‘Pre-Existing Condition’
Marin Ireland’s beautifully crafted play is about a woman who has just emerged from a relationship marked by violence. Reviewing the premiere run two years ago, The New York Times wrote that it “is like seeing its author open up her rib cage and show us everything.” Lupita Nyong’o, Phillipa Soo, Susannah Flood, Hari Nef and Edie Falco take turns portraying the central role in this return engagement; the terrific Greg Keller, Dael Orlandersmith and Sarah Steele provide essential support throughout. (Through Dec. 19, Greenwich House Theater)
‘Safe House’
The musical-theater stalwarts Marc Kudisch and Karen Ziemba are not expected to warble much in L.B. Browne’s play, in which a Pennsylvania dad’s survivalist obsession upends his family. (Sept. 3-13, Theater Row)
‘Garry Starr: Classic Penguins’
Straight from a run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Garry Starr (the alter ego of the writer-performer Damien Warren-Smith) guides us through the famous literary imprint at breakneck speed. Oh, he’s doing it while partially naked … with audience interaction. (Sept. 3-Oct. 4, Studio Seaview)
‘Queen for a Day’
Set in the 1980s, Tyler Anthony Smith’s play imagines an encounter between the designer Halston, his friend Liza Minnelli and a time-traveling Queen Elizabeth I. The show earned positive reviews at its premiere in Chicago last year and could provide a welcome shot of camp. (Sept. 4-14, the Tank)
‘The Ford-Hill Project’
Elizabeth Marvel and Lee Sunday Evans’s documentary piece is based on the transcripts of Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford’s testimonies at Senate hearings, with Gabby Beans and Marvel portraying the two women (Teagle F. Bougere and Josh Hamilton complete the cast). The Waterwell production returns after stints at the Public Theater and the Under the Radar Festival. (Sept. 8-20, Brooklyn Academy of Music)
‘The Body of Mary: A Play in Three Acts (of God)’
In Katie Cappiello’s new play, three women find themselves at the center of power struggles over the control of women’s bodies: Mary of Nazareth is, well, Jesus’ mother; Mother Mary is a nun helping the poor in New York City; and Mary of Nazareth, Texas, works at a Dairy Queen. (Sept. 8-Oct. 8, the Gym at Judson)
‘Truly, Howard Hughes’
Musical-theater lovers don’t have much to munch on this month, pushing to the forefront this new show by York Theater about the famously reclusive and eccentric (to put it mildly) millionaire Howard Hughes. (Sept. 9-Oct. 4, Theater at St. Jean’s)
‘The Hope Theory’
Helder Guimarães, who expanded his audience during Covid-19 with hit streaming shows, is part of the new generation of magicians who create narrative-heavy productions. In his newest, created with the director Frank Marshall, this Portuguese illusionist explores his coming to America. Don’t worry, there are tricks, too. (Sept. 9-Dec. 6, New York City Center Stage II)
‘Beyond the Stardust’
Conceived by Niegel Smith (who also directed and choreographed) and the duo known as the Illustrious Blacks (who also wrote the music and star), this project throws everything — dance, music, disco, space — into an ode to fabulousness. (Sept. 10-Oct. 18, the Flea Theater)
‘Human Things’
It’s always a pleasure to see Victoria Clark onstage. This month, the two-time Tony winner (most recently for “Kimberly Akimbo”) materializes as a bird researcher in the South Pacific in a new play by Joshua Owen. (Sept. 12-Oct. 18, West End Theater)
‘Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library’
Jenny Lyn Bader’s play is inspired by Hannah Arendt’s real-life arrest in Germany in 1933 and her confrontation with a police officer. Laura Collins-Hughes described the show in The Times during a 2024 run as “well-acted, precisely calibrated” (Sept. 12-Oct. 25, 59E59 Theaters)
‘Big Feelings’
Encore engagements seem to be an Off Broadway thing these days, and here’s another one. Ryan Drake’s intimate play stars Julia Greer as a first grade teacher, with the audience members making up her class. As Helen Shaw wrote in The Times in July, “the extraordinary setting, meticulously created by the scenic designer Silin Chen and the illustrator Gaby FeBland, is believable enough that it de-ages something deep in your limbic system.” (Sept. 13-Oct. 9, the Cell Theater)
‘Lost in Del Valle’
When Ned Van Zandt presented his solo show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe last year, it was under the title “Del Valle: A True Tale of Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll … and Redemption,” which gives a better idea of what to expect than the current option. Hint: Del Valle refers to a correctional facility near Austin, Texas. (Sept. 14-Oct. 14, SoHo Playhouse)
‘How Shakespeare Saved My Life’
Long a cherished presence in New York theater, Jacob Ming-Trent takes center stage in this autobiographical solo for Red Bull Theater, in which he explores the ways Shakespeare has helped him through hardships. (Sept. 15-Oct. 18, Public Theater)
‘Creation Stories and All the Important Importants’
A decade ago, Jesse Green praised the Nigerian American playwright Mfoniso Udofia’s “Sojourners” and “Her Portmanteau” in these pages as “extraordinary,” saying they infused “some tired, tempest-tossed old forms with new blood.” Now, in an LCT3 production directed by Tamilla Woodard, Udofia brings us a new show about a Black woman’s life. (Sept. 15-Nov. 1, Claire Tow Theater)
‘Degenerates’
After last year’s “Initiative,” in which malcontent teenagers bonded over Dungeons & Dragons, the playwright Else Went and the director Emma Rosa Went set about exploring the darker recesses of the extremely online as they share rage, frustration and loneliness. (Sept. 16-Oct. 11, Playwrights Horizons)
‘Slam Frank’
Andrew Fox and Joel Sinensky’s satire resumes its improbable journey at the Orpheum Theater — which sits in the geographic center of the once-thriving Yiddish theater scene, adding another wrinkle to the discourse surrounding this hip-hop retelling of Anne Frank’s story. The Times’s Jason Zinoman deemed the production “a full-frontal assault on cringe political theater” and the score “a clever pastiche of musical styles that indicates talent and a deep immersion in theatrical craft.” (Sept. 17-Nov. 30, Orpheum Theater)
‘Songs From Bark of Millions’
In a program note for its run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2024, Taylor Mac described this project as “an opera-concert-song-cycle-musical-performance-art-piece-play,” which was inspired by figures of queer history from Sappho to Chavela Vargas, from Larry Kramer to Margaret Cho. Now Mac and the composer and music director Matt Ray have reconvened to present a version adapted for Central Park. (Sept. 18-20, Delacorte Theater)
‘Bad Practices’
This umbrella title links a couple of plays by Cameron Darwin Bossert that are presented in repertory by the Thirdwing company, one of the most interesting in New York. They are set in the same building, with “This May Sting” taking place in a doctors’ office and “Make Them All Pay” set at a law firm. (Sept. 22-Oct. 4, the Chain Theater)
‘End Credits’
The actors Laurel Lefkow, Jeff Mash, Eric Meyers and Regina Reagan bring to life Steve McQueen’s “End Credits,” which debuted as an installation at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2012. The project is based on the F.B.I.’s files of its decades-long surveillance of the actor and activist Paul Robeson. (Sept. 25 and 26, the Shed)
‘The Hairy Ape’
The lower and upper classes come to a brutal clash in this Eugene O’Neill drama about the coarse Yank who toils stoking coal in the depths of an ocean liner. Ciaran O’Reilly’s production at Irish Repertory Theater stars Jon Beavers (from the Hulu series “Paradise”) as Yank and Elizabeth Teeter (“Beetlejuice”) as the wealthy passenger Mildred. (Sept. 25-Nov. 15, Irish Repertory Theater)
‘Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen’
Sophia Anne Caruso (“Beetlejuice”) stars in this new musical with a Duncan Sheik score. The book, by Leah Nanako Winkler, is based on Moyoco Anno’s manga of the same title, which is set in an early-20th-century French brothel, and this immersive production unfurls in a custom-designed space. Rob Ashford directs and choreographs. (Sept. 25-Jan. 3, the Night Egg at the Culture Club)
‘Fish’
WP Theater and Signature Theater Company are teaming up to present the Turkish playwright Melis Aker’s latest, in which a teenager investigates her brother’s disappearance. (Sept. 26-Oct. 25, WP Theater)
‘In Concert: Shuffle Along’
In 2016, the director George C. Wolfe reimagined the musical “Shuffle Along,” which was the first Broadway hit with an all-Black cast and creative team, as a dazzling hybrid project (hence the subtitle “or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed”). Ben Brantley described it as “one of the season’s essential tickets” in his review for The Times. Now the show pops up (as part of Lincoln Center’s Legacies of San Juan Hill festival) in a one-night-only concert version featuring the original cast, led by Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Billy Porter, Adrienne Warren and Brandon Victor Dixon. (Sept. 27, Rose Theater)
‘Kramer/Fauci’
Aficionados of docu-theater are in luck this month, with another chance to see this staging of a 1993 C-SPAN program involving the writer and activist Larry Kramer (Thomas Jay Ryan) and Anthony Fauci (Will Brill), then the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Since the show is directed by Daniel Fish (“Oklahoma!”), this is no traditional take on the genre. (Sept. 27-Oct. 24, St. Ann’s Warehouse)
The post 25 Plays to Catch Off Broadway This (Very) Busy September appeared first on New York Times.
