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Photograph: Courtesy of the artist

Off Broadway shows, reviews, tickets and listings

Here is where to find reviews, details, schedules, prices and ticket information about Off Broadway shows in New York

Adam Feldman
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New York theater ranges far beyond the 41 large midtown houses that we call Broadway. Many of the city's most innovative and engaging new plays and musicals can be found Off Broadway, in venues that seat between 100 and 499 people. These more intimate spaces present work in a wide range of styles, from new pieces by major artists at the Public Theater or Playwrights Horizons to crowd-pleasing commercial fare at New World Stages. And even the top Off Broadway shows usually cost less than the best Broadway shows (even if you score cheap tickets to them). Use our comprehensive listings to find reviews, prices, ticket links, curtain times and more for current and upcoming Off Broadway shows.

RECOMMENDED: Off-Off Broadway shows in NYC

Off Broadway shows to see in New York right now: reviews, tickets and listings

  • Drama
  • Chelsea

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.  

  • Drama
  • Gramercy

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).

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  • Comedy
  • Upper West Side

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.

  • Musicals
  • Noho

The fabulous Amber Iman, who most recently dazzled in Broadway's short-lived Lempicka, plays a Kenyan musical deity on the prowl at an Afro-jazz nightclub in this original musical conceived and directed by the Public's resident Saheem Ali, with a book by Jocelyn Bioh (Jaja's African Hair Braiding) and songs by the composer and former Late Show bassist Michael Thurber. Iman originated her role—the goddess Marimba, masquerading as a singer named Nadira—in the show's 2022 premiere at Berkeley Rep; her co-stars this time are Austin Scott as a sax pistol who strikes Nadira's fancy, Destinee Rea as his fiancée and J Paul Nicholas as the father who wants him to go into the family business: politics. The choreography is by Darrell Grand Moultrie, and Nick Rashad Burroughs and Arica Jackson play the comic second couple. 

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  • Comedy
  • Chelsea

Where better to send up the conventions of Irish drama than at the Irish Rep? Derry Girls star Saoirse-Monica Jackson and the estimable Kate Burton lead the cast of Ciara Elizabeth Smyth's world-premiere comedy, about a Dublin theater troupe that gets its Irish up when the writer of its Broadway-bound production strays too far from the tried-and-true path of commercial plays from the Emerald Isle. Nicola Murphy Dubey directs the show, which has been in development at the Irish Rep for several years, and Kevin Oliver Lynch, Brenda Meaney and Angela Reed round out the ensemble. 

  • Musicals
  • Hell's Kitchen

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.

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  • Circuses & magic
  • Midtown West

The Time Square Edition's Paradise Club gives itself over to lunacy in this immersive neocirque extravaganza. Conceived by Lara Jacobs Rigolo, the show combines dance, acrobatics, aerialism, music and visual spectacle to salute 13 ancient goddesses of the moon. Tickets purchased individually at the Medusa level have a $40 drink minimum; the fancier Salome level, available for parties of five to seven, includes a thematically related multicourse preshow dinner curated by John Fraser, formerly of the Michelin-starred restaurant Dovetail.

  • Dance
  • Burlesque
  • Bushwick
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

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

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  • Drama
  • Hell's Kitchen

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.

LONG-RUNNING OFF BROADWAY SHOWS

  • Shakespeare
  • Midtown WestOpen run

Five classically trained actors gather to perform a Shakespeare play, but this dramatic cocktail is served with a twist: One of them gets boozed up before the show—in the vein of Comedy Central's Drunk History—and hilarity ensues as the four sober cast members try to keep the script on track. 

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  • Hell's KitchenOpen run
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

Self-described “bubble scientist” Fan Yang's blissfully disarming act (now performed in New York by his son Deni, daughter Melody and wife Ana) consists mainly of generating a dazzling succession of bubbles in mind-blowing configurations, filling them with smoke or linking them into long chains. Lasers and flashing colored lights add to the trippy visuals.—David Cote

  • Comedy
  • Hell's KitchenOpen run

The Canadian performer Katsura Sunshine, billed as the only Western master of the traditional and rigorously trained Japanese comic stortellying art of Rakugo, performs a monthly show at New World Stages. In keeping with the genre's minimalist practice, Sunshine performs in a kimono using only a fan and a hand towel for props. 

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  • Musicals
  • Hell's KitchenOpen run
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

Milo Manheim, Elizabeth Gillies and Jeremy Kushnier currently star in the latest revival of this dark, tuneful and utterly winsome 1982 horror-camp musical about a flesh-eating plant who makes dreams come true for a lowly flower-shop worker. Composer Alan Menken and librettist Howard Ashman wrap a sordid tale of capitalist temptation and moral decay in layers of sweetness, humor, wit and camp. Michael Mayer directs the feeding frenzy in this deeply satisfying revival.—Adam Feldman

  • Musicals

The boys are back in town! Five nice-looking men take it all off and vocalize in this collage of musical vignettes on gay themes, revamped since its 1999 debut with new jokes and more up-to-date references. Although sex is central to most of the numbers, the goofy nudism has no erotic charge (and when the show tries to be serious, it's sometimes hard to watch). After a hiatus of several years, NBS has returned to NYC at a new venue in 2023.

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  • Drama
  • Midtown WestOpen run

A wily cop tries to psych out a possibly homicidal shrink in Warren Manzi’s moldy, convoluted mystery. The creaky welter of dime-store Freudianism, noirish attitude and whodunit gimmickry is showing its age. (Catherine Russell has starred since 1987.)—David Cote

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  • Comedy
  • Hell's KitchenOpen run
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended

Ah, the joy of watching theater fail. The possibility of malfunction is part of what makes live performance exciting, and Mischief Theatre’s farce takes that notion to extremes as amateur British actors perform a hackneyed whodunnit amid escalating calamities. Depending on your tolerance for ceaseless slapstick, the show will either have you rolling in the aisles or rolling your eyes. Directed by Mark Bell, the mayhem goes like cuckoo clockwork on Nigel Hook’s ingeniously tumbledown set.—Adam Feldman 

  • Musicals
  • Midtown West

Four single and neurotic New Yorkers get up to no good in this long-running section of the Theatre Center's must-stage-TV repertory lineup, which also includes shows inspired by Friends and The Office. Like those, Singfeld! has a libretto by Bob and Tobly McSmith; the music in this case is by fellow musical spoof artist Billy Recce (A Musical About Star Wars). Marc David Wright directs.

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  • Musicals
  • GramercyOpen run

The songs of Québécois nightingale Celine Dion are the stately vessel—or are they the iceberg?—in this campy spoof of James Cameron's 1997 romantic disaster film, written by Marla Mindelle (Sister Act) and Constantine Rousouli (Cruel Intentions) with director Tye Blue. The highly game musical-comedy cast currently includes Amber Ardolino, Max Jenkins, Cassadee Pope, Lea DeLaria,Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Lisa Howard, Callum Francis and Kyle Ramar Freeman.

UPCOMING OFF BROADWAY SHOWS

  • Shakespeare
  • Hell's Kitchen

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.

  • Outdoor theaters
  • Central Park

A determined young woman doggedly pursues the uninterested object of her affections—whose hand in marriage she has been granted by a grateful king—in Shakespeare's rarely produced comedy, a romance so problematic that its title verges on sarcasm. Stephen Burdman directs this peripatetic production for his industrious New York Classical Theatre; the cast of eight includes Anique Clements as the dauntless Helena, Paul Deo Jr. as the heedless Bertram, Karel HeÅ™mánek Jr. as the feckless Parolles and Nick Salamone and Carine Montbertran as well-intentioned nobles. The show kicks off in Central Park (June 3–22) before moving east to Carl Schurz Park (June 24–29) and south to Battery Park (July 1–6). Attendance is free, but reservations are suggested.

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  • Shakespeare
  • Harlem

Classical Theatre of Harlem's annual series of free outdoor performances in Marcus Garvey Park—also known as Uptown Shakespeare in the Park—presents an original neoclassical work by playwright Will Power and director Carl Cofield, who also collaborated on CTH's 2021 summer offering, the Richard III riff Seize the King. The play focuses on a figure who is often overlooked in tales of the Trojan War: the Ethiopian king and demigod Memnon—not to be confused with the Greek king Agamemnon—who led a large contingent in Troy's defense before falling to that notorious heel Achilles. Eric Berryman essays the title role, flanked by a cast that includes Andrea Patterson, Jesse J. Perez as Priam, David Darrow and Jesse Corbin. Tickets are free but reservations are strongly suggested.

  • Shakespeare
  • Central Park

After taking last summer off for renovations to the open-air Delacorte Theater in Central Park, the Public Theater's cherished annual series Shakespeare in the Park returns with one of the Bard's most popular plays: an ever-popular comedy of cross-purposes, cross-dressing and cross-gartered socks. Resident director Saheem Ali (Buena Vista Social Clubdirects a starry cast: Lupita Nyong’o and her brother Junior Nyong'o as Viola and Sebastian, nearly-identical siblings separated by a shipwreck; Sandra Oh as the mourning noblewoman who takes a shine to Viola when she is dressed as a boy; and Peter Dinklage, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Khris Davis, Bill Camp, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Moses Sumney as various figures in the lovely Olivia's orbit. Tickets are, as always, free; see our complete guide to Shakespeare in the Park tickets for details.

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  • Shakespeare
  • Morningside Heights

The Public Theater's civically ambitious Public Works series, which collaborates with multiple New York communities to create large-scale theater, lost its leader when director Laurie Woolery fell victim to budget cuts at the Public last year. But the program soldiers on with songwriter-playwright Troy Anthony's new musical adapatation of one of Shakespeare's strangest plays: a kind of Ancient Mediterranean Flash Gordon adventure (often co-attributed to Elizabethan ne'er-do-well George Wilkins) that includes shipwrecks, contests to win a princess’s hand, a pirate abduction, a virgin in a brothel and a guest shot by the goddess Diana. Carl Cofield directs the production, which is performed at the impressive Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights in lieu of the usual Delacorte Theater, which is busy hosting Shakespeare in the Park this year. Casting of the principal roles—usually played by professional actors, leading an army of amateurs—has not yet been announced.

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