To quote “West Side Story”—one of the Broadway shows that vanished into the ether last March—New York theatre is in its “Could it be? Yes, it could” phase. After a year of virtual plays, there are finally inklings of a return to flesh-and-blood performance. As Broadway makes plans to come back in September, the summer brings major strides toward post-Zoom theatregoing. Shakespeare in the Park, one of the city’s most beloved summer traditions, returns to the Delacorte, with “Merry Wives” (beginning July 6), Jocelyn Bioh’s adaptation of “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” now set in South Harlem’s West African immigrant community. The Public’s open-air production, directed by Saheem Ali, promises to be joyful, cathartic, and, as always, free.
Downtown, Moisés Kaufman’s Tectonic Theatre Project and Madison Wells Live stage “Seven Deadly Sins” (starting June 23), a collection of short plays by writers including Thomas Bradshaw and Bess Wohl, each tackling a different sin; performances unfold in storefronts in the meatpacking district, with audiences listening through earphones. Also in June, BAM and Playwrights Horizons present “What to Send Up When It Goes Down,” Aleshea Harris’s play about the insidiousness of anti-Blackness, reimagined for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. And, in the Berkshires, the Williamstown Theatre Festival returns, on July 6, with an all-outdoor season, including a series of one-person shows by Black writers and a new musical staged around a reflecting pool at the Clark Art Institute: “Row,” by Dawn Landes and Daniel Goldstein, based on a memoir by Tori Murden McClure, the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Onward ho! ♦
