12 theater productions to see this spring

Theater houses are offering up musicals, memoirs and stories of history makers as the seasons turn. There’s a fresh take on the late Stephen Sondheim’s musical “Company” with a Black female lead from Broadway in Boston, a true story of survival in “Touching the Void” at Apollinaire Theatre Company, parties and puppetry from ArtsEmerson, and shows centering legends in sports and music. Here are 12 productions to see this spring.

In playwright Tracy Letts’ “The Minutes,” the city council meeting in the fictional town of Big Cherry is full of much more than conversations about streetlights, ordinances and resolutions. The show, which partly focuses on its council members and what drives them, hides a dark heart. Letts — an accomplished actor who starred in “Lady Bird,” “Little Women” and Showtime’s “Homeland” — has penned several narratives for the stage and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his Broadway show “August: Osage County.” In “The Minutes,” helmed by the celebrated director Scott Edmiston, who won the Elliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence, Letts shows how a tiny town can wield overwhelming power. [Read the review of the production here.]

When James, a DJ with a big personality, throws a surprise party, the guests keep coming and coming. The partygoers are set to gather in the back room of the corner shop of James’ landlord, Mrs. Krishnan, to celebrate Onam, a Hindu festival of the Kerala people, and the arrival of Mrs. Krishnan’s son. As the revelers pile up, there’s no choice but to surrender to the good times. The production, by Indian Ink Theatre Company, is an immersive experience where audiences join in the fun.

The late Stephen Sondheim’s original “Company,” which premiered on Broadway in 1970, centered on a young man in New York, Robert or Bobby for short, who struggled with romantic commitment. According to Playbill, the popular show won multiple Tony Awards and ran for 705 performances. A revised version flips the script with a Black female Bobbie, Britney Coleman, whose friends are flummoxed by her singleness. Bobbie is turning 35 and has no good relationship prospects in this Marianne Elliott-directed production. Musical revue lovers get to join Bobbie on her journey as she searches for meaning through award-winning songs such as “You Could Drive a Person Crazy,” “The Ladies Who Lunch,” “Side by Side” and “Being Alive.”

Mountaineer Joe Simpson nearly died in 1985. He and his friend Simon Yates scaled the difficult Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes, but during the descent, Simpson endured a leg injury that threatened to kill them both. Simpson’s harrowing account was detailed in his 1988 memoir-turned-BAFTA-winning 2003 film, which has been adapted for the stage by David Greig. The story explores adventure, trust, fear and the will to live despite the odds.

Composer Huang Ruo and puppeteer/artist Basil Twist (also a MacArthur Fellow) have collaborated in this production to help bring Chinese creation myths to life in “Book of Mountains and Seas.” The ancient stories, with a through-line of climate change, are set to music by the award-winning Ruo and sung by the chorus Ars Nova Copenhagen from Denmark. The show, produced by Beth Morrison Projects, has a three-day run.

Local playwright Kirsten Greenidge (“Our Daughters, Like Pillars”) is back with a new play “Morning, Noon, and Night” focusing on a mother and daughter who are struggling to see eye to eye. Mom Mia wants her daughter Dailyn to quit with the smart-mouthed back talk, and Dailyn wants her mom to get off her back a little. But things get sticky when an unexpected visitor from the digital realm enters the mix. Summer L. Williams directs. “Morning, Noon, and Night” is Greenidge’s second commission as part of the National Mellon Foundation Resident Playwright Program through HowlRound.

Michael R. Jackson spent 18 years working on “A Strange Loop.” That might seem like a long time to anyone chasing a dream, but Jackson shares in an interview, that “it’s worth it to take your time.” While working as an usher in a theater, Jackson started writing what he calls a “self-referential” piece that morphed from a monologue to a musical about a Black queer writer who works as an usher who is developing a musical about a Black queer writer penning a musical. The show — with book, music, and lyrics by Jackson — won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2022 Tony Award for Best Musical.  Front Porch Arts Collective’s co-producing artistic director Maurice Emmanuel Parent (“Seven Guitars,” “Mr. Parent”) heads up this comedy anchored by identity, desire and self-perception. The play was produced in 2019 off-Broadway and then staged in Washington, D.C., two years later. It had its Broadway premiere at the Lyceum Theatre in April 2022.

Many baseball lovers can call to mind their favorite players and their stats. But often, the names of female ball players aren’t synonymous with the same fame, and for Black female players, even less so. Toni Stone, born Marcenia Lyle Stone, is one such name. Even though the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League rejected Stone, she was the first woman to play in the men’s professional Negro American League where she replaced the lauded Hank Aaron, according to the MLB. She also played against Satchel Paige. In “Toni Stone,” playwright Lydia R. Diamond (“The Bluest Eye”) pens a theatrical offering of this groundbreaking woman inspired by the book “Curveball: The Remarkable True Story of Toni Stone” by Martha Ackmann.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby” chronicles Nick Carraway’s life in the monied society of East Egg, Long Island. He becomes intrigued with the enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby, who is interested in rekindling an old flame with Daisy Buchanan, Carraway’s beautiful cousin. Fitzgerald’s celebrated book turned film — adapted for the stage by Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok (“Cost of Living”) — finds a new iteration in the musical “Gatsby.” This world-premiere production features a score by rocker Florence Welch of Florence + The Machine and Thomas Bartlett. Rachel Chavkin (“Hadestown”) directs.

An upper-class Black American family seems to have it all together from the outside looking in. But in this tight-knit bunch in playwright Brian Yorkey’s “Next to Normal,” the matriarch deals with bipolar disorder between making meals and placing kisses on her kids’ cheeks. Yorkey’s show debuted on Broadway in 2009 to critical acclaim. This Pulitzer Prize-winning rock musical, with music by Tom Kitt, is at the intersection of race and mental health. Front Porch Arts Collective’s Pascale Florestal directs.

Actual events inspired this David Henry Hwang play where an Asian American playwright gets wrapped up in lies. In the narrative, the playwright’s accusations of “yellowface” in the casting of white actors as Asian characters come back to haunt him when he misidentifies a mixed-race actor and proceeds to cast him in one of his productions. Then, instead of admitting the blunder, he attempts to cover up the mistake. Ted Hewlett directs this complicated, satiric memoir, not to be confused with author R.F. Kuang’s bestselling 2023 novel “Yellowface.”

If the play “MJ” is anything like an actual Michael Jackson concert, then it’s sure to stun. Dubbed the “king of pop,” music from Jackson’s decades-long career which spawned hits like “Bad,” “Off the Wall” or “Black or White” has touched generations. In this narrative, Jackson’s life around the Dangerous World Tour in the early ‘90s is detailed. The musical by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage (“Clyde’s Diner,” “Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine”) also delves into MJ’s creative and collaborative prowess that helped him become a legend.