5 Shows to See in New York This Month

1. The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
For an all-around crowd-pleaser, you can do no better than the off-Broadway revival of The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin’s musical comedy about kids at a spelling competition. It’s funnier than I remember, benefitting from a cast of some of the best young actors in New York including Tony nominee Jasmine Amy Rogers as Olive Ostrovsky, Justin Cooley as Leaf Coneybear, and the hilarious Kevin McHale as William Barfée. You will be grinning from ear-to-ear as Philippe Arroyo performs “My Unfortunate Erection” as he tosses candy to the audience. It’s unapologetic good fun.

2. Marjorie Prime
If you’re in the market for a hearty drama that grapples with the way technology is changing human behavior, you’ve got to see Jordan Harrison’s Marjorie Prime, now making its Broadway debut at Second Stage with a cast that includes Danny Burstein, Christopher Lowell, Cynthia Nixon, and 96-year-old June Squibb. It’s about an elderly woman living with an AI-powered digital facsimile of her late husband. Can happy memories become a consumer product? When Harrison premiered this play in 2015, the idea of an AI companion seemed highly futuristic, but that technology basically exists today, making Harrison one of the most prescient voices in the American theater—a playwright you should get to know.

3. “Anna Christie”
Eugene O’Neill is widely considered to be the first great American playwright, but I would die happy if I never saw another production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night or The Iceman Cometh.  So I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Thomas Kail’s staging of “Anna Christie” at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Michelle Williams stars as Anna, who reunites with her Swedish sailor father (Brian d’Arcy James at his zaddiest). He sent her to live on a Minnesota farm to keep her safe from “ole devil sea” and the grimy men who fare it. But surprise, she’s a hooker! Tom Sturridge is giving an especially feral performance as a stoker who falls hard for Anna. The sexual politics are retrograde (though quite progressive for 1921, when it won the Pulitzer) and my boss really didn’t like the production. But all the gay men in the audience seemed to be having a ball, doubtlessly fantasizing about the Heated Rivalry-esque sequel onboard a Capetown-bound steamship.

4. Amahl and the Night Visitors
For more family-friendly fare, consider Amahl and the Night Visitors at Lincoln Center Theater. Gian Carlo Menotti’s 1951 opera was inspired by The Adoration of the Magi and was the first opera composed specifically for television. The libretto is in English and the running time is a cool 45-minutes, making this the perfect introduction to opera for young audiences. This new production (which is not televised) is from director Kenny Leon and stars opera mega-star Joyce DiDonato as Amahl’s Mother (you can read her interview with TheaterMania here). This seems like one of those things that is likely to become a beloved holiday tradition, and this is your opportunity to catch it in its inaugural year.

5. A Christmas Carol
Of course, there is no more beloved holiday tradition in the theater than A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens’s classic about an old miser who changes his ways after a visit from the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. Jack Thorne and director Matthew Warchus’s adaptation plays every year at London’s Old Vic, and this year New York audiences have a chance to catch it at PAC NYC, the city’s newest arts palace (it previously played Broadway in 2019 and won five Tony Awards). Michael Cerveris stars as Ebenezer Scrooge in a production critic Hayley Levitt likens to “breathing in a fragrant library book next to a cozy fireplace.”