The Infinite Wrench
Photograph: Courtesy New York Neo-Futurists | The Infinite Wrench
Photograph: Courtesy New York Neo-Futurists

Off-Off Broadway shows in NYC

Looking for the best Off-Off Broadway shows? Here are the most promising productions at NYC’s smaller venues right now

Adam Feldman
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Broadway and Off Broadway productions get most of the attention, but to get a true sense of the range and diversity of New York theater, you need to look to the smaller productions collectively known as Off-Off Broadway. There are more than dozens of Off-Off Broadway spaces in New York, mostly with fewer than 99 seats. Experimental plays thrive in New York's best Off-Off Broadway venues; that's where you'll find many of the city's most challenging and original works. But Off-Off is more than just the weird stuff: It also includes everything from original dramas to revivals of rarely seen classics, and it's a good place to get early looks at rising talents. What's more, it tends to be affordable; while cheap Broadway tickets can be hard to find, most Off-Off Broadway shows are in the $15–$35 range. Here are some of the current shows that hold the most promise.

RECOMMENDED: Full guide to Off Broadway shows in NYC 

Off-Off Broadway shows in NYC

  • Experimental
  • Hell's Kitchen
  • price 2 of 4
Arjun Biju and Raquel Chavez play young adults chasing their techno music–crazy runaway mom across the world in an off-kilter aqdventure by rising talent Daniel Holzman, whose Middle School Play was at the Brick earlier this year. Noah Latty directs the world premiere at the Tank; the cast also features downtown stars Pete Simpson, Mike Iveson, Rita Wolf and Raquel Chavez. 
  • Comedy
  • WilliamsburgOpen run
  • price 1 of 4
After more than a decade performing Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, an ever-changing collection of 30 two-minutes plays, the New York Neo-Futurists had to change course when piece's author pulled the rights abruptly in 2016. Now the troupe performs a different ever-changing collection of 30 two-minute plays called The Infinite Wrench. (We wrote about it here.) In 2025, the troupe moved from Manhattan to the recently established Williamsburg outpost of Chicago's legendary Second City improv-comedy factory.
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  • Shakespeare
  • Tribeca
  • price 2 of 4
The fledgling Ensemble Shakespeare Company presents its first full production: a colorful, unabridged production of Shakespeare's madcap forest farce, in which humans and fairies commingle to comically disastrous effect. Director Dylan Diehl also presides over the 15-person cast as the addled fairy queen Titania. 
  • Shakespeare
  • Central Park
The longevous Boomerang Theatre Company returns—as, true to its name, it is wont to do!—with a free Central Park staging of Shakespeare's lyrical portrait of the last Plantagenet king, a unfortunate weakling who gets sent to the Tower after making an unpopular land deal (setting off a splitting of heirs that eventually leads to the War of the Roses, as chronicled in Shakespeare's other history plays). Aimee Todoroff directs the production, which stars Broken Box Mime Theater's Tasha Milk in the title role. Performances are at 2pm on weekends, and tickets can be reserved in advance. 
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  • Comedy
  • Hell's Kitchen
  • price 2 of 4
Joey DeFilippis and Matt Ferrara are the writers, directors and stars of this satirical retelling of the infamous case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two anarchist Italian immigrants who were sentenced to death in the 1920s—after what many believe to have been an unfair trial—for the murder of two men in an armed robbery gone wrong. What could be funnier than that? Francesco Baldino, Ilana Schimmel, Danielle MacMath, Dan Yaiullo and Ryan O’Toole fill out the cast.
  • Classical
  • Upper West Side
For the middle show of its summer schedule, Hudson Classical Theater Company presents an outdoor production of Jane Austen's 1811 debut novel, in which sisters of meager fortune and markedly different temperaments seek husbands of suitable station. The adaptation is by the company's executive artistic director, Susane Lee, who has a penchant for 19th-century books. (She also adapted the company's suite of plays based on the adventure tales of Alexandre Dumas, père.) Attendance is free and reservations are not required.
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  • Drama
  • West Village
  • price 1 of 4
The widow of a great photographer faces a dilemma when she discovers a trove of artistically exceptional nudes taken by her husband, but their now-adult subject—who she was underage when the seuxally suggestive photos were taken—demands that they be destroyed. The script is by veteran TV drama writer Terry Curtis Fox; his daughter, Avra Fox‑Lerner, makes her directorial debut with a cast that comprises Jane Ives, Susan Bennett, Yuval Boim, James Jelkin and ​Ivy Rose. 
  • Musicals
  • Williamsburg
  • price 2 of 4
In an outrageous queer musical puppet show billed as "Pee Wee Herman meets Starship Troopers," three drag king clowns—Vape Kid Jr, Excess Materials and the saucily named Sir Cum Sized—enter the VHS-preserved world of a cable-access show intended to brainwash 1980s children. Octavia Leona Kohner directs the mayhem, which includes puppets and animation by Muna Muhsin. 
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  • Drama
  • East Village
  • price 2 of 4
Writer-director Dan Bianchi, whose Radiotheatre produces an annual festival devoted to the works of horror master H.P. Lovecraft, offers hot aural action in this multimedia audiotheater adaptation of Lovecraft's creepy 1930 novella about alien visitation. 

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