1. Leopoldstadt
Opened Oct. 2 at the Longacre Theatre. Closes July 2, 2023.
My review: “The great playwright Tom Stoppard and his simpatico director Patrick Marber make a lasting gift of remembrance in the brilliant, gorgeous and devastating new play Leopoldstadt, opening tonight at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre. But it’s a gift that comes with strings, ropes even, the author seems to be warning us: There’s burden attached to memory, and pain, and, above all, responsibility – duty, even – that accompanies every yellowed snapshot in an old family album and every fading face that once seemed fixed with such clarity.”
Further Thoughts: I’ve been, frankly, surprised by the strong box office for Leopoldstadt, an intricate – critic-speak for “sometimes confusing” – work of art that examines, unsparingly, the legacy of the Holocaust and makes clear that humanity’s penchant for forgetfulness is everlasting and catastrophic. Depressing? Not on your life. The Broadway success of Leopoldstadt was theater’s greatest gift of hope in 2022.
(Photo: The cast of Leopoldstadt)
2. Kimberly Akimbo
Opened Oct. 12 at The Booth Theatre.
My review: “Kimberly Akimbo, one of the unlikeliest, most exhilarating and unfailingly moving musicals to hit New York in years, opens on Broadway tonight having lost none of its immense charm since its Off Broadway debut lsat year swept just about every critics award there was to be swept. Opening tonight at the Booth Theatre with its original Off Broadway cast intact, the miraculous Victoria Clark leading the very fine ensemble, Kimberly Akimbo remains a stunner, a sly, quirky, eccentric work of stage art transformed into a crowd pleaser by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s captivating book and lyrics, Jeanine Tesori’s delightful music that, like Kimberly Akimbo itself, works its way into your heart with a jauntiness that both hides and ultimately amplifies its serious ambitions.”
Further thoughts: Not much to add to my review, except to note that two months later I remain haunted by a brief scene in which the 63-year-old actor Victoria Clark, heretofore dressed and styled as the teenage title character who suffers from a rapid-aging disease, suddenly appears in the garb of a middle-aged matron, making physical manifest of an internal decimation. It is perhaps the most poignant 10 seconds of the Broadway season so far.
(Photo: Victoria Clark)
3. Some Like It Hot
Opened Dec. 11 at The Shubert Theatre.
My review: Some Like It Hot is “a tap-dancing, razzle-dazzling embrace of everything to love about classic American musical theater, Golden Age Hollywood and Broadway talent at the top of their games, all of it crafted with a 21st Century wisdom that knows what’s worth clutching from the past and what insists on a refresh. Some Like It Hot is a delight from start to finish.”
Further thoughts: The success of Some Like It Hot and the failure of Almost Famous (closing Jan. 8) couldn’t offer a better lesson on stage adaptations of popular movies: If you have to do it, show just enough respect to capture the film’s spirit, but not enough to prevent experimentation and revitalization. Some Like It Hot beautifully navigated the troubled waters of Hollywood’s use of men in dresses as comic fodder, upending the trope for a 21st Century audience (something not even the well-intentioned Tootsie could manage). Almost Famous the musical was so enamored of Almost Famous the movie that it sinks the movie’s best scene – the sweet little “Tiny Dancer” singalong – in reverence and bombast.
(Photo: NaTasha Yvette Williams and the cast of Some Like It Hot)
4. Into The Woods
Opened July 10 at the St. James Theater. Closes Jan. 8
My review: “Originally staged at New York City Center Encores!, Lear deBessonet’s magnificent, starry Into The Woods all but demanded a Broadway transfer, with sold-out crowds packing City Center and those left out wanting in. Last week at a Broadway preview, the audience was so stoked for this show and this cast that a loud and prolonged cacophony of applause greeted the rise of the curtain. Clearly, this Into The Woods preceded itself.”
Further thoughts: Though box office dropped a bit with the departure of original cast member Sara Bareilles, this terrific production is no less a delight. Sondheim fans who couldn’t make it to Broadway should catch one of the stops on the national tour that starts in February.
(Photo: Gavin Creel and Julia Lester in Into the Woods)
5. Hangmen
Opened April 21 at the Golden. Closed June 18.
My review: “Sneaky, menacing and funny are descriptions that come up more than once in Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen, but not one of the three words quite does justice to this irresistibly pitch-black comedy, opening tonight at the Golden Theatre on Broadway…And no one does dark impulses with as much comedic flare – yes, it’s sneaky, menacing and funny – as McDonagh at full tilt.”
Further thoughts: McDonagh’s new film, The Banshees of Inisherin, represents the writer-director in peak cinematic form, and had me yearning to see him in peak stage form – Hangmen – all over again.
(Photo: Alfie Allen, David Thelfall, Hangmen)
6. Ain’t No Mo’
Opened Dec. 1 at the Belasco. Closes Dec. 23.
My review: “Ain’t No Mo’, the audacious Broadway debut of writer-performer Jordan E. Cooper powerfully directed by Broadway newcomer Stevie Walker-Webb, is a marvel, compelling even when its considerable reach exceeds its grasp, a mix of sketch comedy, satire, social commentary, drama and tour de force performances that places Ain’t No Mo’ are the forefront of the outlandish, take-no-prisoners style of Black theater pioneered by The Colored Museum and more recently joined by Slave Play and A Strange Loop.
Further thoughts: Broadway is shamefully inhospitable to Black plays without big-name stars (see: Topdog/Underdog. No, really, see it.) And Broadway is shamefully rough on experimental work (last season’s Dana H., Is This A Room). So imagine the odds against Ain’t No Mo’. But what a valiant attempt.
(Photo: Jordan E. Cooper)
7. A Strange Loop
Opened April 26 at the Lyceum. Closes Jan. 15.
My review: “Portrayed by Broadway newcomer Jaquel Spivey in a performance so comfortably inhabited you’d be forgiven for assuming he wrote it, Strange Loop‘s Usher takes his name from the stop-gap Lion King job that pays (barely) his bills while he writes the autobiographical musical of his dreams.”
Further thoughts: Spivey deserves all the success he’s getting – he’s been cast in the upcoming movie musical version of Mean Girls – but here’s hoping Broadway doesn’t stray too far from his thoughts.
(Photo:Jaquel Spivey and cast of A Strange Loop.)
8. Topdog/Underdog
Opened Oct. 20 at the John Golden Theater. Closes Jan. 15.
My review: “Twenty years after it first arrived to shake up a complacent Broadway and make a Pulitzer Prize winner of its author Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog has lost none of its vitality and power and cunning. Director Kenny Leon proves that in a vibrant new production opening tonight at the Golden Theatre…Like the Three-card Monte sharks they portray, the actors [Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II] are in full control, pacing their game and teasing out buried histories, secrets and longings with all the grace of a master illusionist.”
Further thoughts: This crowded Broadway season has been loaded with excellent performances, none of which outshine those given by the stars of Topdog/Underdog.
9. The Piano Lesson
Opened Oct. 13 at the Barrymore Theater. Closes Jan. 29
My review: “There’s abundant magic still in The Piano Lesson, August Wilson’s grand, 1987 Pulitzer Prize winning tale of a Black family torn between legacy and ambition, the past and the future, and, it’s not an overstatement to note, between life and death. In the new beautifully performed production opening on Broadway tonight at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, first-time Broadway director LaTanya Richardson Jackson unveils a great deal of that magic – and not always in the places you’d expect. Yes, there are the flashes of the supernatural visitations and omens that the playwright mined from Blues mythology and African American folklore, but the magic Jackson conjures from her cast is one of the most impressive displays currently on Broadway.”
Further thoughts: The rushed ending still vexes, but with an ensemble this strong and a play this good, why quibble?
(Photo: Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington, The Piano Lesson)
10. Take Me Out
Opened April 4 at the Helen Hayes Theatre. Closed June 11 and reopened Oct. 27. Closes Feb. 5.
My review: “With an impeccable cast headed by Jesse Williams, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Patrick J. Adams, Take Me Out just might be a revelation even to those who saw the original Broadway production nearly 20 years ago. My memory of the play is the sports-star-comes-out angle, a then-novel concept that over time has become, if not commonplace, at least not unheard of. What strikes me now about [Richard] Greenberg’s gorgeously crafted tale are the various dominoes that tumble after the coming out, in particular how hate speech, in all its vile ignorance and cruelty, can ooze its way into the most unlikely places, slime attaching itself to those you’d never have guessed might be susceptible, pushing heroes to do unheroic things. No one, Greenberg seems to be telling us, walks away unscathed when bigotry and hate come calling.”
Further thoughts: Was the post-Tony-win reopening a great idea? Declining box office suggests even the hottest pitch eventually cools, but what a game.
(Photo: Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jesse Williams in Take Me Out)
Best Broadway Comeback (Tie): Funny Girl and The Phantom Of The Opera
How to revive interest in a Broadway production that’s lost steam? If you’re producing The Phantom of the Opera, post a closing notice. Funny Girl? Hire Lea Michele.
(Photos: Lea Michele, Funny Girl, Ben Crawford, The Phantom of The Opera)
Best Solo (Tie): The Old Man & the Pool and A Christmas Carol
Somehow, Mike Birbiglia turned a personal story of illness and death into the funniest show on Broadway with The Old Man & the Pool, and Jefferson Mays worked a similar magic making the Dickens chestnut A Christmas Carol feel fresh as a new-cut evergreen. Two men, two holiday season wonders. (Birbiglia’s show closes Jan. 15; Carol on Jan. 1).
(Photos: Mike Birbiglia, The Old Man and the Pool; Jefferson Mays, A Christmas Carol)
Broadway
All The Broadway Shows Coming In 2023 – So Far
Pictures From Home
Studio 54
Previews Jan. 10, Opens Feb. 9
Nathan Lane, Danny Burstein and Zoë Wanamaker star in a comic and dramatic portrait of a mother, a father and a son who photographed their lives. Based on the photo memoir by Larry Sultan, Pictures From Home evokes memories of childhood, parenthood, and the vicissitudes of familial relationships.
A Doll’s House
Hudson Theatre
Previews Feb. 13, Opens March 9
Jessica Chastain stars in a reinvention of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Directed by Tony nominee Jamie Lloyd and adapted by playwright Amy Herzog, this new production “makes freshly relevant a story that shocked audiences and brought forth a new era of theater.” Chastain plays Nora Helmer, a childlike wife and mother who comes to confront the truth of her marriage.
Bob Fosse’s Dancin’
Music Box Theatre
Previews March 2, Opens March 19
Bob Fosse’s Dancin’will return to Broadway 41 years after the original hit production took its final bow. The revival will be directed by Tony Award winner Wayne Cilento, one of the stars of the original Broadway production, and produced in cooperation with Nicole Fosse. It’s described as a “full-throated, full-bodied celebration of the art form Fosse loved, practiced, and changed forever.”
Bad Cinderella
Imperial Theatre
Previews Feb. 17, Opens March 23
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music, lyrics by David Zippeland and an original book by Emerald Fennell retells the classic fairy tale by presenting Cinderella (Linedy Genao) as the “one stubborn peasant who stands in the way of absolute perfection” in the beautiful kingdom of Belleville. Carolee Carmello costars as the Stepmother.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
Previews Feb. 26, Opens March 26
Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford star in this Broadway production of the Sondheim classic. Thomas Kail directs. The synopsis: Filled with diabolical humor and extraordinary music, the eight-time Tony Award-winning musical tells the tale of an exiled barber’s quest to avenge the wrongs unfairly done to him and his family by a corrupt system of justice.
Life of Pi
Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre
Previews March 9, Opens March 30
Based on one of the novel that won the Man Booker Prize, and sold over fifteen million copies worldwide, Life of Pi is a new theatrical adaptation of the epic journey of a sixteen-year-old boy stranded on a lifeboat with four other survivors – a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan, and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger.
Shucked
Nederlander Theatre
Previews March 8, Opens April 4
Featuring a book by Tony Award winner Robert Horn and a score by the Nashville songwriting team of Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, Shucked answers the question of what you get when you pair a semi-neurotic, New York comedy writer with two music superstars from Nashville: “A hilarious and audacious farm-to-fable musical about the one thing Americans everywhere can’t get enough of – corn.”
Fat Ham
American Airlines Theatre
Previews March 21, Opens April 12
The Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy comes to Broadway following a sold-out run Off Broadway, and tells the Hamlet-like story of Juicy, a queer, Southern college kid grappling with questions of identity when the ghost of his father shows up at a backyard cookout.
Camelot
Vivian Beaumont Theater
Previews March 9, Opens April 13
Starring Andrew Burnap, Phillipa Soo and Jordan Donica, the Lincoln Center Theater presentation of Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot promises to reimagine the tale for the 21st century with a new book by Aaron Sorkin, based on the original by Alan Jay Lerner, and direction by Bartlett Sher.
Summer, 1976
Previews April 4
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
This Manhattan Theatre Club presents Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht in a new play by Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Auburn. Over one fateful summer, an unlikely friendship develops between Diana, a fiercely iconoclastic artist and single mom, and Alice, a free-spirited yet naïve young housewife.
Prima Facie
John Golden Theatre
Previews April 11, Opens April 23
Jodie Comer will make her Broadway debut in the US premiere of Prima Facie, a new play by Suzie Miller, for a limited 10-week engagement. She plays Tessa, a young barrister at the top of her game who must confront the lines where the patriarchal power of the law, burden of proof and morals diverge.
Good Night, Oscar
Belasco Theatre
Previews April 7, Opens April 24
Sean Hayes returns to Broadway in Good Night, Oscar from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Doug Wright. Lisa Peterson directs, with Hayes portraying Oscar Levant: Hollywood actor, concert pianist, and the most subversive wit ever to appear on television during its Golden Age.
New York, New York
St. James Theatre
Previews March 24, Opens April 26
With music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb, along with some new words from Lin-Manuel Miranda, New York, New York is based on the 1977 film directed by Martin Scorsese. Featuring such songs as the title tune and “The World Goes Round,” the musical is set in 1946 when a resurgent New York includes a collection of artists with dreams as big and diverse as the city itself.
The Thanksgiving Play
Spring 2023
Helen Hayes Theater
With this production of Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play, directed by Rachel Chavkin, the author becomes the first female Native American playwright produced on Broadway.The synopsis: A troupe of well-meaning theater artists dream of creating something revolutionary: a culturally sensitive, totally inoffensive Thanksgiving school pageant that finally gives a voice to Native Americans.
Once Upon a One More Time
Marquis Theatre
Previews May 13, Opens June 22
Once Upon A One More Time features an original story written by Jon Hartmere that flips the script on favorite fairytale icons. Once Upon A One More Time features the music of Britney Spears including “Oops I Did It Again,” “Lucky,” “Circus,” and “Toxic.”
Back to the Future: The Musical
Winter Garden Theatre
Previews June 30
The hit West End musical adaptation of the 1985 film arrives in New York this summer, with Roger Bart reprising his London performance as Doc Brown. The musical is brought to the stage by the movie’s co-writers, Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis.
Jaja’s African Hair Braiding
Fall 2023
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
Playwright Jocelyn Bioh will make her Broadway debut with thiscomedy set at a Harlem salon where during one sweltering summer day, love will blossom, dreams will flourish and secrets will be revealed.
Merrily We Roll Along
Fall 2023
Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez reprise their roles from this fall’s hit Off Broadway revival of the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth classic.
The Mousetrap
2023
After 70 years in London’s West End, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap will finally make its Broadway debut in 2023.
High Noon
2023
Forrest Gump writer Eric Roth and director Michael Arden will bring this stage adaptation of the Stanley Kramer-produced 1952 film classic Western to the Broadway stage in 2023.
(Photos: Back To The Future, Jessica Chastain for A Doll’s House and Merrily We Roll Along)
