Broadway
OPERATION MINCEMEAT A sneaky compassion lies at the heart of this caper of a show, a deliciously eccentric London import that won the 2024 Olivier Award for best new musical. Starring the original West End cast, it’s a riff on a bizarre true story from World War II, when British Intelligence, keen to misdirect the Germans, dressed up a dead man as a Royal Marines major, planted a fake invasion plan on him and dropped him in the sea for the enemy to find. Through June 15 at the Golden Theater. (All theater listings by LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES)
BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB This jukebox musical about the Cuban artists who made the Grammy Award-winning 1997 album of the title isn’t straight biography. Developed and directed by Saheem Ali (“Fat Ham”), it uses real people and events as a jumping-off point for its storytelling. Rooted in the recording sessions, and choreographed by Patricia Delgado and the Tony winner Justin Peck (“Illinoise”), it was an Off Broadway hit last season for Atlantic Theater Company. Performances begin Feb. 21 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater.
OTHELLO Denzel Washington made a Broadway box-office hit out of “Julius Caesar” two decades ago. On the big screen, he has played Macbeth. Now he takes on Shakespeare’s Othello — the honorable general and smitten newlywed. Jake Gyllenhaal is his foil as the perfidious Iago, who goads Othello into unreasoning jealousy with lies about his beloved Desdemona (Molly Osborne). Directed by Kenny Leon, a Tony winner for his revival of “A Raisin in the Sun,” which also starred Washington. Feb. 24-June 8 at the Barrymore Theater.
PURPOSE Fresh off his Tony win for “Appropriate,” the playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins returns with a new drama about the members of a famous, albeit fictional, Black political dynasty in Chicago, reckoning with history, morality and legacy as they gather for a celebration. Phylicia Rashad directs this Steppenwolf Theater production, whose ensemble cast includes Alana Arenas, Glenn Davis, Jon Michael Hill, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Harry Lennix and another 2024 Tony winner, Kara Young. Feb. 25-July 6 at the Helen Hayes Theater.
GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS David Mamet’s luxuriantly crude, bare-knuckled real estate drama, which won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize, gets its third Broadway revival. Kieran Culkin, last on Broadway a decade ago in “This Is Our Youth,” stars as Richard Roma — the Al Pacino role in the movie adaptation — opposite Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr, Michael McKean, Donald Webber Jr., Howard W. Overshown and John Pirruccello. Patrick Marber, a 2023 Tony winner for his production of “Leopoldstadt,” directs. How’s that for a lead? March 10-May 31 at the Palace Theater.
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY Theatergoing admirers of the HBO drama “Succession” love to ascribe its savvy artistry partly to the considerable stage chops among its cast. Now Sarah Snook, the Australian actor who played Shiv Roy — older sister to Kieran Culkin’s Roman — makes her Broadway debut in Kip Williams’s intricately high-tech retelling of Oscar Wilde’s classic novel. Snook takes on all 26 characters, a feat that won her raves, and a 2024 Olivier Award, in the London run of this Sydney Theater Company production. March 10-June 15 at the Music Box Theater.
BOOP! THE MUSICAL The black-and-white 1930s cartoon character Betty Boop time-travels to a richly chromatic future in this new show, with Jasmine Amy Rogers making her Broadway debut in the title role, and Faith Prince and Stephen DeRosa among the supporting cast. Directed and choreographed by the Tony-winning Jerry Mitchell, the show has a book by Bob Martin (“The Drowsy Chaperone”), music by David Foster, lyrics by Susan Birkenhead and a set by David Rockwell. Performances begin March 11 at the Broadhurst Theater.
JOHN PROCTOR IS THE VILLAIN In Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” a skewering of McCarthyism set amid the witch trials of 17th-century Massachusetts, John Proctor is meant to be the hero. This #MeToo play by Kimberly Belflower turns that presumption on its head, with a group of contemporary high school girls who detect similarities between Miller’s putative good guy and the men in their own world. Sadie Sink (“Stranger Things”) stars; Danya Taymor, a Tony winner for “The Outsiders,” directs. March 20-June 22 at the Booth Theater.
STRANGER THINGS: THE FIRST SHADOW Set in Hawkins, Ind., in 1959, this Olivier-winning sensory spectacle of a play is a prequel to the supernatural Netflix series “Stranger Things.” Directed by Stephen Daldry, it has a script by Kate Trefry, a writer on the hit series, and an original story by Trefry, Jack Thorne and the Duffer brothers, who created the series. Transferring from London’s West End, where it opened in 2023, the show is recommended for ages 12 and up. Performances begin March 28 at the Marquis Theater.
REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES: THE MUSICAL Josefina López’s 1990 play has never been as well known as the 2002 film it spawned, which starred America Ferrera in her breakthrough role. Now both of those form the bases of this new musical about Ana (Tatianna Córdoba), an American teenager in 1980s Los Angeles trying to reconcile her aspirations for herself with her obligations to her undocumented immigrant family. Directed and choreographed by the Tony winner Sergio Trujillo, with music and lyrics by Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez. Performances begin April 1 at the James Earl Jones Theater.
DEAD OUTLAW The hapless Elmer McCurdy wasn’t much good as an Old West criminal, but the real-life, sideshow-attraction saga of his mummified corpse made for a rollicking sleeper-hit musical comedy Off Broadway last year. Once again starring Andrew Durand as Elmer, playing dead like nobody’s business, it’s a country-tinged tale with a conscience from the book writer Itamar Moses, the composer-lyricist David Yazbek and the director David Cromer — Tony winners all for “The Band’s Visit” — and the composer-lyricist Erik Della Penna. Performances begin April 12 at the Longacre Theater.
GODDESS The director Saheem Ali returns to a passion project with this musical inspired by the myth of Marimba, the goddess of music, which Ali heard as a child growing up in Kenya. Conceived by Ali, who directed the premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theater in 2022, the show has a book by Jocelyn Bioh (“Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”), music and lyrics by Michael Thurber and choreography by Darrell Grand Moultrie, all of whom made “Merry Wives” with Ali for Shakespeare in the Park in 2021. April 29-June 1 at the Public Theater.
GHOSTS Nothing against nepo babies, truly, but the most unignorable thing about Lincoln Center Theater’s casting of this Henrik Ibsen drama is the critical mass of them. Lily Rabe (daughter of Jill Clayburgh and David Rabe) stars alongside Ella Beatty (daughter of Annette Bening and Warren Beatty), Levon Hawke (son of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke) and her own partner, Hamish Linklater (son of the renowned vocal coach Kristin Linklater). Billy Crudup, who completes the cast of this Mark O’Rowe adaptation, is the odd man out. Jack O’Brien directs. Through April 13 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.
BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC Returning to form as a cultural hotspot, BAM has a blazing London import in the Almeida Theater’s Olivier-winning production of “A Streetcar Named Desire” (Feb. 28-April 6). Starring Paul Mescal as Stanley Kowalski and Patsy Ferran as Blanche DuBois, it’s directed by Rebecca Frecknall, whose revival of “Cabaret” is currently on Broadway. Then comes “Macbeth in Stride” (April 15-April 27). Written by the Obie Award winner Whitney White, and performed by her and an ensemble, it uses Lady Macbeth as a frame for examining Black womanhood and ambition. A live band plays White’s gospel, rock, R&B and pop score. Harvey Theater at BAM Strong.
AMERIKIN What if, to be accepted into a friendly local club you were eager to join, you had to pass a DNA test? And what if you were mistaken in thinking that you would ace it? In this play by Chisa Hutchinson, the exclusive group is made up of white supremacists, and their would-be recruit (Daniel Abeles) is a new father only now learning about his own family tree. Jade King Carroll directs for Primary Stages. March 1-April 13 at 59E59 Theaters.
WINE IN THE WILDERNESS In Harlem in 1964, a model (Olivia Washington) sits for a painter (Grantham Coleman) who means to depict her as a negative example in his otherwise idealizing triptych on Black femininity. This Alice Childress play had its premiere on public television in 1969. Now LaChanze makes her New York directing debut with it — a continuation of her championing of Childress, the author of “Trouble in Mind,” the play LaChanze starred in on Broadway three years ago. March 6-April 13, Classic Stage Company.
VANYA Among the recent spate of stagings of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” this is the one with Andrew Scott performing every role. Adapted by Simon Stephens as an eight-character solo piece and created with Scott, this is more than a party trick. It’s a cheeky, nimble, intimate interpretation that’s also a workout for the imagination. Sam Yates’s Olivier-winning production has been filmed for National Theater Live. But a camera can’t convey the feeling of experiencing it in the moment, let alone in a room as human-scale as this downtown space. March 10-May 11 at the Lucille Lortel Theater.
THE CHERRY ORCHARD Humor is to the fore in the Donmar Warehouse’s immersive production of this Chekhov classic, which wowed London audiences last year. Directed by Benedict Andrews, who brought his acclaimed production of “A Streetcar Named Desire” to Brooklyn in 2016, it stars Nina Hoss (“Tár”) as the entitled aristocrat Ranevskaya, an estate owner drowning in debt, opposite Adeel Akhtar as Lopakhin, the socially ascendant merchant who proposes a solution. March 26-April 20 at St. Ann’s Warehouse.
EURYDICE Maya Hawke (sister of Levon) plays the title role in this revival of Sarah Ruhl’s piercingly beautiful, comically offbeat retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Directed by Les Waters, who staged the play breathtakingly almost two decades ago, it is about love and connection, mortality and memory. When the just-married Eurydice dies, she descends in an elevator to the underworld, where her tender father takes care of her while Orpheus pines. May 13-June 22 at Signature Theater.
LUNAR ECLIPSE Reed Birney and Lisa Emery portray a long-married Kentucky couple, watching the summer sky and talking through the night, in this new two-hander by Donald Margulies, who won a Pulitzer in 2000 for “Dinner With Friends,” another play about enduring coupledom starring Emery. In “Lunar Eclipse,” Birney is reprising his role from a 2023 production at Shakespeare & Company in Western Massachusetts. Kate Whoriskey (“Clyde’s”) directs this staging, an Off Broadway premiere for Second Stage Theater. May 14-June 22 at Pershing Square Signature Center.
Pop, Jazz and Country
FKA TWIGS The English avant-pop goddess FKA twigs remakes the club in her own image on her latest album, “Eusexua,” which she has described as “a love letter to how dance music makes me feel.” With a background in both ballet and opera, FKA twigs — whose real name is Tahliah Debrett Barnett — approaches her electronic compositions with a highbrow experimentalist’s sense of daring, but the 11 tracks of “Eusexua” are among the most straightforward and pop-oriented of her career. With her nimble, flinty falsetto leading the way, the 37-year old puts her own spin on the techno, garage and drum and bass sounds she grew up with while unearthing dormant desires and articulating her own pleasure principle. “Eusexua” is a record meant to be experienced in a crowd full of dancing, sweaty bodies — an opportunity twigs will offer when she takes it on tour this spring. April 3 and 4 at Knockdown Center, Queens. (LINDSAY ZOLADZ)
DARKSIDE The shape-shifting electro-psychedelia group Darkside began as the electronic producer Nicolás Jaar and the multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington, two accomplished, wide-ranging musicians who started playing together in 2011 as students at Brown. On their third LP, the immersive “Nothing,” the band includes the drummer Tlacael Esparza, who is likewise adept at playing just about every style imaginable. That fluidity gives “Nothing” a thrilling unpredictability — and a license to explore a sonic cosmos that encompasses liquid funk, airy ambience and sudden spurts of garage rock, among other sounds. Esparza’s anchor also allows Darkside to indulge its inner jam band, a development that may unlock something new in the group’s performances. March 21 and 22 at Brooklyn Steel, Brooklyn. (L.Z.)
MEGAN MORONEY Looking for an experience that allows you to wallow in the limitless depths of your sorrow? There is one easy solution for the relentless masochism that unites the brokenhearted: the country singer Megan Moroney, who brings her Am I Okay? Tour to New York in March. Moroney has had a banner couple of years, releasing albums and songs about heavy frustration and even heavier regret at a Drake-like pace. She has a soothing voice, but it’s a Trojan horse for the kind of angst that most musicians — hell, most people — are too scared to traffic in. So come along and bathe in the misery: Maybe you’ll find someone who will hold your hand while you cling to theirs. March 26 and 27 at Radio City Music Hall, Manhattan. (JON CARAMANICA)
CÉCILE MCLORIN SALVANT “She falls in love. She eats the guy. She dies.” That’s how the singer, composer, lyricist and visual artist Cécile McLorin Salvant sums up “Ogresse,” the music-theater work she’ll bring to Zankel Hall in May in its latest iteration. “Ogresse” is a fairy tale-inspired story of a monster who’s conquered by love, with a score that ranges across jazz, chamber music and more. McLorin also headlines Carnegie Hall in March with a nominally more conventional jazz concert: a program of ballads backed by a mini-orchestra, the Knights. But the arrangements are by Darcy James Argue, whose compositions for his own 18-piece Secret Society big band bristle with ambition; the pianist Sullivan Fortner, McLorin’s longtime collaborator and a master of splintered, polytonal harmonies, will also join her. McLorin’s supple voice can radiate innocence, yet she’s anything but naïve. Her versions of jazz standards promise to be as adventurous as her ever-changing eyewear. March 27 at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan; and May 21 at Zankel Hall, Manhattan, (JON PARELES)
Classical
STILE ANTICO Palestrina, that master of gleaming polyphony, was born 500 years ago. The superb vocal ensemble Stile Antico has already honored the anniversary with a recording, sung with lushness and focus, and in March, Miller Theater will present the group in a program based on the album. At the center is a sizable helping of Palestrina, of course, rounded out with pieces by other composers active in Rome during his time, including Orlande de Lassus and Tomás Luis de Victoria — and even a premiere, by Cheryl Frances-Hoad. March 29 at Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Manhattan. (All classical listings by ZACHARY WOOLFE)
PATRICIA KOPATCHINSKAJA The violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, whose performances can send jolts through even the most well-trod pieces, has a far more active career in Europe than in America. So her debut with the New York Philharmonic, as the soloist in Stravinsky’s elegantly bristling Violin Concerto, is not to be missed, particularly since she’s appearing alongside the stylish yet vigorous conductor Jakub Hrusa, who also leads Brahms’s First Symphony. Jessie Montgomery, who composed a bit of the cycle “The Elements” for the Philharmonic a couple of years ago, opens the program with a full work of her own, “Chemiluminescence.” April 9-11 at David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center.
LONG PLAY FESTIVAL For years, the Bang on a Can Marathon was an annual, open-eared immersion in contemporary music. Since 2022, the marathon’s energy and variety has sprawled over a weekend and a borough, with a burst of performances at spaces around Brooklyn. Among the offerings this year are pieces by the Bang on a Can founders, Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe; a premiere by Henry Threadgill; Anthony Braxton’s “Composition No. 19 (For 100 Tubas)”; Nico Muhly’s harp cycle “The Street”; the pianist Adam Tendler playing John Cage; the elite guitar duo of Mary Halvorson and Bill Frisell; and a celebration of Terry Riley’s 90th birthday. May 2-4, various performance spaces in Brooklyn.
PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD His specialty is modernism, but there are few cooler, more technically flawless guides to a wide range of repertory than the pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard. At Zankel Hall, he’ll play a formidable program of fantasias — spanning some 400 years — by Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, C.P.E. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin and Elliott Carter (the brooding, unsettled “Night Fantasies”). He’ll cap the recital with a genuine rarity: Ives’s “The Celestial Railroad,” based on a Nathaniel Hawthorne story and featuring material from the better-known Second Piano Sonata and Fourth Symphony. (Concertgoers will have a tough choice that afternoon, as the English Concert will be performing Handel’s “Giulio Cesare” in Stern Auditorium at the same time.) May 4, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall.
‘THE QUEEN OF SPADES’ It used to be that decades might pass at the Metropolitan Opera between runs of Tchaikovsky’s “Queen of Spades,” a seething tale of obsession, madness and gambling. Happily, the work is increasingly being treated as core repertory, returning this season after an appearance just before the pandemic. Keri-Lynn Wilson, who in 2022 made a strong impression leading Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” conducts a cast that includes the tenor Brian Jagde, the soprano Sonya Yoncheva, the baritones Igor Golovatenko and Alexey Markov and, as an aging countess who knows a dark secret about playing cards, the veteran mezzo Violeta Urmana. May 23-June 7 at the Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center.
TWYLA THARP DANCE Tharp is celebrating her 60th year of making dances. (And what dances they have been!) Her season at New York City Center pairs “Slacktide,” her first work to Philip Glass since her masterpiece “In the Upper Room” (1986), with “Diabelli” (1998), a vivid exploration of American classicism that is a masterpiece, too — albeit one rarely seen. The dance set to Beethoven’s “Diabelli Variations” opens with swinging arms, skips and gallops; it blossoms in complexity and mood as humor and physical intelligence build and layer, creating a wonderfully witty ride. March 12-16 at New York City Center. (GIA KOURLAS)
PAGEANT SPRING 2025 This artist-run space has announced its spring season — “The Rite of Spring, My Right to Spring” — which has all the makings of a breath of fresh air, fittingly full of pageantry. Big theaters have their charm, but smaller spaces are where imaginations are born, where you see what artists are made of. Pageant’s annual gala, set for April 19, is the best show in town; the regular season opens on March 6. The runs come and go in two-day bursts, including evenings by promising young dance artists like Neva Guido and Ella Dawn, so catch what you can. These explorations may run the gamut — as its founders say, Pageant programs artists, not works — but a questing spirit is always intact. That’s the Pageant way. March 6-May 23 at Pageant, Brooklyn. (G.K.)
AYODELE CASEL The exuberance of this joyful, musically sophisticated tap dancer cannot be overstated. Nor can her enthusiasm for ’90s hip-hop, the music that she and other dancers of her generation practiced to and took class to while finding their place in the tap world. Casel was partial to the Fugees, Nas, Craig Mack. “It was formative,” she said, and “it was easy to tap dance to because it swung. It swung in a way that we dance to jazz — easily.” In her upcoming work, directed by Torya Beard, Casel plans, in part, to explore the parallel between hip-hop and tap. “There was something about those two things colliding at the same time that spoke to each other,” she said, “in a deeper way than how it was talked about.” May 28-June 8 at the Joyce Theater. (G.K.)
BATSHEVA DANCE COMPANY The choreographer Ohad Naharin and Batsheva, the company he reshaped into global prominence, have often attracted controversy — less for their sensuality, directness or inhibition-flouting eccentricity than by association with their home country, Israel. A U.S. tour of Naharin’s latest work, “Momo,” was postponed after the Oct. 7 attacks and ensuing war in Gaza; now it arrives at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Set largely to music by Laurie Anderson and the Kronos Quartet, “Momo” is in a sense two overlapping works: a slow, masculine quartet that incorporates rock climbing; and a quicker ensemble piece that involves some parody of ballet. The doubling forces you to accept that you can’t process all the information at once: a milder, controlled version of the lesson that events outside the work are always making. March 6-8 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. (BRIAN SEIBERT)
BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE DANCE COMPANY Like many Americans, Bill T. Jones is trying to understand what world we are living in. His way of processing is to make a work of dance theater. “People, Places & Things,” one of two programs in his company’s spring season, looks at the plight of stateless people, political upheaval and concepts of freedom. The soundtrack is drawn from Jones’s youth in the turbulent 1960s. Now 73, he has also been thinking about his own place in the world. The other program is a solo made in response to “Edges of Ailey,” the recent Whitney Museum exhibition about Alvin Ailey. In “Memory Piece: Mr. Ailey, Alvin … the un-Ailey?,” Jones ruminates with characteristic frankness on his relationship to his choreographer forebear, Black dance, and the largely white milieu of postmodernism. May 15-24 at New York Live Arts, Manhattan (B.S.)