5 Shows to See in New York This Month

1. Bowl EP
I was bowled over by Nazareth Hassan’s Bowl EP, which is now entering its final week at Vineyard Theatre. It’s about Kelly K Klarkson and Quentavius da Quitter, two skaters, lovers, and aspiring rappers. For the first half they roll around the empty swimming pool that has taken over the Vineyard’s small theater, get high, and spit ideas for their album. It’s like Waiting for Godot, if Didi and Gogo had weed. But when their highly specific Godot actually arrives, the play hurtles into another dimension. Don’t miss this wild off-Broadway debut from a rising and highly imaginative new playwright.

2. Call Me Izzy
The first show out of the gate of the new Broadway season is Jamie Wax’s Call Me Izzy, a solo play that stars Jean Smart as a talented poet trapped in an abusive marriage in rural Louisiana. Smart plays comedian Deborah Vance on the HBO series Hacks, which just concluded its fourth season and is one of the best shows currently on television. In Call Me Izzy, Smart shows the Broadway audience why she has won three Emmy Awards in the last four years, with a performance that will haunt you for days. She’s setting a strenuous pace for 2025-26.

3. Prince Faggot
Just in time for Pride Month™ comes Jordan Tannahill’s Prince Faggot, which imagines a queer heir to the British throne, a phenomenon that has happened many times in the past and is statistically likely to happen in the future—but it probably won’t go down like it has before. This world premiere is happening at Playwrights Horizons (in a co-production with Soho Rep), which is on a roll with speculative drama following the success of Jordan Harrison’s The Antiquities. The production is directed by Shayok Misha Chowdhury, whose theatrical experiment, Rheology, really impressed me in April.

4. Viola’s Room
Speaking of impressive theatrical experiments, I still think all the time about the grand immersive production Sleep No More, which ended its 14-year run in January. The creative team behind that unparalleled show, Punchdrunk, is returning this month to the Manhattan’s west side (specifically, the Shed) with a new show called Viola’s Room. Written by Daisy Johnson and based on Barry Pain’s gothic short story The Moon-Slave, it features audio narration by Helena Bonham Carter. The show promises to take audiences into a ’90s-era slumber party, and then destinations darker and further afield, in that dreamy way only Punchdrunk can.

5. Heathers the Musical
Only slightly more menacing than a trip to Viola’s room is a visit with the three Heathers. They’re coming back to New York 11 years after Heathers the Musical first played off-Broadway. I wasn’t that impressed by the musical adaptation of the dark 1989 teen flick when I first saw it, but I’ve had time to reassess, and have come to the conclusion that Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe have written some of the smartest lyrics of the last decade—overflowing with ideas that absolutely predicted the nihilism of the current moment. While plenty of other viewers saw exactly this (the show’s fans are legion), I’m looking forward to experiencing it again in person, 11 years older and (one hopes) a tiny bit wiser.