Reasons To Get Excited; Broadway's January/February Openings

The first two months of the year are traditionally a bit slow on Broadway, with producers gearing up for the annual spring rush. But there's a big all-star comedy coming in to get 2016 off to a fast start followed by a high-profile Off-Broadway transfer and two big stars exercising their dramatic chops. There's plenty to be excited about this winter.

NOISES OFF (January 14th): Is Michael Frayne's rapid-fire backstage farce the English language's funniest play of the 20th Century? There sure were plenty of savvy patrons ready to proclaim that when Dorothy Loudon, Victor Garber, Deborah Rush and company were rocking the Brooks Atkinson nightly back in 1983. Last seen in a 2001 production that starred Patti LuPone, Peter Gallagher and Faith Prince, and won a Best Supporting Actress Tony for Katie Finneran, we can expect plenty of noise coming out of the American Airlines Theatre when inspired clowns like Andrea Martin and Rob McClure join a top-notch company including Megan Hilty, Tracee Chimo and Campbell Scott.

OUR MOTHER'S BRIEF AFFAIR (January 20th) Though Linda Lavin first made her mark in New York as a show-stopping musical theatre performer (THE MAD SHOW, IT'S A BIRD... IT'S A PLANE... IT'S SUPERMAN), after earning TV stardom with the hit series, ALICE, she returned to Broadway with a Tony-winning dramatic turn in Neil Simon's BROADWAY BOUND. Since then she's been regularly contributing memorable stage performances in plays like THE TALE OF THE ALLERGIST'S WIFE, COLLECTED STORIES and THE LYONS. Pulitzer-winning playwright Richard Greenberg's (TAKE ME OUT) newest promises great humor and drama as an aging mother with unreliable memory makes a confession about her past.

THE HUMANS (February 18th): Almost immediately after Stephen Karam's riveting drama opened Off-Broadway in a Roundabout Theatre Company production, word got out that producer Scot Rudin intended to move it to Broadway by the end of the season. Family issues subtly arise during Thanksgiving dinner in a production that retains its original cast, including the highly accomplished Reed Birney and Jane Houdyshell. Look for this one to be a Pulitzer and Tony contender.

HUGHIE (February 25th): Eugene O'Neill's two-character play wasn't produced on Broadway until eleven years after the master playwright passed on, but once Jason Robards got a hold of it, he didn't want to let go. Set in 1928 in a Manhattan hotel lobby, the short piece is essentially a monologue for Erie Smith, a small-time gambler down on his luck, who uses the new night clerk as his sounding board. Robards and Jack Dodson preserved their 1964 Broadway performances on video twenty years later and reunited for tours and regional productions several times until the latter's passing in 1994. Subsequent Broadway productions have starred Ben Gazzara and Peter Maloney, and Al Pacino and Paul Benedict. Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker now makes his Broadway debut as Erie. Given that he is African-American and that Tony winner Frank Wood, playing the night clerk, is white, there should be an interesting new layer added to O'Neill's work.

Things really start heating up in March, when so far we have five Broadway openings. Looks like a great 2016 ahead.