LET'S CALL HER PATTY, PREJUDICE & PRIDE and More Lead Top Off-Broadway Shows for August
Each month we're rounding up 10 off-Broadway recommendations for audiences not to miss!
By: Team BWW Aug. 01, 2023
What's happening off-Broadway? BroadwayWorld is helping you pick what to see next by rounding up our top recommended theatre each month. Coming up off-Broadway this August is a world premiere comedy, a gender bent musical adaptation of a Jane Austen novel, and more.
The Half-God of Rainfall
New York Theatre Workshop
Now through August 20, 2023
When Demi, the half Nigerian-mortal, half Greek-god, is angry, rain clouds gather. When he cries, rivers burst their banks. And the first time he takes a shot on a basketball court, the deities of the land wake up.
From award-winning poet and playwright Inua Ellams (Barber Shop Chronicles) comes a new myth that spans continents and millennia. The Half-God of Rainfall is a contemporary epic that weaves poetry and storytelling in a majestic journey that transports us from a tiny village in South West Nigeria to an NBA arena in the United States to the hallowed halls of Mount Olympus, where the mothers, daughters and goddesses take a stand against the fragile, furious and entitled gods. Obie Award winner and NYTW Usual Suspect Taibi Magar (Help) directs.
Let's Call Her Patty
Now through August 27, 2023
Patty (Rhea Perlman) is an Upper West Sider of more than moderate means who’s lived according to self-prescribed rules and routines: lots of exercise and very few calories. When her daughter Cecile (Arielle Goldman) experiences sudden whirlwind success as a sculptor and turns to cocaine to help cope, Patty, with help from her overextended niece Sammy (Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer), must navigate challenges that push her well outside her carefully curated comfort zone. LET’S CALL HER PATTY is a comedy about what it means to be a mother, a daughter, or anyone in the world doing their best to disentangle life’s mess.
The Saviour
Irish Repertory Theatre
Now through August 13, 2023
There’s a new man in Máire’s life. But some people aren’t happy.
On the morning of her 67th birthday, Máire sits up in bed enjoying a cigarette. She has recently been swept off her feet by a stranger and hasn’t felt this alive in years, but a visit from her son with dark revelations challenges the euphoria.
Deirdre Kinahan’s fiercely funny and utterly gripping new play charts an extraordinary shift in Ireland’s social, political, and religious life. It asks questions about responsibility, how we respond to trauma, and the tricky question of forgiveness.
It stars legendary Irish actress Marie Mullen (The Music Man, Broadway; The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Druid, for which she won a Tony Award) in a tour-de-force performance. She is joined by Jamie O’Neill in this riveting two-hander directed by one of Ireland’s leading theatre directors, Louise Lowe.
The Saviour was first broadcast online in 2021 and makes its world stage premiere at the Irish Rep this summer.
Toros
Second Stage Theater
Now through August 13, 2023
In Toros, three international late-20-somethings (and one dying golden retriever) hang out in a garage in Madrid. They smoke pitis, get drunk, argue about the music, and figure out what version of reality to believe in. TOROS by Danny Tejera is directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch. Abubakr Ali (Anything’s Possible), b (American (Tele)Visions) and Tony Award-winner Frank Wood (Great Society) star alongside Juan Castano (2ST’s A Parallelogram).
Prejudice & Pride
59E59 Theatres
Now through August 20, 2023
The hapless Longborn boys have exhausted all the employment options of East Tennessee and must now marry rich before they lose the family farm. Luckily “a young single woman in possession of a good fortune” has just moved into the ranch next door and brought along ridiculously wealthy songstress Darcy Fitzwilliams, not that banjo-picking Bennett Longborn would stoop to woo her for any amount of money.
Thus begins this knee-slapping, foot-stomping, heart-tugging new folk musical by Sam Wright and Nicholas Collett, updating Jane Austen’s classic novel with an American musical twist. This show features a score of 15 original songs composed on banjo and developed with the KC-based folk band Gullywasher.
Winner of the 2022 Artist Residency at Music Theater Heritage in Kansas City & Sinners Review's #1 Best of Fringe award at Edinburgh Fringe 2022.
Unentitled
59E59 Theatres [Theatre B]
Now through August 6, 2023
Set in the heady days of late 2008, with the Obama campaign as a backdrop, an upper-middle class African American family wrestles internalized racism, class anxiety, and each other when a sudden job loss and a revelation about their shared past threaten to upend their comfortable lives. Tempers and tensions boil over at a cherished Long Island vacation home that becomes the focal point of an intense family drama.
Unentitled explores the nature of risk – how much someone would risk to get what they want, and how hard it is to make that choice when history, tradition, and family all hang in the balance.
Infinite Life
Atlantic Theater Company
August 18, 2023 through October 8, 2023
Atlantic Theater will welcome back both Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Baker (Body Awareness) and Obie Award winning director James Macdonald (Cloud Nine).
Five women in Northern California sit outside on chaise lounges and philosophize. A surprisingly funny inquiry into the complexity of suffering, and what it means to desire in a body that’s failing you.
Blue Man Group
Astor Place Theatre
Now running
Blue Man Group combines music, technology and comedy to create a form of entertainment that defies categorization and appeals to people of all ages. Blue Man Group's shows have been described by critics as "innovative," "energetic" and "wildly entertaining." But the only way to truly understand Blue Man Group's global popularity is to see the show for yourself.
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Sleep No More
The McKittrick Hotel
Now running
A legendary hotel. Shakespeare's fallen hero. A film noir shadow of suspense. Punchdrunk's Sleep No More is an award-winning theatrical experience that tells Shakespeare's classic tragedy Macbeth through a darkly cinematic lens. Audiences move freely through the epic world of the story at their own pace, choosing where to go and what to see, ensuring that everyone's journey is different and unique. No one under sixteen will be permitted.
Sleep No More is set in a building with five floors of theatrical action, putatively called the McKittrick Hotel, though with many rooms and features not normally associated with hotels, including those which resemble an antiquated lunatic asylum, doctor's offices, children's bedrooms, a cemetery, indoor courtyards, shops, a padded cell, a ballroom, taxidermist's menageries, and so on. The actors and their environment all adopt the dress, decor, and aesthetic style of the early 20th century, inspired by the shadowy and anxious atmosphere of film noir. Audience members begin their journey in a fully operational lounge, the Manderley Bar, from which they enter an elevator that transports them to the major floors of the "hotel."
BATSU!
Wara
Now running
In Japan, there is a style of comedy known as batsu game (罰ゲーム), where comedians compete in challenges of all kinds with the losers receiving a punishment. BATSU! NYC brings this comedy style to America, with comedians competing to avoid electric shocks, paintballs, a giant egg-smashing chicken, and many more hilarious jaw-dropping punishments! With a yokocho (横丁・横町) vibe, behind an unassuming door in the East Village, transport yourself to the alleyways of Tokyo with authentic food, drinks, and fun.
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