5 Shows to See in New York This Month

Happy back to school! The fall theater season in New York begins in earnest now, and I have five shows to recommend, starting with the most fun I’ve ever had at the opera:

1. The Marriage of Figaro
Anthony Roth Costanzo is currently singing every role, male and female, in an abridged version of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro at Little Island. It’s a superhuman feat made even more delightful by the visionary DIY direction of Dustin Wills, who has the other actors lip sync as Costanzo ranges across three-and-a-half octaves. It’s the perfect combination of playfulness and technical mastery. I suspect Mozart would have loved it, and it had the audience in stitches the night I attended. While it’s only playing for another week and I hear the run is completely sold out, a camera crew was on hand for opening night, so home audiences may still get a chance to enjoy this landmark production. Read my full review here.

2. Table 17
MCC Theater eases into its new season with Table 17, a bittersweet comedy about a break-up. It’s by Douglas Lyons, author of Chicken & Biscuits, and it features three knockout performances by Michael Rishawn, Biko Eisen-Martin, and brand-new Tony winner Kara Young. It is framed as a reunion dinner between ex-fiancés Jada and Dallas, with a series of flashbacks showing us exactly what went wrong. Simultaneously hilarious and clear-eyed, it’s the perfect antidote to The Notebook. You can read my full review here.

3. The Ask
While much ink has been spilled in the past week about the fierce battle for the White House and the Left-Right divide in America, Matthew Freeman turns his attention to the looming generational conflict between the old-school liberals who donate to organizations like the ACLU and the woke young crusaders who work there. Sensitively written to give both sides a fair hearing, The Ask is brilliantly acted by Betsy Aidem and Colleen Litchfield. The show is just 80 minutes, but the post-show debate will be jangling around your brain for days after. Read my full review here.

4. KS6: Small Forward
Belarus Free Theatre is back in New York with KS6: Small Forward, about Katya Snytsina’s journey from star basketball player to political dissident. BFT has operated underground in Belarus for years, inviting audiences into an oasis of free expression in a country that has been described as the last Communist dictatorship in Europe (you can read my profile of the company here). BFT never shies away from artistic risks with its innovative stagings, but its very existence is a risk in a country in which everything is tightly controlled by the Lukashenko regime. That makes it one of the most vital troupes on earth, and the show a must-see.

5. Grounded
I’ll end this letter where I began: at the opera. The Met, which has taken a major swerve toward new work in recent years, is opening its 2024-25 season on September 23 with the New York debut of Grounded. It’s based on George Brant’s solo drama about a fighter pilot turned drone operator who struggles with a new mission that has her commuting to and from the “battlefield” each day (you can read our off-Broadway production starring Anne Hathaway here). Brant has penned the libretto, and the music is by Jeanine Tesori, the Tony-winning composer of Fun Home and Kimberly Akimbo (read our recent interview with her here). As someone who loves the opera, Broadway, and off-Broadway, it always warms my heart to see such cross-collaboration.