Hamilton is NOT the only show opening this month. There are new plays at the Signature by both Annie Baker, winner of last year’s Pulitzer Prize for The Flick, (new play pictured below), and the 84-year-old A.R. Gurney, experiencing a late-career resurgence. There are 200 shows at the Fringe festival, and another 63 at the lesser known Thespis festival. There are exciting FREE plays at the New Brooklyn Theatre, including one by Lynn Nottage.
Thank you, NewYorkTheatre, for this list. But I think I'd personally take your post more seriously without the shade thrown at Hamilton. Whether you like that show or not, it's opening and the press around it is massive. I like to stay well-informed about New York Theater, on and off-Broadway but the "not just Hamilton" part is sort of elementary. Just my two cents.
Wow, Las Meninas sounds fascinating (see Jack Gohn's linked 2010 bww review below).
The plot concerns the affair between Maria Theresa of Spain, Queen of France, wife of Louis XIV, and her African servant, Nabo.
In fact, Louise Marie Therese of Moret (1664-1732), a black French nun, was believed by a great many to be Maria Theresa's daughter. Yet more proof that, contrary to the criticism often raised here on bww about black actors playing characters like Fantine or the Mother Abbess, there were in fact black people living in Europe throughout much of recorded history and certainly between the 1600s and World War II and on.
Contrary to Gohn's review, however, Maria Theresa of Spain is not the infanta who appears in Velazquez's famous 1656 painting known as "Las Meninas." That princess is Maria Theresa's sister, Margaret Theresa of Spain, Archduchess of Austria, later Holy Roman Empress, Queen of Germany, and Queen Consort of Hungary and Bohemia.
Also contrary to Gohn's review, there is no record of Velazquez or his contemporaries ever referring to the painting as "Las Meninas." Early catalogues of the painting listed it as "La Familia." The first record of it ever being called "Las Meninas" is from an 1843 inventory of the Prado's collections.
It's true that Hamilton was the only show this month to open on Broadway, and it's certainly the biggest hit in a while (not just in the month of August!)
But there were a couple of other shows that got significant notice -- AND, the month is not over. As you'll see from my post, there are still three openings to go, at least one of which has a lot of fans excited.