5 Shows to See in New York This Month

1. Well, I’ll Let You Go
I wanted to make sure you caught Bubba Weiler’s Well, I’ll Let You Go, which is playing a return engagement at Studio Seaview. It’s about a woman grappling with the sudden death of her husband. He died confronting an active shooter and the community hails him as a hero, but she has questions about why exactly he was there that day. I loved the play when it debuted last summer, and the performances have only deepened since then, with a cast of some of the best actors in New York, including Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Constance Shulman, Amelia Workman, Will Dagger, and Emily Davis. The collective gasps and sniffles coming from the audience are very satisfying in this one.

2. Animal Wisdom
In the last decade, Heather Christian has become one of the most fascinating composers working in the theater, with genre-defying musical masterpieces like Oratorio for Living Things and Terce. I first encountered her work in the film of Animal Wisdom, which she recorded at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in 2021 (it was originally produced at the Bushwick Starr in 2017). Part concert, part séance, it’s an excellent introduction to Christian’s special brand of magic. For this off-Broadway revival at Signature Theatre, Tony nominee Kenita R. Miller steps into the role Christian originated. It’s a feast of blues, gospel, and classical music that is like nothing else playing in New York right now.

3. Kenrex
The latest arrival from London, Kenrex tells the remarkable true story of a local tough in smalltown Missouri who repeatedly evades justice with the help of a slick lawyer and through good old-fashioned intimidation. Playwright Jack Holden plays every role, with pulse-quickening country and rock musical accompaniment by John Patrick Elliott. This two-man spectacle will keep you on the edge of your seat with its barrage of top-notch stagecraft (the direction is by co-author Ed Stambollouian) and with its infuriating tale of how the systems meant to keep us all safe and free can easily be subverted by unscrupulous individuals.

4. The Receptionist
Adam Bock has been telling a related story for decades. His 2007 play, The Receptionist, at first seems like a satire of turn-of-the-century office work—all phone extensions and cheap coffee. But beneath the growl of the shredder hums a darker tale of what the Northeast Office actually does, and how its protocols will eventually come for every employee, even lowly receptionist Beverly, grippingly portrayed by Katie Finneran in this off-Broadway revival from Second Stage. Bock wrote the play in the wake of the war on terror, and now that many of the tactics of that war have come home to haunt American citizens, The Receptionist feels especially prescient. This is a play that has only gotten better with age.

5. What Happened Was…
I would say the same about Tom Noonan’s What Happened Was…, now receiving its first major revival since its 1994 debut. Cecily Strong and Corey Stoll play two co-workers at a Manhattan law firm (neither of them lawyers) who meet for a dinner date at her apartment. Things go awry from there. The play brims with insight that makes it feel brand-new (among my favorite lines: “You have people running the country who all they know how to do is keep their jobs—they are not interested in doing their job.”) Of course, since this is the ’90s, our two characters cannot retreat behind their phone screens, and must marinate in the awkwardness they conjure. Those were the good old days.