Greenwich Village events: Concerts, parties, readings and more

Josh Sharp has been a pillar of the queer alt-comedy scene in New York, often working alongside his partner in subversive humor, Aaron Jackson, with whom he co-created the memorably outré 2023 movie Dicks: The Musical. Now he goes it alone, riding the recent vogue for comedic Off Broadway solo shows, with a collection of stories and jokes set to a massive PowerPoint presentation that includes some 2,000 screens to be clicked through. Will he slip on all those slides? Find out in a what is sure to be a manically amusing evening, directed by Oh, Mary!'s newly be-Tonyed Sam Pinkleton. 

An intergenerational cast of queer artists goes beyond camp in an unlikely revival of Galas, Charles Ludlam’s 1983 biography of fictional opera legend Maria Magdalena Galas, a thinly veiled but richly coiffed stand-in for Maria Callas. And filling Ludlam’s high heels in the title role is a bona fide diva: the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, a vision in fashion designer Jackson Wiederhoeft's elegant period creations. He is even more stunning vocally—whereas Ludlam lip-synched his arias, Costanzo sings them live and in Callas's register—and he never plays this ambitious and temperamental prima donna for easy laughs. Galas | Photograph: Courtesy Nina Westervelt Not that Eric Ting’s open-air revival at Little Island isn't funny. As Galas's singer-turned-servant-turned-sage Bruna Lina Rasta, perennial scene-stealer Mary Testa can milk mundane stage business like dusting for grand giggles. Performance artist Carmelita Tropicana is a hoot as Galas's lusty husband-manager Giovanni Baptista Mercanteggini. And there's a delicious game of one-upmanship between Galas and the oversexed Pope Sixtus the Seventh (Samora la Perdida, looking fierce in robes by Hahnji Jang, who designed everyone’s costumes but Costanzo’s). It's all staged energetically on Mimi Lien's spare but effective set, a runway with the lady of the hour's name in lights atop a column. Galas | Photograph: Courtesy Nina Westervelt Yet longueurs creep in as Galas falls apart and begins losing her voice and her...

The sharp-minded Eisa Davis, whose plays include the memoir Angela’s Mixtape and the Pulitzer Prize finalist Bulrusher, worked with Lin-Manuel Miranda on last year's musical concept album Warriors. At HERE she strikes off on her own as the writer, director and star of a piece that interrogates the positioning and perception of Black bodies while rejecting the idea that any person can be reduced to an immalleable essence. The show incorporates striking physical imagery as well as original electrosoul music. 

Prior to the major developments of her last five years—her TikTok stardom, her transition, her trans advocacy, her Bud Light ad campaign and the hateful backlash and boycott it engendered—Dylan Mulvaney was in the chorus of Broadway's Book of Mormon. So it's no surprise that this autobiographical solo show about her roller-coaster ride of self-discovery incorporates elements of musical-theater fabulousness, including several original songs. Tim Jackson, who directed the show's hit production at the Edinburgh Fringe last year, returns to oversee its Off Broadway debut, along with the impending Broadway premiere of Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York).

The boundary-busting comedian Natalie Palamides loves a high concept: She dressed as an egg for her first solo show, Laid, and donned hirsute dudebro drag for her astonishing follow-up, the toxic-masculinity lampoon Nate (which was filmed for a 2020 Netflix special). In Weer, which was a hit in Edinburgh last year, she takes he-said-she-said comedy to new extremes: Dividing herself down the middle through makeup and costume, she simultaneously plays both parts of the kind of young couple you might find in a 1990s romcom. The cherry on top: This production marks the official reopening of the Cherry Lane Theatre, a century-old Off Broadway landmark that has been closed for renovation since it was purchased by the film studio A24 in 2023.