the week of march 21-27, 2025

cave explorers, villain eras, the non-woke musical CATS

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new york’s hottest club is the booth

Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor is the Villain is now playing on Broadway. (A truly joyous and wild sentence!) The “bitingly funny new play about five girls running on pop music, optimism, and fury, trying to summon a better future” is directed by Danya Taymor. (Devoted NFTG readers already know how I feel about this one. See you there!)

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world premieres

• The Lazours’ Night Side Songs runs March 27 - April 20 at A.R.T. in Cambridge, MA in association with Philadelphia Theatre Company. Taibi Magar directs the “genre-breaking theatrical kaleidoscope giving voices to doctors, patients, researchers, and caregivers.”

• Priyanka Shetty’s #CHARLOTTESVILLE starts performances March 22nd at The Keegan Theatre in Washington, DC. The “solo performance about the power of witnessing, constructed from interviews with residents of Charlottesville impacted by events surrounding 2017’s Unite the Right rally and counter-protests” is directed by Yury Urnov.

• The Keen Company’s production of Adam Gwon's All the World's a Stage runs March 25 - May 10 at Theatre Row. Jonathan Silverstein directs the musical following "a gay high school teacher in small-town 1990s America whose efforts to help an offbeat student win a statewide theater competition tangle with the local church." (Discount Code: KEENMAIL for $45 tickets)

productions

• George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s Good Night, and Good Luck is now playing on Broadway. David Cromer directs the stage adaptation of the 2005 film chronicling “Edward R. Murrow’s legendary, history-altering, on-air showdown with Senator Joseph McCarthy.”

• Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap is now running through May 18 at The Guthrie in Minneapolis. The iconic whodunit about “seven strangers snowed in at a remote countryside guesthouse, as news spreads of a murder in London” is directed by Tracy Brigden.

• Candrice Jones’ FLEX is now running through April 13th at The Ensemble Theatre in Houston. Rachel Hemphill Dickson directs the “adrenaline-packed play about a high school basketball team facing the pressures of being young, gifted, Black, and female in rural Arkansas.”

• Ben Power’s adaptation of Stefano Massini’s The Lehman Trilogy is now running through April 6th at North Carolina Stage Company in Asheville, NC. The “epic theatrical event charting the humble beginnings, outrageous successes and devastating failure of the financial institution that would ultimately bring the global economy to its knees” is directed by Charlie Flynn-McIver.

• Karen Zacarías’ The Book Club Play starts performances March 22nd at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. Blake Robison directs the comedy about a devoted book club upended by a documentary filmmaker.

• Edward Albee’s Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? runs March 23 - April 20 at Everyman Theatre in Baltimore. The “explosive comedy and harrowing drama about a game of mental chess that turns into a marital battlefield” is directed by Vincent M. Lancisi.

• Candrice Jones’ FLEX starts performances March 26th at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Kendra Ware directs the “powerful new play celebrating the fierce athleticism of women's basketball with all the adrenaline and swagger of a four-quarter game.”

• Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini’s Sleepova runs March 26 - April 27 at Olney Theatre Center in Maryland. The “testament to the joys of friendship, centering a quartet of four Black British teenagers tentatively making their way in the world” is directed by Paige Hernandez.

• The Donmar Warehouse production of The Cherry Orchard starts performances March 26th at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, NY. The new version of Chekhov’s masterpiece about a “family grappling with the inevitable forces of change” is written and directed by Benedict Andrews.

• Ricardo Pérez González’s Don’t Eat the Mangos runs March 26 - April 27 at The Huntington in Boston. David Mendizábal directs the “wickedly funny tragedy about three Puerto Rican sisters wrestling with how to stay true to their familia and homeland — and seek a satisfying revenge — as a hurricane approaches.”

• Mfoniso Udofia’s Her Portmanteau runs March 27 - April 20 at Boston’s Cental Square Theater in a co-production with Front Porch Arts Collective. The “explosive story of betrayal and forgiveness, centering on a Nigerian mother in the U.S. and her two daughters who lived very different lives” is directed by Tasia A. Jones.

• Ken Urban’s Danger and Opportunity starts performances March 27th at East Village Basement in New York. Jack Serio directs the new drama about “Christian and Edwin, a married gay couple, reconnecting after 20 years with Christian’s ex-girlfriend from Catholic high school.”

• Johnny G. Lloyd’s birthday birthday birthday starts performances March 27th at The Tank in NYC. The “multi-decade romp through race, class, and time about who we choose, how we change, and what it takes to remember it all” is directed by Will Steinberger.

• Suzan-Lori Parks’ The Book of Grace runs March 27 - May 18 at Steppenwolf in Chicago. Steve H. Broadnax III directs the “incendiary family portrait.”

• Adam Guettel and Tina Landau’s Floyd Collins starts performances March 27th at Lincoln Center Theater. The “gripping and powerful musical based on the true story of a cave explorer in Kentucky, 1925” is directed by Tina Landau.

• Orlando Hernández, Tatyana-Marie Carlo, and Leandro “Kufa” Castro’s La Tempestad runs March 27 - April 27 at Trinity Rep in Providence, RI. Christie Vela directs the new adaptation and translation of The Tempest that “purposefully weaves two languages to deconstruct the colonialist narratives, all while retaining the shipwreck, romance, magic, and fantasy that make Shakespeare’s final play so beloved.”

workshops, readings, & series

• We Happy Few will present a reading of Kerry McGee & Rachel Dixon’s adaptation of Cicely Hamilton’s Diana of Dobson’s on March 21st at Big Bear Cafe in Washington, DC. The British suffragist’s seldom-produced 1908 feminist rom-com is directed by Kerry McGee.

• The Wondrous Strange production of Jeremy Ohringer’s Briefly Breathless runs March 21 & 22 as part of Steppenwolf’s LookOut performance series in Chicago. The “experimental dance theater piece staged in and around a giant sheet of plastic examines the culture of cold plunges and asks us to embrace discomfort, to face our fears and to search for our inner resilience.”

• Justice Hehir’s the dowagers will have a reading on March 24th as part of Manhattan Theatre Club’s Ted Snowdon Reading Series. The “pandemic-era play about neighbors, proximity, and the many permutations of care” is directed by Joan Sergay.

• Rachel Borders’ All Girls will have a reading March 27th at The Dramatists Guild in NYC. Olivia Songer directs the “new comedic play about what happens when the multi-generational administration of a family-owned all-girls sleepaway camp realizes that one of their campers is transgender.”

• Eric Marlin’s The Mitzvot Project has reached its midpoint. Inspired by Suzan Lori-Parks' 365 Days/365 Plays, Marlin is writing 100 new plays in 100 days “responding to the first 100 Jewish mitzvot, or commandments, as written down by Rabbi Maimonides.”

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the regional theatre game of thrones

• Maria Manuela Goyanes will be the new artistic director of LCT3. She has been the artistic director of DC’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company since 2018. (Naveen Kumar interviewed Maria and wrote about her departure within the context of DC’s theatre landscape in The Washington Post, here’s a gift link.)

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2025-26 season updates

• Writers Theatre announced its 2025-26 season. The Glencoe, IL company will produce Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt (directed by Carey Perloff), Shaina Taub and Laurie Woolery’s new musical adaptation As You Like It (directed by Braden Abraham), Hershey Felder’s Rachmaninoff and the Tsar, Nilo Cruz’s Two Sisters and a Piano (directed by Lisa Portes), and Max Wolf Friedlich’s Job (directed by David Esbjornson).

• Northern Stage announced its 2025-26 season. The White River Junction, VT theatre’s line-up includes Irene Sankhoff and David Hein’s musical Come From Away (directed by Carol Dunne), Eric Love’s Peter & Wendy (directed by Love), Don Nguyen’s The World Is Not Silent, Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children (directed by Sarah Elizabeth Wansley), and the world premiere of Talene Monahon’s Wonder! A Woman Keeps a Secret.

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get ready for kennedy center honoree babe ruth

I am not recapping this week’s unhinged Kennedy Center board meeting because I have one wild and precious life. The New York Times obtained an audio recording (gift link) and summarized all the nonsense, including plans to produce non-equity shows because they “make a lot more money” (color me shocked that this board is anti-union!), Trump’s love of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals and the “gorgeous bodies” of the original Broadway cast of Cats, gaudy renovation plans, and revamping the Kennedy Center Honors to celebrate casino moguls, athletes, and dead people.