It may be excruciatingly cold outside but things are really heating up off-Broadway. While the Great White Way holds its best dishes to be served up right before Tony deadlines, off-Broadway is like the honey badger; it’s fearless and it plays by its own rules.

So the moral of the story is off-Broadway doesn’t make you wait until spring for the main course, and right now off-Broadway couldn’t be hotter, thanks to these five plays and musicals.

#1. Into the Woods, The Harold & Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre

10 people and a piano, that’s all Fiasco Theater needed to create the wildly affecting new Into the Woods. Good luck finding another production with such depth and clarity of Stephen Sondheim’s score. Running through March 22.

#2. Hamilton, The Public Theater

Photo by Joan Marcus

In the Heights’ Tony-winning creative team reunites for the highly-anticipated new bio musical Hamilton at the Public Theater. Tony winner Lin-Manuel Miranda writes and stars, there’s already Broadway buzz and you’ll need to drop about a dozen Alexander Hamilton’s to get a ticket. #WorthIt Running through April 5.

#3. Every Brilliant Thing, The Barrow Street Theatre

There aren’t enough brilliant superlatives to throw at Every Brilliant Thing, a one-man British important about a young man who spends a good chunk of his life creating a list of brilliant every day things to help combat his mother’s (and then his own) crippling depression. Spoiler: missing this limited run is most definitely not on that list. Running through March 29.

#4. The Woodsman, 59E59

The Tin Man’s backstory comes to life through puppetry, movement and song in the haunting and wildly imaginative The Woodsman. Nothing will make you feel like an Oz-loving kid again like this 60-minute, almost dialogue-free journey to the land over the rainbow. Running through February 22.

#5. Let the Right One In, St. Ann’s Warehouse