B'way Update: Chicken and Biscuits, Plaza Suite, Harry Potter

A new show, a revival, and an altered previously-running show have been added to the 2021-22, post-COVID Broadway calendar. Chicken and Biscuits, a new play, will open at the Circle in the Square, the long-delayed Plaza Suite has announced preview and opening dates, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child will resume performances at the Lyric as a condensed, one-evening presentation rather in its previous two parts. Only a few announced productions have not yet claimed dates, so the Broadway schedule is nearly complete.  

The cast of Chicken and Biscuits
at the Queens Theater
Credit: Dominick Totino

Chicken and Biscuits, a new play by Douglas Lyons, will begin previews at the Circle in the Square Theater on Sept. 23 with an opening set for Oct. 10. Tony nominee Norm Lewis (Porgy and Bess) and Drama Desk winner Michael Urie (The Temperamentals, Buyer and Cellar) star in this comedy which premiered at the Queens Theater in Flushing Meadows in Feb. 28, 2020, but had to close down two weeks into its run because of the COVID pandemic. The play is staged by Zhailon Levingston, who at 27 will be the youngest African-American director in Broadway history. Lyons is also making his Broadway debut as a playwright and has appeared on the Main Stem as an actor in Beautiful and The Book of Mormon. The comedy will have a limited run at Circle in the Square until Jan. 2, 2022. A revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo with Shia LaBeouf was scheduled for the theater before the pandemic and there are plans for the production to open there in March.

B'way Update: Springsteen, Skeleton, Paradise, Lehman, etc.

The 2021-22 Broadway and Off-Broadway season continues to take shape with new productions and those postponed from previous seasons announcing dates and theaters. In the latest round of updates, Bruce Springsteen returns to Broadway, Manhattan Theater fills out its roster, a new musical set during the Civil War is slated, and The Lehman Trilogy finally makes the transfer from Off-Broadway to on with one cast change. 

Bruce Springsteen will return to Broadway
Credit: Rob DeMartin

The beginning of the season keeps getting earlier. Bruce Springsteen on Broadway will now be the first show to open since the theaters closed last March. The Boss's Tony-winning 2017 concert show is slated for a return engagement at the St. James Theater starting June 26 for a limited engagement through Sept. 4. Just last week Pass Over announced it was commencing performances in August. Springsteen's show is also the first to announce official COVID audience protocols. Theatergoers must show proof of COVID vaccination and fill out a health screening within 24 hours of attending. We'll see if anti-vaxxers and libertarians scream invasion of privacy or unconstitutionalism. Last time I check, you don't have a constitutional right to see a Broadway show.

Phylicia Rashad will also return to Broadway, headlining Dominique Morriseau's Skeleton Crew, set in a

Phylicia Rashad will star in
Skeleton Crew

Detroit auto factory in 2008, part of Manhattan Theater Club's season at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater. Rashad will play one of four workers at the endangered factory, facing economic instability. Skeleton Crew has previously been presented Off-Broadway at Atlantic Theater Company's Stage 2 in 2016 and regionally. This production will be directed by Reuben Santiago-Hudson who staged the Atlantic version and will also be appearing as part of MTC's Friedman season in his own autobiographical solo play Lackawanna Blues. Previews begin Dec. 21 in advance of a Jan. 12, 2022 opening. Morriseau is the book-author of Ain't Too Proud which reopens this fall. 

Rashad last appeared on Broadway in August: Osage County, is slated to direct a revival of Charles Randolph Wright's Blue and has just been named Dean of the Chadwick A. Boseman School of Fine Arts at her alma mater, Howard University. MTC has also announced Broadway dates for its revival of Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive with original stars David Morse and Mary-Louise Parker (previews March 29, opens April 19.) Off-Broadway MTC productions have also been announced for the company's City Center space: Morning Sun, Prayer for the French Republic, and Golden Shield.