Our guide to plays and musicals coming to New York stages and a few last-chance picks of shows that are about to close. Our reviews of open shows are at nytimes.com/reviews/theater.
Previews & Openings
‘CHEKHOV/TOLSTOY: LOVE STORIES’ at Theater Row (in previews; opens on Feb. 10). Will two great Russians’ tales taste great together? The Mint Theater continues its relationship with the English playwright Miles Malleson, staging two of his adaptations: Chekhov’s story of an artist and Tolstoy’s tale of a peasant couple. Jonathan Bank and Jane Shaw direct a cast that includes Vinie Burrows.
212-239-6200, minttheater.org
‘DANA H.’ at the Vineyard Theater (previews start on Feb. 11; opens on Feb. 25). Lucas Hnath often writes about famous figures — Isaac Newton, Walt Disney, Hillary Clinton. His subject this time: his own mother, Dana Higginbotham. Hnath adapted the play from interviews that were conducted with her about the time she was held captive by a psychiatric patient she ministered to as a chaplain at a mental institution. The Obie winner Diedre O’Connell brings the harrowing true story to life.
212-353-0303, vineyardtheatre.org
‘DARLING GRENADINE’ at the Roundabout Underground (in previews; opens on Feb. 10). A cocktail of a musical, Daniel Zaitchik’s romantic comedy is about a guy, a girl, a friend, a dog and the ravages of addiction. Adam Kantor plays Harry, a composer, with Emily Walton as the chorus girl he loves and Jay Armstrong Johnson as a loyal friend. Michael Berresse directs.
212-719-1300, roundabouttheatre.org
‘HAMLET’ at St. Ann’s Warehouse (in previews; opens on Feb. 10). Hamlet’s inky cloak? Ruth Negga is wearing it now. The Ethiopian-Irish actress plays the prince in Yaël Farber’s production of Shakespeare’s tragedy. “It nearly killed me,” she told The New York Times, describing an earlier run. Guess there’s nothing like a Dane. With Aoife Duffin as Ophelia.
718-254-8779, stannswarehouse.org
‘THE HEADLANDS’ at the Claire Tow Theater (previews start on Feb. 8; opens on Feb. 24). A writer of puzzle-box plays, Christopher Chen (“Caught,” “Passage”) unspools a new mystery for LCT3. In this detective drama, directed by Knud Adams, a grown son, Henry (Aaron Yoo), pieces together memories to try to solve the murder of his father (Johnny Wu). Laura Kai Chen portrays Henry’s mother in the past; Mia Katigbak, his present one.
212-239-6200, lct3.org
‘HOT WING KING’ at the Pershing Square Signature Center (previews start on Feb. 11; opens on March 1). A saucy comedy, Katori Hall’s new play, part of her Signature Theater residency, unfolds during the Hot Wang Festival in Memphis, with family and romantic conflict cooking alongside the chicken. Steve H. Broadnax III directs a cast that includes Toussaint Jeanlouis and Korey Jackson.
212-244-7529, signaturetheatre.org
[Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead.]
‘THE PERPLEXED’ at New York City Center Stage I (previews start on Feb. 11; opens on March 3). Before Richard Greenberg goes to the ballgame with the Broadway revival of “Take Me Out,” he premieres this uptown comedy about two families, alike in indignity, and the wedding that unites them. For Manhattan Theater Club, Lynne Meadow directs a cast that includes Margaret Colin and Frank Wood.
212-581-1212, nycitycenter.org
‘72 MILES TO GO …’ at the Laura Pels Theater at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theater (previews start on Feb. 13; opens on March 10). When Anita is deported — from Tucson, Ariz., to Nogales, Mexico — family life goes on with and without her. Hilary Bettis’s border-crossing, decade-spanning drama stars Maria Elena Ramirez as Anita, with Triney Sandoval, Tyler Alvarez, Jacqueline Guillén and Bobby Moreno. Jo Bonney directs.
212-719-1300, roundabouttheatre.org
‘SIX’ at the Brooks Atkinson Theater (previews start on Feb. 13; opens on March 12). In a time before marriage counseling and no-fault divorce, the much-married Henry VIII racked up six wives. And in this rock musical by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, they come together to debate who had it worst. “‘Six’ delivers pure entertainment throughout its headlong 80 minutes,” Jesse Green wrote of the Chicago production last summer.
877-250-2929, sixonbroadway.com
‘THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN’ at Abrons Arts Center (previews start on Feb. 8; opens on Feb. 26). Can the 1960 Meredith Willson musical about a Titanic survivor float? The book writer Dick Scanlan’s update for the Transport Group pushes the show toward the actual history of the lifeboat queen Margaret Tobin Brown, played here by Beth Malone. Kathleen Marshall directs and choreographs the show’s Off Broadway premiere.
866-811-4111, transportgroup.org
Last Chance
‘AMERICAN UTOPIA’ at the Hudson Theater (closes on Feb. 16). A knockout concert and an occasional meditation on civics and community, David Byrne’s musical theater experience, choreographed by Annie-B Parson, drops its chain curtain for the final time. The erstwhile Talking Head frontman’s show, Ben Brantley wrote, “repositions a onetime rebel as a reflective elder statesman, offering cozy cosmic wisdom.”
855-801-5876, americanutopiabroadway.com
‘TIMON OF ATHENS’ at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center (closes on Feb. 9). Fashioned for this age of inequality, Simon Godwin’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s (and Thomas Middleton’s) vexed semitragedy ends its run. Starring Kathryn Hunter as a plutocrat who goes broke, the production adds in fragments from other Shakespeare plays, plus a sonnet. Jesse Green called it an “energetic and somewhat Frankensteined revival.”
866-811-4111, tfana.org
Source: Theater - nytimes.com
