Spring Theater Preview: History Sings, Classics Get Twisted and Experiments Explode

Let’s unpack that headline. This season on Broadway you can see musicals based on actual events from circa 1911, 1925 and 1943 (Smash only feels like a throwback to pre-pandemic camp). As for canonical plays, writers and directors tinker with great dramas by Arthur Miller, Anton Chekhov and T.S. Eliot. Finally, there’s a healthy sampling of the Weird: absurd or surreal takes on space travel, academia, women’s fertility—plus whatever experimental icon Caryl Churchill is smoking. Something for everyone. If the concept of “inclusiveness” is under fire by dark forces, at the theater, all are welcome.

Operation Mincemeat at the John Golden Theatre (in previews; opens March 20)

Although “hit in London” doesn’t automatically guarantee a good musical (the dreadful Back to the Future: The Musical won the Olivier Award), there’s interesting buzz around this one. Inspired by a bizarre yet real-life MI5 plot to misdirect the Nazi military in WWII, it’s a musical comedy with heart and acres of stiff upper lip, performed by a cast of five in an exuberant, sketch-comedy style verging on panto. 

Wine in the Wilderness at Classic Stage Company (March 6–April 13)

After solid revivals of Wedding Band and Trouble in Mind, the Alice Childress renaissance continues at Classic Stage Company. Tony-winning actor LaChanze makes her directing debut with this 1968 play, set four years earlier during riots in Harlem that summer. A painter (Grantham Coleman) is working on a triptych about Black womanhood and has found his final model for the “messed-up chick.” But his muse, the recently unhoused Tommy (Olivia Washington), turns out to be much more than a blank canvas. 

Nayatt School Redux at the Performing Garage (March 8–29)

Looking back on its decades of trailblazing experimentation, the Wooster Group has decided to dust off and tinker with a work from 1978. Originally “composed” by the late monologuist Spalding Gray and director Elizabeth LeCompte, the piece involves Gray talking about how as a child he was obsessed by an LP recording of T.S. Eliot’s psychoanalysis-themed verse drama, The Cocktail Party. Decades ago, this culminated in a bizarre reenactment by child performers. Who knows what postmodern spell the Woosters will cast this time?

Smash at the Imperial Theatre (previews March 11; opens April 10)

Hard to believe the backstage Broadway TV show Smash is 13 years old: How many Gen Z theater kids got their minds blown by it, Glee and High School Musical? The show-within-the-series is finally ready for her closeup (wait, that’s another show). The idea: Bombshell, a splashy musical about iconic sex symbol Marilyn Monroe, is about to open on Broadway—if leading diva Ivy Lynn (Robyn Hurder), a harried producer, and panicking authors don’t kill each other first. Songs are by hit-makers Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (Hairspray) and the whole dance-filled, camp circus is directed by Susan Stroman (The Producers).

John Proctor Is the Villain at the Booth Theatre (previews March 20; opens April 14)

Kids read classic literature; they find it “problematic”; they cancel the long-dead, probably white author. Anyone with a social media account knows that social justice and art are in a delicate place now. The pointedly titled new play by Kimberly Belflower explores the awakening of teenage schoolgirls who go from thinking Proctor is the “hero” of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible to viewing him as a sexual predator. And their overeager male English teacher? He’s got issues, too. Director Danya Taymor directs a cast that includes Sadie Sink (Stranger Things).

The Cherry Orchard at St. Ann’s Warehouse (March 26–April 27)

Director Benedict Andrews brings his radically intimate adaptation of Chekhov’s last play from one warehouse to another: London’s Donmar to Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s. Anchored by its original cast, including German leading lady Nina Hoss and the magnetic Adeel Akhtar, Chekhov’s tale of loss and property takes place in the round on large carpets, with actors seated amongst the audience. Please don’t bother the actors; they’re waiting for their cue.

Floyd Collins at the Vivian Beaumont Theater (previews March 27; opens April 21)

Some of the worst-sounding ideas become great musicals. A serial killer baking victims into meat pies? Seventy dense pages of a Tolstoy novel? How about a guy trapped in a cave? The 1996 musical with music and lyrics by Adam Guettel and book by Tina Landau gets its Broadway debut 100 years after the incident that inspired it. Kentuckian Floyd hopes to draw tourists to the caves under his land but ends up trapped by a collapse. There’s a race to rescue him, as he wastes precious gulps of oxygen…singing. Landau returns to direct for Lincoln Center Theater with an ensemble led by Jeremy Jordan as the flunker spelunker. 

Stranger Things: The First Shadow at the Marquis Theatre (previews March 28; opens April 22) 

Every theater preview needs something for family from out of town, and this London import fits the bill. The live-action prequel to the hit Netflix series clearly hopes to draw the audience that made Harry Potter a Broadway cash cow. Chock full of gee-whiz video projections and other stage F/X, the story takes us to Hawkins, Indiana, 1959, as a teenager starts to suspect violent crimes in town might have something to do with him. Will friendship prevail over the darkness? 

Two Sisters Find A Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods at HERE (March 28–April 26)

New Georges and Rattlestick Theater co-present the irreverent, queer comedy by playwrights and real-life partners Emma Horwitz (Mary Gets Hers) and Bailey Williams (Coach Coach). What’s it about? Um, did you read the title? It goes on from there, apparently, to mock performance art, parody science fiction, and paw through dozens of banker’s boxes full of “archives of lesbian ephemera.” The authors perform, directed by Tara Elliott.

Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp. at The Public Theater (April 3–May 4)

Four recent short plays by Caryl Churchill. Need we say more? Okay, they’re directed by James Macdonald, longtime Churchill collaborator, with a homegrown cast. In her seventh decade working in the theater, what subjects attract the 86-year-old writer? Fairytales and mythology. These various playlets involve gods, ghosts, and a girl made of glass. This astonishing shapeshifting dramatist is always morphing before our eyes.

Good Night and Good Luck at the Winter Garden Theatre (previews April 7; opens April 24)

This George Clooney-led show, along with Othello and Glengarry Glen Ross, makes for a notable number of (male) celebrities on Broadway. The script is adapted from the screenplay of the 2005 movie Clooney directed about staunch TV journalist Edward R. Murrow standing up to paranoid demagogue Senator Joseph McCarthy. This time around David Cromer directs a cast packed with local talent (Ilana Glazer! Jennifer Morris! Will Dagger!) An ethical media fighting political disinformation peddled by fascists. We’ll have to tag this one science fiction.

Dead Outlaw at the Longacre Theatre (previews April 12; opens April 27)

What might be the best new musical this season has the most unsavory premise (see Floyd Collins, above). Based on a true story (aren’t they all?), Dead Outlaw is about early 20th century train robber Elmer McCurdy. Or rather, it’s about his corpse, which was put on display for years after he was shot by a posse. With a score by David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna and book by Itamar Moses, this zestfully morbid comedy transfers from Off Broadway with cast intact, including square-jawed Andrew Durand—who can keep still in a coffin for a super long time.

Class Dismissed at the Ellen Stewart Theatre (April 18–May 4) 

Chaotic times call for chaotic plays; Robert Lyons and Daniel Irizarry have you covered. This deconstructing duo—Lyons writes, Irizarry directs and performs—has been turning out head-spinning collisions of political philosophy and clowning for years. Now comes an academic satire in which a beloved professor is slipping into dementia and taking his poor grad students with him. Press notes promise yuca peeling, butter churning, and audiences invited onstage to eat bread and drink Puerto Rican rum. There will be a quiz later.

The Employees at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts (April 24–26)

This Polish import from director Łukasz Twarkowski is a true wild card: hugely ambitious and like nothing else currently on the boards. (What else would you expect at Skirball, which has the most daring programming in NYC.) The futuristic tale happens on the spaceship 6000, crewed by people and androids on their way to explore a distant planet. If you like your science fiction with a metaphysical twist (looking at you, Solaris), you can assume things will get trippy.

A(u)nts! at the Brick Theater (May 8–24)

Writer-actor Zoë Geltman brings her absurdist fertility comedy to the Brick in a production directed by Julia Sirna-Frest, performed by Geltman, Jehan O. Young, and Megan Hill. Three childless workers in a Williamsburg dentist’s talk about loneliness and freezing eggs when the place is invaded—nay, liberated—by a line of matriarchal, utopian ants. More than a pun, Geltman’s title suggests that all women have the potential to transcend social scripts. (P.S.: Keep an eye out for comic dynamo Hill, who returns this summer in the queer magician solo, Open.)