Thanksgiving on 52nd Street, Eva Noblezada Makes Her Off-Broadway Debut

Eva Noblezada, the two-time Tony nominee from Miss Saigon and Hadestown, will make her Off-Broadway debut in Lloyd Suh's The Heart Sellers at MCC Theater, with previews from January 8, 2027, Playbill reports.

West 52nd Street past Tenth Avenue is quiet in January. Inside the MCC building at number 511, it will be Thanksgiving, 1973. Two women who have just met are staring at a turkey that refuses to thaw.

What Is The Heart Sellers About?

The play follows Jane and Luna, two immigrant women who meet as strangers on Thanksgiving in 1973 and decide to spend the unfamiliar American holiday together, according to BroadwayWorld. There are laughs, there are dreams, and there is the frozen bird.

It is a two-hander. Noblezada shares the stage with Juyeon Song, who played in earlier productions at Boston's Huntington and the Guthrie in Minneapolis, Playbill notes, and who makes her own Off-Broadway debut here. Song is known to television audiences from Kim's Convenience, MCC's show page notes. May Adrales directs, with sets by Wilson Chin, costumes by Jennifer Moeller, lighting by Jiyoun Chang and sound by Fabian Obispo. The Telsey Office cast it.

Suh is a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Milwaukee Repertory Theater commissioned the play, and it premiered in Milwaukee in 2023 before productions in Washington, Cleveland and Virginia, among other cities. This is its New York premiere.

Inside the MCC building at number 511, it will be Thanksgiving, 1973.

Why Is This a Big Step for Noblezada?

Because she has never needed a small room before. Noblezada went from Kim in the West End's Miss Saigon in 2014 to the same role on Broadway in 2017, earning a Tony nomination at 21, according to her Wikipedia biography. She originated Eurydice in Hadestown in London and took it to Broadway in 2019 for a second nomination. The cast album won the Grammy.

She was born in San Diego in 1996 and grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she attended the Northwest School of the Arts until she was 17. That first Kim won her a WhatsOnStage Award in London.

Since then she has been Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby and Sally Bowles in Cabaret, both on Broadway, and her Sally won a Broadway.com Audience Choice Award for favorite replacement. In June she walked the Tribeca Festival carpet for the premiere of the filmed Hadestown, the night in the photograph above.

The Heart Sellers is a different proposition. No chorus, no Broadway house. Two actors, one holiday and a new play in an Off-Broadway room.

How Long Does It Run?

Not long. Here are the dates from BroadwayWorld, with Suite 646's arithmetic.

Previews start Friday, January 8. Opening night is Thursday, January 21. The limited run closes Sunday, February 14. By our count that is 38 days in all, 13 of them in previews and 24 after opening night. The play opens on its 14th day and closes on Valentine's Day.

Tickets open in waves, all at noon. MCC patrons get priority on November 10, subscribers on November 16 and everyone else on November 23, through MCC Theater. The public sale starts 46 days before the first preview. Prices have not been announced.

What to Know Before You Go

The Heart Sellers plays the Susan and Ronald Frankel Theater at the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space, 511 West 52nd Street. Shows run Tuesday to Friday at 7 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 7, and Sunday at 1 and 6, with a handful of exceptions in the first weeks, including no public performance on opening night.

MCC has built a talk series around the run, according to BroadwayWorld. Audience conversations follow the January 14 and February 2 performances, Suh and Adrales take questions after January 15, and the cast does the same after January 27, January 31 and February 4. The February 5 performance is open captioned.

MCC's other house in the same building just opened Anne Washburn's Anon, to a split verdict. And if you want Noblezada's old stomping ground, Hadestown is still at the Walter Kerr on West 48th, the house where Matthew Broderick reunited The Producers.

A frozen turkey, two strangers, one long evening. Some Thanksgivings take a while to thaw.