“We don’t just want to tell a story about 1922,” says the playwright Joe DiPietro, whose adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt updates the novel with a modern setting and a diverse cast. In the title role, Matthew Broderick is a middle-class American man—a real-estate broker and father of two—who at night contemplates his growing disillusionment with the so-called American Dream. Searching for deeper meaning in his mundane life, Babbitt decides to change. He veers into progressive politics, begins an affair, travels, and explores the vibrant, unconventional nightlife of the Années folles. “A very good, sneaky, smart, funny story,” in Broderick’s words, Babbitt is about political and social change, morality and acceptance. Anna Chlumsky, Ann Harada, and Julie Halston co-star, and Christopher Ashley directs. —Jeanne Malle