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Off Broadway shows, reviews, tickets and listings

Here is where to find reviews, details, schedules, prices and ticket information about Off Broadway shows in New York

New York theater ranges far beyond the 41 large midtown houses that we call Broadway. Many of the city's most innovative and engaging new plays and musicals can be found Off Broadway, in venues that seat between 100 and 499 people. (Those that seat fewer than 100 people usually fall into the Off-Off Broadway category.) These more intimate spaces present work in a wide range of styles, from new pieces by major artists at the Public Theater or Playwrights Horizons to revivals at the Signature Theatre and crowd-pleasing commercial fare at New World Stages. And even the best Off Broadway shows usually cost less than their cousins on the Great White Way—even if you score cheap Broadway tickets. Use our listings to find reviews, prices, ticket links, curtain times and more for current and upcoming Off Broadway shows.

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NEW OFF BROADWAY SHOWS NOW PLAYING

Belfast Girls

Five young Irishwomen in 1850 leave the Great Famine behind for a new life in Australia in Jaki McCarrick's drama, set on a boat to the other side of the world. Nicola Murphy directs the New York premiere for the Irish Rep.

Between the Lines

A high-school outsider strikes up a romance with a fairy-tale prince in this original musical, adapted from the 2012 young-adult book by the best-selling novelist Jodi Picoult and her daughter Samantha Van Leer. The musical's book is by Timothy Allen McDonald, and the score is by Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson; Jeff Calhoun directs the production, whose cast includes Arielle Jacobs, Jake David Smith, Julia Murney and NewsRadio 's Vicki Lewis.

Broadway Bares 30th Anniversary Celebration

Broadway gets extra playful at the hugely popular annual burlesque extravaganza, where the Great White Way'shottest chorus guys and gals bump and grind to raise money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. After two years of virtual editions, this year's return to live performance is sure to be a blow-out. Directed byLaya Barak, this 30th-anniversary grab-bag edition draws inspiration from past themes and titles of the show. Guest performers include Nathan Lee Graham, Lesli Margherita, Bonnie Milligan, Maulik Pancholy and the cast ofSix.

Chasing Andy Warhol

Bated Breath Theatre Company was a leader in pandemic theater with its outdoor West Village walking-tour production Voyeur: The Windows of Toulouse-Lautrec. Now it follows up with another peripatetic theater experience about an artist: writer-director Mara Lieberman's Chasing Andy Warhol, which explores the enigma of the wiggy pop artist and fame industrialist through vignettes of theater, dance and scenic effects in locations throughout the East Village. Groups of audience members are rolled out at 45-minute intervals on each performance day.

Circle Jerk

Charles Ludlam's seminal Ridiculous Theatrical Company is a prime inspiration for Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley's Circle Jerk , an uproarious satirical farce about white supremacy in the gay community that was a surprise Pulitzer Prize finalist this year. Making use of multiple cameras and quick costume changes, Breslin and Foleyperform theshow live at the East Village's Connelly Theater—joined by fellow performer Cat Rodríguez—and simultaneously livestream it out to viewers watching at home for $5. Rory Pelsue directs.

Corsicana

Rising star playwright Will Arbery follows the successes of Plano and Heroes of the Fourth Turning with a new play, set in rural Texas, that looks at mourning, caretaking and songwriting through the story of half-siblings—one of whom has Down syndrome—who form a bond with a reclusive artist . The busy Sam Gold, of Broadway's current Macbeth , directs the world premiere at Playwrights Horizons.

Exception to the Rule

Black students at a decrepit high school navigate the longueurs and dangers of detention in the premiere of Dave Harris's play, whose coming-of-age comedy acquires ominous overtones. Miranda Haymon directs the production for Roundabout Underground; the cast compriesMaYaa Boateng, Malik Childs, Mister Fitzgerald, Toney Goins, Galen Ryan Kane and Claudia Logan.

Fat Ham

Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but redemption is what's on the menu in James Ijames's delicious riff on Hamlet . Online college student Juicy (an endearing Marcel Spears) takes a spiritual journey at a boisterous Southern backyard barbecue that is funny and fabulous, terrifying and touching, as seven souls—each as messy as the meat they're devouring—clash, connect and push against their expected roles. Fat Ham keeps you cackling so consistently that the play's sudden acts of cruelty land like punches in the gut.—Raven Snook

Hamlet

British star director Robert Icke (1984 ) presents the North American premiere of his acclaimed 2017 London production of Shakespeare's wordy deferred-revenge tragedy, where a ghost and a prince meet and everyone ends in mincemeat. The rising young actor Alex Lawther (The Imitation Game) plays the mopey Dane. The productions runs in rep at the Park Avenue Armory with Icke's Oresteia; Hildegard Bechtler designs the sets and costumes for both.

Islander

From the ashes of the St. Luke's Theatre, which shuttered in 2021, rises the new Off Broadway venue Playhouse 46. Its first tenant is the British a cappella musical two-hander Islander , conceived and directed by Amy Draper. Original U.K. stars Kirsty Findlay and Bethany Tennick reprise their portrayals of multiple characters—and also perform live mixing and looping duties—in this tale of the last inhabitant of a remote Scottish island. The book by Stewart Melton , and the score is by Finn Anderson.

Leonardo! A Wonderful Show About A Terrible Monster

The Chicago collective Manual Cinema ( Ada/Ava ) combines live actors, puppets and filmic techniques to create virtuosic theater experiences. This show, adapted by Sarah Fornace and Drew Dir from two books bythe beloved Mo Willems (Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!),is the tale ofan incompetent monster in search of someone he can manage to scare. Fornace also directs the show, which features original songs and sound design by Ben Kauffman and Kyle Vegter.

Little Shop of Horrors

Conrad Ricamora, Tammy Blanchard and Christian Borle star in the latest revival of this dark, tuneful and utterly winsome 1982 horror-camp musical about a flesh-eating plant who makes dreams come true for a lowly flower-shop worker. Composer Alan Menken and librettist Howard Ashman wrap a sordid tale of capitalist temptation and moral decay in layers of sweetness, humor, wit and camp. Michael Mayer directs the feeding frenzy in this deeply satisfying revival. —Adam Feldman

Romeo & Bernadette

Nikita Burshteyn and Anna Kostakis play the title characters in a musical comedy that transports Verona's lovestruck medieval swain to 1960s Brooklyn, where he falls for the tough daughter of a local crime boss. Mark Saltzman's libretto is set to classic Italian tunes. Justin Ross Cohen directs and choreographs this long-delayed encore run of the show, which premiered Off Broadway in 2020 and has been scheduled to return twice since.

LONG-RUNNING OFF BROADWAY SHOWS

Blue Man Group

Three deadpan blue-skinned men with extraterrestrial imaginations carry this tourist fave, a show as smart as it is ridiculous. They drum on open tubs of paint, creating splashes of color; they consume Twinkies and Cap'n Crunch; they engulf the audience in a roiling sea of toilet paper. For sheer weird, exuberant fun, it's hard to top this long-running treat. (Note: The playing schedule varies from week to week, with as many as four performances on some days and none on others.)—Adam Feldman

Drunk Shakespeare

An actor drinks heavily (in the vein of Comedy Central's Drunk History) and then tries to corral others into enacting a story by the Bard. Bibulous excess is encouraged.

Friends! The Musical Parody

The prolific Bob and Tobly McSmith, who specialize in silly musicals based on nostalgia objects like Saved by the Bell and Beverly Hills 90210 , take a shot at America's favorite six 1990s white people. Assaf Gleizner, who wrote music for the McSmiths'The Office! A Musical Parody, is there for them like he's been there before, and Ryan David Barto directs.

Gazillion Bubble Show

Self-described "bubble scientist" Fan Yang's blissfully disarming act (now performed in New York by his son Deni, daughter Melody and wife Ana) consists mainly of generating a dazzling succession of bubbles in mind-blowing configurations, filling them with smoke or linking them into long chains. Lasers and flashing colored lights add to the trippy visuals.—David Cote

Jersey Boys

Musical theater does right by the jukebox with this behind-the-music tale, presenting the Four Seasons' energetic 1960s tunes (including "Walk Like a Man" and "Big Girls Don't Cry") as they were meant to be performed. Ten months afterconcluding an 11-year run on Broadway, the show returned for an open-ended run at Off Broadway's New World Stages. Under Des McAnuff's sleek direction, Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice's biography feels canny instead of canned. —Adam Feldman

Katsura Sunshine's Rakugo

The Canadian performer Katsura Sunshine, billed as the only Western master of the traditional and rigorously trained Japanese comic stortellying art of Rakugo, performs a weekly show at New World Stages after a year in London's West End. In keeping with the genre's minimalist practice, Sunshine performs in a kimono using only a fan and a hand towel for props.

Perfect Crime

A wily cop tries to psych out a possibly homicidal shrink in Warren Manzi's moldy, convoluted mystery. The creaky welter of dime-store Freudianism, noirish attitude and whodunit gimmickry is showing its age. (Catherine Russell has starred since 1987.)—David Cote

The Play That Goes Wrong

Ah, the joy of watching theater fail. The possibility of malfunction is part of what makes live performance exciting, and Mischief Theatre's farce takes that notion to extremes as six amateur British actors (and two crew members) perform a hackneyed whodunnit amid escalating calamities. Depending on your tolerance for ceaseless slapstick, The Play That Goes Wrong will either have you rolling in the aisles or rolling your eyes. It is certainly a marvel of coordination: Directed by Mark Bell, the mayhem goes like cuckoo clockwork on Nigel Hook's ingeniously tumbledown set. —Adam Feldman

Sleep No More

A New York institution since 2011, Punchdrunk's dark, sleek, gorgeous installation is awe-inspiring in both its size and detail. Silent audience members in creepy white masks are set free in a six-floor labyrinth of wonders, while roving attractive actor-dancers plays out enigmatic scenes inspired by Macbeth and Hitchcock. There are more than 90 different spaces to explore, ranging from a candy shop to a cemetery. There's no way to absorb it all in a single visit, but that's all right. You'll want to go back anyhow. —Adam Feldman

Stomp

This shrewd garbage heap of clog dancing, prop comedy and chest-thumping percussion spins out impressive (if numbing) variations on vaudeville by way of English punk.—David Cote

UPCOMING OFF BROADWAY SHOWS

Richard III

Shakespeare in the Park kicks off its 2022 season with a new production of blood-soaked history play Richard III , which imagines the final Plantagenet king as a Machiavellian villain who claws his way to power on the corpses of his family and friends. In this version, directed by Robert O'Hara ( Slave Play ), the title role will be played by Danai Gurira, known to mass audiences for her roles in The Walking Dead and Black Panther but also a formidable classical stage actor. (She was a superb Isabella in Shakespeare in the Park's 2011 Measure for Measure .) Click here to learnhow to get free tickets to Shakespeare in the Park.

Winnie the Pooh

Puppet mastermind Jonathan Rockefeller's adaptation of Disney's A.A. Milne franchise combines low-tech magic—eye-popping puppets, blooming fake flowers, hills covered in literal blankets of snow—with gentle lessons about friendship, teamwork and the importance of fun. For those who grew up watching the films, the musical numbers—especially those by the Sherman Brothers—will spark fuzzy nostalgia. How wonderful that many families' first show after the pandemic can be one that's so utterly winsome.—Raven Snook

Seagull

The venerable experimental-theater outfit Elevator Repair Service, whose magnificent F. Scott Fitzgerald adaptation Gatz is among the highlights of 21th-century theater in New York, turns its collective eye to The Seagull , Anton Chekhov's group portrait of gloomy artists in a tragicomic daisy chain of she-loves-me-nots. This being an ERS joint, expect elaborately precise sound and movement and plenty of metatheatrical smudging of the lines between characters and performers.

Oresteia

Robert Icke ( 1984 ) won an Olivier Award for directing thismodernized and condensed 2015 version of Aeschylus's seminal three-part tragedy, in which a returning king ends up in a bloodbath and furious recriminations ensue. Lia Williams ( Skylight ) reprises her critically lauded London performance as the vengeful Klytemnestra, and Hildegard Bechtler designs the sets and costumes; in its North American debut at the Park Avenue Armory, the production runs in rep with Icke's version of Hamlet .

As You Like It

The summer's second Shakespeare in the Park offering is director Laurie Woolery and songwriter Shaina Taub's enormous musical adaptation of As You Like It , choreographed by Moulin Rouge! 's Tony-winningSonya Tayeh. The production was originally planned for Summer 2020, and we interviewed Woolery and Taub about it back in 2017, when it was part of the Public's expansive Public Works wing. Several original cast members from that version—Darius de Haas, Joel Perez, Taub herself—will return to their roles, joined by huge ensemble casts drawn from community organizations in all five boroughs. (Click here to learn how to get free tickets to Shakespeare in the Park.)