Audiences desperately need a laugh right now, and the fall theater season is riding to the rescue with farces, rom-coms, political satires and musicals with a sharp sense of humor.
One farce should come with a surgeon general’s warning. Richard Bean’s “One Man, Two Guvnors” had me in physical distress when I saw it first at London’s National Theatre and then again on Broadway. I nearly asphyxiated from laughing.
Whether A Noise Within will be able to capture the slapstick panache of James Corden’s Tony-winning performance in “One Man, Two Guvnors,” is an open question. But the mere memory of this reworking of a commedia-style classic leaves me in stitches.
“Eureka Day” is no less amusing for being politically pointed. Jonathan Spector’s play, set at a super-woke private school in Berkeley, wades into the ever-more contentious vaccine debate. How can concerned parents reach consensus when even medical knowledge has become tribalized? Spector satirizes with just the right combination of empathy and mercilessness.
Hard to think of a finer recent workplace comedy than “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.” Playwright Jocelyn Bioh tracks the relationships between the employees of a Harlem hair salon and their customers who depend on their specialized services in an America that can be oblivious to the vulnerabilities of immigrant outsiders.
In a season that seems to be prioritizing diversion over protest, the plight of immigrants continues to be a pressing concern of dramatists, such as Lloyd Suh, whose play “The Heart Sellers” finds genuine humor in the friendship of two Asian immigrant women searching for a sense of belonging in their strange new consumerist world.
“Stereophonic,” David Adjmi’s intensely intimate yet epic drama about a Fleetwood Mac-style rock band recording a breakthrough album while riding the waves of romantic and artistic discord, is one of the most celebrated plays of the last 10 years. Adjmi and Will Butler, who wrote the score for this hybrid drama, take us behind the music into the crucible of creative genius, where nothing matters but getting the sound right.
As for new and recent musicals, La Jolla Playhouse unveils “Working Girl,” the world premiere musical adaptation of Mike Nichols’ 1988 film about a Staten Island secretary who out-schemes her ruthless bosses to grab the brass ring. (File this under “What took so long!”) And “Suffs,” a musical about the fight to win American women the right to vote, delivers something even more urgent right now than laughter: a tale of empowerment.