Broadway’s 2024-2025 Season: ‘Vanya’ & All Of Deadline’s Reviews

Broadway‘s 2024-25 season has gotten off to a rather extraordinarily fine start, from the wildly popular and hysterically funny Oh, Mary! to the fabulous splash of Death Becomes Her and the wonderful left-field sleeper Maybe Happy Ending. There have been a few clunkers — looking at you, Tammy Faye — but if the spring season holds the ratio, theatergoers have much to look forward to.

This compendium of Deadline’s Broadway reviews for the season might offer some guidance through what will be a very show-packed spring. No fewer than 18 shows are scheduled to open in March and April and of the Tony Awards nominations and show, and we’ll be reviewing them all.

Here’s the upcoming lineup: Buena Vista Social Club (March 19), Operation Mincemeat (March 20), Othello (March 23), The Picture of Dorian Gray (March 27), Glengarry Glen Ross (March 31), Good Night, and Good Luck (April 3), BOOP! The Betty Boop Musical (April 5), The Last Five Years (April 6), Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends (April 8), Smash (April 10), John Proctor is the Villain (April 14), Floyd Collins (April 21), Stranger Things: The First Shadow (April 22), Just In Time (April 23), Pirates! The Penzance Musical (April 24), Dead Outlaw (April 27), Real Women Have Curves: The Musical (April 27).

Vanya

Opening night: March 18, 2025
Venue: Off Broadway’s Lucille Lortel Theatre
Adaptor & Cocreator: Simon Stephens
Director & Cocreator: Sam Yates
Performer & Cocreator: Andrew Scott
Running time: 1 hr 40 mins (no intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: From the perspective of this spring, last spring’s large-cast Lincoln Center staging of Uncle Vanya – the one with Steve Carrell making his Broadway debut – seems barely there, and what remains in memory is of something aimless, lacking. Few will remember this year’s Vanya that way: Though not flawless, the current Off Broadway production, opening tonight at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, stars one and only one actor – Andrew Scott, portraying all the characters – and there’s more vitality in this solo turn than in the combined performances of any number of classics recently revived.

Called simply Vanya and showcasing Scott’s extraordinary talent for, among other things, quick-change characterization and vocal fluidity, the West End staging of this adaptation won Scott an Olivier nomination, and nothing seems to have been lost in the stateside journey. The star of Fleabag, All of Us Strangers, Ripley and many others commands the stage from the moment he enters, smiling impishly at the audience as if to make us complicit in the theatricality of it all.

He plays the eight characters of the Chekhov masterpiece, and though some minor alterations have been made, the plot stands firm: The aging Alexander (his original occupation of professor here changed to filmmaker) has returned to his country estate along with his much younger and very beautiful second wife Helena. The estate has long been cared for, at no small amount of self-sacrifice, by Ivan (the title character), Alexander’s woebegone brother-in-law from the older man’s first marriage. Also in residence: Alexander’s daughter, Sonia, a plain young woman hopelessly in love with the local doctor Michael, who is lovesick for the married Helena. Then there’s Ivan’s mother, ever-worshipful of Alexander, and the household’s various servants.

No one could accuse Chekhov of writing happy plays, and Uncle Vanya might be his saddest. No one dies, but no one thrives either. All are filled with either late-life regret or youthful malaise, their only hope for some small joy lies in the search for love with the right person. Good luck with that, Chekhov says, and in the meantime work.

To describe Scott’s undertaking here as ambitious is an understatement, just as his accomplishment is impressive. The solo approach somewhat robs the play of the character interactions – the instant, even simultaneous reactions as one character’s heart breaks at the offhand comment of another – but Scott comes darn close to compensating with his quicksilver expressions and vocal elasticity. He moves, sometimes dances, nimbly around Rosanna Vize’s set, a homely home interior suggesting something more 1950s middle-class Britain than 19th Century Russian country house. Costume designer Natalie Pryce dresses Scott unobtrusively in a loose-fitting pale green button-down shirt and drab pants, with bits of accessories – sunglasses here, a scarf there – to differentiate the characters.

And it all works, for the most part. Solo productions like this can never quite escape a sense of the gimmick, but the best of them draw us in anyway, whether through a complicit grin or sheer force of personality. With Vanya, Andrew Scott does it all.

Purpose

Opening night: March 17, 2025
Venue: Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theater
Written by: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Directed by: Phylicia Rashad
Cast: LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Harry Lennix, Jon Michael Hill, Glenn Davis, Alana Arenas, Kara Young
Running time: 2 hr 50 mins (one intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins follows up his stunner of a family thriller, last season’s Appropriate, with a family drama that has a quite different power all its own. Somewhat conventional in approach – there’s more than a little Cat On A Hot Tin Roof in this tale of a famous Chicago family headed by an icon of the Black Civil Rights movement – Purpose uses the familiar trope of a family reunion (under very tense circumstances) to pose big questions about responsibility, loyalty, and what is owed to those we love, those we don’t and to ourselves.

A Steppenwolf Theatre Company production forcefully directed by Phylicia Rashad, Purpose is a memory play – a memory of fairly recent vintage and presented to us by Naz, the youngest son of the powerful Jasper family. Naz is returning to the family home near Chicago for the birthday – or near enough – of all-controlling matriarch Claudine (a tornadic LaTanya Richardson Jackson), but the true occasion, or purpose, is the recent homecoming of eldest son Solomon Jr. (Glenn Davis).

Mirroring some circumstances in the real-life Jesse Jackson Family, Junior, a bipolar novice politician, has just been released from prison for some campaign finance shenanigans, and now his wife Morgan (Alana Arenas) must begin her sentence on related charges (Jesse Jackson Jr. and wife Sandi served just such staggered sentences more than a decade ago).

Junior isn’t the only disappointment to father Solomon. With his own glory days of marching with MLK and leading the fight through the ’80s and ’90s beginning to fade into history, Solomon had lifelong spiritual hopes for youngest son Naz, his name, short for Nazareth, a clear indication of the religious path dad chose for him long ago. In what Naz, our narrator, calls “My Great Disappointment,” he dropped out of divinity school to take up wildlife and nature photography. The occupation suits Naz’s desire for isolation: While his too-proud family has always been loathe to admit it, Naz is likely a person with undiagnosed Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Naz also identifies as asexual, which prompts no end of confusion for his parents. Father wonders why he just doesn’t come out as gay, Mother just wants him to meet the right girl.

That girl most definitely is not Aziza (the magnificent Kara Young). Naz’s apartment neighbor in Harlem where their friendship blossomed during the days of the Covid shutdowns, Aziza identifies as queer and has asked her best friend Naz to be her sperm donor. In return for his good deed, Aziza offers to drive him to Chicago for the family reunion, on the condition that she not meet the family. They’d just never understand.

Of course, meet them she does, quite innocently, with a snowstorm stranding her. But her shock to discover who Naz’s family really is – he never mentions them – has her immediately starstruck, awed by the personal photos and paintings of Martin Luther King and other Black icons that line the walls.

Much of the early moments of the play are given over to comic misunderstandings – the family members are convinced Naz and Aziza are an item, despite the protestations. The audience is prepared for heavier things, though, as Naz has repeatedly warned us of things to come. Just before Solomon delivers one of his longwinded prayers before dinner, Naz turns to the audience and says, “Buckle up.”

Not only does Aziza spill the beans about her pregnancy and Naz’s part in it, but Junior has a surprise of his own: His birthday gift to Claudine is a printed-up collection of every letter she sent him in prison, and he intends to publish it as part of his hoped-for ambitions as a prison reformer. Solomon will have none of it – not only does he not want the family name associated with prison any more than it has to be, but he’s offended at the mere suggestion that Junior’s country-club prison was anything like the suffering of heroes like Nelson Mandela and countless civil rights workers.

Claudine’s letters also spark the ire of Junior’s till-now moodily silent wife Morgan. Outraged by Junior’s lack of acknowledgement of her own suffering – she’s soon heading off to prison herself – but she’s been simmering over the dearth of sympathy from her in-laws.

In the play’s pivotal scene, Morgan explodes in fury right there at the dinner table (Arenas is absolutely thrilling). Insisting she knew nothing of the crimes being committed by her husband, and railroaded into taking a plea by the powerful family and their accountants, Morgan loudly lets loose all the skeletons from this ungrateful family’s closet – the patriarch’s many infidelities and their offspring, Junior’s crimes and mental issues, the matriarch’s complicities and, pointing to Naz, “this one over here about twenty years too late for the obvious autism diagnosis you wouldn’t get him.”

With the play’s themes and threads beautifully set up, the second act proceeds a bit more quietly (mostly) as the characters grapple with the truisms that have been exposed. Regrets are voiced or they are not, the limits of friendship are considered, the cruel impact of mental illness faced and, perhaps most of all, the weights and costs of responsibilities are pondered. Most of all, Jacobs-Jenkins asks, what is our purpose?

Given a very fine production for its Broadway debut, Purpose is, among other things, lovely to look at, with the large, upscale house tastefully appointed with those mesmerizing historical photographs and African artworks (scenic design by Todd Rosenthal), character-defining costumes (by Dede M. Ayite) and stormy sound and lighting designs (Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen for the former, Amith Chandrashaker the latter) predicting all sorts of turmoil.

Pulling it all together is Rashad, who directs her excellent cast with insight and nuance, no false moves from beginning to end. The play doesn’t pretend to answer all the lofty questions it raises – how could it? Finding purpose is an elusive and difficult endeavor, and Jacobs-Jenkins has fashioned a play that, more than anything, embraces the search.

A Streetcar Named Desire

Opening night: March 11, 2025 (Closes April 6)
Venue: Harvey Theater at BAM (Off Broadway)
Written/directed by: Rebecca Frecknall
Cast: Paul Mescal, Patsy Ferran, Anjana Vasan, Dwane Walcott, Janet Etuk, Eduardo Ackerman, Alexander Eliot, Gabriela Garcia, Tom Penn, Jabez Sykes
Running time: 2 hr 45 mins (one intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: Stripped of the frills that Blanche DuBois so favors – well, except for that Chinese lampshade, but no need to be Stanley cruel – Rebecca Frecknall’s A Streetcar Named Desire, more-astonishing than her Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, presents a the much-staged Tennessee Williams classic as if its never been done before. Gone, mostly, are Blanche’s lilting, lyrical line readings cemented by Vivien Leigh in Elia Kazan’s 1951 movie masterpiece, with Patsy Ferran’s Blanche a decidedly more feral concoction, wounded but all the more dangerous for being so. She’s a match for Paul Mescal’s deceptively appealing, come-and-go wolf-smile creature until she isn’t.

Staged at Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater by way of London’s Almeida Theatre, this Streetcar took the Old City by storm in 2023, nominated for six Olivier Awards and winning three (Best Revival (deserving), Best Actor for Mescal (very deserving), and Best Supporting Actress for Anjana Vasan, who plays Stella (so very deserving).

Accolades in London don’t, of course, always guarantee love in New York, but it’s happy news that this time, the guarantee is made and delivered.

Played in modern, more or less, dress and on Madeleine Girling’s raised platform set – think of a low-rise boxing ring, with gutters to catch the buckets of water that rouse Stanley from his drunken ravings or the downpour that drenches a nearly catatonic Blanche following her rape by the brutish brother-in-law. The simple square wooden platform couldn’t be further from Williams’ intentions for the Kowalski’s deshabille two-room French Quarter abode, but then many if not most of the author’s stage directions go ignored here. Not to worry – Frecknall and her cast know exactly what they’re doing.

The story barely needs retelling here: Down, out and oh so alone Blanche, that most wilted of all Williams’ flowers, arrives at the New Orleans home of her good-hearted, survival-minded sister Stella and Stella’s husband Stanley Kowalski, that beer-swilling, soldier of bowling who takes an instant dislike – or is it something else – to this intruder of his crummy little castle. Even when the masterful Mescal shows a kind, toothy smile upon Blanche’s entrance, it disappears like the gulp of a beer and leaves us wondering whether we ever really saw it.

Stanley’s change in mood, of course, comes quickly once he realizes that the old DuBois plantation homestead has been, in the words of Blanche, lost through years of “epic debauches.” Stanley isn’t having it – he has an acquaintance who knows about these things, of course – and wants to understand where, exactly, all that family money he once imagined has gone. The Napoleonic Code, after all.

What Frecknall, Mescal and Ferran seem to understand and portray, perhaps better than any production of Streetcar I’ve seen, is that all the talk of failed loans and Ambler and Ambler and white summer furs is the MacGuffin that serves only to give Stanley the barest rationale to snoop into the past of his sister-in-law. A true predator, he senses Blanche’s history – something in her history, anyway, something buried deep – is her weak spot, her jugular. He’ll get there one smile, one swagger, one bellow and one cruel outburst at a time.

As these two bob and weave in that boxing ring of a set – well, these three actually, because the excellent Anjana Vasan’s sturdy Stella is no wallflower – a percussive soundscape, courtesy of drummer Tom Penn seated well above the stage, builds like thunder or beats softly like a quickened pulse, the only real adornment that Frecknall allows to compete with her actors. Well, almost only: She does grace Blanche with that red paper lantern, a fragile and temporary cleft in the rock of Blanche’s confinement, a refuge no more lasting than the weak arms and weaker character of Mitch (Dwane Walcott), the friend of Stanley’s on whom Blanche has pinned her last granule of hope.

When the end comes – after Mitch has run off and Williams hands us one of the two greatest mad scenes in American theater (guess the other, Mary) – the final showdown is played between Stanley – now changed from the type of clothes that Mescal might wear to the gym into those legendarily ludicrous red silk pajamas – and Blanche. Like Mescal, Ferran has changed out of her mostly nondescript normcore dresses into a frilly, white ball gown at least as ridiculous as those silk P.J.s. (Kudos to costume designer Merle Hensel). With the platform-stage all but bare except for Stanley and Blanche and their newly noticeable attire, starkly lit (by designer Lee Curran) as if it were some basement dog fight, this most famous of Streetcar‘s scenes reveals something that might have gone unobserved in Streetcars past: If Blanche is theater’s great self-deceiver, Stanley is every bit her equal, playing the loving husband when the mood strikes, the joyful celebrant in red silk when it suits him, the grinning peacemaker offering a loving cup only moments before he’s on all fours, growling like an animal going for the kill.

What Frecknall seems to be soliciting from her cast – and it is quite the opposite of what she asked of her Cabaret cast – is a sort of toning down, to perform Williams’ gorgeous poetry of the South without the ghosts of Leigh’s languid stylization and Brando’s mumbled, guttural demands hovering overhead. (Fret not, those performances, god bless ’em, are just a TCM away). Mescal, Ferran, Vasan and even the terrific Walcott are after something different here: Southern Gothic made conversational, normal even, the horrors of domestic abuse and soul-crushing circumstances snatched from the black and white of an old movie and laid sopping wet at our feet.

Much has always been made of Streetcar‘s ending, how Williams was forced to change the play’s unrepentant coda – Stella taking the rapist Stanley back into her arms – to a more Hollywood view of sinners punished. In the film, Stella takes the baby and refuses to hang back with the brute.

But Frecknall has envisioned something scarier than either scenarios: The last image we see of this Streetcar is Stella collapsed on the floor, screaming for her sister, caught in her husband’s hug that can only be described as a death grip. Stanley, the predator, is unwilling to let go of his quarry.

Redwood

Opening night: February 13, 2025
Venue: Broadway’s Nederlander Theatre
Written/directed by: Tina Landau
Music by: Kate Diaz
Lyrics by:  Diaz and Landau
Cast: Idina Menzel, De’Adre Aziza, Michael Park, Zachary Noah Piser, Khaila Wilcoxon
Running time: 1 hr 50 mins (no intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: Don’t be fooled by the elaborate, gorgeous projections and LED panels that turn the Nederlander Theatre’s stage into a massive forest, a cross-country trip with state after state speeding by outside a car window, a Brooklyn apartment, a fast-spreading woodland fire, all so expertly created they can, at times, feel more like one of those virtual amusement park rides (that’s a compliment) than a typical Broadway outing. At heart, though, Redwood is an intimate tale, emotionally generous in message if familiar in narrative. And it really does look amazing.

Idina Menzel’s much anticipated Broadway return won’t rank among her stage triumphs like Wicked and Rent, but in its own smaller way seems a no-brainer choice for her return star vehicle. The score calls for a lot of belting — too much belting, actually — and there are few better than Menzel. Director Tina Landau’s book (Menzel gets a co-conceived credit and she contributed to the lyrics) never quite hits the heights that the show’s title might imply, but it holds our interest throughout.

Menzel plays Jesse, a New York City gallery owner, who, when we first meet her, might seem to have a charmed life — a successful business, a wife she loves (De’Adre Aziza plays Mel), a son (Zachary Noah Piser as Spencer) she dotes on until she can’t. We sense early on that this happy life is a memory as the play cuts back and forth through time, and soon enough we learn about the event that has shattered the idyll: Spencer, so playful and loving as a child, grows into a troubled, resentful young man, fated to die of a drug overdose just after college. How the two mothers deal with the tragedy is the engine of the story.

While the open-hearted Mel wants to honor Spencer’s life (and the survivors’ grief) by facing up to reality — and talking about it — Jesse’s instinct is to run, both emotionally and physically. As the one-year anniversary of Spencer’s death approaches, Jesse’s bottled-up feelings drive a wedge between the two women, and on impulse Jesse hits the road. In the parlance of 12-steppers, she pulls a geographic: She takes off, impetuous and alone, for a cross-country trip, seeking some kind of self-understanding as she ultimately lands in the forests of California’s redwood country, finding both a sanctuary and, whether she knows it or not, a bucket-list tribute to her late son.

“Losing a child – your only child – breaks you in a way that is not fixable or solvable,” Jesse says.

While she can’t quite verbalize or come to terms with her grief — “I’m just not a therapy person,” she says, an innocuous quip that hits Mel like a fist — she makes an immediate and visceral connection to the giant trees, one in particular that she names Stella. A chance meeting in the forest with two canopy botanists (Michael Park and Khaila Wilcoxon, both terrific) studying climate change by scaling the heights of the trees finds Jesse entranced with the trunks and the leaves and the opportunity to lose herself in both. She determines to join her new acquaintances on a climb, if not to the treetops then to a resting platform high enough to experience the glory.

If the tale sounds a bit far-fetched, keep in mind the real-life story that inspired it: In the late 1990s, activist Julia Butterfly Hill spent more than 700 days living in a 1,000-year-old tree — she named hers Luna — to prevent it from being chopped down by loggers. She won the battle.

While the book and lyrics find considerable poetry and allegory in the conceit (“If the fires come,” Jesse sings to her tree, “would I lose you like I lost him?”), the book isn’t always convincing in some of the details, like the scholars’ acquiescence to the beginner or Jesse’s sudden climbing skills. Fortunately, Menzel and the production’s designers pick up the slack with a near-miraculous job in making believers of us. Hana S. Kim’s video projections, Jason Ardizzone-West’s scenic designs, Scott Zielinski’s lighting and Jonathan Deans’ sound are so potent they come close to vertigo-inducing. As the actors fly on their ropes, the massive projected forest begins to move, soaring and taking the audience with it. It’s a wonderful effect, so powerful in its execution that at moments the entire theater seems to be rising.

The way Menzel becomes one with that movement is thrilling. At one point, after watching her companions playfully use their climbing ropes for some Tarzan-style fun, she does the same, away from their protective eyes. Only we see what she sees, as she gleefully swoops in long arcs from the huge tree that dominates the stage. (Jesse’s air dances, or “vertical performance,” is choreographed by Bandaloop, a dance company with an expertise in just such stage movements).

Menzel’s go-for-broke commitment is rewarded by a score full of big ballads for those powerhouse vocals and enough space to accommodate her quieter, supple approach. “In the Leaves,” one of the show’s big numbers, is her chance to use her full arsenal, as the song moves from ballad to rocker driven forward by the insistent percussion of drums and strings. It’s a love song to a tree, and Menzel sells it for all it’s worth.

Redwood, though, ultimately is just a shade too thin in its storytelling imagination, hitting the familiar dramatic beats we’ve come to expect through countless grief and recovery stories. Still, it’s not hard to focus your attention on the successful aspects — Menzel, that set, the sky dancing, and across-the-board fine performances from the rest of the cast. Piser is particularly poignant as the late son, appearing spectrally to offer a last chance at closure. It’s a touching moment that ties up loose ends and satisfies emotionally. Whatever their shortcomings, in the end we’re happy for both Jesse and for Redwood.

Opening night: January 23, 2025
Venue: Broadway’s Todd Haimes Theatre
Written by: Sanaz Toossi
Directed by: Knud Adams
Cast: Tala Ashe, Ava Lalezarzadeh, Pooya Mohseni, Marjan Neshat, Hadi Tabbal
Running time: 1 hr 40 mins (no intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: Absolutely nothing gets lost in the translation of Sanaz Toossi’s English as the Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a group of Iranians longing for the West finally makes its Broadway debut, two years after its Off Broadway bow garnered critical raves and regional stagings won over audiences with its unfailing wit, grace and compassion. Read full review.

Opening night: December 22, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s Hudson Theatre
Written by: Simon Rich
Directed by: Alex Timbers
Cast: John Mulaney, Fred Armisen, Richard Kind, Renée Elise Goldsberry
Running time: 1 hr 30 min (no intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: Directed by the ever nimble Alex Timbers and performed by a rotating cast of four actors – I was lucky to get the truly excellent John Mulaney, Fred Armisen, Renée Elise Goldsberry and Richard Kind – the 90-minute All In is a perfect holiday snickerdoodle, a light and tasty snack no less funny for its brevity and lack of splashy production values. Read full review.

Opening night: December 19, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s Majestic Theatre
Directed by: George C. Wolfe
Book by: Arthur Laurents
Music by: Jule Styne
Lyrics by: Stephen Sondheim
Cast: Audra McDonald, Danny Burstein, Joy Woods, Jordan Tyson, Kevin Csolak, Lesli Margherita, Lili Thomas, Mylinda Hull, Jacob Ming-Trent, Kyleigh Vickers, Marley Lianne Gomes & Jade Smith, Natalie Wachen, Tryphena Wade
Running time: 3 hrs (including intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: Along with the high hopes is the question that’s been whispered since the production was announced months ago: Would Audra McDonald, an opera-trained vocalist prized for her impossibly pure soprano, have the grit and belt for the rough-around-the-edges anti-heroine Rose, a character entrusted with a bundle of the finest, gutsiest anthems and ballads ever written by those formidable theater creators Arthur Laurents, Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim? The answer is a qualified, perhaps even reluctant, yes. I can’t recall a better wrong-for-the-part performance in recent memory than McDonald’s Rose. Read full review.

Opening night: December 16, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
Written by: Jonathan Spector
Directed by: Anna D. Shapiro
Cast: Bill Irwin, Thomas Middleditch, Amber Gray, Jessica Hecht, Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz, Eboni Flowers
Running time: 1 hr 40 mins (no intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: Playwright Jonathan Spector has done us all a favor and molded one of the most divisive, inane, grotesque and newly resurgent issues — vaccines — and polished it into a shiny, insightful and damn funny little gem so that all of us can ogle and ponder and reconsider just how in the name of Jonas Salk did we get here. Read full review.

Opening night: December 12, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theater
Written By: Leslye Headland
Directed By: Trip Cullman
Cast: Molly Bernard, Roberta Colindrez, Barbie Ferreira, Rebecca Henderson, Christopher Lowell, Zachary Quinto, David Rasche, Christopher Sears, Mare Winningham, Shailene Woodley
Running time: 1 hr 45 mins (no intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: A Second Stage Theater production steered like a fast-moving sleigh by director Trip Cullman, Cult of Love boasts an excellent cast (headed by Zachary Quinto, Mare Winningham, David Rasche and, in an impressive Broadway debut, Star Wars: The Acolyte‘s Rebecca Henderson) that pulls off a familiar scenario with unexpected freshness. Read full review.

Opening night: November 21, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
Directed/choreography by: Christopher Gattelli
Book by: Marco Pennette
Music by: Julia Mattison & Noel Carey
Cast: Megan Hilty, Jennifer Simard, Christopher Sieber and Michelle Williams, with Marija Abney, Lauren Celentano, Sarita Colon, Kaleigh Cronin, Natalie Charle Ellis, Taurean Everett, Michael Graceffa, Neil Haskell, Kolton Krouse, Josh Lamon, Sarah Meahl, Ximone Rose, Sir Brock Warren, Bud Weber, Ryan Worsing, Warren Yang
Running time: 2 hr 30 mins (including intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: A perfect rejoinder to the ubiquitous Broadway Sucks These Days gripe about the too-many movie-to-stage adaptations has arrived at long last, and it’s a simple three-word response: Death Becomes Her. A virtually perfect big-budget, broad-appeal musical comedy that improves in every way over the 1992 film, director-choreographer Christopher Gattelli’s wildly entertaining vehicle for two of our best singer-actor-comedians on any stage today renders the movie-as-source snipe worthless. Read full review.

Opening night: November 19, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s Longacre Theatre
Director: Michael Mayer
Book: John Logan
Music and lyrics: The Avett Brothers
Cast: John Gallagher Jr., Stark Sands, Wayne Duvall and Adrian Blake Enscoe, with Josh Breckenridge, Hunter Brown, Matt DeAngelis, Cameron Johnson, Brandon Kalm, Rico LeBron, Michael J. Mainwaring, Orville Mendoza, Chase Peacock, Tyrone L. Robinson, David Rowen and John Sygar. (Swings include John Michael Finley and Robert Pendilla.)
Running time: 1 hr 30 mins (no intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: As enthralling as it is disquieting, Swept Away is a taut and captivating new folk musical featuring the gorgeous songs of the roots-rock group The Avett Brothers and an impeccable cast headed by John Gallagher Jr. and Stark Sands. Most in the audience will know where all this is headed, though Swept Away has more than a few surprises in store, not least some revelations about one character’s previous experiences and his long, slow march toward redemption. Read full review.

Opening night: November 17, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s Marquis Theatre
Directed by: Philip Wm. McKinley
Book by: Thomas Meehan and Bob Martin
Music: by Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin
Cast: Grey Henson, Sean Astin, Kayla Davion, Michael Hayden, Ashley Brown, Kai Edgar, Jennifer Sanchez, Kalen Allen, Michael Deaner
Running time: 2 hr 30 mins (including intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: The updated Elf remains as much a mixed bag as it was during its previous two Broadway stagings in 2010 and 2012, with one major improvement: Grey Henson, the immensely likable, pitched-to-the-rafters firecracker from Mean Girls and Shucked, steps as easily into Buddy’s green winklepickers as Cinderella ever did a glass slipper. Read full review.

Opening night: November 14, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s Palace Theatre
Directed by: Rupert Goold
Book by: James Graham
Music by: Elton John
Lyrics by: Jake Shears
Cast: Katie Brayben, Christian Borle, Michael Cerveris, Autumn Hurlbert, Nick Bailey, Charl Brown, Mark Evans, Allison Guinn, Ian Lassiter, Raymond J. Lee, Max Gordon Moore, Alana Pollard, Andy Taylor, and Amanda Clement, Michael Di Liberto, Jonathan Duvelson, Lily Kaufmann, Denis Lambert, Elliott Mattox, Brittany Nicholas, Keven Quillon, Aveena Sawyer, Allysa Shorte, TJ Tapp, Daniel Torres, and Dana Wilton
Running time: 2 hr 35 mins (including intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: Tammy Faye is only slightly more fun than church on a hot July day. All concerned seem absolutely determined to transform Tammy Faye Bakker into a respectable, saintly and rather dull church-lady-next-door. Read full review.

Opening night: November 12, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s Belasco Theatre
Directed by: Michael Arden
Book by: Will Aronson, Hue Park
Music by: Will Aronson
Lyrics by: Hue Park
Cast: Darren Criss, Helen J Shen, Dez Duron, Marcus Choi and Arden Cho, Young Marion, Jim Kaplan
Running time: 1 hr 45 mins (no intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: A tenderhearted meet-cute rom-com tinged with poignance, laughs and break-your-heart melancholy, Maybe Happy Ending just might be this season’s answer to Kimberly Akimbo. A near-perfect little fable of set-for-the-scrap-heap robots learning to love and knowing whatever happiness they find will be short-lived, it is, of all things, a musical about androids that absolutely brims with humanity. Read full review.

Opening night: November 11, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s Studio 54
Director: Christopher Renshaw
Co-directors: Christina Sajous and James Monroe Iglehart
Book by: Aurin Squire
Music by: Songs From The Career of Louis Armstrong
Cast: James Monroe Iglehart, Darlesia Cearcy, Jennie Harney-Fleming, Kim Exum, Dionne Figgins, DeWitt Fleming Jr., Jason Thomas Forbach, Gavin Gregory, Jimmy Smagula and Brandon Louis Armstrong, Wesley J. Barnes, Willie Clyde Beaton II, Ronnie S. Bowman, Jr., Eean S. Cochran, Kate Louissaint, Matt Magnusson, Jodeci Milhouse, Alysha Morgan, Khadijah Rolle, Tally Sessions, Brett Sturgis, Renell Taylor, Meridien Terrell, Dori Waymer. (James T. Lane plays Armstrong at certain performances.)
Deadline’s takeaway: If A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical, starring a terrific James Monroe Iglehart (Aladdin, Hamilton) as the legendary Satchmo, doesn’t escape every pitfall of the jukebox musical, it comes closer than most. Read full review.

Opening night: October 24, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s Circle In The Square
Written by: William Shakespeare
Directed by: Sam Gold
Music by: Jack Antonoff
Movement direction/choreography by: Sonya Tayeh
Cast: Kit Connor, Rachel Zegler, Gabby Beans, Daniel Bravo Hernández, Jasai Chase-Owens, Tommy Dorfman, Nihar Duvvuri, Sola Fadiran, Taheen Modak, Gían Pérez
Running time: 2 hr 20 mins (including intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: Make room, plenty of room, for Sam Gold‘s Romeo + Juliet rave-up starring the compelling and well-matched Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler. The play is perhaps the best use in ages of Circle in the Square’s often troublesome in-the-round staging. Even when Connor’s Romeo and Zegler’s Juliet square off from opposite sides of the venue, their invisible chains – hormones, by another term – are magic. Read full review.

Opening night: October 23, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s James Earl Jones Theatre
Written by: Delia Ephron
Directed by: Susan Stroman
Cast: Julianna Margulies, Peter Gallagher, Peter Francis James, Kate MacCluggage
Running time: 1 hr 40 min (no intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: Played by Julianna Margulies (ER, The Good Wife) with endless appeal that doesn’t shortchange the harsher aspects of a chemo-drenched recovery, the play’s Delia Ephron is still getting used to being alone following the recent death of her husband. Left on Tenth is a slight endeavor – slighter, probably, than a cancer odyssey has any right to be – and certainly falls short of better Ephron Sister efforts. Even so, there can be only one response to it, and that’s well wishes for all. Read full review.

Opening night: October 20, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s St. James Theatre
Director: Jamie Lloyd
Book and lyrics: Don Black and Christopher Hampton
Music: Andrew Lloyd Webber
Cast: Nicole Scherzinger, Tom Francis, Grace Hodgett Young, David Thaxton, with Olivia Lacie Andrews, Brandon Mel Borkowsky, Shavey Brown, Hannah Yun Chamberlain, Cydney Clark, Raúl Contreras, Tyler Davis, E.J. Hamilton, Sydney Jones, Emma Lloyd, Pierre Marais, Shayna McPherson, Jimin Moon, Justice Moore, Drew Redington, Diego Andres Rodriguez. (Mandy Gonzalez will guest star as ‘Norma Desmond’ at certain select performances.)
Running time: 2 hr 30 mins (including intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: All that madness in Gloria Swanson’s eyes at the end of Billy Wilder’s 1950 masterpiece Sunset Boulevard is amplified to breathtaking lengths in Jamie Lloyd‘s commanding and gorgeous renovation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1993 musical. With a career-expanding performance that redefines the onetime Dancing With the Stars competitor Nicole Scherzinger as thoroughly as Lloyd’s staging does Lloyd Webber’s musical, the revival is a stunner, stark always, funny sometimes and ultimately terrifying. Read full review.

Opening night: October 10, 2024
Venue: Ethel Barrymore Theatre, Broadway
Written by: Thornton Wilder
Directed by: Kenny Leon
Cast: Jim Parsons, Zoey Deutch, Katie Holmes, Billy Eugene Jones, Ephraim Sykes, Richard Thomas, Michelle Wilson, Julie Halston, Donald Webber Jr., with Ephie Aardema Sarnak, Heather Ayers, Willa Bost, Bobby Daye, Safiya Kaijya Harris, Doron JéPaul, Shyla Lefner, Anthony Michael Lopez, John McGinty, Bryonha Marie, Kevyn Morrow, Hagan Oliveras, Noah Pyzik, Sky Smith, Bill Timoney, Ricardo Vázquez, Matthew Elijah Webb, Greg Wood, Nimene Sierra Wureh
Running time: 1 hr 45 mins (no intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: While a check-in from the fictional Grover’s Corners circa 1901-1913 is always a moving and welcome addition to anyone’s frazzled day, the new staging by Kenny Leon, with a cast that includes Jim Parsons, Katie Holmes, Richard Thomas, Billy Eugene Jones, Ephraim Sykes and Zoey Deutch, lacks the strong personality that would send it to the top of the many Our Towns that have staked claims on the world’s stages for nearly a century. Read full review.

Opening night: October 1, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s Todd Haimes Theatre
Written by: David Henry Hwang
Directed by: Leigh Silverman
Cast: Daniel Dae Kim, Kevin Del Aguila, Ryan Eggold, Francis Jue, Marinda Anderson, Greg Keller, Shannon Tyo
Running time: 1 hr 45 mins (no intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face debuted Off Broadway 17 years ago, spinning a farcical tale about a real-life Broadway controversy that had taken place some 17 years before that. How it manages to be relevant, insightful and very funny as it makes its Broadway debut tonight, all these years later, is anyone’s guess, but it does. Read full review.

Opening night: September 30, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center
Written by: Ayad Akhtar
Directed by: Bartlett Sher
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Brittany Bellizeare, Rafi Gavron, Melora Hardin, Andrea Martin, Ruthie Ann Miles, Saisha Talwar
Running time: 1 hr 40 mins (no intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: Slow to grab hold and knotty when it does, Ayad Akhtar’s McNeal, starring Robert Downey Jr. in a formidable Broadway debut, is, at its core, a sort of literary parlor game: Let’s take that most mighty of 20th century book-chat tropes – the macho, aging male superstar novelist who amorally mines the lives and works of his enemies, his betters and, most cruelly, his loved ones, as grist for his art, fuel for his bank accounts and supply chain for his trophy shelves. Now drop him into the brave new world of AI, where thievery can be accomplished with an ease and at a magnitude heretofore unimagined … astutely directed by the great Bartlett Sher, it is an often confusing though wheedlingly emotional mindgame. Read full review.

Opening night: September 29, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s Broadhurst Theater
Written by: Jez Butterworth
Directed by: Sam Mendes
Cast: Laura Donnelly, Leanne Best, Ophelia Lovibond, Helena Wilson; Nancy Allsop; Sophia Ally; Lara McDonnell; Nicola Turner, David Wilson Barnes, Ta’Rea Campbell, Bryan Dick, Richard Lumsden, Richard Short, Liam Bixby, Ellyn Heald, Max Roll, Cameron Scoggins
Running time: 2 hr 45 mins (including one intermission and one pause)
Deadline’s takeaway: Is there a more dependable set-up for family drama than the gathering of long-estranged siblings? Last season’s dark and wonderful Appropriate proved there was plenty of life in Pinter’s old Homecoming trick, and this Broadway season Jez Butterworth does it again with the fine The Hills of California, a superbly performed reckoning with old traumas and those family squabbles that can seem so petty on the surface. Read full review.

Opening night: September 12, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s Booth Theatre
Written by: Jen Silverman
Directed by: Jack O’Brien
Cast: Mia Farrow, Patti LuPone
Running time: 1 hr 40 mins (no intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: The Roommate is an awkwardly paced, abruptly mood-shifting tale of two very different women on the verge of old age looking to outrun their pasts and stake new claims on the future. Not even the ever-reliable director Jack O’Brien can get a firm grasp on this squiggly story, but at least he doesn’t have to make the effort alone: Who wouldn’t want Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone on their team? Read full review.

Opening night: August 12, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s Hudson Theater
Written by: Amy Sherman-Palladino (new adaptation)
Music: Mary Rodgers
Lyrics: Marshall Barer
Original book: Jay Thompson, Dean Fuller, Marshall Barer
Directed by: Lear deBessonet
Cast: Sutton Foster, Michael Urie, Ana Gasteyer, Brooks Ashmanskas, Daniel Breaker, Will Chase, Nikki Renée Daniels, David Patrick Kelly
Running time: 2 hr 15 mins (including intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: Carol Burnett is alive and well and not starring in the latest Broadway revival of Once Upon a Mattress, the fractured fairy tale musical opening tonight that laid the foundation for the funny lady’s towering comic career way back in ’59. Fortunately for Broadway audiences, the contemporary stage has its very own Princess Winnifred who is more than capable to doing the royal succession bit: Sutton Foster. Read full review.

Opening night: June 11, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre
Written by: Cole Escola
Directed by: Sam Pinkleton
Cast: Cole Escola, Conrad Ricamora, James Scully, Bianca Leigh, Tony Macht
Running time: 1 hr 20 mins (no intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: There’s funny, there’s very funny, and then there’s Oh, Mary! Cole Escola, low-key famous these last few years, ups the career stakes immensely with Oh, Mary! With nods and hints to Charles Busch, the late, great and forever ridiculous Everett Quinton, the Sedaris siblings, Carol Burnett, Pee-wee Herman and Absolutely Fabulous, Escola squeezes just enough juice from their influences for a mix that is entirely fresh and not to be missed. Read full review.

Opening night: June 5, 2024
Venue: Broadway’s Todd Haimes Theatre
Written by: Samm-Art Williams
Directed by: Kenny Leon
Cast: Tory Kittles, Brittany Inge, Story Ayers
Running time: 1 hr 30 mins (no intermission)
Deadline’s takeaway: With the acclaimed director Kenny Leon at the helm and a three-actor cast that all but channels the author’s voice and the groundbreaking intensity and rhythms of his ’70s-era work for the Negro Ensemble Company, the revival promised to be a testament to the tenacity of the play and a well-deserved splash of late-career recognition for a once celebrated playwright who would become far better known for producing a trio of 1990s sitcoms (Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Martin). Read full review.