Seasons don’t have themes. Scores of shows will open this fall from Broadway to Off-Off, but no shadowy organization meets to decree a season message. Even so, it was hard to ignore a certain XX-shaped pattern emerging: women and power. More than half of the shows in our fall preview center around women’s issues (reproductive rights, consent, motherhood) or showcase a powerful female lead (Norma Desmond, Ayn Rand, Mama Rose). It can’t possibly have anything to do with a certain November election, could it? Regardless, women are center stage. (So are avant-garde icons: Richard Foreman, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Builders Association, Elevator Repair Service.) Check out the list and get tickets before the show sells out. Oh, and vote.

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Jack Tucker: Comedy Standup Hour at the Connelly Theatre (September 3–13)

If you attend stand-up comedy, you’ve probably seen people bomb. Also, you’ve seen them kill. Jack Tucker, the flop-sweat-spraying alter ego of Zack Zucker, does both. In this superb collision of stand-up and clowning, Tucker is a deliberately pathetic species of male comedian: trying to tread the line between edgy and woke—and stumbling all over it. The fun is watching Tucker spiral into desperate failure amid incredibly dense and funny sound effects (air horns, gunshots, song samples). Every punch line is aimed squarely at his own face.

McNeal at the Vivian Beaumont Theater (September 5–November 24)

MCU MVP Robert Downey, Jr. makes his Broadway debut in the new tech drama by Ayad Akhtar (Disgraced). No stranger to playing cocky, smart, yet flawed men, Downey is Jacob McNeal, a feisty, macho, old-guard novelist (think Philip Roth) who develops an obsession with Artificial Intelligence. Is the literary lion prowling for fresh meat online? We’ll see when the Lincoln Center Theater production, directed by Bartlett Sher, opens.

The Ask at the Wild Project (September 6–28)

Savvy and twisty playwright Matthew Freeman explores the complex politics of giving—like donating wealth to nonprofit organizations—in this two-hander starring stage vet Betsy Aidem (Prayer for the French Republic) and Colleen Litchfield (Leopoldstadt). Aidem is a wealthy Upper West Sider who locks horns with a Gen Z fundraiser........

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