Broadway legends! Movie and TV celebrities! A newly minted star! That’s the marquee promise of the new Broadway season, the buzz that signals renewed hope for the resilience of theater in the Big Apple.
Tony, Grammy, and Emmy Award winner Ben Platt kicked off the 2024–2025 season in late May with Ben Platt: Live at the Palace, opening a new chapter in the storied history of the now newly refurbished, legendary Broadway house. Another season-opening highlight was Roundabout Theatre Company’s limited-run revival of Home, directed by Kenny Leon. We were reminded of the enduring power of an almost forgotten poetic drama by the late Black playwright Samm-Art Williams.
Two very diverse Off-Broadway plays, both still running, made splashy Broadway debuts following sold-out runs the previous season. Oh, Mary! (limited run at the Lyceum Theatre through November 10) heralds the arrival of Broadway’s newly minted star Cole Escola. The consummate writer-performer takes ridiculous theater to sublime heights with their deliciously skewed take on former first lady Mary Todd Lincoln. At the other end of the dramatic spectrum, Peter Friedman and Sydney Lemmon face off in the intense — alternately scary and funny — psychological thriller JOB by Max Wolf Friedlich (at the Hayes Theater through October 27).
And with an irresistible burst of comic energy, the new revival of Mary Rodgers’s beloved fairy tale Once Upon A Mattress became the first musical to open the season. The production is led by the irrepressible Tony Award winner Sutton Foster (Anything Goes, The Music Man) and Drama Desk winner Michael Urie (Spamalot). The cast also includes Tony nominees Brooks Ashmanskas (The Prom), Daniel Breaker (Passing Strange), and Will Chase (The Mystery of Edwin Drood) alongside Ana Gasteyer and Nikki Renée Daniels.
Here are the rest of the season offerings — productions scheduled to open between now and the end of the year.
The Roommate, Booth Theatre
In previews, opens September 12
Acclaimed movie star Mia Farrow, last seen on Broadway in 2014 in Love Letters, has said that Jen Silverman’s funny and quirky script, along with the opportunity to star opposite her friend Patti LuPone, coaxed her out of retirement. Similarly, three-time Tony Award–winning Broadway legend LuPone (Company, Gypsy, Evita) called it the “easiest decision in my life” to return to Broadway much sooner than she anticipated. This comic two-hander that attracted these formidable talents centers on Sharon, a middle-aged divorcée in Iowa who takes in Robyn, a Bronx native with a shady past unlike anything Sharon has encountered before. The production is directed by Jack O’Brien, who received a career-topping Lifetime Achievement Tony Award earlier this year, adding to his previous Tony wins for directing The Coast of Utopia, Henry IV, and Hairspray. The production also features an original music score by Tony Award winner David Yazbeck (The Band’s Visit).
McNeal, Vivian Beaumont Theater
Previews start September 5, opens September 30
Robert Downey Jr., Oscar winner for Oppenheimer and Marvel movie megastar as Iron Man, makes his Broadway debut as an acclaimed writer struggling with a new novel, his estranged son, and an unhealthy curiosity about AI. This startling drama is written by two-time Tony nominee and Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Ayad Akhtar (Disgraced). The Lincoln Center Theater production is directed by Tony Award winner and multiple Tony nominee Bartlett Sher (South Pacific, The King and I, To Kill a Mockingbird). The cast features two-time Tony winner Andrea Martin (Pippin, My Favorite Year) and Tony Award winner Ruthie Ann Miles (The King and I). Reflecting the titular character’s obsession with artificial intelligence, the production will also feature a state-of-the-art “metahuman” digital likeness of Downey created by the Academy Award–winning independent studio AGBO.
The Hills of California, Broadhurst Theatre
Previews start September 11, opens September 29
The latest from Jez Butterworth, 2019 Tony Award winner of Best Play for The Ferryman, is a family saga that arrives on Broadway following an Olivier-nominated hit run in London’s West End. This darkly comedic drama centers on four sisters who reunite at their childhood home in the English seaside town of Blackpool to attend to their dying mother. As they confront bittersweet memories from 20 years earlier — when they aspired to be the next Andrews Sisters in the 1950s — shocking secrets are revealed. Oliver Award winner and Tony nominee Laura Donnelly (The Ferryman) leads the cast, which includes fellow London cast members Leanne Best, Ophelia Lovibond, Helena Wilson, Nancy Allsop, Sophia Ally, Lara McDonnell, and Nicola Turner. The production is directed by Oscar, Tony and Olivier Award winner Sam Mendes, who last directed on Broadway with The Lehman Trilogy.
Our Town, Ethel Barrymore Theatre
Previews start September 17, opens October 10
It’s time to visit Grover’s Corners again. Thornton Wilder’s beloved and timeless American classic, set in a small fictitious town in New Hampshire, returns to Broadway. This marks the fifth Broadway revival since Wilder received the Pulitzer Prize for his enduring masterpiece in 1938. The playwright once said he was interested in “the small, overlooked moments of life, the spaces between events where so much goes unnoticed.” The current revival is directed by Tony Award winner Kenny Leon (A Raisin in the Sun), who has long wanted to present this classic to new generation of theater lovers. He describes the play as speaking “so beautifully and intimately to all people about our shared time on the planet.” Jim Parsons, four-time Emmy Award winner and 2024 Tony nominee for Mother Play, plays the part of the Stage Manager, guiding the audience through the lives of the town’s inhabitants. Parsons leads a cast that includes Zoey Deutch, Katie Holmes, Billy Eugene Jones, Ephraim Sykes, Richard Thomas, Michelle Wilson, Julie Halston, and Donald Webber Jr.
Left on Tenth, James Earl Jones Theatre
Previews start September 26, opens October 23
Delia Ephron, best known for cowriting the popular rom-com You’ve Got Mail and the Off-Broadway play Love, Loss and What I Wore with her sister Nora, experienced a real-life story worthy of one of her own touching and uplifting scripts. At age 72, Ephron found herself falling in love all over again. After losing her husband of over 30 years and still grieving the loss of Nora to leukemia, she reconnected with a man from 50 years earlier who she barely remembered. Their blossoming romance not only flourished but also survived Ephron’s own near-fatal bout with cancer, giving her what she described as “a second chance in life,” the subtitle of her 2022 memoir. Now Ephron makes her Broadway playwriting debut with an adaptation of that memoir. Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Award winner Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife) stars as Ephron, and Peter Gallagher (On the Twentieth Century, Noises Off) plays her second husband, Peter Rutter. The production is directed by five-time Tony Award–winning director and choreographer Susan Stroman (The Producers, Contact).
Romeo + Juliet, Circle in the Square Theatre
Previews start September 26, opens October 24
William Shakespeare’s tale of doomed young love never goes out of fashion. The famous tragedy has been produced on Broadway over 30 times in this past century alone. The plus sign in the title — possibly a nod to Baz Luhrmann’s film — suggests that this revival will likely take a contemporary approach to the story of young people caught up in ancient feuds nurtured by their elders. Director Sam Gold, a Tony Award winner for Fun Home, is well-known for his unconventional Broadway Shakespeare revivals such as Macbeth with Daniel Craig and King Lear with Glenda Jackson. The music for this production is by 10-time Grammy Award–winning songwriter and producer Jack Antonoff, with movement by Tony Award–winning choreographer Sonya Tayeh (Moulin Rouge! The Musical). Expect a genuine Gen Z vibe from the leads, Kit Connor (Netflix’s Heartstoppers) and Rachel Zegler, a Golden Globe winner for her performance as Maria in West Side Story. Both will be making their Broadway debuts in this production.
Sunset Boulevard, St. James Theatre
Previews start September 28, opens October 20
The pictures may have grown smaller, but Norma Desmond remains as big as she always believed herself to be. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s lush musical adaptation of Billy Wilder’s 1950 classic about a fading silent-screen star originally premiered on Broadway 30 years ago with Glenn Close playing the role immortalized by Gloria Swanson in the movie. Now, a new star, Nicole Scherzinger, makes her Broadway debut as the lead in the current revival, which swept the Olivier Awards in London this year, winning seven awards, including Best Musical. Before becoming the latest sensation on the West End and winning the best actress trophy, Hawaiian-born Scherzinger was best known as the lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls and for her stint on The X Factor. Also making their Broadway debuts are Olivier Award winner Tom Francis, Grace Hodgett-Young, and David Thaxton from the London cast. Unlike the opulent original, this new production is a stripped-down, radically reimagined version, utilizing cinematic projections and handheld cameras. The book and lyrics are by Don Black and Christopher Hampton, and direction is by Jamie Lloyd, a 2023 Tony Award nominee for A Doll’s House. Webber has described this production as a “psychological chamber piece.”
Yellow Face, Todd Haimes Theatre
Previews start September 13, opens October 1
A satirical farce from Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly) that revisits the 1990 controversy surrounding the casting of a white actor to play the lead Eurasian role in the Broadway mega-musical Miss Saigon. At the time, Hwang, an Asian American playwright, made headlines by voicing strong protests against the contentious production, which ultimately proceeded as planned. In what he describes as “an unreliable memoir,” Hwang — whose work was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and received an Obie Award after its 2007 Off-Broadway run — blends fact with fiction. He places himself at the center of the narrative and examines his own complicity while exploring the broader issues of race, identity, and minority representation in theater. Daniel Dae Kim (The King and I) plays Hwang’s fictional stand-in, DHH. The cast includes Kevin Del Aguila (Some Like It Hot, Frozen), Francis Jue (Pacific Overtures, Thoroughly Modern Millie), Greg Keller (Our Mother’s Brief Affair), and Broadway newcomers Marinda Anderson, Ryan Eggold, and Shannon Tyo. The Roundabout Theatre production is directed by two-time Tony Award nominee Leigh Silverman (Suffs, Violet).
A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical, Studio 54
Previews start October 16, opens November 11
Tony Award winner James Monroe Iglehart (Aladdin, Spamalot) stars in this new musical about the beloved jazz artist who was celebrated both as a virtuoso trumpet player and an ebullient entertainer. Affectionately known as “Satchmo,” Louis Armstrong achieved international fame and was dubbed “America’s Ambassador of Goodwill” due his numerous worldwide tours. Armstrong’s career spanned five decades, and this musical tells his story through the perspectives of his four wives, each of whom made a distinctive impact at different stages in his life and career. Dionne Figgins plays Daisy Parker, whom Armstong met when he was teenager in New Orleans; Jennie Harney-Fleming plays Lil Hardin, the jazz pianist who helped him develop his career in Chicago; Kim Exum takes on the role of Alpha Smith, Armstrong’s wife during the period when he began pursuing a career in Hollywood; and Darlesia Cearcy plays his final wife, Lucille Wilson, a former Cotton Club dancer who remained with him until his death in Queens, New York City, in 1971. Incorporating songs made famous by the legendary performer, the musical’s book is written by Aurin Squire (This Is Us, The Good Fight). It was coconceived by Drama Desk winner and Tony Award nominee Christopher Renshaw (The King and I, Taboo) and Andrew Delapaine; the production is directed by Renshaw.
Maybe Happy Ending, Belasco Theatre
Previews start October 16, opens November 12
Attention must be paid to AI, and Broadway acknowledges it this season. First, there’s the digital re-creation of Robert Downey Jr. interacting with human counterparts in McNeal. Now, meet a lonely robot living in a one-room apartment on the outskirts of Seoul, South Korea, in a new original musical set a few decades into the future. Emmy and Golden Globe winner Darren Criss (American Buffalo) stars as an out-of-warranty HelperBot 3, whose life changes when he meets Claire, a fellow robot neighbor, played by Broadway newcomer Helen J Shen. This romantic comedy, which premiered in a Korean language version in Seoul in 2016 and received a Richard Rodgers Award the following year for its English language version, is written by Will Aronson (book and music) and Hue Park (book and lyrics). The production is directed by Michael Arden, who won a 2023 Tony Award for Parade and received Tony nominations for directing Once on This Island and Spring Awakening.
Tammy Faye, Palace Theatre
Previews start October 19, opens November 14
Olivier Award winner Katie Brayben makes her Broadway debut reprising her sensational London performance as Tammy Faye Messner, the flamboyant 1970s televangelist and gay icon known for her bold use of makeup. The new musical features a score by Elton John (Tony Award winner for Aida and Tony nominee for Billy Elliot: The Musical and The Lion King), lyrics by Jake Shears (formerly co–lead vocalist for the Scissor Sisters), and a book by 2024 Olivier Award winner and Tony Award nominee James Graham (Ink). The production is directed by two-time Tony Award nominee Rupert Goold (Ink, King Charles III), who also directed last season’s Patriots. Goold has described Tammy Faye’s glamorous persona and scandal-ridden life as a “bizarre, baroque, almost operatic life story.” Her first husband, Jim Bakker, with whom she so exuberantly brought Christianity into American homes before his late-1980s conviction for fraud, is portrayed by two-time Tony Award winner Christian Borle (Something Rotten, Peter and the Starcatcher). Two-time Tony Award winner Michael Cerveris (Fun Home, Assassins) plays the ultraconservative Reverend Jerry Falwell, the Bakkers’ rival in the preaching business. The scenic design by is two-time Tony Award winner Bunny Christie (Company, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), with choreography by Tony nominee Lynne Page (La Cage aux Folles.)
Death Becomes Her, Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
Previews start October 23, opens November 21
Tony Award nominee Megan Hilty (Noises Off) and two-time Tony Award nominee Jennifer Simard (Company, Disaster!) camp it up in this supernatural musical comedy that skewers the quest for eternal youth and beauty. Hilty plays a self-absorbed fading actress and Simard portrays an aspiring writer, both destined to remain frenemies forever. The women find themselves competing for the same man, played by two-time Tony Award nominee Christopher Sieber (Shrek the Musical, Spamalot), and take a fateful leap when they dabble with a magic potion offered by a mysterious woman, portrayed by Michelle Williams, the Grammy Award–winning singer-songwriter-performer and member of Destiny’s Child. The music and lyrics are by Julia Mattison and Noel Carey, with a book by Marco Pennette (Ugly Betty), based on the 1992 cult favorite that starred Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn. The production, previously staged in Chicago, is directed and choregraphed by Christopher Gattelli, Tony Award winner for Newsies: The Musical.
Swept Away, Longacre Theatre
Previews start October 29, opens November 19
Four men shipwrecked off the coast of New Bedford, Massachusetts, struggle to survive in a lifeboat adrift on the high seas in this new musical, which features music and lyrics by the Grammy-nominated folk-rock band the Avett Brothers. The harrowing story, inspired by a true tale from the 1880s, originally inspired the band’s 2004 album, Mignonette. Setting the story at the end of the whaling era, Tony Award winner John Logan (Red, Moulin Rouge! The Musical) has crafted a book that incorporates songs from the album as well as other selections from the band’s catalog. Tony Award winner John Gallagher Jr. (Spring Awakening), Tony Award nominee Stark Sands (Kinky Boots), Adrian Blake Enscoe, and Wayne Duvall will reprise the roles they played in earlier stagings at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Arena Stage. The production is directed by Tony Award winner Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening) and choreographed by Tony Award nominee David Neumann (Hadestown). Out-of-town critics have praised the show for its spectacular scenic design by Tony Award winner Rachel Hauck (Hadestown).
Elf The Musical, Marquis Theatre
Previews start November 9, opens November 17
The adorable musical tale of an orphan boy who mistakenly gets transported to the Norh Pole to become one of Santa’s little helpers returns to Broadway for a second time since its premiere in 2010. This holiday entertainment features songs by Tony nominees Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin (The Prom, The Wedding Singer) and a book by Tony Award winners, Thomas Meehan (Annie, Hairspray) and Bob Martin (The Drowsy Chaperone). Based on the popular 2003 movie, the production stars Grey Henson as Buddy the Elf and is directed by Philip William McKinley.
Cult of Love, Hayes Theater
Previews start November 20, opens December 12
Broadway loves dysfunctional families! Meet the Dahls, an evangelical Christian family that comes together at their family home for the holidays. All sems harmonious as they celebrate a traditional Christmas and sing carols, but a tempest is brewing in this spiky comedy from playwright and screenwriter Leslye Headland (cocreator of the Netflix series Russian Doll). Expect a spectacular maelstrom as mother, father, four adult siblings, and their assorted partners collide in the Second Stage Theater production directed by Trip Cullman (Choir Boy, Significant Other), which was previously staged at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.
Gypsy, Majestic Theatre
Previews start November 21, opens December 19
The theatre marquee says it all: “Audra/Gypsy.” What more do we need to know? It’s six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald’s (Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, A Raisin in the Sun, Ragtime, Master Class, Carousel) turn to play the legendary stage mom Rose. Famously created by Ethel Merman in 1959, the role has since been played on Broadway by Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters, and, most recently, Patti LuPone (who, coincidentally, is starring across the street in The Roommate this season). This is the fifth Broadway revival of the classic Golden Age musical written by Jule Styne (music), Stephen Sondheim (lyrics), and Arthur Laurents (book). The production is directed by multiple Tony Award winner George C. Wolfe (Angels in America, Bring in the ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk), who received a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award this year. The production is choreographed by Tony nominee Camille A. Brown (Hell’s Kitchen, for colored girls…). This revival of Gypsy will be the first show to occupy the fully restored Majestic Theatre, which has been dark since its previous tenant, The Phantom of the Opera, ended its record-breaking 35-year run there in April last year.
Eureka Day, Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
Previews start November 25, opens December 16
Playwright Jonathan Spector makes his Broadway debut with a sharp comedy that lampoons a group of American parents grappling with a mumps outbreak at a liberal private school in California, only to discover that some among them are anti-vaxxers. Written a couple of years before COVID-19 changed the world, and previously staged in productions at Berkley, Off-Broadway, and in London, Spector’s satire remains as relevant as ever. The new production from the Manhattan Theatre Club is directed by Anna D. Shapiro, Tony Award winner for August: Osage County. The cast includes Amber Gray (Hadestown), two-time Tony Award nominee Jessica Hecht (Summer, 1976, A View From the Bridge), Tony Award winner Bill Irwin (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), and Broadway newcomers Zoë Chao and Thomas Middleditch.
All In: Comedy About Love, Hudson Theatre
Previews start December 11
Comedian John Mulaney, last seen in Oh, Hello on Broadway, leads a rotating cast of comedy icons, including Renée Elise Goldsberry, Fred Armisen, and Richard Kind, in a new play by well-known novelist and humorist Simon Rich. This marks Rich’s Broadway debut with a collection of comedic playlets based on his regular contributions to The New Yorker. Fun fact for theatergoers who recall the days when The New York Times could make or break a Broadway show with a single review: Simon Rich is the son of Frank Rich, the esteemed former chief theater critic of the paper during 1980s and early 1990s. According to the playwright, his work aims to tell “one simple story: that the most important part of life is who we share it with.” The production is directed by Tony Award winner Alex Timbers (Moulin Rouge! The Musical) and features songs by indie band The Magnetic Fields.
Updated September 13, 2024.