New York Theater’s Fall Ten Must-Sees

September 26, 2008 by Dennis Baker 

With theater tickets so expensive it can be hard to decide what to see. Theatermania posted its ten must-sees for the New York theater fall season. The list hits a wide range of genres and there seems be something in the list for all the different types of theater-goers. New York magazine does not limit their list to ten. Below are the summaries of the plays picked by theatermania.

All My Sons
Schoenfeld Theatre, October 16-January 11
The new Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons stars John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Patrick Wilson, and Katie Holmes. Simon McBurney directs. Miller took his inspiration from a true story about a successful business man who knowingly sold the government defective airplane parts during World War II with tragic consequences. The truth comes out and his life unravels when his son prepares to marry his business partner’s daughter.
Photo Credit: Andrew Eccles

Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds
Various venues, September 24-December 13
This amalgam of events — organized by Carnegie Hall — celebrates the achievements of Leonard Bernstein. Highlights include a salute by the New York Pops featuring such vocalists as Christiane Noll and Lillias White (October 17); a Standard Time concert by Michael Feinstein (October 22), a series of screenings of classic telecasts ranging from Trouble in Tahiti to Candide and Wonderful Town at the Paley Center for Media (November 8-23); and the City Center Encores! mounting of On the Town (November 19-23).

The Cripple of Inishmaan
Atlantic Theater Company, December 9-March 1
Atlantic Theater Company co-produces Academy Award winner and four time Tony Award-nominated playwright Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan with Druid, Galway. Tony Award-winning Garry Hynes directs.

Set in 1934 on an island off the west coast of Ireland, Hollywood filmmaker Robert Flaherty arrives on the neighboring island of Inishmore to film his movie The Man of Aran and excitement ripples through the sleepy community of Inishmaan. For orphaned Billy Craven, who has been relentlessly scorned by the island’s inhabitants, the film represents an escape from the poverty of his existence. He vies for a part in the film, and to everyone’s surprise, it is the cripple who gets his chance.

Doctor Atomic
Metropolitan Opera, October 13-November 13
John Adams’ contemporary masterpiece explores a momentous episode of modern history: the creation of the atomic bomb. Director Penny Woolcock makes her Met debut with this gripping story that changed the course of history. Baritone Gerald Finley, above, plays J. Robert Oppenheimer, the title character.

Equus
Broadhurst Theatre, September 5-February 8
Read New York Times Review.
Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe and Richard Griffiths star in Peter Shaffer’s Equus. Thea Sharrock directs. In Equus, psychiatrist Martin Dysart (Griffiths) investigates the blinding of six horses, a savage act committed by a mild-mannered stable boy, Alan Strange (Radcliffe), whose home life is filled with bigotry and religious fervor. As Dysart reveals the mysteries behind the boy’s demons, he realizes he is confronting his own.

Fifty Words
Lucille Lortel Theater, September 10-October 25
Something’s gone very wrong behind the idyllic façade of Jan and Adam’s Brooklyn brownstone. At 9:10 p.m., they’re reveling in the freedom of having waved off their young son, Greg, to a neighborhood sleepover. By 9:15 p.m., they’re both in tears. By 9:25 p.m., things are way past tears. Alternately funny and frightening, Fifty Words is an expansive look at modern marriage, as seen through the looking glass of one couple’s long night’s journey into day.
Photo Credit: Joan Marcus

New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF)
Various venues, September 15-October 5
The New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) is a three-week celebration highlighting the next generation of musicals and the vibrant community of writers and artists working in musical theater today.

Pal Joey
Studio 54, November 11-February 15
Roundabout Theatre Company presents a new Broadway production of Pal Joey, featuring music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart. This production features a new book by Richard Greenberg, based on the original book by John O’Hara, with music direction by Paul Gemignani, and choreography by Graciela Daniele. Joe Mantello directs.

Set in Chicago in the late 1930s, Pal Joey is the story of Joey Evans, a brash, scheming song and dance man with dreams of owning his own nightclub. Joey abandons his wholesome girlfriend Linda English, to charm a rich, married older woman, Vera Simpson, in the hope that she’ll set him up in business.

The score includes such classic songs as “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” “I Could Write a Book,” “You Mustn’t Kick It Around,” and “Zip,” among others. The new production also features “I’m Talking to My Pal,” a song that had been dropped from the score during its out-of-town tryout, and will be heard on Broadway for the first time.

Road Show
Public Theater, October 28-December 28
The new Stephen Sondheim-John Wediman musical Road Show, formerly called Bounce, spans 40 years from the Alaskan Gold Rush to the Florida real estate boom in the ’30s. The musical is the story of two brothers whose quest for the American Dream turns into a test of morality and judgment that changes their lives in unexpected ways.

Romantic Poetry
Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage 1, beginning September 30
From John Patrick Shanley, the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Doubt and Henry Krieger, the two-time Tony-nominated composer of Dreamgirls comes this crackpot musical romance. Connie of Woodmere has just married Fred of Newark, but her exes are back in the picture and not sure they approve of the union. Mary of Greenpoint climbs Frankie of Little Italy’s fire escape with amorous erotic intent — but things go awry as she reaches for her dream.

DENNIS BAKER LLC’s choice:
If You See Something Say Something
Joe’s Pub, October 15-November 30th
In this groundbreaking monologue, Mike Daisey tackles a story at the heart of our world today: the surprising, secret history of the Department of Homeland Security. This is woven together with the untold story of the father of the neutron bomb—called “the perfect capitalist weapon” for the way it kills civilians while leaving cities and industries intact—and a pilgrimage to the Trinity blast site, where atomic fire rewrote history a half a century ago and ushered in an age of American supremacy. Combining damning fact and searing personal history, Daisey takes us on a journey through the dark heart of America, in search of answers for what it means to be secure, and the price we are willing to pay for it.

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