Snow be gone! It’s time for the spring air to give us energy and hope as we head out to a new slate of shows around town. As might be expected, the culture is steeped with foreboding, offering a reflection of the national mood: a second installment of the TV series “Beef,” which takes personal grievance to new heights; Kaija Saariaho’s opera “Innocence,” at the Met, about the lingering trauma of a school shooting; the Whitney Biennial, a survey of artists responding to the American experiment. But there is also much beauty and joy to behold: Dance Theatre of Harlem’s “Firebird,” set in a Caribbean rain forest; the return of Miranda Priestly, Andy Sachs, and Emily, in “The Devil Wears Prada 2”; “Cats: the Jellicle Ball” and “Schmigadoon!” strutting their jubilance on Broadway; Waxahatchee, Dry Cleaning, Bruce Springsteen, all rolling through the city. Let the renewal begin.—Shauna Lyon

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Television

Illustrations by David Huang

In TV as in life, there are the haves and the have-nots. The much anticipated second season of Netflix’s “Beef” (April 16), an anthology series about interpersonal feuds that spin out of control, takes place at a country club, where the general manager (Oscar Isaac) and his wife (Carey Mulligan) get caught up in a conflict with his employees (Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny). They’re matched in lavish environs by Apple TV’s “Imperfect Women” (March 18), in which a trio of friends (Kerry Washington, Elisabeth Moss, and Kate Mara) in fancy clothes and fancier houses attempt to conjure “Big Little Lies.”

It’s unclear whether tech moguls are still satirizable, but AMC’s “The Audacity” (April 12) will test the waters with a Silicon Valley drama starring Billy Magnusson and Zach Galifianakis. Further north, Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell join the Taylor Sheridan-verse as New York transplants who settle in scenic Montana after a family tragedy, in “The Madison” (March 14), on Paramount+.

Pfeiffer also stars in Apple TV’s more downscale “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” (April 15), as the mother of a college student (Elle Fanning) who gets pregnant and becomes a success on OnlyFans, gleaning advice from her estranged wrestler father (Nick Offerman). Content creation is also seen as a way out on the third season of “Euphoria” (April 12), which returns to HBO after a four-year hiatus, and follows the teens-gone-wild into their twenties. Zendaya’s Rue is still grappling with the ramifications of her opioid addiction, while Sydney Sweeney’s once sweet Cassie channels her suburban frustrations into courting attention online. A word that Sweeney used to describe the season, “unhinged,” might likewise apply to Prime Video’s “Bait” (March 25), a hard-to-categorize dramedy about a struggling actor (Riz Ahmed) whose life goes haywire after it’s publicized that he’s a finalist to play the next James Bond. Ahmed, who created the show, enmeshes his character in a Pakistani British context—and a Bondian conspiracy.

Thankfully, not everything’s feast or famine. Perfectly normal people with totally real jobs populate “Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat” (March 20), the second iteration of Prime Video’s acclaimed experimental show, in which an ordinary person has no idea that what he’s experiencing is an elaborate fake scenario with professional actors. Also on the platform, in “Spider-Noir” (May 27, in optional color or black-and-white), Nicolas Cage, now in live action, reprises his “Into the Spider-Verse” character—an over-the-hill nineteen-thirties gumshoe fighting his demons.

Wedding jitters get a horror twist in Netflix’s “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen” (March 26), in which Adam DiMarco and Camila Morrone play a couple at the center of a doomed wedding. But heterosexuality gets scarier yet for the characters in “The Testaments” (April 8), Hulu’s sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale.”—Inkoo Kang

Movies

Fashion is drama in some of the most prominent new releases, as in “Marc by Sofia” (March 20), a documentary by Sofia Coppola about Marc Jacobs, anchored by the creation and launch of his Spring 2024 collection. “The Devil Wears Prada 2” (May 1) boasts many of the same actors from the first installment—including Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci—along with new ones, such as Simone Ashley, in a comedy about a fashion magazine’s efforts to cope with new media. Boots Riley’s “I Love Boosters” (May 22) is a comedy, starring Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Poppy Liu, Eiza González, and LaKeith Stanfield, about a group of shoplifters who organize against an evil designer (Demi Moore).

The season spotlights artists of many sorts, including those who work in movies. The Swedish director Tarik Saleh’s drama “Eagles of the Republic” (April 17) stars Fares Fares as a movie star who is ordered to act in a bio-pic of Egypt’s real-life President, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. In the satire “Yes” (March 27), by the Israeli director Nadav Lapid, a Tel Aviv musician and composer (Ariel Bronz) is commissioned to write an anthem in praise of Israel’s destruction of Gaza. Steven Soderbergh’s “The Christophers” (April 10) stars Ian McKellen as a once acclaimed artist whose children (Jessica Gunning and James Corden) secretly hire an art restorer (Michaela Coel) to complete some of his unfinished paintings. Coel also stars in David Lowery’s “Mother Mary” (April 17) as a fashion designer who’s summoned by a fading pop star (Anne Hathaway) to create costumes for her comeback.

Romance and its calamities are perennial spectacles, including in “The Drama” (April 3), featuring Robert Pattinson and Zendaya as a couple whose engagement is menaced by a disturbing secret. Charli XCX stars in Pete Ohs’s melodrama “Erupcja” (April 17), as a British woman whose romantic getaway in Warsaw with her partner (Will Madden) is disrupted by her reunion with a friend (Lena Góra). “Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo)” (April 17), the first feature by Joel Alfonso Vargas, is centered on a young Dominican American couple in the Bronx (Juan Collado and Destiny Checo) whose relationship changes as they prepare to have a child.

The fraught bonds of parents and children get a varied workout. Julia Ducournau’s “Alpha” (March 27) is a body-horror drama about a teen-age girl (Mélissa Boros) who, as a result of a tattoo, may have contracted a mysterious disease that her mother (Golshifteh Farahani), a doctor, treats. “Is God Is” (May 15), based on the play of the same name by the film’s director, Aleshea Harris, involves twin sisters, scarred in a fire, who are sent by their mother to seek revenge on their father, who started the fire. Kara Young, Mallori Johnson, and Janelle Monáe star. “Poetic License” (May 15), the first feature directed by Maude Apatow, stars her mother, Leslie Mann, as a woman who audits a poetry class at the local college and is courted by two young classmates (Cooper Hoffman and Andrew Barth Feldman).

The enduring power of history comes to the fore in Annemarie Jacir’s drama “Palestine 36” (March 20), which depicts residents of a Palestinian village who are rising up against British rule in 1936 amid the arrival of Jewish refugees from Europe; Hiam Abbass, Saleh Bakri, and Jeremy Irons star. “Two Prosecutors” (March 20), directed by Sergei Loznitsa, is set in the Soviet Union, in 1937, and dramatizes efforts to seek justice amid trumped-up charges and show trials. Andy Serkis directs an animated adaptation of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” (May 1), featuring the voices of Seth Rogen, Gaten Matarazzo, and Glenn Close, among many others.—Richard Brody

The Theatre

Matters of life and death weigh heavily on the theatre this spring. On Broadway, Daniel Radcliffe catalogues simple pleasures as an antidote to depression in Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe’s “Every Brilliant Thing” (Hudson; in previews); Stephen Adly Guirgis’s “Dog Day Afternoon,” based on a true story from 1972, and a 1975 movie, about a bank robbery that balloons into a hostage situation, stars Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, both of “The Bear” (August Wilson; begins previews March 10). The comedy powerhouse Nathan Lane waxes tragic for Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” (Winter Garden; March 6), opposite Laurie Metcalf; Adrien Brody and Tessa Thompson star in “The Fear of 13,” based on a documentary about a death-row prisoner released after twenty-two years (James Earl Jones; March 19). Off Broadway, wills and fates so contrary run for the title characters in two Shakespearean tragedies: “Titus Andronicus,” featuring the stately Patrick Page (Pershing Square Signature Center; March 17), and “Hamlet” (BAM; April 19), starring the high-octane Hiran Abeysekera.

Shuffling off this mortal coil need not occasion grief, however. The drag-ball revamping of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cats” sees voguing felines vie for entry to the beyond, under the supurrvision of doyen André De Shields (Broadhurst; March 18). In the spoof “Titaníque,” with Jim Parsons hopping aboard for its Broadway transfer, the dread iceberg portends nothing worse than a hundred minutes of unrelenting Céline Dion (St. James; March 26). The macabre is a matter of fun, not fright, in “The Rocky Horror Show” (Studio 54; March 26), with Luke Evans and Stephanie Hsu, and “The Lost Boys: A New Musical,” adapted from the 1987 teen-vampire movie, envisions eternal leather-clad sexiness (Palace; March 27).

Legacy is explored in Mark Rosenblatt’s “Giant” (Music Box; March 11), about the dark side of the beloved children’s writer Roald Dahl (John Lithgow), and in Jay Presson Allen’s 1989 one-man play “Tru” (House of the Redeemer; March 6), starring Jesse Tyler Ferguson as Truman Capote. David Auburn’s Pulitzer- and Tony-winning “Proof” (Booth; March 31) considers the impact of a deceased genius (Don Cheadle) on one of his daughters (Ayo Edebiri).

For anyone disinclined to contemplate mortality, there’s “Schmigadoon!,” an adaptation of the Apple TV series, about a stagnating couple who are trapped in the bighearted world of golden-age musicals (Nederlander; April 4). Romantic complications also quicken revivals of Gina Gionfriddo’s “Becky Shaw” (Hayes; March 18), about a blind date that spirals spectacularly, and Noël Coward’s “Fallen Angels,” in which the friendship of two women (Rose Byrne and Kelli O’Hara) is imperilled by the return of their ex-lover (Todd Haimes; March 27).

Other works center non-romantic relationships: “Beaches” (Majestic; March 27), a musicalization of the novel turned tearjerker film, considers lifelong friendship; “Girl, Interrupted”—another book-to-movie-to-musical, with a score by Aimee Mann—examines the bonds among women in a psychiatric ward (Public; May 13). “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” (Barrymore; March 30), August Wilson’s nineteen-tens installment of his “Century Cycle,” stars Cedric the Entertainer and Taraji P. Henson as the owners of a Pittsburgh boarding house; David Lindsay-Abaire’s satire “The Balusters” presents a neighborhood rocked by a proposal to put a stop sign on a picturesque block (Samuel J. Friedman; March 31). Braving the workplace are two alarmingly relevant revivals: “The Receptionist” (Second Stage; April 15), Adam Bock’s ink-black comedy about corporate culture, from 2007, and the New Group’s retooling of Elmer Rice’s 1923 drama “The Adding Machine,” in which an employee is replaced by technology (Theatre at St. Clement’s; March 24). Gulp.—Dan Stahl

Art

This spring is an exciting season for acolytes of contemporary art, because two of New York’s most important recurring survey shows will align, giving viewers a chance to engage with a broad swath of new work. First up, there’s the much discussed and often controversial Whitney Biennial (opening March 8), the museum’s survey of the state of contemporary American art—which, these days, the institution defines loosely. Among this year’s fifty-six artists and collectives, some are from Afghanistan, Chile, and other places that the curators identify as “marked by the reach of U.S. power.” The following month, MOMA PS1 opens “Greater New York 2026” (April 16), its quinquennial exhibition of emerging and mid-career artists working around the city. The fifty-three exhibitors include a collective of Asian and migrant massage-parlor workers (Red Canary Song) and a pair of Ecuadorian siblings who’ve been hand-painting signs for decades (the Cevallos brothers).

But the season’s most sprawling and heterogeneous exhibition might be at the New Museum, which has finally set a date for its reopening. On March 21, the institution inaugurates its newly expanded and renovated space with “New Humans: Memories of the Future,” which examines two centuries of our relationship with technology. The show casts an especially wide net: alongside recognized art-historical names (Max Ernst) and contemporary ones (Hito Steyerl), there are writers, scientists, and architects in the mix.

For those who prefer the classics, fear not. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Raphael: Sublime Poetry” (March 29) offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to go in-depth with the work of the Italian Renaissance master here in the U.S. Featuring loans from institutions across Europe, the exhibition gathers some two hundred of Raphael’s paintings, drawings, and tapestries, placing greatest hits alongside studies to illuminate his creative process. It’s worth braving the crowds for this one.

Meanwhile, the Museum of Modern Art pays tribute to a modern master with “Marcel Duchamp” (April 12). The retrospective paints a fuller picture of the man who famously turned a urinal into a sculpture and coined a whole new category, the readymade. Notably, the exhibition is organized with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where two of Duchamp’s most important art works are on permanent view; if you’re a completist, start planning your trip to Philly. (The retrospective will also travel there later this year.)

MOMA’s other notable spring show is less rigorous but a sure crowd-pleaser: “Frida and Diego: The Last Dream” (March 21). Organized in conjunction with a Metropolitan Opera production about the legendary artist couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, the MOMA exhibition features a mise-en-scène by the opera’s set and co-costume designer, Jon Bausor. If production stills are any indication, his backdrop will provide flair for what’s actually a small collection show.

Those intrigued by the MOMA/Met Opera crossover may be interested in the Met Museum’s annual Costume Institute exhibition. Simply titled “Costume Art” (May 10), this year’s show is organized around “thematic body types” and pairs garments with other objects from the museum’s collections in order to take a more expansive look at clothing. Most notably, it will mark the opening of a large, new, centrally located space devoted to the Costume Institute—named Condé M. Nast Galleries, after the original publisher of this magazine. Fashion fans may want to follow it up with a visit to the Brooklyn Museum, where the designer Iris van Herpen, known for 3-D-printed dresses, is getting a solo outing (May 16).—Jillian Steinhauer

Dance

Both of the new works that the Mark Morris Dance Group is bringing to the Brooklyn Academy of Music this season (March 26-29) touch upon man’s place in the universe. In “Via Dolorosa,” the religious references are overt; the pieces for solo harp (by Nico Muhly) to which it is set are inspired by meditations on the Stations of the Cross by the poet and Anglican priest Alice Goodman. The choreography is quiet, almost angelic. “Moon,” in contrast, is a lighthearted contemplation of our relationship to outer space, and the score is built from old popular songs about the lunar orb, interspersed with sounds from the Voyager Golden Record: “Friends from space, how are you all?” The desire to reach toward something beyond ourselves suffuses both pieces.

The great spiralling rotunda of the Guggenheim will be the setting for five early dances by Lucinda Childs, high priestess of minimalist dance, on March 14-15 (co-produced by “Works & Process” and the Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels Festival). The earliest, “Pastime,” from 1963, is Childs’s most coolly absurdist—a woman reclines in a stretchy bolt of cloth, as in a bathtub, or wears a fruit bowl on her head. The other dances involve patterns of walking that unspool in space and time like elegant mathematical equations.

For its centenary season, the Martha Graham Dance Company (New York City Center; April 8-12) is bringing back Graham’s 1936 piece “Chronicle,” a hymn to heroic womanhood created by Graham in response to the rise of Fascism in Europe. The following week at City Center (April 16-19), Dance Theatre of Harlem revives its “Firebird,” a landmark production from 1982, in which the pseudo-Russian fairy tale is transported to a fantastical Caribbean rain forest (as imagined by the Trinidadian-born artist Geoffrey Holder), with a powerful Black ballerina at the center, performed by Alexandra Hutchinson.

New York City Ballet is pulling out the stops for Tiler Peck’s second ballet for the company, which it unveils during its spring season (David H. Koch Theatre; April 21-May 31). No less than the violinist Hilary Hahn will perform the score, Édouard Lalo’s brilliant violin concerto “Symphonie Espagnole,” at the première, on May 7. Peck’s choreographic ambition—the piece is for thirty dancers—is not surprising given her own virtuosity and fine-tuned musicality as a dancer. The company also performs, for the first time, Christopher Wheeldon’s 2002 “Continuum,” a companion piece to his better-known “Polyphonia,” set to piano études by György Ligeti.—Marina Harss

Contemporary Music

The spring slate of concerts in contemporary music is defined by curation, highlighted by the long-running European festival C2C, which returns to New York for its second year with a caravan of beloved eccentrics: Arca, Los Thuthanaka, Nourished by Time, Aya, YHWH Nailgun, and many more (Knockdown Center; May 8).

The nonprofit cultural center Pioneer Works offers programming for nearly every niche. On March 19, the jazz saxophonist and composer Immanuel Wilkins brings his quartet for a celebration of a new album, “Live at the Village Vanguard Vol 1.” On March 24, the space brings together Maria Somerville and Joanne Robertson, impressionistic artists who broke out with mesmerizing records last year. That same week, the ever-evolving multi-disciplinarian Meshell Ndegeocello performs as part of Winter Jazzfest (March 29). On April 3, the dynamic instrumental-rock trio Dirty Three returns to the city for the first time since 2009. And on May 1, the organist and minimalist musician Kali Malone stages “Does Spring Hide Its Joy,” an immersive piece blending visuals with nonlinear composition.

Brooklyn Paramount’s lineup is equally diverse, if more centrist in its appeal. There’s the Swedish electro-pop star Zara Larsson (March 26-27) and the feverish K-pop group NMIXX (March 31); Lindsey Jordan’s lush crossover project Snail Mail (April 15); two of the preëminent forces in indie rock, the Katie Crutchfield vehicle Waxahatchee and the slacker messiah MJ Lenderman (April 19); and Dave, the decorated and ascendant king of British rap (April 30-May 1).

Elsewhere, there is no shortage of guitar-driven singer-songwriter music of all stripes. At Public Records, drift into the soft-spun acoustic folk of Annahstasia (April 1-4). Music Hall of Williamsburg gets possessed by the eerie, ethereal melodies of Skullcrusher (April 15). At Irving Plaza, join an emotional cross-examination of self with the droll, demure music of Eliza McLamb (April 24). Extending beyond that sphere, there’s multifaceted alt-rock (Hayley Williams, Hammerstein Ballroom; April 9-12), evocative drone metal (Sunn O))), Town Hall; April 12), and wry post-punk (Dry Cleaning, Brooklyn Steel; May 7), for those seeking something more propulsive.

The arenas open their doors to big personalities from across scenes and generations. First, at Madison Square Garden, on March 25-26, the charismatic Bronx rapper Cardi B commemorates a triumphant comeback, then, on April 26, the Mexican star Peso Pluma waves a flag for the continued evolution of his regional music, which blends corridos tumbados with Latin trap. At Barclays Center, Florence + the Machine gather participants to complete the spell-casting circle of their mystic and witchy art-pop (April 21-22, 24). And with stops at both venues, Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band seek to restore the soul of the heartland on their “Land of Hope and Dreams” tour (Madison Square Garden; May 11 and 16, and Barclays Center; May 14).—Sheldon Pearce

Classical Music

As we defrost from this Siberian winter, a lively spread of classical performances emerges. National Sawdust, ever the usher of the new, puts on the world première of “Division of Time,” a ten-part work for cello and piano by Eric Nathan, with accompanying visual delights by the Gandini Juggling ensemble (March 25). The vocal group Khorikos fills the Guggenheim’s acoustically resounding rotunda with folk songs, Renaissance motets, and selections from Thomas Adès and Arvo Pärt—a so-called Well-Being Concert (April 11).

Some events grapple with the two-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday of our discordant country. Carnegie Hall’s series “United in Sound: America at 250” includes the New York première of Ayanna Woods’s “Infinite Body” (March 24), composed for the fifty-one-person choir the Crossing, which reflects on how capitalism impacts our physical state. On April 9, “United in Sound” puts on Copland’s dreamy mainstay “Appalachian Spring,” as well as Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” and a world première by Gabriel Kahane, soloed by the clarinettist Anthony McGill. At Merkin Hall, Chanticleer rings in the semiquincentennial with a new work by Trevor Weston, which spotlights the legacy of African American spirituals. They’ll also throw in Randall Thompson’s “Alleluia,” and a little “Home” from “The Wiz” (April 21).

Speaking of America, BAM presents the New York première of “The Post Office,” an opera, by Laura Kaminsky (music) and Elaine Sexton (libretto), about a one-room post office. The main character? Benjamin Franklin (May 16-21). For something a bit more poignant, the Metropolitan Opera offers “Innocence,” the unsettling final opera by the late Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (April 6-29), which follows the aftermath of a school shooting, with a libretto by Sofi Oksanen and Aleksi Barrière. Heartbeat Opera, an indie operation that still packs a punch, premières its reimagining of Samuel Barber’s messy “Vanessa,” about the relationship between idealism and compromise (May 12-31). The music director, Jacob Ashworth, strips it down to five performers, plus a few chairs and some fog.

And then we have Gustavo Dudamel, in his last stretch as the New York Philharmonic’s music director designate before he can finally drop that pesky “designate” next season. This spring, he conducts Beethoven’s “Eroica” (March 12-17) and the world première of David Lang’s “the wealth of nations” (March 19-22). Also on the agenda are the eternal “Firebird” (April 30-May 2), Gershwin’s “Cuban Overture,” and Gabriela Ortiz’s “Antrópolis,” a celebration of club culture in Mexico City (May 6-8). The first section of “Antrópolis” is called “Los Infiernos”—let’s heat things up, shall we?—Jane Bua

P.S. Good stuff on the internet: