“Sweeney Todd” gets the Signature Theatre treatment this month.

/ Signature Theatre

May appears to be a pretty musical month for D.C. theater, which means everything from tours of recent Broadway success stories, to new musicals about Audrey Hepburn, to Sondheim revivals, to ambitious local productions. Here’s what’s on the docket, both with singing and otherwise.

SPEAKING OF THOSE AMBITIOUS LOCAL PRODUCTIONS: NextStop Theatre Company in Herndon performs one of mega-composer Lin-Manuel Miranda’s early award-winners, In the Heights. (May 12-June 11)

HOLLYWOOD VERSUS REALITY: Arena Stage’s Exclusion focuses on a historian who becomes quickly dispirited when her book gets optioned for television. (May 5-June 25)

BACK IN TOWN: Good Bones is a new work from Pulitzer winner James Ijames specially commissioned by Studio Theatre. It’s about an urban planner returning to her old neighborhood, and takes a heavy look at gentrification and fraught homecomings. (May 10-June 11)

DON’T MESS WITH MOM: A world premiere at Woolly, Incendiary takes inspiration from comic books and video games to tell the story of a woman wholly committed to get her son off death row. (May 29-June 25)

THEY WENT TO THEIR MAKER IMPECCABLY SHAVED: Signature wraps an (even more than usual) Sondheim-tastic season with a production of Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet…Street. (May 16-July 9)

Left to right, Joel Ashur, Johnny Ramey, Cara Ricketts, and Deidre Staples star in “Good Bones” at Studio Theatre. Studio Theatre

Also opening this month:

  • The Humours of Bandon from Solas Nua is all about an Irish dancing champion. (May 31-June 11)
  • That Audrey Hepburn musical we were talking about is being performed at Creative Cauldron, aptly named Audrey The New Musical. (May 11-June 4)
  • Taffety Punk puts on a collaborative dance work called The Inherent Echo at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop; each of three shows will begin with an original dance work from D.C.-area performers. (May 4-6 – sold out but they are offering standby)
  • What happens when the Holocaust Museum gets ahold of some disturbing Nazi-era photos? Find out in Here There Are Blueberries at Shakespeare Theatre Company. (May 7-May 28)
  • Say his name: Beetlejuice The Musical makes an appearance at the National. (May 16-28)
  • Two women have a tough conversation about George Floyd’s murder in Essential Theater’s Dissonance. (May 30-June 11)
  • Toni Morrison’s tragic The Bluest Eye gets a staging from Theater Alliance. (May 31-June 25)
  • Monty Python fans, take note: Spamalot is coming to the Kennedy Center. (May 12-21)
  • Pretty much what it sounds like: Scena’s Three By Yeats collects together three short plays by the poet. (May 11-June 4)
  • The climate changed-focused Hurricane Diane is being performed by Avant Bard. (May 18-June 10)
  • Murdered Men Do Drip and Bleed, looking at the consequences of the alt-right movement, is getting workshopped in a collaboration between Solas Nua and Mosaic. (May 5-7)
Kelli Blackwell as Mahalia Jackson, Carrie Compere as Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Felicia Boswell as Marie Knight in the musical “SHOUT SISTER SHOUT!” at Ford’s Theatre. André Chung / Ford's Theatre

Still playing:

Mojada at 1st Stage and On the Far End at Round House close May 7; May 13 weekend marks the end for ‘Night Mother at Anacostia Playhouse, La Valentina at GALA, and Falsettos at Rep Stage; you’ve until May 21 to catch The World Goes Round at Olney, The Body of the Woman as Battlefield from Expats, and Puppet Co.’s Jack and the Beanstalk; Constellation’s School of Lies wraps on May 28; you’ve got until June to catch Passing Strange at Signature, Shout Sister Shout at Ford’s, Grease at Toby’s, and Nu Sass’s Finding Neil Patrick Harris (about a quest to fulfill a nail salon customer’s dying wish).

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