A Sampling of My Fall Preview Wish List

The fall theater season has already begun and it’s more jam-packed than it has been in years. No matter what kind of show you like, there is bound to be something that you'll want to see. But no matter how avid a theatergoer you are, there’s no way to see all of it. So this isn’t a full fall preview. Instead, it’s a sampling of shows that—with fingers crossed that they'll live up to my expectations—I'm really looking forward to seeing over the next couple of months.

A BROADWAY PLAY: Other Desert Cities, opening Oct. 18 at the Hudson Theatre: Jon Robin Baitz’s sensational drama is about a wealthy, right-wing couple whose adult daughter returns home with a book she’s written that will expose long-buried family secrets. It was one of my favorite plays of the year when I saw the original off-Broadway production in 2010 and then again when I got to see the Broadway production the next year.  And I wasn’t the only one knocked out by it; the play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. So I would have wanted to see this revival even if it didn’t have the killer cast of Lily Rabe as the daughter, Ed Harris as the father, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, making her Broadway debut as the mother, and Allison Janney, playing the tart-tongued alcoholic aunt, a role that won Judith Light her second Tony Award.  

But you might also want to check out Downstate, Bruce Norris’ drama about the challenging question of what to do with convicted sex offenders once they’ve served their sentences. 

 

A BROADWAY MUSICAL: Wanted, opening Nov. 8 at the James Earl Jones Theatre: Liisi LaFontaine and Solea Pfeiffer star in this wholly original musical that tells the tale of the Clarke sisters, African-American twins who were light enough to pass for white and bold enough to become outlaws in 1893 Texas. Angelica Chéri, a protégée of the award-winning playwright Lynn Nottage, wrote the book and lyrics based on stories that her own family has passed down over the past century and a half. And her collaborator Ross Baum has written a score filled with bangers and soulful ballads that might feel right at home on Spotify's Top Tracks list.

But you might also want to check out Galileo, Raul Esparza’s return to Broadway for the first time in 14 years in a rock musical about the 17th century scientist whose discoveries brought him into conflict with the Catholic Church.

 

AN OFF-BROADWAY PLAY: The Verge, opening Nov. 5 at the Public Theater: If Eugene O’Neill is the father of modern American drama, then Susan Glaspell is its mother. A co-founder of the Provincetown Players who helped to nurture O’Neill’s early career and a pioneering feminist, Glaspell was also the second woman to ever win a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. But she doesn’t get done much anymore, not even by companies that pride themselves on reviving works by neglected playwrights. This drama about a woman whose desire to be more than just a wife and mother drives her insane was Glaspell’s big breakout but it hasn’t had a major New York production since its debut in 1921. So it’s beyond exciting for me that the Fiasco Theater Company is staging this revival at the Public Theater, starring Miriam Silverman, a recent Tony winner for her breakout performance in the 2023 revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window.

But you might also want to check out A View From the Bridge, Arthur Miller’s tragedy about a longshoreman’s lust for his niece, which is being revived at, of all places, the iconic downtown avantgarde theater La MaMa, with a  starry cast that includes Sam Rockwell, Marin Ireland and Alfred Molina

 

AN OFF-BROADWAY MUSICAL: Imitation of Life, opening Dec. 3 at the Shed: The novelist Fannie Hurst centered her 1933 tearjerker around two single mothers, one white and one black, struggling with the challenges of race, class, identity and female ambition. It’s been made into a movie twice and now it’s a musical with a book by Lynn Nottage and a score by the 13-time Grammy-winning singer and songwriter John Legend. The production will star Adrienne Warren and Jessica Vosk and I’m so eager to see this one that I bought my tickets the day they went on sale back in May.

But you might also want to check out: Memoirs of an Amorous Gentleman, based on a series of Japanese graphic novels and the final show with a score by Duncan Sheik, who died just last month a few days before previews began, it revolves around a Parisian courtesan who relates the stories—and kinks—of her various clients as she tries to figure out her own desires.