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. Previews begin July 14.
Cats
Neil Simon
The return of 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” and featuring Leona Lewis as Grizabella. Previews begin July 14.
Engagements
McGinn/Cazale
In Lucy Teitler’s dark comedy, directed by Kimberly Senior for Second Stage Theatre Uptown, a young woman causes trouble at a series of summer engagement parties. Previews begin July 18.
Hyperbolic! (The Last Spectacle)
Dixon Place
Monstah Black’s dance-theatre piece, the centerpiece of the twenty-fifth annual “HOT!” festival of queer-focussed work, imagines the last party ever in a distant future. Opens July 8.
Kanze Noh Theatre
Rose Theatre
Lincoln Center Festival kicks off with a presentation of works from the centuries-old Japanese genre Noh, directed by Kiyokazu Kanze, the twenty-sixth Grand Master of the Kanze School. In Japanese, with English supertitles. July 13-17.
Motown the Musical
Nederlander
The 2013 musical, which uses the Motown catalogue to trace the rise of Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, and other musicians, returns for an eighteen-week run. Berry Gordy, Jr., the founder of Motown, wrote the book. Opens July 12.
New York Musical Festival
Various locations.
The festival returns for its thirteenth year, with selections including “The Gold,” about a German Jewish boxer in the nineteen-thirties; “Camp Rolling Hills,” set at a summer camp for tweens; and “Ludo’s Broken Bride,” about a man who travels to the beginning and end of time. Opens July 11.
Oslo
Mitzi E. Newhouse
Bartlett Sher directs J. T. Rogers’s play, which recounts how a Norwegian diplomat (Jennifer Ehle) and her husband (Jefferson Mays) orchestrated the secret talks that led to the Oslo Accords, in the nineties. In previews. Opens July 11.
Privacy
Public
Daniel Radcliffe, De’Adre Aziza, and Rachel Dratch star in James Graham’s interactive, interview-based work, which explores issues of privacy in the digital age. Josie Rourke directs the Donmar Warehouse co-production. In previews. Opens July 18.
PTP/NYC
Atlantic Stage 2
Potomac Theatre Project presents two 1981 plays in repertory: Howard Barker’s “No End of Blame: Scenes of Overcoming,” about a Hungarian political cartoonist sparring with government censors, and C. P. Taylor’s “Good,” in which a professor studies a German man succumbing to madness. In previews. Opens July 12.
Runaways
City Center
“Encores! Off-Center” stages a concert version of the late Elizabeth Swados’s experimental musical from 1978, drawn from her interactions with young runaways and featuring a cast of New York City teen-agers. July 6-9.
Simon Says
Lynn Redgrave
Brian Murray stars in a thriller by Mat Schaffer, in which a young psychic and a retired professor try to solve a two-thousand-year-old murder. Myriam Cyr directs. In previews. Opens July 9.
Small Mouth Sounds
Pershing Square Signature Center
A return engagement of Bess Wohl’s comedy, directed by Rachel Chavkin, in which six urbanites attend a silent retreat in upstate New York. In previews. Opens July 13.
Troilus and Cressida
Delacorte
Daniel Sullivan directs the second offering of the Public’s Shakespeare in the Park season. The cast includes Andrew Burnap, Ismenia Mendes, Corey Stoll, and John Douglas Thompson. Previews begin July 19.