NEW YORK, NY.- For theater companies across the United States, the start of the new season finds them still in a time of uncertainty, with audiences not yet returned to prepandemic levels. It makes sense, then, that a lot of fall programming favors the cozily familiar: revivals of known quantities and fresh takes on classic tales. This list skews more toward the adventure of wholly new work — but it’s peppered with tempting adaptations, too.
‘COLD CASE’: An Inupiaq woman from a Native village in Alaska battles to retrieve her aunt’s body from an Anchorage morgue in this new play by Cathy Tagnak Rexford (HBO’s “True Detective: Night Country”). The script won the Barrie and Bernice Stavis Playwright Award, whose previous winners include Sanaz Toossi’s “Wish You Were Here.” DeLanna Studi directs. (Sept. 6-22 in Juneau, Alaska, and Oct. 11-20 in Anchorage; Perseverance Theater)
‘PRELUDE TO A KISS A MUSICAL’: Rita and Peter are young, beautiful and headlong in love when an old stranger supernaturally swaps bodies with her: his soul in Rita’s, hers in his. Craig Lucas’ 1988 fable of a play, which became a 1992 rom-com movie, now morphs into a musical, with a score by Daniel Messé (Lucas’ collaborator on “Amélie,” the musical) and Sean Hartley. Kenneth Ferrone directs. (Sept. 10-Oct. 19; Milwaukee Repertory Theater)
‘PRIMARY TRUST’: Eboni Booth’s graceful, aching, gently funny play about a lonely man quietly slipping through the cracks of a small American town won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for drama. This fall, productions are cropping up across the country, including at Signature Theater in Arlington, Virginia. (Sept. 10-Oct. 20); Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. (Sept. 18-Oct. 13); La Jolla Playhouse in La Jolla, California, where Knud Adams, who staged the premiere off-Broadway, directs (Sept. 24-Oct. 20); the Goodman Theater in Chicago (Oct. 5-Nov. 3); and Seattle Repertory Theater (Oct. 24-Nov. 24).
‘OH HAPPY DAY!’: Playwright Jordan E. Cooper joins forces again with director Stevie Walker-Webb, who staged Cooper’s wild sketch satire “Ain’t No Mo’” on Broadway. This new comedy, a reimagining of the story of Noah’s Ark, has original music by gospel songwriter Donald Lawrence and stars Cooper as an estranged son arriving unexpectedly at a family barbecue in Mississippi. (Sept. 19-Oct. 13; Baltimore Center Stage)
‘MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING’: When the hot guy who’s been your dependable pal gets engaged to someone else, is it poor form to try to win him for yourself? The Julia Roberts-Dermot Mulroney classic rom-com gets the musical treatment in this Ron Bass-Jonathan Harvey adaptation, with songs by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Kathleen Marshall (“Anything Goes”) directs the premiere. (Sept. 26-Oct. 27; Ogunquit Playhouse, Ogunquit, Maine)
‘BABBITT’: Matthew Broderick stars as George F. Babbitt, the soul-deadened embodiment of middle-class American conformity, in Joe DiPietro’s new adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’ satirical novel, in which Babbitt weathers a midlife crisis. Christopher Ashley, who staged the play last fall at La Jolla Playhouse in California, directs a cast that also includes Ann Harada, Ali Stroker and Judy Kaye. (Oct. 1-Nov. 3; Shakespeare Theater Company, Washington, D.C.)
‘AMERICAN IDIOT’: Center Theater Group and Deaf West Theater, which went to Broadway together with the 2003 revival of “Big River,” collaborate on this new staging of the punk-rock opera, with music by the band Green Day. Snehal Desai directs an ensemble of Deaf and hearing actors, who in signature Deaf West style will perform simultaneously in American Sign Language and English. (Oct. 2-Nov. 10; Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles)
‘FALCON GIRLS’: Playwright Hilary Bettis (“72 Miles to Go...”) revisits the world of her rural Colorado upbringing in this autobiographically inspired coming-of-age story. Set in the 1990s, the play follows the teenage dramas of a six-girl horse judging team with national ambitions. May Adrales directs the premiere. (Oct. 10-Nov. 2; Yale Repertory Theater, New Haven, Connecticut)
‘THE JANEIAD’: The mythical Penelope waited long years for the return of her wandering beloved, Odysseus. In the decades since the Sept. 11 attacks, the grieving, hopeful Jane has done the same for her lost husband. Rob Melrose directs this new play by Anna Ziegler (“Photograph 51”). (Oct. 11-Nov. 3; Alley Theater, Houston)
‘RUTKA’: A 14-year-old Jewish girl’s diary about her restless, yearning, increasingly dangerous life in Poland in 1943 is the basis for this new indie-rock musical, with a score by Jocelyn Mackenzie and Jeremy Lloyd-Styles (both formerly of the Brooklyn band Pearl and the Beard) and a book by Neena Beber (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”). Wendy C. Goldberg directs. (Oct. 13-Nov. 10; Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park)
ARENA STAGE: This theater will roll out three premieres under one roof: John Leguizamo’s play “The Other Americans” (Oct. 18-Nov. 24), directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson and starring Leguizamo as the struggling owner of a laundromat in Queens; Matthew Libby’s “Data” (Oct. 31-Dec. 15), a Silicon Valley thriller directed by Tyne Rafaeli; and Ken Ludwig’s adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot mystery “Death on the Nile” (Nov. 22-Dec. 29), directed by Hana S. Sharif. (Arena Stage, Washington, D.C.)
‘LEROY AND LUCY’: The legend of Robert Leroy Johnson, the real-life Mississippi bluesman said to have traded his soul for musical genius, informs this new two-hander by Ngozi Anyanwu (“The Last of the Love Letters”), starring Jon Michael Hill (“Pass Over”) and Brittany Bradford (“The Comeuppance”) as strangers who meet by night at a crossroads. Awoye Timpo (“Wedding Band”) directs. (Oct. 24-Dec. 15; Steppenwolf Theater Company, Chicago)
‘DIARY OF A TAP DANCER’: Virtuosic tapper Ayodele Casel, who choreographed the jaw-dropping tap in the recent Broadway revival of “Funny Girl,” is an ardent ambassador of her art form. In this new play with music and dance, whose title she has long used for a series of dance pieces, Casel honors her female forebears in tap. Torya Beard directs. (Dec. 12-Jan. 4; American Repertory Theater, Cambridge, Massachusetts)
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.
