Although the summer time theater thrills wind down this month, August brings a particular deal with for Houston performing arts lovers: Houston Theater Week (August 18-24) and its many purchase one, get one reductions. To have fun, we thought a fall theater preview so as. Theater corporations throughout town start their 2025-2025 seasons within the subsequent few months with among the greatest exhibits of the yr.
We’re marking our calendars (particularly September 19) for the opening exhibits and dates for every firm. So seize these discounted tickets for a fall stuffed with blockbuster musicals, drama, comedy and possibly even just a few world premieres.
Earlier than diving in to what’s to come back, this is one late addition to final month’s column that coated exhibits debuting in July and August. Evening Courtroom, Houston’s all-lawyer theater firm, will current a musical comedy titled Legislation’s Anatomy on August 20. It takes audiences alongside on legislation rounds throughout a wacky day within the lifetime of Houston’s medical and authorized communities.
Houston Ballet opens with Onegin (September 5)
Ballet will get dramatic with the return of John Cranko’s Onegin. This poignant storybook ballet weaves a story of unrequited love set to Tchaikovsky’s stirring music, because the worldly aristocrat Onegin should face the life altering penalties when he rejects a younger girl’s love. Only some weeks in a while September 18, HB rocks out for the blended rep Rock, Roll, & Tutus, that includes two modern viewers favorites, Illuminate by Houston Ballet Soloist Jacquelyn Lengthy and Christopher Bruce’s Rolling Stones impressed Rooster. Plus the corporate unleashes co-artistic director Stanton Welch’s newest world premiere Vi et animo.
Most important Road Theater opens with Purlie Victorious: A Non-Accomplice Romp by means of the Cotton Patch (September 13)
Whereas many efficiency artwork lovers probably bear in mind the late, nice Ossie Davis’s many years lengthy theater and film profession, Davis was additionally an acclaimed director and author. His hilarious satire Purlie Victorious debuted on Broadway in 1961, with Davis starring as Purlie, a touring preacher who returns to his small Georgia city hoping to avoid wasting the neighborhood’s church, and emancipate the cotton pickers who work on oppressive Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee’s plantation. The present was later was a Tony nominated musical and simply two years in the past, the Broadway revival of the play received acclaim from critics and audiences alike.
After a break final yr, MST goes again to spending the vacations in Regency England with Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon’s performs in regards to the additional adventures of Jane Austen’s Bennet sisters. Georgiana and Kitty: Christmas at Pemberley makes a beautiful and spirited finish to the trilogy, because it places the deal with the youngest Bennet, Kitty and Mr. Darcy’s sister, Georgiana.
Broadway on the Interest Heart opens with Kimberly Akimbo (September 16)
The large Broadway season begins with this 2023 greatest musical Tony winner a few teen scuffling with each peculiar highschool drama, like becoming in at a brand new college, and a uncommon genetic dysfunction that causes her to seem a lot older than she is. The bittersweet comedy chronicles Kimberly’s loopy life as she navigates her household dysfunction, unrequited love, clueless associates, and doable felony fees.
In November, season subscribers may simply need to guide a staycation downtown as each the large Neil Diamond bio musical A Lovely Noise and the 2024 greatest musical Tony winner, The Outsiders dance into city with solely per week between them.
4th Wall Theatre opens with Eureka Day (September 19)
For its massive fifteenth season, 4th Wall presents their very own manufacturing of this latest Broadway hit that couldn’t be extra well timed.When a mumps outbreak hits a progressive personal college in California, mother and father should navigate private freedoms, public well being, and the chaos of on-line discourse.
Whereas not essentially a vacation present, 4th Wall presents Thornton Wilder’s traditional Our City to viewers in November for contemplative reminder of the quiet magnificence of each life.
Alley Theatre opens with The Da Vinci Code (September 19)
The Alley unlocks one of many massive blockbuster exhibits of the autumn season with this play tailored from the Dan Brown bestseller, which was in fact a mega-hit Tom Hanks movie. Only some theaters within the U.S. have produced this present, although the thrilling drama turned successful within the UK earlier than the pandemic.
Symbologist Robert Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu race to resolve a lethal puzzle that would change historical past. Following the clues hidden in historic symbols and imagery, they uncover secrets and techniques that lead them on a harmful quest throughout Europe. Alley creative director Rob Melrose will direct, and it appears to be like the big forged and design workforce will probably be pushing the Alley stage past its limits for this globe trotting thriller.
Then, simply in time for probably the most haunted time of the yr, the Alley presents the primary of two world premieres of their 25-26 season with The Physique Snatcher. Impressed by Robert Louis Stevenson’s Victorian Gothic traditional, the our bodies stack up on this twisted story. A father’s devotion for his ailing daughter and her rising affection for his medical assistant create a horrific moral dilemma as they push medical boundaries.
Ensemble Theatre opens with Akeelah and the Bee (September 19)
Ensemble begins its momentous forty ninth season with this coronary heart warming play based mostly on the 2006 Keke Palmer movie. Rising up in South Central, Los Angeles, younger, and gifted Akeelah Anderson received’t let private challenges, the pressures of her robust neighborhood, and societal obstacles cease her from competing within the nationwide spelling bee.
For the vacations, Ensemble hops the practice, the Soul Prepare that’s, for the musical Take the Soul Prepare to Christmas, chronicling the African American celebration of Christmas.
Phases opens with The Lehman Trilogy (September 19)
This Tony Award winner for greatest play makes its Houston debut on Phases’ intimate Sterling Stage as three actors play a number of generations of the Lehman household. The present chronicles Hayum Lehmann arrival in mid-Nineteenth century New York from Bavaria to make his manner in a brand new world. After altering his identify to Henry Lehman, he and his brothers begin a small material enterprise that evolves over generations to change into one of the highly effective finance corporations on this planet till the market crash in 2008. The play tells a very American story in all its complexities.
In October, one other distinctive portrait of a household over many years is revealed in Mud Row, as a one home in West Chester, Pennsylvania turns into the setting for 2 generations of sisters who should navigate challenges of sibling relationships, class, race, and love.
A.D. Gamers opens with Freud’s Final Session (October 1)
Calling their 25-26 season one in all exploration, the corporate begins that journey into the thoughts and spirituality with this “what if” play. What if on the eve of World Struggle II the getting older however world famend psychiatrist and famous atheist, Sigmund Freud, met the younger, up-and-coming creator and theologian C.S. Lewis? Sit in on this extraordinary assembly of the minds.
Conserving with the magical, religious worlds of C.S. Lewis, the corporate brings his most cherished novel, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to the stage for the vacations with the large musical Narnia.
Theatre Below the Stars opens with The twenty fifth Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (October 21)
Spelling bees change into one thing of a development this fall, as TUTS opens with this Tony profitable musical. Inventive director Dan Knechtges choreographed the unique Broadway manufacturing of this charming comedy in regards to the cutthroat world of center college spelling bees so we are able to’t wait to see Knechtges’s full directorial and choreographic imaginative and prescient on this new manufacturing. The present additionally presents the viewers the possibility to get in on the spelling motion, so get these dictionaries prepared.
For the vacations, TUTS goes conventional with the traditional Irving Berlin’s White Christmas. Two tapping military buddies, Bob and Phil, turned song-and-dance sensations, workforce up with a pair of gifted sisters to avoid wasting a snow-dusted Vermont inn. We wouldn’t be shock if that “snow” falls upon audiences with this household favourite.
Houston Grand Opera opens with Porgy and Bess (October 24)
HGO is asking their 25-26 lineup a season of “grand goals” and that’s definitely the case with their opener, George and Ira Gershwin’s grand and nice American opera. Set within the Jim Crow period and the fictional Charleston slum of Catfish Row, Porgy, a disabled beggar, and Bess, a girl scuffling with dependancy, fall in love. Although it initially debuted on Broadway within the 30s, HGO’s manufacturing 50 years in the past is claimed to have renewed Porgy’s recognition in opera homes world wide. That 1976 manufacturing went on to Broadway and earned HGO each a Tony and a Grammy. In honor of the 50 yr anniversary, HGO presents this acclaimed manufacturing from Washington Nationwide Opera directed by frequent buddy of the corporate Francesca Zambello.
The next week, HGO presents for the primary time Puccini’s masterful trio of one-act operas Il trittico. Taken collectively, these three operas will take audiences from the depths of tragedy to the heights of affection to chic comedy.
Rec Room ends their season with Angel in American (November 8)
One of many smallest theater areas on the town has all the time achieved issues a little bit bit otherwise, like organizing their seasons by the calendar yr. They wrap up their 2025 season with what is likely to be probably the most formidable manufacturing of the autumn, Tony Kushner’s masterpiece of late twentieth century American theater Angels in America. Rec Room will produce each half one, Millennium Approaches and two, Perestroika, on alternating evenings in repertory. Profitable just about each award doable, together with a Pulitzer and a number of Tonys, Angels depicts the AIDS disaster whereas additionally holding up a type of celestial mirror to America on the finish of the twentieth century.
A number of of our mid-sized and smaller corporations solely provide one present the final half of the yr, however we all know from expertise to by no means miss these fall gems. Mildred’s Umbrella continues its partnership with the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Group Heart for the well timed The Final Yiddish Speaker. Grime Canines returns to one in all their favourite playwrights, Tracy Letts, with The Minutes, a political satire set throughout a small city metropolis council assembly. And Classical Theatre Firm goes about as classical as theater can get with an authentic new imaginative and prescient of the Sophocles tragedy Electra.
