On Theater: 10 great Off-Broadway tickets

With all the noise around a certain theatrical spider and all the big names lining up for Broadway this spring, it would be seriously wrong to overlook Off-Broadway's upcoming enticements.

The winter-spring season already began wonderfully last Thursday at Lincoln Center Theater's Off-Broadway venue, the Mitzi E. Newhouse, with the premiere of Jon Robin Baitz's crackling and thoughtful "Other Desert Cities." Here are 10 more of the many I'm anticipating, in more-or-less chronological order.

1. GRUESOME PLAYGROUND INJURIES, Second Stage Theatre, 307 W. 43rd St., in previews, opens Jan. 31. Playwright Rajiv Joseph, who has his first play on Broadway open in March with Robin Williams in the 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist, "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo," gets an earlier showcase with this dark romance that stars Jennifer Carpenter (the foster sister in "Dexter") and Pablo Schreiber (Tony nominee for "Awake and Sing!" and, incidentally, gifted half brother of Liev). Whatever else, Joseph clearly knows a good title when he writes it.

2. THE WHIPPING MAN, Manhattan Theatre Club, 131 W. 55th St., in previews, opens Feb. 1. Andre Braugher hasn't been on a New York stage since 1996, when he played Henry V in Central Park. But we've been admiring him a lot recently, both as Dr. House's psychiatrist and as the troubled heir to a car dealership in TNT's "Men of a Certain Age." In Matthew Lopez's new drama, he plays a former slave raised as a Jew by a Jewish slave owner and Confederate soldier. Doug Hughes, who staged "Doubt" at this theater, directs.

3. THREE SISTERS, Classic Stage Company, 136 E. 13th St., in previews, opens Feb. 3. Two years ago, Maggie Gyllenhaal played a languorous, dangerously bored Yelena in Austin Pendleton's intimate production of "Uncle Vanya." Director and star return to the same tiny theater, as does Peter Sarsgaard, in another of Chekhov's humanist masterworks.

4. COMPULSION, Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Ave., previews Feb. 1, opens Feb. 17. Mandy Patinkin is back where he belongs, onstage in a big, juicy role. In Rinne Groff's drama, the actor plays the man who, in 1951, fought to get Anne Frank's diary published and turned into a play. Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public, directs.

5. PETER AND THE STARCATCHER, New York Theatre Workshop, 79 E. Fourth St., previews Feb. 18, opens March 9. If "Wicked" can be a stage prequel to "The Wizard of Oz," isn't there also room for theater imaginings about how Peter Pan became the boy who would not grow up? Adapted from the bestselling children's books by Ridley Pearson and humorist Dave Barry, the play, directed by Roger Rees and Alex Timbers ("Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson") will ponder that question with 12 actors playing 50 characters.

6. THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, Theatre for a New Audience, 3 Spruce St., previews Feb. 27, opens March 13. Shylock smackdown, anyone? Shakespeare's vengeful merchant would surely have a word for the kind of guts needed to follow Al Pacino's shattering portrayal with one by F. Murray Abraham. The impressive production, a hit in 2006, returns en route to a cross-country tour. (Also of major interest, John Douglas Thompson, who gave a star-making performance of "Othello" with this company two years ago, takes on "Macbeth.") Previews March 12, opens March 20.

7. THE OTHER PLACE, MCC Theater at the Lucille Lortel, 121 Christopher St., previews March 10, opens March 28. Laurie Metcalf, astonishing last year in both Sam Shepard's "A Lie of the Mind" and the short-lived "Brighton Beach Memoirs," plays an Alzheimer's expert whose potential treatment breakthrough tangles her in a hallucinatory mystery. Joe Mantello, the "Wicked" director who just staged the remarkable "Other Desert Cities," directs this new play by Sharr White.

8. THE INTELLIGENT HOMOSEXUAL'S GUIDE TO CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM WITH A KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES, Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St., previews March 22, opens May 5. Tony Kushner's first big play since "Angels in America," is a co-production as part of the Signature Theatre's all-Kushner season. Directed by Michael Greif, who also staged the current "Angels" revival, the hotly anticipated new work involves a retired Brooklyn longshoreman's shocking family revelations. Stephen Spinella, Prior Walter in the original "Angels," is part of the fascinating cast.

9. CARL'S SISTER, Manhattan Theatre Club, 131 W. 55th St., in previews May 10, opening to be announced. Alfred Uhry, whose "Driving Miss Daisy" is in splendid form on Broadway with Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones, explores another thorny relationship in this adaptation of "Apples and Oranges," a memoir by Marie Brenner. Lynne Meadow, MTC founder and director, stages the drama about a New York liberal journalist who tries to help her dying brother, a conservative apple grower in Washington state, who wants no part of her.

10. BY THE WAY, MEET VERA STARK, Second Stage Theatre, 307 W. 43rd St., April date to be announced. Lynn Nottage, whose devastating 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning "Ruined" dealt with sexual atrocities in the Congo, carries us someplace completely different in this drama about 70 years in the lives of a headstrong African-American maid with acting ambitions and an aging white Hollywood star. Both women land roles in the same Southern epic, with historic repercussions.