yes—yes you said yes you will Yes!—then you may wish to hear the arguments presented by both sides in the 1933 court case defending Joyce's book, which is sometimes sexually explicit but always explicitly literary, against American charges of obscenity. Six Irish actors, playing some two dozen characters, go a-courting in Colin Murphy legal drama, directed by Conall Morrison in its U.S. premiere at the Irish Arts Center.