Beyond Broadway: A Political Thriller, a Sexy Rom-Com, Musical Spoofs and More

The launch of Broadway’s fall season gets all the buzz but, as ever, some of the city’s must-see shows are taking place a bit farther afield. From the sublime to the sexy to the willfully stupid, here’s Broadway.com's latest roundup of some of the theatrical delights on our minds and after our hearts as the air gets brisker and September turns into October.

COUNTING AND CRACKING
Belvoir St Theatre is a small but mighty theater company in Sydney, Australia (it’s the company that turned this writer onto theater, incidentally) whose directors have a knack for creating theatrical magic out of thin air. A collaboration with the similarly Sydney-based company Kurinji, Counting and Cracking, now playing at NYU Skirball with a three-hour-plus runtime and a largely South Asian cast of 19, is told partly in Tamil and Sinhala dialogue, spans four generations of a Sri Lankan-Australian family's history and traverses thousands of miles. By any definition, it’s a sprawling, ambitious epic. It’s also lighter on its feet than that term implies, telling its story of personal and political upheaval with warmth, humor and humanity—and stagecraft so ingenious it elicits gasps as well as laughter. With theater this life-affirming, that lengthy runtime feels like an act of generosity.

TABLE 17
Whether she’s giving bedroom eyes or delivering a swift karate kick, Kara Young’s charisma could generate enough electricity to power Midtown. Hot off winning her Tony Award for Purlie Victorious, Young stars in the world premiere of Douglas Lyons' romantic comedy about a previously engaged couple who reunite for a perhaps ill-advised date night. Director Zhailon Levingston directed Cats: The Jellicle Ball, and some of that show’s flirty, frisky, quasi-immersive energy can be felt at the MCC Theater Space. It's been transformed into the kind of slick bar-restaurant-club that's hard to get into on a Friday night and audience members are emboldened, at various points, to talk back to the actors. Speaking of date night, Table 17’s dose of sex, style and relationship real talk would make for a pretty delectable one, best enjoyed with pre-show and post-show cocktails.

OUR CLASS
In the poster image for Our Class—now at Classic Stage Company thanks to its standout Under the Radar festival run at BAM last winter—10 smiling people cuddle up like besties snapping a photo for the yearbook. It’s already setting you up for the devastating gut-punch of Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s long-incubating play based on unearthed records about the Jedwabne pogrom—a 1941 massacre of hundreds of Polish Jews perpetrated by fellow Poles, not occupying Germans as was believed for over 50 years. It’s darkly ironic that a story about a tight-knit community ravaged by hate should epitomize ensemble theater at its best. Igor Golyak directs the play (adapted by Norman Allen) in the free spirit of devised theater with familiar faces like Richard Topol and Alexandra Silber filling out the cast of Jewish and Catholic classmates whose bonds turn violent. More than a reckoning with history, it’s a story that challenges you to ask how playground crushes can mutate into unfathomable cruelty.

THE BIG GAY JAMBOREE
With Titanique, the musical spoof of 1997’s nautical disaster romance, Marla Mindelle tapped into an insatiable appetite for ‘90s nostalgia, high camp and Céline Dion (redundant, I know). While Mindelle’s personal website assures fans that she is “still broke,” her off-Broadway hit, now in its third year, enticed Barbie herself (i.e. Margot Robbie’s production company LuckyChap) to take a chance on her next piece of off-Broadway inanity, The Big Gay Jamboree, now in previews at the Orpheum Theatre. Think Schmigadoon! for the downtown set (and maybe SNL fans, considering Alex Moffat’s participation) where Mindelle stars as Stacey, a drunk mess who awakes in “some b*tch ass Music Man world where everybody keeps bursting into song and dance.” It doesn’t have the sing-along-ability of Titanique—Mindelle writes brand-new music as well as the show’s book alongside Jonathan Parks-Ramage and Philip Drennen—but lure throngs of theater queens to a Big Gay Jamboree and they’ll find a way to chime in.

VLADIMIR
Erika Sheffer made her New York (and playwriting) debut nearly 13 years ago with Russian Transport, an equal parts dramatic and comedic thriller about a family of Russian immigrants struggling to keep their business aloft in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay. Now, with Vladimir, a Manhattan Theatre Club production beginning performances September 24, her Russian intrigue relocates to Moscow circa the millennium where a journalist chases a story during Vladimir Putin’s first presidential term. “My work always seems to deal with morality,” Sheffer said in an interview during her Russian Transport days. “I'm interested in characters on the edge of doing the right thing.” This new play—a period piece that screams with contemporary relevance—promises just that, with themes of journalistic integrity, political bravery and the ethical calculations they demand at the fore. Plus, the cast boasts two-time Tony winner Norbert Leo Butz with direction by Tony winner Daniel Sullivan. Those are more than enough credentials to take a chance on a new work.

FORBIDDEN BROADWAY: MERRILY WE  STOLE A SONG
It’s customary to say that Forbidden Broadway celebrates the art form while it skewers it, but that downplays the genuine satirical intent at play here—creator Gerard Alessandrini clearly has some bones to pick. The latest installment of the long-running Broadway spoof fest takes a hatchet to The Outsiders, Hell’s Kitchen, Cats: The Jellicle Ball, The Great Gatsby and plenty more; a segment demonstrating the devolution of Cabaret’s Emcee, from Joel Grey to Alan Cumming to Eddie Redmayne, makes its point with devilish glee. While you may not agree with all of the critiques, there’s wicked fun to be had at Theatre 555 on the far end of 42nd Street—like you might have eavesdropping on a particularly catty gossip session between industry insiders. And who doesn’t enjoy a good Bernadette Peters impersonation?