Frontmezzjunkies reports: Plays by David Lindsay-Abaire and Martyna Majok Announced for MTC’s 2025-26 Season
There’s a lot of excitement coming from MTC these days as they announce that the 2025-26 season will include the world premiere of Lindsay-Abaire’s The Balusters and a newly imagined version of Majok’s Queens. Alongside some already announced productions of James Graham’s Punch and Ngozi Anyanwu’s The Monsters.
Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) shared the addition of these two fascinatingly brought-forth shows that will be a part of its 2025-26 season. MTC will proudly present the world premiere of The Balusters by Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire (Kimberly Akimbo) in spring 2026 on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, and a newly imagined version of Queens by Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok (Cost of Living) this fall off-Broadway at NY City Center Stage I. Both are must-see plays delivered by exciting teams of creatives.
The Balusters, directed by Tony Award winner Kenny Leon (Broadway’s Purlie Victorious), will unwrap a neighborhood war that begins when a new resident to the Vernon Point Neighborhood Association suggests installing a stop sign on the corner of the enclave’s prettiest block.
“The Vernon Point Neighborhood Association is a passionate bunch, whether squabbling over historically inaccurate porch railings or debating trash can protocol. Still, no one is prepared for the neighbor-versus-neighbor battle royale that ensues when a newcomer to the board suggests the unthinkable: installing a stop sign on the corner of the enclave’s prettiest block.” Written by Pulitzer Prize and Tony winner, Manhattan Theatre Club veteran, and master of antics David Lindsay-Abaire and helmed by Tony winner Kenny Leon, The Balusters is revving up to be a “raucous, wild ride through a small community with big feelings“.
Staged off-Broadway at NY City Center and directed by Trip Cullman (Broadway’s Cult of Love), Queens chronicles the complex connections, struggling for survival in an illegal basement apartment in Queens, where multiple generations of immigrant women fight to launch a new life in this difficult new world. When a young Ukrainian woman comes searching for the mother who abandoned her years ago, she forces a reckoning with the impossible choices the women made to survive.
Written by the Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok, MTC presents an “epic drama about hunting for the American Dream, finding family, and facing the ghosts you left behind.” Directed by Trip Cullman, Queens chronicles the “strivers who sacrificed whole worlds for the chance at something remarkable.“
MTC’s 2025-26 season, as previously announced, will also include the exciting Broadway premiere of Punch by Olivier Award winner James Graham (Best of Enemies), directed by Adam Penford, and the off-Broadway world premiere of The Monsters, written and directed by Ngozi Anyanwu (Good Grief), in a co-production with Two River Theater.
Punch, which received five stars from WhatsOnStage for both its world premiere run at the Nottingham Playhouse in May 2024 and its current transfer to the Young Vic in London, is a drama based on the true-life book “Right from Wrong” by Jacob Dunne (who also serves as a production consultant). It tells the true-life account of how Dunne threw a single punch that rocked his world, with fatal consequences leading to his imprisonment.
Exploring “themes of forgiveness, toxic masculinity, class, and the education system“, we witness Jacob tearing like a warrior through Nottingham in a whirlwind of drugs, girls, and bar fights, until the moment when he makes a fatal, powerful mistake that lands him in prison. “But as he struggles to accept the consequences of his actions and build a new life, he finds an unusual source of salvation: the parents of the boy he killed.”
Based on Graham’s remarkable true story, PUNCH is his “most moving work yet” so says The Times of London, and with the Broadway production being helmed by original director Adam Penford (with dates, casting, and design team to be announced), the transfer will surely be an exciting addition to the New York theatre scene. The ongoing Young Vic production features David Shields as Jacob, Julie Hesmondhaigh as Joan, Tony Hirst as David, Alec Boden, Shalisha James-Davis, and Emma Pallant, with a creative team comprising Anna Fleischle (sets and costumes), Robbie Butler (lighting), Alexandra Faye Braithwaite, Leanne Pinder (movement direction), Lynne Page (movement consultation), and Kev McCurdy (fight direction).
(© Marc Brenner)
MTC’s season will also include The Monsters, a new play about mixed martial arts written and directed by Ngozi Anyanwu. Co-produced with Two River Theater, the play will run at New York City Center in winter 2026.
“For a long time, LIL has been obsessed with fighting, and one fighter in particular: her older brother BIG, an aging but successful figure in the local Mixed Martial Arts circuit. But she’s been doing it all from afar… until one day when she decides to show up on his doorstep.” Written and directed by Ngozi Anyanwu, this world premiere is a sibling love story about “reunions, resentment, reconnection, and wrestling with demons”, and will be a welcome addition to the off-Broadway season of 2025-26. Frontmezzjunkies can not wait for it all.
