Below is my annual preview guide of Broadway openings in the 2022-2023 season, which features starry revivals of some of America’s most acclaimed plays and musicals, new adaptations of beloved movies and books, and the Broadway debuts of provocative original plays and unusual new musicals.
The list is organized chronologically by opening date (not by first preview), with the title linked to the show’s official website.
July, 2022
Into the Woods
St. James Theater
First Preview: June 28, 2022
Opening July 10
Closing August 21, 2022
Written by Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) and James Lapine (book),
Directed by Lear deBessonet, choreographed by Lorin Lattaro
Cast: Sara Bareilles as the Baker’s Wife, and Gavin Creel as the Wolf/Cinderella’s Prince from the Encores production, with new cast members Brian D’Arcy James as the Baker, Patina Miller as the Witch, Phillipa Soo as Cinderella and Joshua Henry as Rapunzel’s Prince.
This revival of Sondheim and Lapine’s clever and tuneful adult take on classic fairy tales is a transfer from the New York City Center Encores! concert series.
My review
The Kite Runner
The Hayes
First preview July 6
Opening July 21
Closing October 30, 2022
Written by Matthew Spangler
Directed by Giles Croft
Cast: Amir Arison as Amir and Faran Tahir asBaba.
A stage adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s best-selling 2003 novel about two kite-flying friends from Afghanistan, and how Amir betrays Hassan, and then is called to make amends two decades later.
My review
October, 2022
Leopoldstadt
Longacre
First preview: September 14
Opening October 2
Written by Tom Stoppard
Directed by Patrick Marber
A cast of 38, 24 of them making their Broadway debuts.
Cast: “several members of the original West End company and 23 actors making their Broadway debuts”
The nineteenth Broadway production of a play by Stoppard, 84, is inspired by his own Jewish family history, set over several decades in Vienna, Austria before and after World War II.
my review
Cost of Living
MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theater
First preview: September 13
Opening October 3
Written by Martyna Majok
Directed by Jo Bonney
Cast: Gregg Mozgala, Katy Sullivan, Kara Young and David Zayas
Majok’s 2018 Pulitzer Prize winning play that tells two parallel stories, about people with disabilities and their caretakers. I called it an eye-opening play featuring a quartet of extraordinary performances, offering a tart retort to that sappy Barbra Streisand song about the luck of people who need people, and smashing more than one stereotype along the way. The Broadway version stars two of the four original cast members. My recent interview with Gregg Mozgala
1776
Roundabout’s American Airlines Theater
First Preview: September 16
Opening October 6
Closing January 8, 2023
Music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards, book by Peter Stone
Directed by Jeffrey L. Page and Diane Paulus
This second Broadway revival of the 1969 Tony winning musical tells the story of the meeting in 1776 of the Continental Congress that resulted in the Declaration of Independence employs a cast composed entirely of female, non-binary and trans performers.
Death of a Salesman
The Hudson
First preview September 17
Opening: October 9
Closing January 15, 2023
Written by Arthur Miller
Directed by Miranda Cromwell
Cast: Wendell Pierce as Willy Loman, Sharon D Clarke as Linda Loman, André De Shields as Ben Loman, Khris Davis as Biff Loman, McKinley Belcher III as Happy Loman.
This fifth Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s tragedy of the common man is told from the perspective of an African American family. Pierce and Clarke starred in an acclaimed London production.
my review
The Piano Lesson
Barrymore Theater
First preview: September 19
Opening October 13
Written by August Wilson
Directed by Latanya Richardson Jackson
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Danielle Brooks, John David Washington
This first revival of Wilson’s 1990 Pulitzer Prize winning play, the fourth in his American Century Cycle, is set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District in 1936, with a brother and sister embroiled in a battle over a family heirloom piano carved with the faces of their ancestors.
Topdog/Underdog
John Golden Theater
First Preview: September 27, 2022
Opening: October 20, 2022
Written by Suzan-Lori Parks
Directed by Kenny Leon
Cast: Corey Hawkins as Lincoln, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Booth.
A first Broadway revival of Parks’ 2002 Pulitzer-winning play about two brothers named Lincoln and Booth playing three card monte who discover the true nature of their history.
Walking With Ghosts
Music Box Theater
First preview: October 18
Opening: October 27
Closing: November 20
Written and performed by Gabriel Byrne
Directed by Lonny Price
A stage adaption of Byrne’s memoir of the same name, about his life from working class Dublin to Hollywood.
“Take Me Out”
Bernard Schoenfeld Theater
Reopening: October 27, 2022
Closing: January 29, 2023
Written by Richard Greenberg
Directed by Scott Ellis
Cast: Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jesse Williams, Bill Heck, Michael Oberholtzer, Julian Cihi, Hiram Delgado, Brandon J. Dirden, Carl Lundstedt, Ken Marks, Eduardo Ramos and Tyler Lansing Weaks
A return to Broadway of the Tony-winning revival of the play about a star baseball player who comes out of the closet (portrayed by Tony-nominated Williams) and his new accountant (Tony winning Ferguson), who becomes smitten…with baseball. The cast is intact except for newcomer Bill Heck replacing Patrick J. Adams. (My review of the production in April.)
November, 2022
Almost Famous
Bernard B. Jacobs Theater
First Preview: October 3, 2022
Opening: November 3, 2022
Book by Cameron Crowe; Music by Tom Kitt; Lyrics by Crowe and Kitt
Directed by Jeremy Herrin
A musical based on Crowe’s 2000 semi-autobiographical movie about a teenage rock journalist who goes on tour with a rock group in the early 1970s. My review
Kimberly Akimbo
The Booth
First Preview: October 12, 2022
Opening: November 10, 2022
Music by Jeanine Tesori, book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire
Directed by Jessica Stone, choreographed by Danny Mefford
Cast: Victoria Clarke, Justin Cooley, Steven Boyer, Bonnie Milligan
The Broadway transfer of an Off-Broadway musical, based on Lindsay-Abaire’s 2003 play, about a teenager with a rare terminal disease that makes her appear to be in her seventies, which focuses on her relationship with another misfit in her school. In my review of this off-beat musical Off Broadway, I wrote “the awkward, wry, tacitly sorrowful but explicitly exuberant relationship that slowly develops is the heart of the musical. The droll, touching, beautifully sung performances by the actors who portray them – Victoria Clark, the 62-year-old, Tony-winning Broadway veteran, and Justin Cooley, who at 18 is making an impressive Off-Broadway debut – makes the heart beat sweetly.” My Broadway review
Mike Birbiglia: The Old Man & The Pool
Vivian Beaumont at Lincoln Center
First preview: October 28
Opening: November 13
Closing: January 15, 2023
Written and performed by Mike Birbiglia
Directed by Seth Barrish
Another solo by a comic storyteller who was last on Broadway talking about being a new father. This one is a contemplation of aging and illness and the need for exercise. My review
& Juliet
Stephen Sondheim Theater
First preview: October 28
Opening: November 17
Book by David West Read
Directed by Luke Sheppard
Cast: Lorna Courtney, Paulo Szot, Betsy Wolfe, Stark Sands
New story for Shakespeare’s tragic heroine and lovestruck teenager Juliet in which she chooses to live after Romeo dies, with a score featuring familiar pop songs from the last three decades such as “Since U Been Gone,” “Roar,” “Baby One More Time,” “Larger Than Life,” “That’s The Way It Is,” and “Can’t Stop the Feeling.” My review
KPOP
Circle in the Square
First Preview: October 13, 2022
Opening: November 20, 2022
Closing: December 11, 2022
Book by Jason Lim, score by Helen Park and Max Vernon
Directed by Teddy Bergman
Cast: Luna
A look inside the Korean pop music phenomenon. I loved this show when I saw it Off-Broadway in 2017 (my review), a production that took over the entire A.R.T./New York Theaters building for “a wildly (and loudly) entertaining immersive theater piece offering the audience a tour of a Korean pop music factory.” The audience was split into smaller groups and ushered from one fun, funny and tuneful scene to another. For Broadway’s only theater in the round, the audience stays put; instead, the show is now framed as a mockumentary about an forthcoming American tour for a K-pop entertainment company’s roster.
A Christmas Carol
Nederlander
First preview: November 8
Opening: November 21
Closing: January 21, 2023
Adapted by Michael Arden, Susan Lyons and Jefferson Mays from Charles Dickens
Directed by Michael Arden
Cast: Jefferson Mays
Mays’ celebrated solo show adapting Charles Dickens famous story, in which the actor portrays 50 characters. (My review of it in 2020, when the show was only available online)
December, 2022
Ain’t No Mo
Belasco
First preview: November 9
Opening: December 1
Closing: December 18
Written by Jordan E. Cooper
Directed by Stevie Walker-Webb
What if the U.S. government offered Black Americans one-way plane tickets to Africa? In my review of this comedy at the Public Theater in 2019, I wrote: If the premise is mass African-American exodus, and some of the scenes take place at an airport, “Ain’t No’ Mo’” does not offer a direct flight. We make stops at a funeral parlor, an abortion clinic, a TV studio, a mansion, and a prison, and veer from comic and chaotic to pointed and unsettling. Lee Daniels makes his Broadway debut as a producer.
A Beautiful Noise, The Neil Diamond Musical
Broadhurst
First Preview: November 2, 2022
Opening: December 4, 2022
Music (obviously) by Neil Diamond, book by Anthony McCarten, choreography by Steven Hoggett
Directed by Michael Mayer
Cast: Mark Jacoby as Neil now; Will Swenson as Neil in his 70s heyday.
The life of singer-songwriter Neil Diamond, told by the older Neil looking back in therapy. A poor Jewish kid from Brooklyn who began by pitching songs to the publishing houses in Tin Pan Alley, enduing many rejections until…. “I Am…I Said,” “Cracklin’ Rosie,” “Song Sung Blue” and “Sweet Caroline.”
Ohio State Murders
James Earl Jones Theater (formerly the Cort)
First Preview: November 11, 2022
Opening: December 8, 2022
Closing: January 15, 2023
Written by Adrienne Kennedy
Directed by Kenny Leon
Cast: Audra McDonald
When writer Suzanne Alexander (Audra McDonald) returns to her alma mater as a guest speaker, in which she explores the violence in her works, a dark mystery unravels.
Some Like It Hot
The Shubert
First Preview: November 1, 2022
Opening: December 11, 2022
Score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, book by Matthew Lopez and Amber Ruffin
Directed by Casey Nicholaw
Cast: Christian Borle, J. Harrison Ghee, Adrianna Hicks
A musical adaptation of the 1959 Billy Wilder film comedy, which starred Marilyn Monroe, and Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon as two musicians who disguise themselves by dressing as women to escape from gangsters whom they witnessed committing a crime. They then join an all-female band. This is the third Broadway musical comedy in three years that adapts a movie about straight men who disguise themselves as women as part of a con, albeit a well-intentioned one. (The others were Tootsie and Mrs. Doubtfire.) The creative team has dealt with drag before: Shaiman and Wittman (Hairspray), Matthew Lopez (The Legend of Georgia McBride.)
Between Riverside and Crazy
Second Stage’s Hayes Theater
First preview: November 30
Opening: December 19
Written by Stephen Adly Guirgis
Directed by Austin Pendleton
Cast: Common, Victor Almanzar, Elizabeth Canavan, Rosal Colón, Liza Colón-Zayas, Stephen Mckinley Henderson, and Michael Rispoli
Seven years after it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the play makes its Broadway debut with the same director and most of the same cast as the Off-Broadway production. For ex-cop and recent widower Walter “Pops” Washington (Henderson) and his recently paroled son Junior, the struggle to hold on to one of the last great rent stabilized apartments on Riverside Drive collides with old wounds, sketchy new houseguests, and a final ultimatum
My Broadway review
The Collaboration
MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
First preview: November 29
Opening: December 20
Written by Anthony McCarten
Directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah
Cast: Paul Bettany and Jeremy Pope
In the summer of 1984, longtime international superstar Andy Warhol and the art scene’s newest wunderkind, Jean-Michel Basquiat, agree to work together.
February, 2023
Pictures from Home
Studio 54
First preview: January 10
Opening: February 9
Written by Sharr White
Directed by Bartlett Sher,
Cast: Nathan Lane, Danny Burstein and Zoë Wanamaker.
Adapted from the memoir by the late photographer Larry Sultan, who photographed and interviewed his parents.
March, 2023
Bob Fosse’s Dancin’
Theater: Music Box
First Preview: March 2, 2023
Opening: March 19, 2023
Director: Wayne Cilento
A revival of the 1978 musical revue that had been directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse (and featured Cilento in the cast) with music by some two dozen composers, from Neil Diamond to Johann Sebastian Bach.
A Dolls House
Hudson Theater
First preview: February 13
Opening March 9
Closing: June 4
Written by Henrik Ibsen, rewritten by Amy Herzog
Directed by Jamie Lloyd
Cast: Jessica Chastain
An updating of one of the world’s most produced plays about Nora Helmer’s awakening, breaking away from the restrictions of married life and motherhood.
Parade
Bernard Jacob Theater
First preview: February 21
Opening: March 16
Closing: August 6
Music by Jason Robert Brown, book by Alfred Uhry
Directed by Michael Arden
Cast: Ben Platt, Micaela Diamond
The Broadway transfer of the New York City Center production of this musical based on the true story of Leo Frank, a Jew in 1913 Atlanta who was lynched after being convicted of murdering a 13-year-old factory worker.
My review of Parade
Bad Cinderella
Imperial Theater
First Preview: February 17
Opening: March 23
Composed by Andrew Lloyd-Webber, book by by Emerald Fennell
Directed by Laurence Connor, choreographed by JoAnn M. Hunter
Cast: Linedy Genao
A reworking, and renaming, of the musical “Cinderella” that debuted in London in 2021. “This modern retelling of the classic fairytale is set in the exceptionally beautiful kingdom of Belleville. Our Cinderella is no longer the damsel in distress who needs saving. She finds herself and her prince in new circumstances which cause them to rethink what “happily ever after” really means.”
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Lunt-Fontanne
First preview: February 26
Opening: March 26
Composed by Stephen Sondheim, book by Hugh Wheeler
Directed by Thomas Kail
Cast: Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford
The third Broadway revival of the murderous musical about the demon barber of Fleet Street, who, to revenge the wrongs committed against him, slashes the throats of his victims, and then delivers the corpses to the loving Mrs. Lovett downstairs, the enterprising shopkeeper, who makes pies out of them, legal ingredients being so expensive in 19th century London.
Life of Pi
Gerald Schoenfeld Theater
First preview: March 9
Opening: March 30
Written by Lolita Chakrabarti, adapting Yann Martel’s novel
Directed by Max Webster
After a cargo ship sinks in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, a sixteen-year-old boy name Pi is stranded on a lifeboat with four other survivors – a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan, and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger. Time is against them, nature is harsh, who will survive? The 2001 bestselling novel by Yann Martel was also adapted into a 2012 film by Ang Lee. Chakrabarti’s stage adaptation was the winner of five Olivier Awards in the UK including Best New Play
April, 2023
Shucked
Nederlander Theatre
First preview: March 8
Opening: April 04
Book by Robert Horn, score by Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally
Directed by Jack O’Brien
Cast: John Behlmann, Kevin Cahoon,, Andrew Durand, Caroline Innerbichler, Ashley D. Kelley, Alex Newell
A worrisome alliance between a hick and a huckster featuring a naïve farmgirl, and a citified con man in this musical that is a collaboration between two Nashville songwriters and the Tony-winning book writer of “Tootsie”
Fat Ham
American Airlines Theater
First Preview: March 21
Opening: April 12
Closing: August 6
Written by James Ijames
Directed by Saheem Ali
Cast: The original Off-Broadway cast. Nikki Crawford as “Tedra,” Chris Herbie Holland as “Tio,” Billy Eugene Jones as “Rev” and “Pap,” Adrianna Mitchell as “Opal,” Calvin Leon Smith as “Larry,” Marcel Spears as “Juicy,” and Benja Kay Thomas as “Rabby.”
In this Pulitzer Prize winning drama, Juicy is a queer, Southern college kid, already grappling with some serious questions of identity, when the ghost of his father shows up in their backyard, demanding that Juicy avenge his murder. But here’s the rub! Revenge doesn’t come easy to Juicy, a sensitive and self-aware young Black man in search of his own happiness and liberation. My review of Fat Ham when it was Off-Broadway at the Public Theater.
My review of Fat Ham on Broadway
Camelot
Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont
First Preview: March 9, 2023
Opening: April 13, 2023
Original book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, with additional book by Aaron Sorkin, music by Frederick Loewe.
Directed by Barlett Sher
Cast: Andrew Burnap as Arthur, Phillipa Soo as Guenevere, and Jordan Donica as Lancelot Du Lac
The musical closely associated with the Kennedy Administration is reimagined by the team that brought “To Kill A Mockingbird” to Broadway (Sher and Sorkin.)
Room
Update: “indefinitely postponed”
James Earl Jones Theater
First preview: April 3, 2023
Opening: April 17
Written by Emma Donoghue
Songs by Kathryn Joseph and Cora Bissett
Directed by Cora Bissett
Cast: Adrienne Warren
Emma Donoghue’s harrowing story, first a novel, then a film, now a play with music (first produced in the UK in 2017), of a young boy raised in a shed where he and his mother are held captive by a sexual predator.
The Thanksgiving Play
Second Stage’s Hayes Theater
First Preview: March 25
Opening: April 20
Written by Larissa FastHorse
Directed by Rachel Chavkin
Cast: D’Arcy Carden, Katie Finneran, Scott Foley, Chris Sullivan
A troupe of really 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. (My review of the Off-Broadway production.)
My review of The Thanksgiving Play on Broadway
Peter Pan Goes Wrong
Barrymore Theater
First preview: March 17
Opening: April 19
Closing: July 9, 2023
Written by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields Music by Richard Baker and Rob Falconer; Based on “Peter Pan” by J.M. Barrie
Directed by Adam Meggido
The team behind The Play That Goes Wrong gives the same treatment to the J.M. Barrie classic Peter Pan: The much-loved members of The Cornley Drama Society once again battle against technical hitches, flying mishaps and cast disputes on their way to Neverland
My review of Peter Pan Goes Wrong
Prima Facie
John Golden Theater
First preview: April 11
Opening: April 23
Closing: June 18
Written by Susie Miller
Directed by Justin Martin
Cast: Jodie Comer
Jodie Comer (the star of “Killing Eve”) makes her Broadway debut in a one-woman play about a lawyer who specializes in defending men accused of sexual assault, until she is assaulted herself.
Good Night, Oscar
Belasco Theater
First preview: April 7, 2023
Opening: April 24, 2023
Written by Doug Wright
Directed by Lisa Peterson
Cast: Sean Hayes as Oscar Levant, Ben Rappaport as Jack Paar, Emily Bergl, Peter Grosz, and John Zdrojeski .
It’s 1958 and “The Tonight Show.” host Jack Pear booked his favorite guest, Hollywood actor and concert pianist Oscar Levant, who once famously proclaimed, “There’s a fine line between genius and insanity, and I have erased that line.” In 90 short minutes, Oscar will have audiences howling, censors scrambling
Summer, 1976
MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman
First Preview: April 4, 2023
Opening: April 25
Written by David Auburn
Directed by Daniel Sullivan
Cast: Laura Linney, Jessica Hecht
As the Bicentennial is celebrated across the country, two young women in Ohio navigate motherhood, ambition, and intimacy, and help each other discover their own independence.
New York, New York
Theatre: St James Theater
First Preview: March 24
Opening: April 26
Songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb, additional lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, book written by David Thompson and Sharon Washington
Directed and choreographed by Susan Stroman
Loosely based on Martin Scorsese’s 1977 movie of the same name, but with a rewritten storyline: The characters portrayed by Liza Minelli and Robert DeNiro reportedly will not be included. So what will? The same setting in 1946, and (crucially) the Kander and Ebb songs from the film, plus new ones by Kander and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
The Sign in Sydney Brustein’s Window
James Earl Jones Theater
A last-minute addition to the Broadway season, this second Broadway production by Lorraine Hansberry (A Raisin in the Sun) is returning to Broadway after more than half a century in a revival starring Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan that debuted at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in February.
April 25 – July 2, opening April 27
