‘Anna Christie’
Greta Garbo played her. Liv Ullmann and Natasha Richardson played her. Now Michelle Williams plays her: the title character in Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1921 drama about a woman who has survived through prostitution and admits it. But for the men in Anna’s life — the barge captain father (Brian d’Arcy James) who abandoned her and the stoker (Tom Sturridge) she falls in love with — censoriousness about her past comes easily. Williams’s husband, Thomas Kail (“Hamilton”), directs a company that also includes Mare Winningham. (Through Feb. 1, St. Ann’s Warehouse)
‘Diversion’
In this opioid crisis play by Scott Organ, medication starts disappearing from a hospital’s intensive care unit, and the nursing staff comes under suspicion of theft. Seth Barrish directs. (Through Dec. 21, Barrow Group Performing Arts Center)
‘Gotta Dance’
This homage from the York Theater and American Dance Machine is a celebration of choreography from classic stage and screen musicals, reconstructing dances from “West Side Story,” “A Chorus Line,” “Pippin,” “Singin’ in the Rain” and more. Nikki Feirt Atkins and Randy Skinner direct. (Through Dec. 28, Theater at St. Jean’s)
‘The Surgeon and Her Daughters’
Adrienne Campbell-Holt directs the world premiere of Chris Gabo’s New York drama about two sisters whose mother, a Marine sergeant major, goes missing during a deployment. This Colt Coeur production has its roots in a workshop at the Cherry Lane Mentor Project nearly a decade ago. (Through Dec. 20, Theater 154)
‘Tartuffe’
Starring Matthew Broderick as the con man Tartuffe and David Cross as the bourgeois dupe Orgon, Lucas Hnath’s new adaptation of Molière’s comedy has an absolute wow of a cast: Emily Davis, Bianca Del Rio, Amber Gray, Ryan J. Haddad, Francis Jue, Lisa Kron and Ikechukwu Ufomadu. Sarah Benson directs, with choreography by Raja Feather Kelly and original music by Heather Christian. (Through Jan. 24, New York Theater Workshop)
‘What If They Ate the Baby?’
Over three consecutive summers at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland scored a hat trick: a Fringe First award for each two-hander they performed there, starting in 2022. This is the U.S. premiere of the second of those, an absurdist comedy and queer clown show about American womanhood, inspired by the shadow of McCarthyism and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. (Through Dec. 22, SoHo Playhouse)
‘The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions’
The sexually liberated vision of Larry Mitchell’s 1977 utopian manifesto, illustrated by Ned Asta, blossoms into three dimensions in this music theater adaptation by the composer Philip Venables and the director Ted Huffman. When the show ran in 2023 at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, the New York Times critic Joshua Barone described it as “an astonishing feat of controlled chaos” and its score as “a delirious stylistic fantasia.” (Dec. 2-14, Park Avenue Armory)
‘Everything Is Here’
Mia Katigbak, Jan Leslie Harding and Petronia Paley play residents of an assisted living facility, spending time in the common room and re-enacting scenes from “A Streetcar Named Desire,” in this new play by Peggy Stafford. Directed by Meghan Finn and choreographed by Lisa Fagan, this Tank production is presented in collaboration with New Georges, with support from Clubbed Thumb — so even in Midtown Manhattan, it has serious downtown bona fides. (Dec. 3-20, 59E59 Theaters)
Foreign Exchange Festival
The influential Playwrights Horizons teams up with the Soho Theater in London to produce readings of eight plays: four American works in London, four U.K. works in New York. Off Broadway, the inaugural festival lineup consists of Temi Wilkey’s “Main Character Energy 2,” Eoin McAndrew’s “Little Brother,” Nadya Menuhin’s “I, Mother” and Rianna Simons’s “White Girls Gang.” (Dec. 3-6, Playwrights Horizons)
From the Other Side
“Reimagining Theater From the Balkans, Edition 1.0” is the subtitle of this multifaceted series of events, headlined by two full productions, each performed with English supertitles: “They Are All Gone” (Dec. 4-7), written by Doruntina Basha and directed by Andrej Nosov, about our understanding of the survivors 30 years after the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of Muslim men and boys; and Vedrana Klepica’s “Things That Burn Easily” (Dec. 11-14), about a family whose land has been affected by a catastrophe, and about alienation and interconnection as responses to a fragmented world. Play readings (in English), video screenings (with subtitles) and round-table discussions (in English) are also on the program. (Dec. 3-14, La MaMa)
‘Bum Bum (or, This Farce Has Autism)’
Three autistic artists, slated to perform sanitized routines on a mainstream-friendly telethon benefiting an autism charity, rebel against societal condescension and infantilization in this satire by the autistic playwright Dave Osmundsen, produced by the neuroinclusive company EPIC Players. (Dec. 4-14, Here Arts Center)
‘Interstate’
Amy Hargreaves and Nicholas Turturro are among the cast of this satirical road-trip fairy tale by Amina Henry (“Ducklings”), about a mother who sets off cross-country in her convertible, bound for the Grand Canyon, her adult children in tow. Cat Miller directs. (Dec. 4-20, Dixon Place)
‘Oklahoma Samovar’
The Oklahoma Land Run of 1889 might seem an unlikely contest for a pair of young Latvian Jews to find themselves in after fleeing the Russian Army, but so they have in this play by Alice Eve Cohen, which is inspired by the story of her great-grandparents. A tale of immigration and the American dream, with magic realism and puppetry folded in. Eric Nightengale directs. (Dec. 5-21, La MaMa)
‘Predictor’
Caitlin Kinnunen, who was nominated for a Tony Award when she played the smitten teenage lesbian at the center of the musical comedy “The Prom,” stars in this feminist comic drama by Jennifer Blackmer about Meg Crane, the young graphic designer who invented the home pregnancy test. Alex Keegan (“Dilaria”) directs. (Dec. 6-Jan. 18, AMT Theater)
‘Picnic at Hanging Rock: The Musical’
The supernaturally tinged 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay, not Peter Weir’s classic 1975 film adaptation, is the basis for Hilary Bell and Greta Gertler Gold’s new musical about a group of teenage girls in Australia who go missing on a summer day in 1900. With choreography by Mayte Natalio (“Suffs”), Portia Krieger directs a cast that includes Tatianna Córdoba (“Real Women Have Curves”). (Dec. 16-Jan. 17, Greenwich House Theater)
The post 13 Plays (and 2 Festivals) to Invigorate Your December appeared first on New York Times.
