15 Shows to See Off Broadway This March

Catch Andrew Scott, Maura Tierney, Kate Baldwin and more stars onstage

—

The stars . March brings some big names to smaller stages, including Andrew Scott in a one-man Vanya, Maura Tierney in a revisal by The Wooster Group and Kate Baldwin in a rare mounting of the musical Love Life. We couldn’t include everything, so be sure to browse the listings in TDF’s Show Finder to see what else is playing. And remember, most of our picks for February are still running!

If you’re a TDF member, log in to your account daily to see what we’re selling as ticket inventory changes frequently.

—

Primary Stages: Amerikin – begins March 1

59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street between Madison and Park Avenues in Midtown East

Previews begin March 1. Opens March 18. Closes April 13.

59E59 Theaters’ AMPLIFY series celebrates the work of one playwright per season. This edition’s pick is Chisa Hutchinson, with three of her plays receiving their NYC premieres. Primary Stages presents the final offering, Amerikin, about a new father in a small town who aligns himself with a white supremacist group to get ahead. But unexpected ancestry test results and an intrepid Black journalist reveal how slippery identity is in a multicultural society.

—

Classic Stage Company: Wine in the Wilderness – begins March 6

Classic Stage Company, 136 East 13th Street between Third and Fourth Avenues in the East Village

Previews begin March 6. Opens March 24. Closes April 19.

—

The Wooster Group: Nayatt School Redux – begins March 8

The Performing Garage, 33 Wooster Street between Grand and Broome Streets in Soho

Begins March 8. Closes March 29.

Legendary experimental theatre collective The Wooster Group continues to revisit its repertoire with a reinvention of the 1978 work Nayatt School, which launched the monologue career of the late Spalding Gray as he spoke about his theatre journey. For this updated iteration, once again directed by troupe cofounder Elizabeth LeCompte, veteran member Kate Valk shares archival footage of Gray along with her own tale of artistic evolution, followed by a recreation of the play’s final scenes featuring ER‘s Maura Tierney, Obie winner Scott Shepherd and other frequent Wooster Group collaborators.

—

Vanya – begins March 10

Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher Street between Bleecker and Hudson Streets in the West Village

Previews begin March 10. Opens March 18. Closes May 11.

—

Last Call – begins March 12

New World Stages, 340 West 50th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues in Midtown West

Previews begin March 12. Opens March 16. Closes May 4. If you’re a TDF member, log in to your account to purchase discount tickets.

About a decade ago, writer Peter Danish was sitting in the Blaue Bar in Vienna’s Sacher Hotel reading the collected letters of Leonard Bernstein when the bartender recalled eavesdropping on a 1989 conversation at that very venue between the celebrated composer-conductor and his lifelong rival, Herbert von Karajan. Inspired, Danish began drafting Last Call, which imagines a final, freewheeling conversation between the two classical music titans, who both died soon after. A pair of women star as the legendary duo: Helen Schneider is Leonard Bernstein and Lucca Züchner is von Karajan in this meditation on fame, artistry and legacy.

—

The Return of Benjamin Lay – begins March 14

Sheen Center, 18 Bleecker Street between Mott and Elizabeth Streets in Noho

Previews begin March 14. Opens March 17. Closes April 6. If you’re a TDF member, log in to your account to purchase discount tickets.

This one-man bio show by historian Marcus Rediker and Obie-winning playwright Naomi Wallace (Night is a Room, And I and Silence) chronicles the incredible true story of Benjamin Lay: an 18th-century British abolitionist, animal-rights activist, farmer, writer, friend to Benjamin Franklin and little person. Portrayed by Mark Povinelli (the movie Water for Elephants), Lay returns from the dead to share the passionate and prescient beliefs that got him expelled from his Quaker community. After a well-received run in London, this production transfers to New York courtesy of the Playhouse Creatures Theatre Company.

—

Abingdon Theatre: Maybe Tomorrow – begins March 15

A.R.T./New York Theatres, 502 West 53rd Street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in Midtown West

Begins March 15. Closes April 6. If you’re a TDF member, log in to your account to purchase $15 tickets.

In 2015, Max Mondi’s Maybe Tomorrow won the Overall Excellence Award in FringeNYC. Now Abingdon Theatre Company is reviving this poignant two-hander about a pregnant woman who decides to live solely in the bathroom of her family’s mobile home. Once Tony nominee Elizabeth A. Davis and Dan Amboyer star in this metatheatrical examination of the challenges of facing adversity head-on. Chad Austin directs.

—

New York Theatre Workshop: Becoming Eve – begins March 19

Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street near Pitt Street on the Lower East Side

Previews begin March 19. Opens April 7. Closes April 27.

—

Keen Company: All the World’s a Stage – begins March 25

Theatre Row, 410 West 42nd Street between Ninth and Dyer Avenues in Midtown West

Previews begin March 25. Opens April 15. Closes May 10.

Adam Gwon’s All the World’s a Stage has its world premiere courtesy of Keen Company. Known for his delightfully off-kilter projects, including his love letter to interconnected New Yorkers, Ordinary Days, and the Macbeth-inspired Scotland, PA, Gwon’s new musical centers on a small-town gay math teacher whose carefully compartmentalized life cracks open as he coaches an outcast student for the 1996 State Thespian Competition. Jagged Little Pill Tony nominee Elizabeth Stanley leads the ensemble cast.

—

St. Ann’s Warehouse: The Cherry Orchard – begins March 26

St Ann’s Warehouse, 45 Water Street near New Dock Street in Dumbo, Brooklyn

Previews begin March 26. Opens April 2. Closes April 27.

Another lauded Anton Chekhov adaptation imported from London, Donmar Warehouse’s modern-day mounting of The Cherry Orchard stars Nina Hoss (Homeland) as Ranevskaya, the matriarch who returns to her Russian estate to try to find herself, happiness and hopefully some cash to save her family home. In adaptor-director Benedict Andrews’ singular interpretation, the lights are always on, and the audience becomes part of the scenery as the mournful characters pine for what they can never have.

—

Danger and Opportunity – begins March 27

East Village Basement, 321 East 9th Street between First and Second Avenues in the East Village

Previews begin March 27. Opens April 3. Closes April 25.

Playwright Ken Urban’s second play this season, Danger and Opportunity centers on a married gay couple whose relationship shifts when a female ex pops up. Rising director Jack Serio (Grangeville, On Set with Theda Bara) helms this examination of queer expansiveness, which stars Juan Castano, Ryan Spahn and Julia Chan.

—

WP Theater and Cole Coeur: minor•ity – begins March 29

Previews begin March 29. Opens April 14. Closes May 4. If you’re a TDF member, log in to your account to purchase discount tickets.

This world premiere from francisca da silveira explores the challenges of being an in-demand artist of color in a white-run world. Three Black artists from different disciplines and cultures clash at an international African arts conference in Paris. WP Theater and Colt Coeur co-produce this thought-provoking play about the tricky intersection of identity and art.

—

New York City Center Encores! Love Life

New York City Center, 131 West 55th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues in Midtown West

Begins March 26. Closes March 30.

After being canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic, this concert staging of Love Life has been resurrected at Encores! Kate Baldwin and Brian Stokes Mitchell play age-defying spouses navigating 200 years of change in America in this rarely mounted 1948 flop, an early concept musical and the sole collaboration between Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner. Two-time Tony-winning performer, Victoria Clark, directs.

—

A Mother – begins March 29

Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 West 37th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues in Midtown West

Previews begin March 29. Opens April 7. Closes April 13.

Two-time Tony nominee Jessica Hecht (Eureka Day, A View From the Bridge) and writer Neena Beber are behind this radical reimagining of Bertolt Brecht’s tragedy The Mother, which resets the action in 1980 Miami as a single working mother becomes an activist to try to protect her son. Equal parts personal narrative, history and dance, A Mother uses the original text fused with disco, reggae, salsa, gospel and klezmer music to explore love and loss against the backdrop of social unrest following the real-life murder of Arthur Lee McDuffie by white cops.

—

Theatre for a New Audience: The Swamp Dwellers – begins March 30

Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Place between Lafayette Avenue and Fulton Street in Fort Greene, Brooklyn

Begins March 30. Closes April 27.

Theatre for a New Audience presents a rare revival of Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka’s The Swamp Dwellers about aging spouses living in the Nigerian Delta in the late 1950s who are trying to survive on flooded land and dealing with the fallout from colonialism, religion and environmental crisis. Obie winner Awoye Timpo directs.

—

TDF MEMBERS: Go here to browse our latest discounts for dance, theatre and concerts.