5 Shows to See in New York This Month

1. You Got Older
Cherry Lane Theatre, which has recently undergone an impressive makeover under the management of the film studio A24, is hosting a revival of Clare Barron’s 2014 play You Got Older, about a thirtysomething woman who loses her job, breaks up with her boyfriend, and moves back home to care for her father, who has recently been diagnosed with cancer. It’s a heavy premise, but Barron finds so much humor in the drama of a life at the crossroads. Memorable performances from Peter Friedman and Alia Shawkat undergird director Anne Kauffman’s bracing production, which shows us humanity at its most vulnerable. Don’t let this one slip by.

2. Cold War Choir Practice
Further uptown, MCC Theater is presenting the off-Broadway debut of Ro Reddick’s Blackburn Prize-winning play Cold War Choir Practice, an outlandish and hilarious spy thriller set around a Syracuse roller rink. Inspired by her own childhood participation in a “peace choir,” she has infused the play with songs about milkshakes, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the prospect of nuclear annihilation. “I can feel my own smallness in the world when facing these large forces that have a lot of control over what is going to happen to me,” Reddick explained in a recent interview with TheaterMania. I found it somewhat comforting that today’s apocalyptic angst isn’t very different from how people felt four decades ago.

3. Spare Parts
Of course, technology has rapidly advanced since 1987, providing the basis for David J. Glass’s science-not-quite-fiction drama Spare Parts. It’s about a tech billionaire who is prepared to pour his considerable wealth into the scientific quest for longevity, with the ultimate goal of immortality. This is something that America’s richest men are sincerely pursuing. Glass, who is a longevity researcher moonlighting as a playwright, brings shrewd dramatic instincts and intimate knowledge of the subject to this story that very well could be ripped from the headlines.

4. Trash
While we spend an awful lot of time examining the famous and powerful, some of the most worthwhile theater offers us a glimpse into the lives of those who are regularly ignored. James Caverly and Andrew Morrill’s Trash is about two deaf roommates whose squabble over a routine chore spirals into an all-out war. The trials of working while deaf, sexual relationships with the hearing, the ever-controversial fight over interpreters on Broadway—nothing is off-limits in this candid portrayal of contemporary deaf life in America. While the show is mostly performed in American Sign Language, Caverly and Morrill have devised clever ways to make the show accessible to the hearing. If only we could consistently return the favor!

5. Seagull: True Story
Finally, I’m really excited about the return of Alexander Molochnikov and Eli Rarey’s Seagull: True Story, about a princeling of the Russian theater who flees to New York in the wake of Putin’s war on Ukraine, only to discover a more insidious form of oppression in deepest, darkest Brooklyn. I was riveted by the bold honesty and playful theatricality of this show when it debuted at La MaMa last year, so I’m eager to revisit it at the Public Theater later this month (previews start March 22).