Second Stage, the nonprofit organization that champions plays and musicals from living American writers, said it would present a modern retelling of “The Fantasticks” and the Pulitzer Prize finalist “Gloria” at its Helen Hayes Theater this season.
Evan Cabnet, Second Stage’s artistic director, said in a statement on Wednesday that the organization had “always been the premiere home for contemporary works by both emerging writers and established masters” and that the coming season would be “no exception.”
“The Fantasticks,” a musical written by Tom Jones, was long a staple of New York’s Off Broadway scene. It first opened in 1960 at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village, and ran there for 42 years — defying “every convention of the here-today-gone-tomorrow ethos of the theater,” as The New York Times put it in 2002. The musical tells of two young lovers, Matt and Luisa, whose parents try to keep them apart.
The reimagined version of “The Fantasticks” concerns two boys, their mothers and a mischievous plan to make the young men fall in love. It will be directed and choreographed by Christopher Gattelli, who won the Tony Award for best choreography in 2012 for “Newsies,” and who is nominated this year for best direction of a musical and best choreography for “Schmigadoon!” Previews of “The Fantasticks” will begin on Oct. 22, and the show will open on Nov. 16.
“Gloria,” written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and directed by Cabnet, follows a group of low-level employees frantically trying to claw up the corporate ladder of a prestigious magazine in New York. The dark comedy explores how far people will go to satisfy their ambitions.
The play was staged Off Broadway in 2015 at the Vineyard Theater, where Cabnet also directed it, and it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2016. Ben Brantley, then a theater critic for The Times, wrote that Jacobs-Jenkins brought an “anthropological accuracy to his depiction of the hierarchies, language and rites of obeisance and humiliation in one small, intensely stratified world.”
Last year, Jacobs-Jenkins won the Pulitzer for his play “Purpose,” which also won the Tony for best play. Another of his works, “Appropriate,” won a Tony in 2024 for best revival of a play.
Previews for “Gloria” will begin on March 17, and the show will open on April 5.
Second Stage has not yet announced casting information for either production.
To round out its new season, Second Stage will also present three Off Broadway plays at the Pershing Square Signature Center: “The Visitors,” written by Bryna Turner and directed by Jenna Worsham; “Work of Devotion,” written by Miranda Rose Hall; and “how to roll a blunt,” written by Naomi Lorrain and directed by Colette Robert.
Derrick Bryson Taylor is a Times reporter covering breaking news in culture and the arts.
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