As this summer’s Odyssey demonstrates, audiences seem ready for new versions of the classics. Houston theater and performing arts companies are giving an ovation to this trend as they begin their daring and dramatic fall seasons. Major award winners, literary masterpieces, and contemporary classics will ignite Houston stages this month from Romeo and Juliet to The Sound of Music to Manon. Houstonians looking for something more recent and edgy will want to see 21st century Pulitzer and Tony winners, plus a cool comedy or two.
Photo by Jeremy Daniel
Broadway at the Hobby Center presents The Sound of Music
Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties from Mildred’s Umbrella (September 3-19)
Five women with little in common but their first name, Betty, meet in this contemporary mad comedy from Jen Silverman. And as the Houston theater that focuses on plays about and by women, no company is better to bring the five Betties to life than Mildred’s Umbrella.
From an affluent New York society woman to a would be actress to the owner of a boxing gym, these five Betties find connection and an outlet for their collective rage by forming a theater collective and staging “Pyramus and Thisbe,” the mini-farce within Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Yes, this is a play about the making of a play within a play, as Silverman creates comedy by shattering the roles women adhere to.
Pecos Bill from Houston Ballet (September 11-20)
Houston Ballet leaps into a new season with three works that illustrate the depth and breadth of the company’s skills. Have some down-home fun with Stanton Welch’s rollicking ballet depicting the adventures of the mythic cowboy, Pecos Bill. The company will also show off its classical expertise with George Balanchine’s elegant and dynamic Symphonie Concertante. For a debut treat, HB will perform celebrated choreographer Lar Lubovitch’s Meadow. While this will be the first time the company dances a Lubovitch piece, HB co-artistic director Julie Kent was in the original cast for its world premiere by the American Ballet.
Proof from 4th Wall Theatre (September 11-October 3)
The first of two Tony and Pulitzer double winners on this month's must-see list, Proof was a Broadway hit then film in the early 2000s and since has become a emotional showcase for regional actors around the country. Twenty-five years after its debut, this complex story of family, trust, grief, and genius still resonates. As the play unfolds, the audience meets Catherine, who has given up years of her life to take care of her brilliant mathematician father as he wrestles with mental illness. After his death, Catherine is adrift in the world. Can she find the courage to prove her mental stability to her doubtful sister and her own math genius to one of her father’s former students?
Cold War Choir Practice at Main Street Theater (September 12-October 11)
Perhaps this month's most undefinable show, this comedy, with choral music interludes, earned critical acclaim when it debuted off Broadway earlier this year. The play follows the adventures of 10-year-old Meeks, who is not exactly an average girl growing up in the late 80s. Her father is a former Black Panther who now owns a roller rink and her uncle a prominent security advisor in the Reagan administration, with a mysteriously ill, white wife who also might be a cult member.
With Christmas around the corner, Meeks keeps busy with choir practice and building a bomb shelter in her basement. But with her uncle’s unexpected visit, long-simmering tensions within the family begin to boil and national secrets are in jeopardy, as the world prepares for the disarmament summit between Reagan and Gorbachev.
The Music Man presented by Theatre Under the Stars (September 15-27)
Musical lovers just can’t say no to that conman with a heart of gold, Harold Hill, a.k.a the Music Man. Since it first debuted in the 1950s, the feel-good musical seems to get a Broadway revival or tour with regularity. Now, Theatre Under the Stars opens its 2026-27 season by presenting the latest national touring production of the comedy about charming Harold who gets conned himself by small town sincerity and the love of a good librarian. With big dance numbers and songs like "(Ya Got) Trouble,” "Seventy-Six Trombones,” and "Till There Was You,” the show remains one of the great American musicals.
Amadeus at Rec Room (September 17-October 10)
After a several months hiatus as it moves from a calendar year season to a fall/spring one, Rec Room is back and celebrating its 10th anniversary with a show that hasn't been performed locally in quite a while. The now classic 20th century play is about the (mostly one-sided) rivalry between composers Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; it explores themes of creation, jealousy, and the nature of genius.
As one of Houston’s most intimate spaces, Rec Room has managed to produce epic productions on its small stage thanks to the creative team’s ability to ignite its audiences’ imaginations. Anticipate the same kind of theatrical magic for Amadeus, which the company describes as a “theatrical séance where memory, ritual, and myth converge.”
Rhinoceros from Catastrophic Theatre (September 18-October 10)
The blasts from the past continue as Houston’s home for avant garde theater, Catastrophic, revives its hit production of Eugene Ionesco’s epic absurdest play, Rhinoceros. Several of the cast members and creative artists from its last staging in 2017 will return to this story about a small town whose citizens begin to transform one-by-one into destructive rhinoceros until almost no humans are left. Written in the late 1950s, Rhinoceros has some of the markings of a horror film of the time period. Using absurdist imagery, it warns how easily fascism and authoritarianism can rise when people feel the call of the herd. Yet the play still has moments of outrageous dark comedy.
Purpose at Ensemble Theatre (September 18-October 11)
The oldest and largest professional African American theatre in the Southwest celebrates its 50th season with one of the most award-winning plays of the last few years. Earning both the Best Play Tony and Pulitzer Prize, Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins’s drama depicts a political prominent family as it gathers together for something of a celebration, homecoming, and bitter going away dinner. The Jasper patriarch was a leader in the Civil Rights movement, but the two adult sons struggle to live up to their father’s legacy, while their mother attempts to keep the family together and family secrets hidden. Meanwhile, an uninvited guest gives the proceedings an outsider's perspective.
Come From Away at Stages (September 18-October 18)
The true story of a small town in Newfoundland that rallied together to host thousands of stranded international travelers when planes were grounded world wide on September 11, 2001 made for one of the most poignant and hopeful musicals in decades. It’s been a few years since Come From Away toured nationally, so Houstonians should be looking forward to seeing Stages begin its season with this homegrown production filled with some of the company's best actors.
While the show has been a hit all over the world that speaks to human connection and kindness even during the greatest of tragedies, it also has some deep Texas roots. Among the many stories the musical sings, one of otheur favorites is the glimpse into the extraordinary life of Texan Beverley Bass, the first female captain at American Airlines.
Manon from Houston Ballet (September 24-October 4)
For its second production of the month, Houston Ballet pirouettes from one act dances to Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s lush, romantic tragedy, Manon. With music by French composer Jules Massenethe, the ballet journeys from glamorous parties in Paris to the bayous of Louisiana to recount the doomed love story between the irresistibly beautiful femme fatale, Manon, and impoverished student, Des Grieux.
Romeo and Juliet at Alley Theatre (September 25-October 11)
There might not be a dry eye in the Theater District as the Alley also opens its fall season with a romantic tragedy that literally originated the term "star-crossed lovers." The entire Alley resident acting company will take roles in Shakespeare’s wrenching tale of young lovers crushed between their warring families.
The production also marks the debut of a new initiative between the Alley and the University of Houston that expands the existing MFA in Acting program at the University of Houston by placing third-year acting students in residence at the Alley, working directly with the full-time acting company. For Romeo and Juliet, several of those students will have roles in the ensemble and as understudies.
The Sound of Music presented by Broadway at the Hobby Center (September 29-October 4)
Houston's month of classics ends with arguably the most beloved musical of all time, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music. This new touring production that celebrates the musical’s 65th anniversary features new direction from three-time Tony Award winner Jack O’Brien (Hairspray).
Devout Music fans shouldn’t worry, because, while a new generation of actors take on the roles of Maria, Captain von Trapp, and that gaggle of singing von Trapp kids, the story of love, family, and bravery in the face of evil remains the same. Prepare to hum along (quietly) to classics such as “Climb Every Mountain,” “Do-Re-Mi,” “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” and, of course, “The Sound of Music.”
