OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS
BUTLER
59E59
Richard Strand’s play, directed by Joseph Discher, tells the true story of General Benjamin Butler’s moral crisis when three escaped slaves arrived at Fort Monroe in 1861 seeking sanctuary. Opens July 27.
CATS
Neil Simon
Trevor Nunn’s long-running production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, based on T. S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” returns, featuring Leona Lewis as Grizabella. In previews. Opens July 31.
GHOST QUARTET
Maria Hernandez Park
The Bushwick Starr presents a free, open-air staging of Dave Malloy’s chamber musical, which weaves together four tales set over seven centuries. July 29.
KURT VONNEGUT'S GOD BLESS YOU, MR. ROSEWATER
City Center
“Encores! Off-Center” stages Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s little-known first musical, based on Vonnegut’s 1965 novel, about a millionaire (Santino Fontana) who decides to lavish his fortune on an impoverished town after reading the work of a utopian novelist (James Earl Jones). July 27-30.
MEN ON BOATS
Peter Jay Sharp
Jaclyn Backhaus’s play, presented by Playwrights Horizons and Clubbed Thumb, is a stylized retelling of an 1869 expedition in which John Wesley Powell and a crew of explorers charted the Colorado River. In previews. Opens Aug. 1.
QUIETLY
Irish Repertory
In Owen McCafferty’s drama, set in Northern Ireland following the Good Friday Agreement, two men meet in a Belfast bar forty years after a violent incident. Jimmy Fay directs. In previews. Opens July 28.