12 Plays and Musicals to Brighten the Spring

New York Times

28-03-2025

Variety, ambition and ingenuity are on generous display at theaters throughout the United States this spring, with a healthy crop of new shows, a lauded Kinks musical making its North American debut and one friend of Paddington starring in a Chekhov play. These dozen productions are worth putting on your radar.
A cache of photos of Nazis who built and ran the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II is the starting point for this historically inspired production from Tectonic Theater Project ('The Laramie Project'). A finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize, it feels like a companion piece to the film 'The Zone of Interest,' fixing its gaze on perpetrators of the Holocaust. As a museum archivist in the play says, 'Six million people didn't murder themselves.' Moisés Kaufman directs. (Through March 30, Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Beverly Hills, Calif. April 5-May 11, Berkeley Repertory Theater, Berkeley, Calif.)
This savvy goofball comedy by Lauren Yee ('Cambodian Rock Band') is set in 1992 in St. Petersburg, where college friends Evgeny and Dmitri are bumblers at 25, perplexed and adrift in a new economy that their Soviet upbringing did nothing to prepare them for. So Evgeny, the son of a former high-ranking K.G.B. official, and Dmitri, who had always hoped to join the agency, mimic the old ways, spying for a client on a defector who has returned. Nicholas C. Avila directs the world premiere. (Through April 13, Seattle Rep.)
Kinks fans on this side of the Atlantic at last get their chance at a jukebox musical about the band. With original story, music and lyrics by Ray Davies, and a book by Joe Penhall ('The Constituent'), this retelling of the Kinks' rise won the Olivier Award (Britain's equivalent to the Tony) for best new musical in 2015. Edward Hall, who staged that production, directs this one, too. Songs include 'You Really Got Me,' 'Lola' and more. (Through April 27, Chicago Shakespeare Theater.)
The title role in Chekhov's lately omnipresent comic drama seems almost tailor-made for Hugh Bonneville ('Downton Abbey'), who has often played hapless beta men to perfection; think Mr. Brown in the 'Paddington' movies or Bernie in 'Notting Hill.' In Simon Godwin's production of Conor McPherson's adaptation, Bonneville plays a man waking up to the waste of having toiled all his life for the benefit of his celebrated brother-in-law (Tom Nelis), while building nothing for himself. With John Benjamin Hickey as Astrov, the tree-hugging doctor. (March 30-April 20, Shakespeare Theater Company, Washington, D.C.)
The playwright Larissa FastHorse ('The Thanksgiving Play') turns her satirical wit to the world of nonprofits and the minefield of identity politics in this workplace farce, which pits the heads of two Native American organizations — one Native (Shyla Lefner), one white (Amy Brenneman) — against each other. Michael John Garcés directs. (April 3-May 4, Arena Stage, Washington, D.C.)
The exclamation point in the title is a clue to the cheeky, heightened tone of this world-premiere comedy by Keiko Green, about a pair of extinction events: the death of the Earth and, more immediately, the death of Greg, a middle-aged guy with a protective wife, a drag-artist kid and a diagnosis of Stage 4 cancer that — for a while, anyway — sparks new life in him. Tinged with grief, touched with magic, the play was a finalist for this year's Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Zi Alikhan directs. (April 5-May 3, South Coast Repertory, Costa Mesa, Calif.)
An infamous catalyst for World War I animates this new play by Rajiv Joseph ('Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,' 'Dakar 2000'), about three young men, living under the oppression of empire, who are tapped to assassinate the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Sophie, his wife. Blanka Zizka directs. (April 15-May 4, Wilma Theater, Philadelphia.)
This poetic, tender, funny play by a.k. payne, which won this year's Blackburn Prize, is about two estranged cousins who grew up close on the same unpromising street: Mina, who left for the Ivy League, and Sade, who left for prison. Back in the neighborhood for the weekend, for the funeral of yet another relative who died too young, they eat Cookie Crisp cereal, watch cartoons on BET and make a space to be themselves as they dream of utopia. Tinashe Kajese-Bolden directs. (April 16-May 18, Geffen Playhouse, Los Angeles.)
Zora Howard ('Stew') has called her new play 'a meditation on rage,' but it is a comic drama — intended as a constructive, even transcendent, response to anti-Black racism and police violence. In the play, a 2022 finalist for the Blackburn Prize, a couple (Caroline Clay and Raymond Anthony Thomas) witness their neighbor (Keith Randolph Smith) being pulled over as he gets home. Then events turn surreal. Lileana Blain-Cruz directs. (April 19-May 18, Goodman Theater, Chicago.)
Knud Adams, who directed the world premieres of the last two dramas to win the Pulitzer Prize, stages this quiet new play by Jiehae Park ('Peerless'). It begins conventionally — with a park bench, occupied by a man and a woman who have spent half a century together — but becomes far more cryptic and contemplative as it unfolds over a year. (May 2-June 8, Berkeley Repertory Theater, Berkeley, Calif.)
A boy with an agile imagination finds a duffel bag of cash that he thinks his dead mother might have sent from the beyond in this new family musical, adapted from Frank Cottrell Boyce's novel and his screenplay for the film of the same name. With music and lyrics by Adam Guettel ('Days of Wine and Roses') and a book by Bob Martin ('The Drowsy Chaperone'), it is directed by Bartlett Sher. (May 9-June 15, Alliance Theater, Atlanta.)
Queer romance is in the air in this new play by Tarell Alvin McCraney ('Moonlight,' 'The Brother/Sister Plays'), about a couple who fell for each other when they weren't looking for love. Now complications ensue. Does it give away the ending that real-life couples may apply to get married onstage during some performances? Signs point to happily ever after. (May 16-June 15, Arena Stage, Washington, D.C.)