Around Broadway

With a cast led by a two-time Tony Award-winner Norbert Leo Butz, and an actress currently best-known for her off-screen life, Katie Holmes, the new play Dead Accounts, gives fans of both acting and star-gazing a reason to head to the Music Box Theatre.

Fans of Anton Chekhov will likely recognize three of the four title names in playwright Christopher Durang's new comedy, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, which stars Sigourney Weaver and David Hyde Pierce in the Lincoln Center Theater production at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.

August Wilson’s play The Piano Lesson is one of the few in his 10-play “Century Cycle” that has not seen a major New York revival since its original Broadway production in 1985. The Signature Theatre, which devoted a whole season to Wilson’s work a few years ago, has now revived this Pulitzer Prize winner, in a production directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson at the Pershing Square Signature Center.

The Tony-winning musical "Spring Awakening," a coming-of-age musical about teenagers and sex, has returned to Broadway. The original production of the musical by Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik closed only in 2009, and thus might seem to be making an unusually quick return. However, the new production on stage at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre takes a very novel approach. It’s from the Los Angeles-based company Deaf West Theatre and the cast features a mixture of hearing and deaf actors. Casting deaf actors in a musical may seem like a challenging prospect. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood explains the mechanics of the production and whether or not the show merits its quick return to Broadway.

Playwrights Horizons kicks off its fall season with "The Christians," a play by Lucas Hnath about a schism in an evangelical church. In the production, directed by Les Waters, Andrew Garman portrays a pastor who causes an uproar among his flock when he decides that church policy will no longer recognize the existence of a literal hell. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood offers his review.  “The Christians” can be seen through Oct. 11 at Playwrights Horizons.

The new Off Broadway show "The Legend of Georgia McBride" by Matthew Lopez is a comedy about a young Elvis impersonator named Casey who’s barely making a living performing in a Florida Panhandle bar. With an empty bank account and pregnant wife, during the course of the play Casey makes a rather surprising career switch from struggling Elvis impersonator to successful drag queen. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us know if "The Legend of Georgia McBride" is something to get all shook up about. The MCC Theater production directed by Mike Donahue with choreography by Paul McGill runs through Oct. 11 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre.

Labor Day, the semi-official end to the summer, is now in the rearview mirror. Which means that theater-watchers will be eagerly getting ready for the fall season. Broadway already has seen one smash musical open, the hotter-than-hot ticket “Hamilton,” but there’s much more to come, both on Broadway and Off. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood takes a look at the new fall crop of shows and suggests some highlights.

A new Off Broadway play by Sherie Rene Scott and Dick Scanlan tells the semi-autobiographical account of their experiences working with prison inmates. The play's unusual title — "Whorl Inside a Loop" — refers to a particular fingerprint pattern. Scott also stars in the play as a well-regarded actress who agrees to teach six inmates how to tell their stories behind the bars of a men's maximum security prison. Sharing intimate and sometimes hilarious details of their former lives, this unlikely group forms a bond. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood offers his review.

The latest play from the prolific A.R. Gurney comes with a forthright title, "Love & Money." The Signature Theater Company production features Maureen Anderman as the wealthy, elderly Cornelia Cunningham, who has decided to give away her entire fortune to charity, at least until an unexpected visitor arrives. As the work of divesting herself of the money continues —with good intentions — complications arrive in the form of a young man who is — or at least, claims to be — the woman’s grandson. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood offers his thoughts on "Love & Money," directed by Mark Lamos. The Signature Theater Company production runs through Oct. 4 at the Pershing Square Signature Center.

Annie Baker won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for her play "The Flick," which has been restaged this summer at the Barrow Street Theatre. But Baker also has a new play concurrently on the boards called simply "John," and presented by the Signature Theatre Company. The drama tells the story of a young couple with relationship problems who the week after Thanksgiving pay a visit to a rather odd bed and breakfast in Gettysburg, Penn. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us know if "John" is worth the trip to the theater. The production plays through Sept. 6 at the Pershing Square Signature Center.

The Public Theater’s second free Shakespeare in the Park presentation this summer is the late romance “Cymbeline,” a twisty tale of duplicity and betrayal directed by Daniel Sullivan. The cast features Shakespeare in the Park regulars Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater as young newlyweds separated by the titular king and his conniving queen. The convoluted "Cymbeline" plot involves, among other things, a headless corpse, a beautiful heroine who fools everyone into thinking she’s a boy simply by putting on a boy’s clothes and Jupiter flying in and out of the action on an eagle’s back. The play has been in and out of fashion over the years, with many detractors over the last century or so. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood has seen several productions, so he has a sense of perspective to offer as he evaluates Shakespeare in the Park’s "Cymbeline" at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.

The story behind one of the best-known hymns in the English language is the subject of the new Broadway musical "Amazing Grace." The show tells the story of the man who wrote, “I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.” John Newton worked in the English slave trade before changing his ways and becoming a spokesman for abolition in Great Britain — and a hymn writer. The production at the Nederlander Theatre features a score by Christopher Smith, a newcomer to musical theater, and a book by Smith and Arthur Giron.  New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood reviews it in this conversation.

The young playwright Joshua Harmon made a splash with his comedy “Bad Jews” in 2012, which was initially presented at the Roundabout Theatre Company’s black-box theater and was later produced at its larger Laura Pels Theatre. The play not only got great reviews, it also received productions at numerous regional theaters around the country. Now Roundabout is mounting another Harmon play, “Significant Other,” a romantic comedy about a gay man in his 20s watching his female friends pair up around him as he remains single and a little lonely. It stars Gideon Glick and is directed by Trip Cullman. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood explains why Harmon’s new work is good summer entertainment.

Even when everybody knows what’s planned, you can never be sure of what will actually happen when friends get together. In Bruce Norris's new play “The Qualms,” what’s supposed to be a quiet evening of dinner, drinks and what used to be called “swinging” doesn’t go as expected. It’s a barbecue with a side of sexual dallying among four couples. Norris’s comedy, directed by Pam MacKinnon, is running at Playwrights Horizons through July 12. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us in on the story and the performances.

The 2015 Tony Awards ceremony was Sunday night at Radio City Music Hall. The new musical "Fun Home" had the most fun, winning awards for Best Musical, Book, Score, Leading Actor and Director. "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime" was named Best New Play. As the statuettes were being handed out, New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood was keeping track — not only of the winners, but also of the nominees who he thought should have won. Isherwood shares his list, as well as a few thoughts on the telecast itself.

An awkward sweetness and a laconic wit are qualities the actor Jim Parsons wields with Emmy Award-winning skill in his role as Sheldon Cooper on the television series “The Big Bang Theory.” Those are not, however, characteristics we usually associate with the Creator of the Universe. And yet, there on the Broadway stage is Parsons in the title role of “An Act of God,” a new show written by David Javerbaum and directed by Joe Mantello. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us in on the idea behind this act and even a couple of new commandments being issued to audiences at Studio 54.

A quiet play about a group of people working in a run-down Massachusetts movie theater is getting its second New York City production. Annie Baker’s “The Flick” might be quiet onstage, but it has made noise in the theater world, winning the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was first produced at Playwrights Horizons in 2013. Now the play has been remounted in a Off Broadway production at the Barrow Street Theatre, with the original cast intact and the same director, Sam Gold, at the helm.  How has the mix of old and new elements altered New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood’s impression? He tells us.

A show that can take on both Shakespeare and a group of Tony nominees sounds like a wonder and “Something Rotten” appears to be just that. The new musical has racked up an impressive 10 Tony Award nominations recently, including one for best musical. Set in the theater world of Elizabethan England and directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw, it’s the story of two brothers, Nick and Nigel Bottom, whose company is in desperate need of a hit to counter the overwhelming success of their chief rival, William Shakespeare. They concoct a crazy plan to sing and dance at the same time on stage — in other words, they’ve dreamed up the idea of the Broadway musical. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us know if the show deserves the accolades it’s already received.

Broadway has been going to the movies for so long now that it’s almost surprising that the beloved 1951 movie-musical “An American in Paris” has only now been turned into a stage show. The man who finally undertook the challenge of brining the Gene Kelly-Leslie Caron romance to the stage is the internationally acclaimed ballet choreographer Christopher Wheeldon. He created the dances and directs the new production, which this week earned 12 Tony Award nominations, including best new musical. The film "An American in Paris" celebrated the City of Light, but even more so the music of George Gershwin. His songs were integrated into Alan Jay Lerner’s story about an American ex-patriate, played by Kelly, and his romance with a Parisian woman, played by Caron. The climactic dance scene was scored to the Gershwin concert work for which the picture was named. The film won seven Oscars, including an honorary one for Kelly. Now, given Wheeldon’s presence, one might assume that this stage version is a dance-driven production. Is it a ballet on Broadway, a Broadway musical, or something in between? Wheeldon is a former principal dancer with New York City Ballet and most of the dancers come from the ballet world, too, including the leads, Robert Fairchild and Leanne Cope, who get to do something rarely required of ballet artists — they sing. The playwright Craig Lucas has adapted the original screenplay by Lerner.   New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood visits this week to say if the stage version swings — and sings.

The 1958 movie musical “Gigi,” about a young woman being groomed for a life as a courtesan, won an impressive nine Oscars, including Best Picture. But a 1973 theatrical production did not enjoy similar success. Now a new lavish stage version has opened on Broadway. Directed by Eric Schaeffer, it stars Vanessa Hudgens, best known for the “High School Musical” franchise. This production features a newly adapted book by Heidi Thomas, which has been revised since its first, brief, appearance on Broadway. Along with it come all the Lerner & Lowe songs made famous in the movie, including “The Night They Invented Champagne,” “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” and “I Remember It Well.” New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood assesses the latest “Gigi," playing at the Neil Simon Theatre.

Social scientists tell us that relocating and setting up a new home is one of life’s big stresses. So the pressure is really on when a young, upwardly mobile black man moves back to his old Brooklyn neighborhood, bringing his white girlfriend with him. Add a little more tension when the man’s former schoolmate, fresh out of rehab, arrives to crash on the couch for a while. It can push a relationship to the breaking point. Love, fear and privilege are topics explored in playwright Tracey Scott Wilson’s new Off Broadway play “Buzzer,” directed by Anne Kauffman and now running at the Public Theater. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood shares his review.

Robert Askins’s dark comedy Hand to God has already had two productions Off Broadway, at Ensemble Studio Theatre and MCC Theater. Now it’s making the leap to the big time, opening on Broadway’s Booth Theatre in the thick of the spring season. The show stars Steven Boyer as a troubled, but good-hearted teenage boy whose alter ego, an evil hand puppet named Tyrone, gradually wreaks havoc on his life. It’s pretty unusual for a play to have three separate New York runs. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us in on what makes Hand to God so special — and so funny.

The spring theater season is traditionally dominated by Broadway openings, as the deadline for Tony awards considerations arrives at the end of April. But Off Broadway doesn’t go into hibernation. Ars Nova, a small theater dedicated to new writing, has a hit on its hands with its latest show, Small Mouth Sounds, written by Bess Wohl and directed by Rachel Chavkin. The play is set at a weeklong silent spiritual retreat — which would seem to pose a dialogue challenge. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood answer the question: Do the characters break their vow of silence or is this an unusually quiet play?

The late Wendy Wasserstein hit the playwright’s jackpot in 1989, when The Heidi Chronicles took home the Tony Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Drama Desk and New York Critic’s Circle Awards for best new play. Wasserstein’s tale of a New York City woman looking for love, but ultimately making her life — and even having a child — without a male partner, resonated with many women struggling over their life and career choices at the time. But that was more than a quarter-century ago. Now the play is being given its first Broadway revival in a new production starring Elisabeth Moss of “Mad Men” fame. The new production at the at the Music Box Theatre is directed by Pam MacKinnon and also features Bryce Pinkham and Jason Biggs as the men in and out of the heroine’s life. So, is the story relevant to a new generation and are the jokes still funny? New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood answers those questions and explains how Moss puts a new spin on the title role.

Larry David was one of the masterminds behind the megahit sitcom “Seinfield,” but since then he’s become better known for playing a version of himself in the HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Now he’s on Broadway in Fish in the Dark, which he wrote and stars in, alongside a cast that includes Rita Wilson, Ben Schenkman and Rosie Perez. You might be wondering if the Larry David you know from “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is the guy you’re going to see on Broadway. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood answers that question, and a few others.  Directed by Anna D. Shapiro, Fish in the Dark continues through June 7 at the Cort Theatre.

Helen Mirren won an Oscar for portraying Queen Elizabeth II in the 2006 movie “The Queen.” Now she picks up the famous handbag again in the play The Audience, written by Peter Morgan, who also wrote “The Queen,” and directed by Stephen Daldry. The play, originally seen in London's West End, depicts the Queen in her weekly meetings with various prime ministers, including Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Harold Wilson and David Cameron. The Audience is on Broadway at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre through June 28.

If you’ve been in a dive bar in New York, or anywhere else, just those simple words are enough to conjure the bleak decor, the smell of stale drink and something more. Eugene O’Neill’s 1939 play, The Iceman Cometh, takes place in a dive bar filled with broken people, and their broken dreams, who are the unseen props that fill the stage. The play makes only rare appearances on stage, this is in-part because of its extensive length. The four acts stretch across more than four hours. But the Brooklyn Academy of Music is currently hosting a production from Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. The play stars Nathan Lane and Brian Dennehy. Dennehy is an old hand at playing O’Neill characters, but Lane, one of New York’s great comic actors, might be a surprising casting choice. New York Times theater critc Charles Isherwood has visited this bleak O’Neill world and he shares his view of the production and also suggests why spending time in O’Neill’s world is worthwhile. The Iceman Cometh is at BAM's Harvey Theater through March 15.

A new production from The Civilians, a journalistic theater company, is called Pretty Filthy and is an exploration of the pornography industry centered in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley. The Civilians use words of ordinary people — in this case, people who work in porn — so the story is told with less concern for poetry than for verity. And, oh yes, it’s a musical, too. The show, directed by Steve Cosson, features songs by the Civilians’ in-house composer Michael Friedman, and a book by Bess Wohl. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us know if Pretty Filthy is worth seeing in, shall we say, the flesh.

Decades before Anton Chekhov’s plays about the struggles of existence among ostensibly successful and wealthy Russians, Ivan Turgenev wrote A Month in the Country, a play that contains many elements of Chekhov’s more famous works. There’s a bored, young wife on a country estate and men who orbit her in varying degrees of attraction and repulsion. The play has been given a rare revival this season by the Classic Stage Company. The production features two stars currently appearing in popular television shows: Taylor Schilling from “Orange Is the New Black” and Peter Dinklage from “Game of Thrones.” New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood shares his thoughts on this classic 19th century play as produced with actors of 21st century fame.

"Boy meets girl” is a fine start for so many stories, including Let the Right One In, a play adapted by Jack Thorne and based on the Swedish novel and film of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist. But when the boy is an adolescent misfit and the girl is a vampire, the consequences of their encounter are likely to be farther-reaching than those in a human-to-human hookup. No less than three other Broadway musicals have been vampire-based, although all three of them proved to be somewhat less than immortal. This one is directed by John Tiffany, known for the musical Once. How does this "boy meets girl" relationship begin, how does this vampire make her way in the world of mortals? And — more important for us theatergoers — is this vampire tale going to leave us bewitched or simply benumbed? New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood clues us in. The National Theatre of Scotland production of Let the Right One In runs through Feb. 15 at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn.

What can happen when two people meet? The possibilities are endless, but every relationship winds up following a single path, better known as “what actually happened.” But what about all of those alternative possibilities, the relationship roads not taken, the places the relationship might have gone? We see some of those alternative realities in Nick Payne’s 2012 play, Constellations, now in its Broadway debut at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Relativity, quantum mechanics and string theory are involved in this story — both in the play’s underpinnings and in the words spoken onstage by actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson. So there are stars of several kinds in Constellations; New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood tells us if they shine brightly enough for Broadway.

Courtney Love, a famous rock widow and an actor and rock star in her own right, is making a low-key return to performing in the new musical theater piece Kansas City Choir Boy at HERE Arts Center, as part of the Prototype Festival of new opera and musical theater works. The music and lyrics performed in the show are written by Todd Almond, who plays the other leading role in a story that looks back on a relationship, which is permanently ended. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood gives his review. Hear a song from the musical:

Every Brilliant Thing is a one-man show that features a large supporting cast. The show's other big self-contradictory element is its exploration of the impenetrable sadness of depression through things that uplift us, specifically, a list of things that make life worth living. This mildly immersive show is written by Duncan Macmillan, directed by George Perrin and features a sole performer, Jonny Donahoe. But Donahoe conscripts numerous members of the audience to play minor or sometimes major roles in the play. Every Brilliant Thing was a hit at the Edinburgh Festival and now North American audiences are getting their first chance to see it in an Off-Broadway production at the Barrow Street Theater. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood looks for the brilliance in Every Brilliant Thing and shares what he finds.

The New York Times recently sent theater critic Charles Isherwood on a trip to London, where he saw Shakespeare, quasi-Shakespeare and Kristin Scott Thomas onstage. While there, Isherwood took note of the theatrical import-export balance between Broadway and the West End. • Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins at the Menier Chocolate Factory. • Shakespeare's Henry IV at the Donmar Warehouse. • Mike Bartlett’s King Charles III at the Wyndham's Theatre. • David Hare's Behind the Beautiful Forevers at the National Theatre. • Sophocles's Electra at the Old Vic Theatre.

Theatrical magic acts have a long, long tradition in the world of entertainment. With a name that pays homage to earlier forms of stage trickery, The Illusionists: Witness the Impossible is a slickly packaged production of seven professional prestidigitators, all of whom appear – and perhaps occasionally disappear – on the stage of the Marriott Marquis Theater. Without giving away any secrets of this family oriented presentation, New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood lets us know if you should or should not make an appearance at the box office for The Illusionists.

In 2003, Mark Haddon wrote a well-received novel about a 15-year-old boy solving a mystery that's become a literary staple. But “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” is atypical of the boy-detective form because the boy in Haddon’s novel is atypical. He has autism and experiences the world in a markedly different way from most of us, possessing, among other qualities, a keen visual sense and an aversion to being touched, in addition to the usual challenges of adolescence. Haddon’s novel is now a stage show of the same name adapted by Simon Stephens and imported from London’s National Theater. It's running on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theater and directed by Marianne Elliott. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood offers his thoughts on how effectively the story has been translated to the stage and on Alex Sharpe, the young actor straight out of Juilliard who is making his Broadway debut in this production.

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were riding high in 1947 on the successes of Oklahoma! and Carousel. For their next show they tried something with a Greek chorus and a stage with no sets and few props. The subject matter was unusual, too, a man whose story ends with him in a state of existential confusion. The show, Allegro, was not a hit. But now, director John Doyle has revived Allegro in a production for Classic Stage Company.

Edward Albee’s 1966 play A Delicate Balance won him the first of his three Pulitzer Prizes. It has become one of his most highly regarded and frequently produced works, and returns for its third run on Broadway with one of the season’s starriest casts.

A musical that spent just a few months on Broadway in 1997 has been re-tooled and returned to the Great White Way. Side Show is based on the lives of Daisy and Violet Hilton, conjoined twins born in Britain in 1908, who became famous on the vaudeville and sideshow circuit there and in the United States in the 1930s.

On Broadway right now at the Neil Simon Theatre is The Last Ship, which might as well be called The Sting Musical, since the pop superstar has contributed not only music and lyrics, but most of the pre-launch publicity. The story is based on the world Sting knew growing up in an English seaside town where life revolved around the local shipyard.

A short Off-Broadway run in 2012 was New York’s introduction to Disgraced. Novelist and screenwriter Ayad Akhtar’s drama is about the stresses placed on an American Muslim man struggling to resolve conflicting world views within himself and among his family and friends. The play now returns to New York, this time on Broadway and with bigger credentials, too, as a 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner.

The hottest-selling show on Broadway this fall is, surprisingly, not a musical. Instead, it’s the revival of Terrence McNally’s 1982 comedy It’s Only a Play, set in a theater producer’s lavish New York apartment where a group of onstage and offstage principals anticipate the reviews after opening night. The reason for It's Only a Play's current ticket craze is the virtually all-star cast: Matthew Broderick is the playwright; Nathan Lane is his best friend; Rupert Grint is the genius director; Megan Mullally is the novice producer; Stockard Channing is the addled leading lady; and F. Murray Abraham is the dreaded newspaper critic.

To say that Tail! Spin! is true to life might be a bit of an understatement. Mario Correa’s play uses words taken from the public record to tell the sex-scandal stories of four politicians: Anthony Weiner, Mark Sanford, Larry Craig and Mark Foley. The four men are played by different actors, but all the women — “wives, tails, beards and Barbara Walters,” as the show’s website puts it — are played by former "Saturday Night Live" cast member Rachel Dratch.

Steve Martin has quite a resume: comic, actor, writer, art collector, banjo player and now, musical book writer and musical theater co-creator. Martin and his collaborator, singer-songwriter Edie Brickell, have written the new show Bright Star, in which we see the lives of two people from the perspective of a couple of different decades in their lives.

In the late 1980s, A.R. Gurney created an unusual play consisting only of a long correspondence between two people. But that play, Love Letters, has endured and has been seen in innumerable regional and amateur theater productions. Perhaps that’s because it’s easy to produce: no chorus lines, no costumes, no need for a balcony or a staircase on the stage set. The text is the lifelong correspondence between a man and woman of the East Coast upper crust and it is read by the actors on a bare stage rather than performed. But perhaps, slight as the work is by some measures, its words are enough to compensate for what it otherwise does not have.

Playwrights Horizons, a New York theater company with a mission devoted to supporting works by American writers, has opened its new season with a bold new play. Bootycandy, written and directed by Robert O’Hara, is a surreal and sexually explicit comedy about growing up black and gay in America. Philip James Brandon stars as Sutter, who grows from boy to man to budding playwright in the course of the play.

The prolific A.R. Gurney is among the playwrights in residence at the Signature Theatre Company this year. The first of three Gurney plays to be presented is a revival of his 1977 play The Wayside Motor Inn, in which 10 characters dealing with various life crises all check in to the same motel outside Boston. The production is directed by Lila Neugebauer.

New York City’s new theater season is a great way to cure those end-of-summer blues. There are plenty of revivals and a few choice new offerings. There are musicals and straight plays. There are star-filled casts and productions in which the play’s the thing. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood suggests a few — well, more than a few — shows that are likely to pique the interests of Broadway and Off-Broadway patrons.

Robert Schenkkan’s All the Way, this year’s Tony winner for best play and for its leading actor, Bryan Cranston, was a hefty drama about Lyndon Johnson and the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. But, in fact, it was only half the story: The Great Society is the name of Schenkkan’s sequel.

Summer is the slow season for Broadway, with few shows opening between the Tony Awards in June and the fall season kickoff in September. But it’s high season for theater festivals. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood made a trip to the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada, one of the largest festivals in North America.

The nature of intimacy is one of the themes of Laura Eason’s new play Sex With Strangers, in which two writers first get busy and then get to know each other. Olivia is played by Anna Gunn, best-known for her portrayal of Skyler White on the AMC series “Breaking Bad.” Ethan is played by Billy Magnussen, a Tony Award nominee for his portrayal of the last of the four title characters in Vanya, Sonya, Masha, and Spike. There’s also a notable name behind the scene — the director is David Schwimmer, most recognizable from the TV show "Friends."

Your usual beauty contest features a lot of the same elements as this Off-Broadway musical making its return — lots of makeup, form-fitting costumes, noble speeches of rehearsed sincerity, and musical performances. The significant difference in Pageant is what lies beneath; the hyper-feminine contestants are all men. They're vying for the title of Miss Glamouresse and members of the audience help select the winner.

Lili is young, beautiful and married to South Texas magnate Alberto, who never appears on stage in the new Off-Broadway play Mala Herbia by Tanya Saracho, who writes for the HBO series “Looking” and “Girls.” Those who are on stage in this story of a troubled Mexican-American trophy wife include Lili’s housekeeper, stepdaughter by one of Alberto’s earlier marriages and Lili's former lover, Mari. In spite of her name, Lili is the ostensible weed referred to in the play’s Spanish title, but she may not be the most noxious among those planted on stage.

Classical pianist Mona Golabek is a winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and a recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant. She is also now a stage performer, telling the story of her mother’s life in the one-woman show The Pianist of Willesden Lane, now playing at 59E59 Theaters.

The title of Brigadoon, the 1947 musical by Lerner and Lowe, refers to a mythical Scottish town that appears for only a single day every 100 years. Though not quite as seldom seen as the town, Brigadoon the musical — the first hit by the team that later created the legendary shows My Fair Lady and Camelot — hasn’t had a Broadway revival in more than three decades. But it has been given a big new production, now extended through Aug. 17, at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre.

Cherry Jones, who won acclaim for her portrayal of Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie on Broadway this past fall, has made a quick return to the New York stage. She’s starring in a new play, When We Were Young and Unafraid, by Sarah Treem, a writer for the Netflix series "House Of Cards."

Benjamin Scheuer is a New York City singer-songwriter and the star — in fact, the only performer — in a new Manhattan Theater Company production called The Lion directed by Sean Daniels. In this autobiographical show, Scheuer, who’s just 32, reflects on the ups and downs of a fairly turbulent life as told through story and song.

Broadway's latest jukebox musical — a show built around pre-existing songs — is a new twist on this now-familiar theatrical form. Holler If Ya Hear Me is inspired by music of the late rap star Tupac Shakur. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood discusses the show, its source material, the fictional story created to support the music and the challenges of turning a highly theatrical music form into actual theater.

The playwright Ayad Akhtar won the Pulitzer Prize last year for his breakthrough play Disgraced, about the clash between traditional Islamic beliefs and contemporary American culture. He returns to similar themes in his new play The Who & the What, which is being presented by Lincoln Center Theater as part of its LCT3 series at the Claire Tow Theater.

If the witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth need a lot of space to cook up their double helping of toil and trouble, they've got it at the Park Avenue Armory. That’s where the latest New York staging of Macbeth is being presented. The lavish and action-packed production is a joint effort between the Armory and the Manchester International Festival. It is also the New York stage debut of acclaimed actor and director Kenneth Branagh, who takes the title role (he is co-director here, with Rob Ashford).

The versatile actor Jim Dale takes the stage solo in his new show, aptly and modestly entitled Just Jim Dale. Accompanied by the pianist Mark York, the show, directed by Richard Maltby Jr., is an autobiography in song, story and even a little dance. It plays at the Roundabout Theatre Company's Laura Pels Theater.

Irish playwright Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan isn’t even 20-years-old, but the play is already getting its third New York production. The latest does have a couple of special characteristics. The play is being presented for the first time in a Broadway house at the Court Theatre and leading the cast — and, presumably, the tourist-ticket trade — is Daniel Radcliffe, best known as the big screen Harry Potter.

The latest silver-screener to migrate to the Great White Way is Bullets Over Broadway, Woody Allen’s 1994 film about a playwright who becomes entangled with mobsters. The musical-comedy, set in the 1920s, employs hits of the era such as "Let’s Misbehave," and lesser known Tin Pan Alley tunes, and includes a cast of seasoned Broadway performers, as well as TV star Zach Braff. The production is directed and choreographed by the award-winning Susan Stroman.

Nominations for the 68th annual Tony Awards were announced Tuesday, with tough competition in several categories. For instance, Tyne Daly, Cherry Jones and Audra McDonald are among the nominees for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play; Sutton Foster, Idina Menzel and Kelly O'Hara are all nominated for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical.

The Off-Broadway musical Violet has found new life on Broadway in a revival by the Roundabout Theater Company. Directed by Leigh Silverman, the production features Broadway star Sutton Foster.

One of the most celebrated voices of our era meets one of the most distinctive voices of an earlier era. Audra McDonald, the five-time Tony-winning singer and actress, becomes the latest performer to channel Billie Holiday in the Broadway revival of Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill at Circle in the Square Theater. Written by Lanie Robertson and directed by Lonny Price, we see Holiday performing at a Philadelphia nightclub just a few months before her death in 1959.

A star-packed cast — Toni Collette, Michael C. Hall, Tracy Letts and Marisa Tomei — is assembled for the Broadway debut of a playwright known for “experimental theater.”

Les Miz s back. (Did you know it had ever gone away?) The original Cameron Mackintosh theatrical colossus ran for more than 15 years before closing in 2003, then came back for a brief encore in 2006.  Les Miserables returns again with the same producer (Mackintosh), same score (Alain Boublil and Jean-Michel Schönberg) and even the same theater (the Imperial on West 45th Street), but in what is described as a “new production” directed by Laurence Connor and James Powell.

The people at Disney Theatrical Group, who produce the company’s live shows, have certainly had a genie in a bottle for the past 20 years, coming up with hit stage musicals based on the films "Beauty and the Beast," "The Lion King," "Mary Poppins," "The Little Mermaid" and others. But now they’re letting that genie out: "Aladdin," the 1992 film that featured Robin Williams as the voice of the genie, has joined the ranks of Disney’s screen-to-stage properties.

Yo, Adrian! I’m on Broadway! It might not be the last movie you ever expected to see turned into a Broadway musical, but it’s probably not one of the first either. Nevertheless, here it is: “Rocky,” the Oscar-winning 1976 movie written by and starring Sylvester Stallone, has now been set to song and dance.

Actor Bryan Cranston’s roles keep getting bigger. He gained fame for his work on the TV sitcom “Malcolm in the Middle,” then went on to even greater acclaim — and three Emmy awards — for his work on the drama “Breaking Bad.” Now he’s making his Broadway debut playing a bigger character than either Malcolm’s father Hal Wilkerson, or the “Breaking Bad” high-school-teacher-cum-meth-dealer, Walter White.

Sarah Ruhl's new play Stage Kiss follows the antics of two actors who renew an old romance when they appear together in an antique drama from the 1930s. Jessica Hecht and Dominic Fumusa star in the production, which is directed by Rebecca Taichman for Playwrights Horizons.

A lineup of famous Yankees from several eras past and present are on the same stage in Bronx Bombers, a new play now running at the Circle in the Square Theatre. Babe Ruth and Derek Jeter are the roster bookends in Robert Simonson's play, which centers on famed catcher Yogi Berra, played by Peter Scolari. The play’s first act is set in 1977, when Berra was a coach with the Yankees. In the second act, the dimension of time is set aside, allowing a meeting of legendary Yankee team members.

Theater that knocks down the wall between performers and spectators has become a fashionable trend in recent years. Sleep No More, an interactive riff on Macbeth, has been a runaway hit, playing for more than two years in Chelsea.

Two Irish farmers, Anthony and Rosemary, are deeply tied to the land. Because they grew up as neighbors, they also have deep ties to one another, but their personal connections are not all positive.

Carole King is one of the great pop songwriters of the 1960s and '70s. Now, her songs — from early novelties such as “Who Put the Bomp” to intimate, soulful compositions such as “So Far Away” and “A Natural Woman” — are on Broadway in the biographical show Beautiful: the Carole King Musical. The show, at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, stars Jessie Mueller as King, and features a book by Doug McGrath. The director is Marc Bruni.

January is traditionally a lean month for the commercial theater, with tourists leaving and Broadway offering discounts. If you need help climbing out of the winter theater doldrums, New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood suggests you consider some newly minted — as well as more experimental — works being presented in two festivals in New York.

A playwright’s art imitates a financier’s life in a work about the reverberations of corruption and public scandal in The Commons of Pensacola by actress Amanda Peet, who embarked on a new career as a playwright this past fall.

The turn of the year marks the halfway point in the New York theater season. New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood runs down a partial list of some 20 new shows opening between now and the Tony Awards in June. There are some new plays, some new musicals, a revival or two and headliners ranging from Alan Cumming to Denzel Washington, Toni Collette and Marisa Tomei.

The distinctive performance artist Marina Abramović is telling her life story — and attending her own funeral — at the Park Avenue Armory. Be assured, Abramović is very much alive, but she, with the help of the singular director Robert Wilson, is looking backward from the future in The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, a theatrical event made distinct by the sensibilities of these two artists.

When it comes to the songs of Burt Bacharach, you know more than you think you do. Bacharach, best known for his collaborations with lyricist Hal David, has written in a style that is very much a hybrid of pop, jazz and his own unique touch. His songs have surprising chord progressions and even more surprising rhythmic changes and yet they’re real pop tunes — catchy and sing-along-able. For the movies, Bacharach and David wrote the theme from “Alfie” and “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” for “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” For Broadway, they wrote the score of Promises, Promises, which includes “I Say a Little Prayer for You” and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” two songs that were big hits for singer Dionne Warwick. In all, Bacharach has placed 73 songs in Billboard magazine’s Top 40 music chart. We told you that you know more Bacharach than you think.

Two fabled knights are jousting on Broadway these days, and no, it’s not a revival of Camelot. The knights are Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart and they’re appearing together at the Cort Theater in two plays, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land, both directed by Sean Mathias.

Actor Jefferson Mays is only one man, but he’s happy not to limit himself to a single role when he goes on stage. In 2004, Mays won a Tony Award and several other awards for his two-character turn in Doug Wright’s play, I Am My Own Wife. But now he's quadrupled that load in the new musical A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway.

An iconic moment in American history is the subject of a new Broadway revue at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. After Midnight purports to take its audience to a Jazz Age Harlem nightclub. It was a time and place in which America’s new music, jazz, was burgeoning. Conceived by Jack Viertel, and directed and choreographed by Warren Carlyle, this new show pays homage to the Cotton Club and other Harlem hotpots that had their heyday in the 1920s and 1930s. The show features more than 25 songs from the era, with an emphasis on both compositions and arrangements by Duke Ellington.

Crime novelist John Grisham is one of the most successful novelists of our time. Now, his novel "A Time to Kill," has come to the Broadway stage at the John Golden Theater. It’s Grisham’s first novel, and the first of his books that he has allowed to be adapted for theatrical presentation.

More than a century after the incident that inspired it, Terence Rattigan’s play The Winslow Boy, is back on Broadway at the American Airlines Theatre in a production from Roundabout Theatre Company.

Janis Joplin's star burned briefly, but brightly. For only about three years was her name prominent among pop musicians of the late 1960s. She made a single — "Me and Bobby McGee" — that reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart, and two albums that reached into the top five. She died of an accidental drug overdose at age 27. But her powerful, gutsy vocals and performance style continue to be distinctive among the singers of her era. Now her enduring appeal is recognized with a Broadway show at the Lyceum Theatre.

Billie Holiday’s voice and image are icons of 20th century America and the jazz world. Now her story comes to the stage in the musical biography Lady Day at the Little Shubert Theater.

Fans of “Breaking Bad” star Bryan Cranston can see him up close at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Lucy Thurber is getting an honor not usually granted to mid-career playwrights: a cycle of five of her plays is being mounted in New York City. The cycle, called “The Hill Town Plays,” centers around one character, a smart young heroine struggling to form an identity independent from her western Massachusetts upbringing.

"The Cheaters Club" is the latest production from The Amoralists, a downtown theater group self-described as producing “work of no moral judgment.”

Labor Day Weekend is here – alas, the unofficial end of Summer. But with that ending comes many new beginnings, one of which is the new theater season in New York City.

Who doesn't remember the awkwardness of a first date? First Date, the first new Broadway musical of the season playing at the Longacre Theatre, is a romantic comedy about a young couple meeting for the first time on a blind date. The book is by Austin Winsberg and the score is by Alan Zachary and Michael Weiner. Zachary Levi from the television series "Chuck" stars alongside Krysta Rodriguez, who appeared in the backstage-on-Broadway series "Smash."

The second offering from The Public Theater’s free Shakespeare in the Park this summer is a musical adaptation of Love’s Labour’s Lost, the Bard's early comedy about four young men who swear off romance to devote themselves to study, only to promptly fall in love. The play has been adapted and directed by Alex Timbers, the director of Peter and the Starcatcher, among many other shows, and the songs are by Michael Friedman, the house composer of the downtown theater troupe the Civilians.

The 1967 animated Disney film "The Jungle Book" — inspired by Rudyard Kipling's book of the same name — springs to life in a new musical that had its world premiere at the Goodman Theater in Chicago. Written and directed by Mary Zimmerman, best known for her stage play based on Ovid's "Metamorphoses," the new show features all the songs from the movie, including the hit tune "The Bare Necessities."

There’s a new murder mystery in town and it comes with musical comedy included. Murder for Two may be a two-man show, but the characters onstage appear in numbers far greater than that of the performers. Jeff Blumenkrantz and Brett Ryback not only play all the characters, but they are also the musicians, each taking turns at the piano to accompany the other, and even sharing the keyboard on occasion.

Reality television is lampooned a lot  — and loved a little bit, too — in a new musical now running at Second Stage Theatre. Written by the playwright Itamar Moses and the composer and lyricist Gaby Alter, Nobody Loves You follows a philosophy student’s televised pursuit of his girlfriend on a reality show that looks a lot like "The Bachelor." Other contestants, a telegenically smarmy host, and even a Twitter-addicted fan, all make appearances.

Did you know that Barbra Streisand has a shopping mall in the basement of her barn? (You did know she had a barn, didn’t you?) Playwright Jonathan Tolin has taken that surprising thread of superstar trivia and woven it into the one-man show Buyer & Cellar at the Barrow Street Theater.

A Chinese fable told in music and visual spectacle is one of the signature offerings of this year’s Lincoln Center Festival. Monkey: Journey to the West is a collaboration of director Chen Shi-Zeng and musician Damon Albarn, the songwriter and singer of the British band Blur. His collaborator on the virtual band Gorillaz, Jamie Hewlett, designed the costumes and the animation.