Spring Preview: 2025 Broadway Shows (2025)

Sanaz Toossi'sabsorbing and thoughtfuldramaabout adult studentslearningEnglish in Iran wonthe 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Now the Roundabout brings it to Broadwaywith the same terrific five-person cast as itsOff Broadway debutat the Atlantic Theatre Company:Tala Ashe, Ava Lalezarzadeh, Pooya Mohseni, Marjan Neshat and Hadi Tabbal.Knud Adams (Paris) once again directs.

The wickedly talented Adele Dazeem—sorry, we mean Idina Menzel—returns to Broadway as the star of an original musical that she conceived with the highly creative director Tina Landau (SpongeBob Squarepants), who has also written the show's book and co-written its lyrics with composer Kate Diaz. Menzel plays a woman who goes into the woods of Northern California as a means of coping with the death of her adult son. The cast of five also includesDe’Adre Aziza as Menzel's wife>, Zachary Noah Piser as their late child, and Michael Park and Khaila Wilcoxon as a pair of tree huggers who help her climb to healing.

Having taken the U.K. by storm in productions about the country, culminating ina well-receivedforay into the West End, this scrappy musical comedy about a wacky real-life British spy operation in World War II now invades New York City. The entire original company of five re-ups for the Broadway production: co-authorsDavid Cumming,Natasha Hodgson and Zoë Roberts—who wrote the show withFelix Hagan, their comrade inthe comedy troupeSpitLip—as well asClaire-Marie Hall and Olivier Award winner Jak Malone.Robert Hastie directs the military mayhem.

If you were alive in the late 1990s, you probably remember the ubiquitous 1997 albumbuena Vista Social Club, which reunited elderly musicians to recreate the atmosphere and songs of a Havana nightspot before the Cuban Revolution. This original musical by Marco Ramirez—directed by Saheem Ali and choreographed gorgeously by Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck—brings their storyto Broadway, in slightly fictionalized form, after a highly enjoyable debut at the Atlantic last year. As winter pokes its frigid fingers into New York City, this lively celebration of Cuban music offers an irresistable tropical getaway.

Movie magnets Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal star in Shakespeare's fast-paced tragedy of jealousy and misplaced trust, in which a villain preys on the insecurities of a Moorish war hero married to aFlorentinewoman. The busyKenny Leon (Our Town) directs the play's first Broadway revival in more than 40 years, which is sure to be a highly coveted ticket(orat least extremely expensive one). Theprincipal cast also includesMolly Osborne as Desdemona,Andrew Burnap as Cassio,Kimber Elayne Sprawl as Emilia andAnthony Michael Lopez as the hapless Roderigo.

Broadway audiences got a taste of playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's strong but delicious medicine in last season's revival ofAppropriate. They'llgetanother gulp with this newfamily drama, which looks at thestructural damagebehind the pious facade of aprominent Black family. Stage and screen royalPhylicia Rashad directs a cast of six that includes four holdovers from the play's debut at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company last year—Harry Lennix,Jon Michael Hill,Alana Arenas and Glenn Davis—plus the formidable Latanya Richardson Jackson and the irresistable Kara Young.

David Mamet's 1983vivisection of American hustle has proved perennially popular with both audiences and actors looking toget drunk on the play's punchylanguage. The play's third Broadway revival in 20 years is directed byPatrick Marber (Closer) and headlined by four big names: Kieran Culkin—the latest in a succession ofSuccessionstars to hit the Great White Way—as hotshot Ricky Roman; Bob Odenkirk as thecreaky Shelley "The Machine" Levine; and, two of their colleagues at a crummy sales firm, stand-up starBill Burr and comedy mainstay Michael McKean.Donald Webber Jr., Howard W. OvershownandJohn Pirruccello complete the ensemble cast.

While her ertswhile Succession brother Kieran Culkin gets down and dirty in Glengarry Glen Ross a few streets away, Sarah Snook takes a walk on the Wilde side in a solo adaptation of Oscar W.'s fanciful Victorian gothic novel about the ultimate demon twink. Snook plays more than 25 characters in a production helmed by adapter-director Kip Williams; her performance in the West End, which our London critic called "astonishing", earned her a 2024 Olivier Award.

Newcomer Jasmine Amy Rogers stars as the muffin-headed 1930 cartoon sexpot Betty Boop in a new musical that finds Betty leaving ToonTown for the sometimes harsh realities of non-animated New York. The book is by the clever Bob Martin (The Drowsy Chaperone); the score is by veteran pop hitmaker David Foster—who has given us such hits as Chicago's "You're the Inspiration" and Whitney Houston's "I Have Nothing"—and  lyricist Susan Birkenhead (Jelly's Last Jam). Director-choreographer Jerry Mitchell (Kinky Boots) oversees a colorful production whose supporting players include Faith Prince, Erich Bergen, Ainsley Melham, Stephen DeRosa and Anastacia McCleskey.

Broadway fans had a love-hate relationship with Smash, NBC's campy backstage series about the making of a musical about Marilyn Monroe, but everyone agreed that the show's highlights were its original songs by the Hairspray team of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. Many of those numbers will also be featured in this original adaptation by Rick Elice (Jersey Boys) and Bob Martin (Boop!), directed by Susan Stroman (The Producers) and choreographed once again by Joshua Bergasse. Robyn Hurder and Caroline Bowman star as Ivy and Karen, the story's competing would-be Marilyns, and the TV version's Krysta Rodriguez; other attractions include two of Broadway's most delightful comic actors, Brooks Ashmanskas and Kristine Nielsen, and two of its studliest muffins, John Behlmann and Casey Garvin.

George Clooney makes his Broadway debut in a stage adaptation of his 2005 film portrait of the storied CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow, who helped turned the tide against McCarthyism in the 1950s. In the Oscar-nominated movie version—which Clooney directed and co-wrote, like the play,with Grant Heslov—he played Murrow's colleague Fred Friendly; this time around, he steps into the lead role originated by David Strathairn. David Cromer (The Band's Visit), one of the theater world's most reliably intelligent and insightful directors, directs the world premiere.

This 2002 he-sang, she-sang musical by the gifted Jason Robert Brown(Parade) trackssoon-to-be exes along different lines of an X-shaped structure, in which his story moves forward in time and hers is told backward (in the sliced vein ofMerrily We Roll Along). The callous rising novelistJamie is played by pop pin-upNick Jonas, andhis"shiksa goddess" Cathy, an aspiring actress, is essayed byTinaidolAdrienne Warren.Whitney White (Jaja’s African Hair Braiding) directs the show's belated Broadwaypremiere.

Sadie Sink (Stranger Things) in a new comedy by Kimberly Belflower, in which a high school English class in rural Georgia challenges the conventional interpretation ofThe Crucible, Arthur Miller's classic witch-trial drama, and its martyred hero, John Proctor. Danya Taymor, who won a Tony last year forThe Outsiders, directs theBroadway premiere.

Two cherished Broadway leading ladies, Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga, are among the performers in this revue of songs by the peerless showtunesmith Stephen Sondheim, whose popularity has only grown since his death in 2021. Peters and Salonga were also in the show when it debuted in London in 2023; for the U.S. premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club, directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne (Swan Lake), they are flanked by several of their West End costars (Gavin Lee, Bonnie Langford, Jeremy Secomb, Jason Pennycooke) and a few new additions, such as Kate Jennings Grant and the priceless Beth Leavel.

Jeremy Jordan was most recently seen on Broadway as the star of The Great Gatsby. Now he takes on a radically different 1920s title character: a Kentucky spelunker who became a nationalsensation when he got trapped underground in what is now Mammoth Cave National Park. More than a quarter century after its Off Broadway premiere, this ambitious cult-favorite musical—with music and lyrics by Adam Guettel (The Light in the Piazza) and a book by Tina Landau—finally makes its Broadway debut. Landau, who is also helming Redwood this season, directs the Lincoln Center production; the supporting cast includes Jason Gotay, Lizzy McAlpine, Marc Kudisch and Jessica Molaskey as Floyd's family members, Taylor Trensch as a reporter on the scene, and Wade McCollum, Sean Allan Krill and Cole Vaughan as worried locals.

On the heels of his Tony-winning performance in last season's Merrily We Roll Along, Broadway sweetie Jonathan Groff returns to star as pop and nightclub star Bobby Darin, who peaked in the late 1950s with such hits as "Dream Lover," "Beyond the Sea" and "Mack the Knife." Alex Timbers (Moulin Rouge!) directs an immersive production at Circle in the Square, with a cast that features Michele Pawk, John Treacy Egan and Caesar Samayoa. The hits are strung together through an original book by Warren Leight (Side Man) and comic essayist Isaac Oliver (Intimacy Idiot).

Josefina López's 1990 play, about a Latina teenager torn between her family's garment factory and her college dreams, has already been the basis of the 2002 film that introduced the world to America Fererra. Now playwrights Lisa Loomer (Living Out) and Nell Benjamin (Legally Blonde) adapt it into a musical with music and lyrics by Joy Huerta (of the Mexican pop duo Jesse & Joy) and Benjamin Velez. Following a warmly received 2023 premiere at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the show is moving to Broadway under the guiding eye of director-choreographer Sergio Trujillo (Ain't Too Proud).

The Roundabout teams up with "Escape" artist Rupert Holmes (The Mystery of Edwin Drood) for a boldly jazzy adaptation of The Pirates of Penzance, the best-known show by the Victorian operetta masters W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan: a romp that bustles with sweet-hearted pirates, bumbling cops and pretty young lasses, now reset in New Orleans. Scott Ellis directs a power cast that includes, on the outlaw side, Ramin Karimloo as the Pirate King, Nicholas Barasch as his naive apprentice and RuPaul's Drag Race champion Jinkx Monsoon as the slatternly Ruth; and, on the side of the law, the justly beloved David Hyde Pierce as the Major General, Samantha Williams as his fetching daughter and Preston Truman Boyd as the Sergeant of Police.

The teambehind the lovely, Tony-winning musicalThe Band's Visit—book writer Itamar Moses, composer David Yazbek and directorDavid Cromer, now joinedby songwriterErik Della Penna—reunites to tell the very weird story ofElmer McCurdy: a Wild West outlaw whose corpse toured the country for decades as a side-show mummy. Theshow's Off Broadway premiere last year earned it multiple prizes, includes the Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Musical; the cast for the Broadway transfer has not yet been announced.