Though the summer theater thrills wind down this month, August brings a special treat for Houston performing arts lovers: Houston Theater Week (August 18-24) and its many buy one, get one discounts. To celebrate, we thought a fall theater preview in order. Theater companies across the city begin their 2025-2025 seasons in the next few months with some of the biggest shows of the year.
We’re marking our calendars (especially September 19) for the opening shows and dates for each company. So grab those discounted tickets for a fall filled with blockbuster musicals, drama, comedy and maybe even a few world premieres.
Before diving in to what's to come, here's one late addition to last month's column that covered shows debuting in July and August. Night Court, Houston's all-lawyer theater company, will present a musical comedy titled Law’s Anatomy on August 20. It takes audiences along on law rounds during a wacky day in the life of Houston’s medical and legal communities.
Houston Ballet opens with Onegin (September 5)
Ballet gets dramatic with the return of John Cranko’s Onegin. This poignant storybook ballet weaves a tale of unrequited love set to Tchaikovsky’s stirring music, as the worldly aristocrat Onegin must face the life changing consequences when he rejects a young woman’s love. Only a few weeks later on September 18, HB rocks out for the mixed rep Rock, Roll, & Tutus, featuring two contemporary audience favorites, Illuminate by Houston Ballet Soloist Jacquelyn Long and Christopher Bruce’s Rolling Stones inspired Rooster. Plus the company unleashes co-artistic director Stanton Welch’s latest world premiere Vi et animo.
Main Street Theater opens with Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp through the Cotton Patch (September 13)
While many performance art lovers likely remember the late, great Ossie Davis’s decades long theater and movie career, Davis was also an acclaimed director and writer. His hilarious satire Purlie Victorious debuted on Broadway in 1961, with Davis starring as Purlie, a traveling preacher who returns to his small Georgia town hoping to save the community’s church, and emancipate the cotton pickers who work on oppressive Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee’s plantation. The show was later turned into a Tony nominated musical and just two years ago, the Broadway revival of the play won acclaim from critics and audiences alike.
After a break last year, MST goes back to spending the holidays in Regency England with Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon’s plays about the further adventures of Jane Austen’s Bennet sisters. Georgiana and Kitty: Christmas at Pemberley makes a lovely and spirited end to the trilogy, as it puts the focus on the youngest Bennet, Kitty and Mr. Darcy’s sister, Georgiana.
Broadway at the Hobby Center opens with Kimberly Akimbo (September 16)
The big Broadway season begins with this 2023 best musical Tony winner about a teen struggling with both ordinary high school drama, like fitting in at a new school, and a rare genetic disorder that causes her to appear much older than she is. The bittersweet comedy chronicles Kimberly’s crazy life as she navigates her family dysfunction, unrequited love, clueless friends, and possible felony charges.
In November, season subscribers might just want to book a staycation downtown as both the big Neil Diamond bio musical A Beautiful Noise and the 2024 best musical Tony winner, The Outsiders dance into town with only a week between them.
4th Wall Theatre opens with Eureka Day (September 19)
For its big 15th season, 4th Wall offers their own production of this recent Broadway hit that couldn’t be more timely.When a mumps outbreak hits a progressive private school in California, parents must navigate personal freedoms, public health, and the chaos of online discourse.
While not necessarily a holiday show, 4th Wall gifts Thornton Wilder’s classic Our Town to audience in November for contemplative reminder of the quiet beauty of every life.
Alley Theatre opens with The Da Vinci Code (September 19)
The Alley unlocks one of the big blockbuster shows of the fall season with this play adapted from the Dan Brown bestseller, which was of course a mega-hit Tom Hanks film. Only a few theaters in the U.S. have produced this show, though the thrilling drama became a hit in the UK before the pandemic.
Symbologist Robert Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu race to solve a deadly puzzle that could change history. Following the clues hidden in ancient symbols and imagery, they uncover secrets that lead them on a dangerous quest across Europe. Alley artistic director Rob Melrose will direct, and it looks the large cast and design team will be pushing the Alley stage beyond its limits for this globe trotting mystery.
Then, just in time for the most haunted time of the year, the Alley presents the first of two world premieres in their 25-26 season with The Body Snatcher. Inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s Victorian Gothic classic, the bodies stack up in this twisted tale. A father's devotion for his ailing daughter and her growing affection for his medical assistant create a horrific ethical dilemma as they push medical boundaries.
Ensemble Theatre opens with Akeelah and the Bee (September 19)
Ensemble begins its momentous 49th season with this heart warming play based on the 2006 Keke Palmer film. Growing up in South Central, Los Angeles, young, and talented Akeelah Anderson won’t let personal challenges, the pressures of her tough neighborhood, and societal obstacles stop her from competing in the national spelling bee.
For the holidays, Ensemble hops the train, the Soul Train that is, for the musical Take the Soul Train to Christmas, chronicling the African American celebration of Christmas.
Stages opens with The Lehman Trilogy (September 19)
This Tony Award winner for best play makes its Houston debut on Stages’ intimate Sterling Stage as three actors play multiple generations of the Lehman family. The show chronicles Hayum Lehmann arrival in mid-19th century New York from Bavaria to make his way in a new world. After changing his name to Henry Lehman, he and his brothers start a small fabric business that evolves over generations to become one of the most powerful finance firms in the world until the market crash in 2008. The play tells a truly American story in all its complexities.
In October, another distinctive portrait of a family over decades is revealed in Mud Row, as a one house in West Chester, Pennsylvania becomes the setting for two generations of sisters who must navigate challenges of sibling relationships, class, race, and love.
A.D. Players opens with Freud’s Last Session (October 1)
Calling their 25-26 season one of exploration, the company begins that journey into the mind and spirituality with this “what if” play. What if on the eve of World War II the aging but world renowned psychiatrist and noted atheist, Sigmund Freud, met the young, up-and-coming author and theologian C.S. Lewis? Sit in on this extraordinary meeting of the minds.
Keeping with the magical, spiritual worlds of C.S. Lewis, the company brings his most cherished novel, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to the stage for the holidays with the big musical Narnia.
Theatre Under the Stars opens with The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (October 21)
Spelling bees become something of a trend this fall, as TUTS opens with this Tony winning musical. Artistic director Dan Knechtges choreographed the original Broadway production of this charming comedy about the cutthroat world of middle school spelling bees so we can’t wait to see Knechtges’s full directorial and choreographic vision in this new production. The show also offers the audience the chance to get in on the spelling action, so get those dictionaries ready.
For the holidays, TUTS goes traditional with the classic Irving Berlin’s White Christmas. Two tapping army buddies, Bob and Phil, turned song-and-dance sensations, team up with a pair of talented sisters to save a snow-dusted Vermont inn. We wouldn’t be surprise if that “snow” falls upon audiences with this family favorite.
Houston Grand Opera opens with Porgy and Bess (October 24)
HGO is calling their 25-26 lineup a season of “grand dreams” and that’s certainly the case with their opener, George and Ira Gershwin’s grand and great American opera. Set in the Jim Crow era and the fictional Charleston slum of Catfish Row, Porgy, a disabled beggar, and Bess, a woman struggling with addiction, fall in love. Though it originally debuted on Broadway in the 30s, HGO’s production 50 years ago is said to have renewed Porgy’s popularity in opera houses around the world. That 1976 production went on to Broadway and earned HGO both a Tony and a Grammy. In honor of the 50 year anniversary, HGO presents this acclaimed production from Washington National Opera directed by frequent friend of the company Francesca Zambello.
The following week, HGO presents for the first time Puccini’s masterful trio of one-act operas Il trittico. Taken together, these three operas will take audiences from the depths of tragedy to the heights of love to sublime comedy.
Rec Room ends their season with Angel in American (November 8)
One of the smallest theater spaces in town has always done things a little bit differently, like organizing their seasons by the calendar year. They wrap up their 2025 season with what might be the most ambitious production of the fall, Tony Kushner’s masterpiece of late 20th century American theater Angels in America. Rec Room will produce both part one, Millennium Approaches and two, Perestroika, on alternating evenings in repertory. Winning pretty much every award possible, including a Pulitzer and multiple Tonys, Angels depicts the AIDS crisis while also holding up a kind of celestial mirror to America at the end of the 20th century.
A few of our mid-sized and smaller companies only offer one show the last half of the year, but we know from experience to never miss those fall gems. Mildred’s Umbrella continues its partnership with the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center for the timely The Last Yiddish Speaker. Dirt Dogs returns to one of their favorite playwrights, Tracy Letts, with The Minutes, a political satire set during a small town city council meeting. And Classical Theatre Company goes about as classical as theater can get with an original new vision of the Sophocles tragedy Electra.
