Denzel Washington as Othello, Jonathan Groff as singer Bobby Darin, George Clooney as journalist Edward R. Murrow: The Spring Broadway season promises a starry and vibrant mix: original shows (plays by Tony winner Branden Jacob-Jenkins and by Pulitzer winner Sanaz Toossi; a musical co-conceived by Idina Menzel, who stars in it); revivals (including one on its 22nd run, another on its 27th) and adaptations (of two movies, two TV series, a novel, an album and a comic strip.) They are performed by newcomers (Clooney is making his Broadway debut, as are Succession’s Sarah Snook, and Breaking Bad’s Bob Odenkirk), but also by beloved veterans: Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga together in a Sondheim revue; Ramin Karimloo and David Hyde Pierce in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta; Nick Jonas and Adrienne Warren in Jason Robert Brown’s chamber musical (which is one of several acclaimed Off-Broadway shows making it to Broadway.)
Below are details, with links to their websites, of the 19 shows (so far) opening on Broadway from January to April, 2025, going chronologically by opening dates. Things are likely to change — additions, subtractions, rescheduling — in the weeks and months ahead; this list will be updated.
JANUARY, 2025
ENGLISH
Theater: Roundabout’s Todd Haimes
Opening: January 23, 2025
Writer: Sanaz Toossi
Director: Knud Adams
Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play about an English-language class in Iran. My review of it Off-Broadway.
FEBRUARY
REDWOOD
Theater: Nederlander
First preview: January 24
Opening: February 13
Librettists, co-lyricist and director: Tina Landau
Composer and co-lyricist: Kate Diazali
Starring: Idina Menzel
Menzel (who co-conceived the show) portrays a woman experiencing a life altering event that drives her far from everyone and everything she knows — winding up at the foot of the redwoods in Northern California.
MARCH
PURPOSE
Helen Hayes Theater
First preview: February 25
Opening: March 17
Written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Directed by Phylicia Rashad
Cast: LaTanya Richardson, Kara Young and Alana Arenas join 3 who were in original Steppenwolf production:Harry Lennix, Glenn Davis, and Jon Michael Hill
For decades, the influential Jasper family has been a pillar of Black American Politics: civil rights leaders, pastors and congressmen. But like all families, there are cracks and secrets just under the surface. When the youngest son Nazareth returns home to Illinois with an uninvited friend in tow, the family is forced into a reckoning. “Purposae” had its world premiere in March 2024 at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater.
BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB
Theater: Schoenfeld
First Preview: February 21
Opening: March 19
Book by Marco Ramirez
Developed and Directed by Saheem Ali
Starring: Natalie Venetia Belcon, Julio Monge, Mel Semé, Isa Antonetta
A musical inspired by the 1996 album with fifteen classic Cuban songs performed in Spanish. My review of the production when it was Off-Broadway in 2023.
OPERATION MINCEMEAT
John Golden Theater
First preview: February 15
Opening: March 20
Written and composed by the comedy group, SpitLip (David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson and Zoë Roberts)
Directed by Robert Hastie
The Olivier Award winning musical is based on the improbable true story of a successful British operation in World War II to deceive the Germans before the Allied invasion of Sicily by dressing up a corpse as if it had been an officer of the Royal Marines and planting a fake letter between two generals that the Allies planned to invade Greece and Sardinia.
OTHELLO
Barrymore Theater
First Preview: February 24, 2025
Opening: March 23, 2025
Closing: June 8, 2025
Starring: Denzel Washington, Jake Gyllenhaal, Molly Osborne
Writer: William Shakespeare
Director: Kenny Leon
Denzel Washington will play Othello and Jake Gyllenhaal will play Iago in Shakespeare’s tragedy of jealousy and deception. A production of the play was last on Broadway four decades ago starring James Earl Jones.
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
Music Box Theater
First preview: March 10
Opening: March 27
Adapted and directed by Kip Williams
Starring Sarah Snook
The star of the HBO series “Succession” takes on all 26 roles in this adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel about a man who stays looking young, while his portrait turns evil and ugly.
GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS
The Palace
First preview: March 10
Opening: March 31
Closing: May 31
Written by David Mamet
Directed by Patrick Marber
Cast: Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr, Michael McKean
The fourth Broadway production of Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about cutthroat Chicago real estate office where four salespeople compete to keep their jobs selling mostly worthless properties to unwitting customers.
APRIL
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK
Winter Garden
First preview: March 12
Opening: April 3
Starring: George Clooney
Writers: George Clooney and Grant Heslov
Director: David Cromer
About: George Clooney will make his Broadway debut in a stage adaptation of his 2005 film, about Edward R. Murrow’s television crusade against Senator Joseph McCarthy.
BOOP! THE BETTY BOOP MUSICAL
Theater: Broadhurst
First preview: March 11
Opening: April 5
Book by Bob Martin
Music by David Foster and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead
Directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell
A musical about the cartoon flapper from the 1930s: Betty’s dream of an ordinary day off from the super-celebrity in her black-and-white world leads to an extraordinary adventure of color, music, and finding love in New York City
THE LAST FIVE YEARS
Theater: Hudson
First preview: March 18
Opening: April 6
Book, music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown
Directed by Whitney White
Cast: Nick Jonas and Adrienne Warren
Two New Yorkers fall in and out of love over the course of five years.
STEPHEN SONDHEIM’S OLD FRIENDS
Theater: MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman
First Preview: March 25, 2025
Opening: April 8
Starring: Bernadette Peters, Lea Salonga
Writers: Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics), Cameron Mackintosh (devisor)
Directors: Matthew Bourne, Julia McKenzie
About: The hit West End tribute to the late Stephen Sondheim comes to Broadway starring Broadway’s Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga.
SMASH
Imperial Theater
First preview: March 11
Opening: April 10
Music by Marc Shaiman; Lyrics by Scott Wittman & Marc Shaiman
Book by Rick Elice & Bob Martin
Choreography by Joshua Bergasse
Direction by Susan Stroman
A musical inspired by the TV series, which ran in 2012 and 2013 about the making of a Marilyn Monroe musical called Bombshell.
JOHN PROCTOR IS THE VILLAIN
Booth Theater
First preview: March 20
Opening: April 14
Written by Kimberly Belflower
Directed by Danya Taymor
Starring: Sadie Sink
At a high school in a rural town in Georgia, an English class is studying The Crucible, where the students begin to question the play’s perspective and the validity of naming John Proctor the show’s hero.
FLOYD COLLINS
Vivian Beaumont Theatre
First Preview: March 27, 2025
Opening: April 21, 2025
Writers: Adam Guettel (music & lyrics), Tina Landau (book)
Director: Tina Landau
The Broadway debut of the award-winning musical based on the true story of a man trapped in a cave in the 1920s, igniting one of the first media storms of the modern era.
Stranger Things: The First Shadow
Theater: Marquis
First preview: March 28
Opening: April 22
Written by Kate Trefry; Original Story by The Duffer Brothers, Jack Thorne & Kate Trefry
Directed by Stephen Daldry, Co-Directed by Justin Martin
A prequels to the goings-on in the Netflix TV horror series “Stranger Things.” It opened last year in London.
PIRATES: THE PENZANCE MUSICAL
Theater: Roundabout’s Todd Haimes
Opening: April 24, 2025
Starring: Ramin Karimloo, David Hyde Pierce
Writers: Arthur Sullivan (music), W.S. Gilbert (libretto), Rupert Holmes (adaptation)
Director: Scott Ellis
They’ve altered the name a tad, but this is still the 27th Broadway production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic operetta (albeit the first in four decades), about a pirate ship that docks in jazzy-bluesy New Orleans.
JUST IN TIME
Circle in the Square Theater
First preview: March 31
Opening: April 26
Starring: Jonathan Groff
Developed and directed by Alex Timbers
Written by Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver
Groff portrays singer Bobby Darin as if performing in a night club, featuring a cast of 16 and a live on-stage big band performing such Bobby Darin hits as “Beyond the Sea,” “Splish Splash,” “Dream Lover,” and “Mack the Knife.”
REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES
Theater: James Earl Jones
First preview: April 12
Opening: April 27
Music and lyrics by Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez
Book by Lisa Loomer with Nell Benjamin
Directed and choreographed by Sergio Trujillo
A musical adapted from the 2002 movie and 1990 play by Josefina López, which had a brief run at American Repertory Theater in Cambridge earlier this year, tells the story of a L.A. teenager, who dreams of college and a career in New York City, but her family’s expects her to stay home and work at their garment factory.
DEAD OUTLAW
Longacre
First preview: April 12
Opening: April 27
Book by Itamar Moses
Music by David Yazbek
Directed by David Cromer
A musical about the bizarre true story of outlaw-turned-corpse-turned-celebrity Elmer McCurdy. My review of Dead Outlaw Off-Broadway, which was an outlier opinion.
