TAKE A DETOUR
Off-Broadway shows that go outside the box
OFF-Broadway has always been a safe bet for seeing innovative, exciting, talked-about shows on New York stages.
Case in point: “Oh, Mary!” at the Lucille Lortel, Cole Escola’s rollicking comedy about Mary Todd Lincoln (Abe’s troubled wife) which leaves you aching from laughter.
There are more bright stars to see in productions running now or starting soon:
“Here There Are Blueberries,” at New York Theatre Workshop, is a play conceived and directed by Moisés Kaufman (“The Laramie Project”). It tells the true — and truly unsettling — story of an album of photographs that was sent to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2007.
In “Sally & Tom” at the Public Theater, Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks casts her unblinking gaze on history in this spiky play about a company putting on a play about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.
Also at the Public, “Jordans,” by Ife Olujobi, takes on race, ambition and appearances in a plot about a put-upon receptionist in this workplace button-pusher.
“Billions” star Maggie Siff leads the cast of Alexis Scheer’s “Breaking the Story” at Second Stage Theater, a contemporary drama about a war correspondent battling to determine where she’s headed. Geneva Carr (“Bull”) and Julie Halston co-star.
Jukebox musical “A Sign of the Times,” at New World Stages, pours on ’60s hits to tell the tale of a woman with plus-sized dreams who lands in 1965 NYC.
Virtual reality and actual relationships collide in “Scarlett Dreams,” a drama at Greenwich House by S. Asher Gelman that blurs the lines between the digital and real worlds.