Nathan Lane, Jessica Chastain, Josh Groban, Laura Linney and Phillipa Soo are all returning to Broadway in what promises to be the first normal Spring season in four years (or at least we’re praying that’s the case.) There are new musicals with scores by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Kander and Ebb (plus Lin-Manuel Miranda), revivals of revered musicals by Sondheim and Lerner and Loewe, adaptations of two books; Ibsen, rewritten; and several new plays, including this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner, transferring intact from Off-Broadway.
Below is the rundown on the 16 shows (so far) opening on Broadway from February to April, 2023, going chronologically by opening dates. (Plus three more announced but not yet with opening date or other details.) Things are likely to change — additions, subtractions, rescheduling — in the weeks and months ahead; this list will be updated.
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
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.
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.
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”
Camelot
Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont
First Preview: March 9, 2023
Opening: April 12, 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.)
Fat Ham
American Airlines Theater
First Preview: March 21
Opening: April 12
Closing: June 25
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.
Room
update: “postponed indefinitely”
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.
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
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.)
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 focus will be on New York in recovery.
ANNOUNCED FOR 2022-2023
but with essential details still to be determined (TBD)
High Noon
Theater: TBD
First Preview: Spring 2023
Opening: TBD
Written by Eric Roth
Directed Michael Arden
A stage adaptation of Stanley Kramer’s 1952 Academy Award-winning film, which starred Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, about a former marshal who faces down evil alone (a local criminal released from jail and vowing revenge) because the good people of the town are too afraid to do what’s right.
Pal Joey
Theater: TBD
First Preview: TBD
Songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart , new book written by Richard LaGravenese
Directed by Savion Glover and Tony Goldwyn
A reimagining of the 1940 Rodgers and Hart musical comedy, based on the short stories by John O’Hara, about a cad of a nightclub performer, best-known for the song “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” and for the stars who played Joey — Gene Kelly in the original Broadway production, Frank Sinatra in the bowdlerized 1957 movie. The characters will now be Black, and live in the South Side of Chicago in the 1940s. (I read a whole book about the creation and significance of the musical, Pal Joey: The History of a Heel)
2023-2024 Season
Once Upon a One More Time
Theatre: Marquis Theatre
First Preview: May 13, 2023
Opening: June 22, 2023
Writers: Britney Spears (music), Jon Hartmere (book)
Directors: Keone & Mari Madrid
The songs of Britney Spears are used for a musical about how such female fairy-tale characters as Cinderella, Snow White and the Little Mermaid gain a feminist perspective after reading Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique”
Back to the Future
Theatre: Winter Garden Theatre
First Preview: June 30, 2023
Opening: August 3, 2023
Starring: Roger Bart, Hugh Coles
Writers: Alan Silvestri & Glenn Ballard (music & lyrics), Bob Gale (book)
Director: John Rando
A musical based on the 1985 movie .
ANNOUNCED FOR 2023-2024
but with essential details still to be determined (TBD)
Jaja’s African Hair Braiding
Theatre: Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
First Preview: Fall 2023
Writer: Jocelyn Bioh
Director: Whitney White
About: Jocelyn Bioh’s Broadway playwrighting debut is about a group of West African immigrant women working in a Harlem hair braiding salon.
Merrily We Roll Along
Theatre:Hudson Theater
First Preview: September 19, 2023
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez, Krystal Joy Brown, Katie Rose Clarke, Reg Rogers
Writers: Stephen Sondheim (music & lyrics), George Furth (book)
Director: Maria Friedman
The first Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s musical about three idealistic friends who turn cynical, except their transformation is told in reverse chronological order.
