After an extended intermission, Broadway is back with a vengeance: Some 35 shows are either beginning or restarting performances before the year ends. Not sure which to see first? Here’s our guide to the season’s most groundbreaking, toe-tapping, showstopping plays and musicals.
The Tightened Tony Winner
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
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The producers of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child spent lockdown practicing the reducio spell. When the show reopens in November, it will be a single, slimmed-down performance, rather than the 5-plus-hour two-parter that opened at the Lyric Theatre in 2018. Muggles, fear not: In a statement, the producers promised the show will have “all the amazing magic, illusions, stagecraft, and storytelling set around the same powerful narrative.” Now you just need to practice the accio spell to summon tickets…
Begins November 12 at the Lyric Theatre, harrypottertheplay.com
The ’90s Nostalgia Trip
Mrs. Doubtfire
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Mrs. Doubtfire, the 1993 Robin Williams comedy about a struggling actor who disguises himself as an old nanny so he can see his kids, gets a musical makeover from the team behind Something Rotten!. Here, Karey Kirkpatrick, who cowrote the book and the music and lyrics, explains why the film works on stage: “As music theater writers, the question you’re always asking yourself is, Does it sing? Usually, what makes a musical sing is heightened emotion, and there is plenty of emotion in Mrs. Doubtfire. We’re dealing with divorce and how that impacts a family, and also with a man who will do anything to be with his kids. That desperation leads to fantastic comedic moments, but also deeply moving emotional moments. There is no better way to express that emotion than with music.”
Begins October 21 at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, mrsdoubtfirebroadway.com
The Late Arrival
Trouble in Mind
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In 1955, groundbreaking playwright Alice Childress premiered her off-Broadway hit Trouble in Mind, a searing satire about racism in the theater industry that portrayed rehearsals for a fictional play-within-a-play about lynching. It was set to transfer to Broadway in 1957, which would have made Childress the first Black female playwright to have a show on Broadway—but it never came to be. Now, Roundabout Theatre Company is finally mounting a production, starring Tony winner LaChanze. “The social and racial conflicts of the time that Ms. Childress explores are just as relevant today, 66 years later,” LaChanze says. “Trouble in Mind centers the struggle of a Black female actor trying to reconcile the outer stereotypes of the racial dynamic within the play and her inner need for representation as her authentic self.” During the pandemic, LaChanze was one of 19 artists, including Billy Porter and Audra McDonald, who founded Black Theatre United, “out of the need to be a part of the global outcry for racial justice.” The organization, which has been described as the NAACP of the theater world, is putting forth a “New Deal” that seeks to establish industry standards for diversity, inclusion, and accessibility. “We need stories that reflect society,” LaChanze says, “and demonstrate a deeper way of understanding our conflicts.”
Begins October 29 at the American Airlines Theatre, roundabouttheatre.org
The Moonwalker
MJ the Musical
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When you’re planning a Michael Jackson jukebox musical, the moves are as important as the megahits. The hotly debated MJ the Musical would seem to have the right man for the job, as it’s directed and choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon, the artistic associate of the Royal Ballet and former resident choreographer of the New York City Ballet. This isn’t the first time the English dancer has tackled an American dance icon on Broadway: He won a 2015 Tony for choreographing An American in Paris. “In the same way fans of the… movie would have wanted and, I hope, felt that they came away with a real sense of the style of that period and of Gene Kelly and of Leslie Caron, that might kind of be the route we go with Michael,” he told Playbill.
Begins December 6 at the Neil Simon Theatre, mjthemusical.com
The Highbrow Hitmakers
Flying Over Sunset
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Lincoln Center’s new musical Flying Over Sunset tells a trippy tale of self-discovery as three influential figures—philosopher Aldous Huxley (Harry Hadden-Paton), actor Cary Grant (Tony Yazbeck), and conservative writer and politician Clare Boothe Luce (Carmen Cusack)—try LSD in the 1950s. Improbably, the behind-the-scenes team may be even more impressive than the protagonists. Composer Tom Kitt won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and two Tonys for Next to Normal, plus a 2021 Grammy for the Jagged Little Pill musical soundtrack. Lyricist Michael Korie was nominated for a Tony and a Grammy for his work on the musical Grey Gardens. Book writer James Lapine won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Sunday in the Park with George and three Tony Awards for Best Book of a Musical (Into the Woods, Falsettos, and Passion). And choreographer Michelle Dorrance became the first tap dancer and choreographer to be awarded a MacArthur “genius grant” in 2015.
Begins November 11 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center, flyingoversunset.com
The Hot Ticket
The Music Man
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Ya got trouble! Right here in New York City! Trouble, that is, scoring an orchestra seat to The Music Man. With Hugh Jackman as swindling traveling salesman Harold Hill and Sutton Foster as persnickety librarian Marian Paroo—not to mention direction by the legendary Jerry Zaks—this revival of Meredith Willson’s Tony-winning 1957 musical is sure to be the season’s biggest box office hit.
Begins December 20 at the Winter Garden Theatre, musicmanonbroadway.com
The Comeback Kids
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Broadway’s return has everyone wanting to get in on the action—including a handful of actors and shows that already took their final bows pre-pandemic. Sara Bareilles returns as the pie-baking protagonist of Waitress, the musical for which she wrote the music and lyrics, from September 2 through January 9. Starting October 5, Jeff Daniels reprises his role as Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, alongside Celia Keenan-Bolger, who won a Tony for her performance as Scout. On September 17, David Byrne comes back with American Utopia—a hybrid of a rock concert and a theatrical experience—which had a limited Broadway run from October 2019 to February 2020. And Freestyle Love Supreme, the hip-hop improv group cofounded by Lin-Manuel Miranda, brings back its musical comedy show from October 7 through January 2. Encores indeed.
The Royal Drama
Diana: The Musical
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Diana: The Musical, about the People’s Princess, gave just nine preview performances in 2020 before Broadway shut down. This fall, the show will reach a much bigger audience: Besides returning for a proper run on November 2, a filmed version of the stage production premieres on Netflix October 1. Whether they’re watching from the mezzanine or their couches, royals obsessives will lap it up, and Jeanna de Waal, who plays Diana, admits that “there’s a lot of pressure to do her justice.” She knows, however, that the magic of the theater is on her side. “At the end of the day, you’re only in an auditorium, and the actors’ imaginations are what is creating the world and making people believe it’s really happening,” she says. “You have to surrender and let it take over.”
Begins November 2 at the Longacre Theatre, thedianamusical.com
The Comedic Comfort Food
Chicken & Biscuits
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Perhaps the only thing we all missed more than theater last year was our families. Enter Douglas Lyons’s Chicken & Biscuits, a comedy about a funeral that goes awry when a family secret is revealed. When the production—which stars Ugly Betty’s Michael Urie and Norm Lewis (the first Black Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera) in his non-musical debut—was announced in June, it became the record seventh play by a Black writer to make it to the Great White Way this season. If that’s not enough, 27-year-old Zhailon Levingston is the youngest Black director in Broadway history.
Begins September 23 at the Circle in the Square Theatre, chickenandbiscuitsbway.com
The Overachievers
Lackawanna Blues; Clyde’s
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After a season stuck at home, two Broadway creatives are coming back with a multitasking gusto. Ruben Santiago-Hudson is directing Skeleton Crew, but to see him in all his glory, book a ticket to Lackawanna Blues: He directs and plays more than 20 roles in a revival of his 2001 solo show about the woman who raised him in a boarding house outside Buffalo. Lynn Nottage—the only female playwright with two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama—does him one better: She wrote the book for MJ the Musical, she adapted her play Intimate Apparel into a new opera at Lincoln Center (previews begin January 13), and she’s debuting a new play, Clyde’s, this fall. Set in a truck stop sandwich shop that employs formerly incarcerated workers, Clyde’s stars Emmy winners Uzo Aduba (Orange Is the New Black) and Ron Cephas Jones (This Is Us).
Lackawanna Blues begins September 14 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, manhattantheatreclub.com; Clyde’s begins November 3 at the Hayes Theater, 2st.com
The Boundary Breakers
Dana H.; Is This a Room
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The experimental docudramas Dana H. and Is This a Room played downtown’s tiny Vineyard Theatre during the 2019-20 season. Tickets were hard to come by, but if you missed out the first time around, both shows are transferring to Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre, where they’ll play in repertory, offering a one-two punch of avant-garde audacity. In Dana H., Lucas Hnath uses interviews of his mother, chaplain Dana Higginbotham, who was kidnapped and held hostage for five months. (Actress Deirdre O’Connell lip-syncs to her recorded voice in a pulse-quickening performance.) Playwright Tina Satter takes a similar approach with Is This a Room: The script is taken wholly from the 2017 FBI interrogation of Reality Winner, an Air Force linguist charged with leaking evidence of Russian election interference. The actors— including Emily Davis as Winner—perform every “um” and “uh” and cough that happened in real life.
Is This a Room begins September 24 and Dana H. October 11, both at the Lyceum Theatre, vineyardtheatre.org
The New A-Lister
Katrina Lenk in Company
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Katrina Lenk won the 2018 best actress Tony for her performance in The Band’s Visit, and this fall’s Company should secure her a spot on the A-list. Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical about a man named Bobby who can’t commit to a stable relationship has been recast as a woman’s tale, with Lenk playing Bobbie. “I think this role will show audiences a side of her artistry they’ve never seen before,” says Etai Benson, Lenk’s Company castmate, who also appeared alongside her in The Band’s Visit. “Not only is it a defining moment for her career, it’s a defining moment for Broadway—to come back after a year- and-a-half hiatus in an iconic reimagined role in the quintessential New York musical. Who better to usher us back to Broadway than Katrina Lenk?”
Begins November 15 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, companymusical.com
The Costume Party
Six
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The new-to-Broadway musical Six imagines the wives of Henry VIII as modern pop stars: Catherine of Aragon emulates Beyoncé, Anne Boleyn channels Miley Cyrus, Jane Seymour remixes Adele and Sia, Anne of Cleves takes on Rihanna and Nicki Minaj, Catherine Howard tackles Ariana Grande, and Catherine Parr echoes Alicia Keys. As any pop-culture fan knows, the look is as key as the music. Costume designer Gabriella Slade—fresh off doing the over-the-top stagewear for the Spice Girls’ Spice World 2019 tour—brought these queens of pop to life, marrying Tudor corsets and latticework with Swarovski crystals and fishnet stockings. (Dresses from Balmain and Alexander McQueen also served as inspiration.) As the Time Out London review of the original West End production noted, “Gabriella Slade’s spangly costumes made my teeth hurt, but they are a spot-on synthesis of stadium pop princess and Tudor court.” The mash-up should ensure that this fun, flashy show continues to avoid a beheading by the press.
Begins September 17 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, sixonbroadway.com
The American Dream Deferred
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The best shows hold up a lens to the American experience—and this season brings several timely works that should start conversations about race relations in this country. Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s Pass Over combines the absurdism of Waiting for Godot with references to the Book of Exodus and heaps of existential dread to shine a light on police brutality through the story of two Black men, Moses and Kitch, who spend their days chatting and playing word games under a lamppost on a desolate street corner. Keenan Scott II’s Thoughts of a Colored Man combines slam poetry, spoken word, and humor as it follows seven Black men from the barbershop to the basketball court and beyond over the course of a single day in Brooklyn.
(The cast includes Emmy winner Keith David, The Wire’s Tristan Wilds, and Grammy nominee Luke James.) And Phylicia Rashad stars in Skeleton Crew—part of Tony-nominated playwright Dominique Morisseau’s “Detroit trilogy”—about a small automotive plant on the brink of foreclosure during the 2008 financial crisis, and the ways in which its employees cope with the uncertain future that lies ahead.
Pass Over is playing now at the August Wilson Theatre, passoverbroadway.com; Thoughts of a Colored Man begins October 1 at the John Golden Theatre, thoughtsofacoloredman.com; Skeleton Crew begins December 21 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, manhattantheatreclub.com
The Pond Crosser
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The 2003 musical Caroline, or Change is a quintessentially American tale about a Black maid working for a Jewish family in 1963 Louisiana, as the Civil Rights movement rages outside their doors. In 2018, the show began an acclaimed revival in the West End, and now it’s making its way back to the States, complete with Olivier Award–winning star Sharon D. Clarke. We asked the London-born actress about the big move.
What’s most exciting for you about doing theater in New York?
It’s my Broadway debut! That’s everything right there. I was just getting into my NYC groove when COVID struck, so I’m itching to get back.
Did you bring anything from your own childhood to Caroline?
I drew from my mother’s life as part of the Windrush generation [Caribbean immigrants who arrived in the U.K. between 1948 and 1971]: all the challenges and adversities being a Black woman in that time brought, and how she navigated that with dignity, strength, and pride.
What about this musical do you think will resonate with audiences today?
After the last year and a half, and the Black Lives Matter movement, just how much has changed? Right now, the world is all about change on so many levels: how we work, travel, socialize, our social responsibility to keep each other safe. The Black Lives Matter movement can not become a [fleeting] moment, and hopefully shows like Caroline, or Change will keep change for the better in the front of people’s minds.
Begins October 8 at Studio 54, roundabouttheatre.org
