2025 begins as the Year of Wicked. Although the movie won only ”best cinematic and box office achievement” at the Golden Globes last night, both it and the stage musical broke box office records last week, with the movie’s $681,256,000 worldwide gross (so far), beating Mamma Mia as the highest-earning adaptation of a Broadway musical in Hollywood history; and the Broadway show’s $5,037,392 weekly gross the highest of any production in Broadway history. People are clearly interested in both. (And their loyalty is reportedly intense: “fans are fuming” that Wicked only won one Golden Globe; the film had been up for best picture and both Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande also received nominations.) Will Wicked’s dominance continue all the way to Part 2 next November, and if so, what effect will that have on New York theater?

That’s more or less one of the 10 Questions About Theater in 2025 I asked on New Year’s Day, most of them more long-term, such as what  the generational shift in artistic directors that occurred last year will  mean to Off-Broadway.

Given the story that “Wicked” tells, its title is meant ironically. Many fear that 2025 will wind up a wicked year more literally, given that, two weeks from today, a convicted felon will be sworn into office as president of the United States — the same person who, four years ago today, incited an unprecedented riot at the Capitol. That prompts another one of the questions I asked: Will the theater, and theatergoers, tune out of politics?

Year End Theater Quiz: A Look Back at 2024

New York Theater Previews

 Spring 2025 Broadway season guide, 

Broadway Poll: Spring 2025 Show You Most Want To See

January 2025 New York Theater Openings

January Theater Festivals 2025: from Dodos to Dictators, Gwyneth Paltrow to Yoko Ono

The Week in New York Theater Reviews

Under the Radar: Techne at BAM

“Techne,” one of the shows that opened the 20^th anniversary “Under the Radar” festival this weekend, reinforces its reputation for theater so experimental it makes you wonder what theater is. 

The Week in New York Theater News

Broadway veterans who won Golden Globes: Kieran Culkin (This Is Our Youth, and soon to be in “Glengarry Glen Ross”) for “A Real Pain” ; Jean Smart (Piaf, Tony nominated for The Man Who Came to Dinner) for “Hacks”; Sebastian Stan (Talk Radio, Picnic) for “A Different Man” (complete list of winners);

Congestion pricing launched over the weekend, charging a toll for vehicles entering Manhattan between 60^th Street and the Battery. The first of its kind in the United States, although it’s been under way for a while in other global cities, such as London, Stockholm and Singapore, it is intended to cut down on traffic and to raise much-needed funds for the subway. But how will it affect theatergoing? Attendance by suburban theatergoers is already down from its pre-pandemic peak.

Congestion Pricing has begun in New York City. Here’s how it works (NYTimes)
Congestion Pricing and the Broadway community (NY1)
Heather Abbott @habbott4.bsky.social‬: I’m a suburban theatergoer. My issue was more the halving of the schedule once LIRR opened Grand Central.
Carole DI Tosti @theatercritic9.bsky.social‬ Theater is going to choke. Unless the MTA comes up with cost efficiencies, the $9.00 raising millions will be swallowed in MTA malfeasance, inefficiency, waste…

Goodbye to Suffs, Back to the Future, and Sleep No More, all of which ended January 5
Forthcoming closings:
Stereophonic, January 12
Our Town, January 19
Blue Man Group, February 2

Suffs was comforting after Election Day, Shaina Taub tells @diepthought.bsky.social:"The theatre is one of the only places we can come together to feel loudly in public.We can cry, we can laugh, we can yell, we can do all these things, and it's encouraged as part of it."playbill.com/article/i-fe…

— New York Theater (@newyorktheater.bsky.social) 2025-01-06T01:31:41.124Z

Sleep No More Will Live On in Its Dancers (Dance Magazine)

Works entering the public domain as of January 1, 2025 include the characters Poppeye and Tintin, the books Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and musical compositions “Singin’ in the Rain,” “Ain’t Misbehaving,” and “An American in Paris,” What it means when works are out of copyright: They are less expensive and therefore more likely to be adapted for the stage.

In Memoriam

Richard Foreman, 87, prolific, award-winning and deliberately abstruse avant-garde playwright and founder of  Ontological-Hysteric Theater,

Writer/Director/Genius Richard Foreman has died at age 87.“I’m there to make a kind of theatrical music that is desperately missing from my life. And if other people don’t like it, I’m very unhappy, but I can’t do anything about it.”

— Robert Falls (@robertfalls.bsky.social) 2025-01-05T00:31:47.234Z

Dick Capri, 93, Catskills Comic Who Took His Shtick to Broadway,

Mel Shapiro, 89, Tony-winning director, who co-wrote and directed an acclaimed  musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona.

The Week’s Theater Video

Philip Caudre’s long but fascinating discourse (hooked to Wicked’s success but going far broader) on the history of Broadway shows as movie musicals; what’s worked, what hasn’t, and why