2019-20 Broadway Season Forecast

July is here and that means the 2018-19 Broadway season is officially done with and the next one is underway. Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune, the revival of Terrence McNally's 1988 two-hander, was the first official production of the season, opening in May. The summer is pretty slow this year with only two Broadway openings confirmed--Moulin Rouge, the stage version of Baz Luhrmann's gaudy and superficial 2001 film musical and Sea Wall/A Life, a transfer of a pair of solo pieces starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Sturridge which played the Public Theater earlier this year. Tea at Five, the one-woman play starring Faye Dunaway as Katharine Hepburn, was supposed to open sometime during the summer, as was an all-female staging of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross. But neither ever secured a theater and their future is uncertain. Tea at Five is now playing Boston's Huntington Theater through July 14.

Here's a rundown of announced Broadway openings for 2019-20:

Charlie Cox, Zawe Ashton, and Tom Hiddleston in Betrayal.
Credit: Marc Brenner

Betrayal: Harold Pinter's reverse-chronicle triangle drama returns to Broadway for its third revival with Tom Hiddleston, Zawe Ashton and Charlie Cox making their Broadway debuts after a smashing success in London's West End. (Original: 1980 with Raul Julia, Blythe Danner, and Roy Scheider, Reprised in 2001 with Liev Schreiber, Juliette Binoche and John Slattery, and in 2013 with Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, and Rafe Spall). (Jacobs/Sept. 15)

Derren Brown: Secret--The magician and mentalist brings his Drama Desk winning show to Broadway after a run at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2017.

The Height of the Storm--Manhattan Theater Club opens its Broadway season with this drama by French playwright Florian Zeller starring Eileen Atkins and Jonathan Pryce repeating their London performances as a couple who, not unlike the protagonists of Zeller's plays The Father and The Mother, face uncertainty and despair after decades of marriage.

'Crucible' and 'Father' Join Broadway Spring Roster

Frank Langella will star in a play called
 The Father for the second time

Of course as soon as I post a Broadway/Off-Broadway calendar, two new shows announce openings in the spring--The Father with Frank Langella and the sixth Broadway production of The Crucible. The Father is not to be confused with the play of the same name by August Strindberg which also starred Langella in 1996. This one is a new play by French playwright Florian Zeller about a man suffering from dementia. It will be part of Manhattan Theater Club's season at the Friedman previewing March 22 and opening April 12. Arthur Miller's The Crucible previews Feb. 29 and opens on April 12 at a theater to be announced. Ben Whislaw plays John Proctor, Tony winner Sophie Okonedo will be his wife Elizabeth, and Ciarin Hinds is Deputy Governor Danforth. (I played Reverend Parris in college.) Ivo van Hove is directing so it will probably be set inside a wind tunnel or something with everyone dressed as mummies. Van Hove is one weird-ass director. I still remember his Streetcar Named Desire at New York Theatre Workshop where Elizabeth Marvel as Blanche DuBois dove into a bathtub fully clothed and emerged dripping wet and covered with suds, then went right back into the scene without a pause. It was like a Carol Burnett Show parody of an avant-garde production. (His Scenes from a Marriage was brilliant I will admit.) But van Hove's A View from the Bridge is also opening on Broadway this season and received raves during its London run. With the two Miller plays, Long Day's Journey, Fiddler on the Roof, and Color Purple, the season is like a retread of old times--which is also being done, the Harold Pinter play I mean. Broadway is becoming like a college course in Dramatic Literature with very little new work on display. Here's the updated calendar: