“Prince’s Purple Rain,” a new musical based on the album and movie of the same name, will open April 12 at Broadway’s Majestic Theater. It has been overhauled since its six-week run last year in Minneapolis, with a new director and book writer. Casting has yet to be announced,
It is the sixth new musical announced so far for the Broadway 2026-2027 season and joins a total of twenty other shows that as of now have nailed venues and specified opening nights, most recently three shows from Roundabout: “The Imaginary Invalid,” written by Moliere and adapted by Bill Irwin, Dominique Morisseau’s “Mix and Master” and a revival of “The Full Monty.”. Details here.
More to come — all signs of a healthy season, according to Broadway producer Ken Davenport, who last week offered an hour-long slide show on “The State of the State of Broadway.” Oskar Eustis, the Public Theater’s long-time artistic director who this week announced his departure in 2028, has a different take. (see below.)
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
Heart surgery might not sound like a natural subject for a musical comedy, but in “Broad Strokes,” Cat Cohen’s effort to turn her medical trauma into comic turns and tunes gets an assist from the true story. She swears her cardiologist was actually named Dr. Love…
Giulia The Poison Queen of Palermo
Country music star Jennifer Nettles’ ambitious debut musical about a 17th century serial killer …appeals far more for its look and its sound than for its language and its story.
The Week in New York Theater News
The Public Theater announced that Oskar Eustis will step down as artistic director when his contract concludes on July 31, 2028, the end of the theater’s 60th anniversary at Astor Place, and his 23 years at its head. A search for a new AD will begin this Fall.
Oskar Eustis, Theater Giant, Is Stepping Down. First, He Has Thoughts. (NYTimes):
How are you thinking about the state of the theater?
The field is in a very tough moment. I think the American nonprofit theater movement is over. That doesn’t mean any individual theater is over. But every individual theater is having to make its own case and come up with its own business model. We’ve lost a lot of theaters, and we’re going to lose more. And most of the other theaters, whether they say it or not, will become more commercial.
How should a nonprofit theater be different?
The free expression of artists, able to say and promote their artistic visions regardless of whether they are popular in the marketplace, and the access of the audience to great art that binds them together, regardless of whether they can pay for it — those are the two things that the Public believes in and will continue to try and model.
A herd of 50 buffalo will roam through Brooklyn & Manhattan Sept 19-20 – and YOU can help bring one to life. These are life-sized puppets, from the same people who brought us Little Amal. Details of “Return of the Buffalo: Tatanka Owe Akupi”:
The State of Broadway 2026: Relatively flat, says Ken Davenport, who remains optimistic
Aaron Tveit, who originated the role of “Christian” in Moulin Rouge! The Musical on Broadway, will return August 18 to August 29. The show closes the next day.
Randy Weiner, who turned Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” into the immersive “Masquerade,” says he would like to do the same thing for “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” which is set to close August 8 after only four months. “I’m just one guy. I’m not an industry, but I would do anything to help them,” he tells Page Six. I would build a whole club for it.” with dancing afterwards.
6 Theater Book Award Winners How theater artists helped restore democracy in Chile; thirty ways to consider the playwright María Irene Fornés; fifteen takes on immersive performance; the history of the Palestine Theater Movement….These are among the winners of the annual awards by The Association of Theatre in Higher Education
The Week’s Theater Video
Les Miserables Arena Concert, at Radio City Music Hall, July 23 through August 9, 2026: One Day More on the Tonight Show
Watch Broadway in Bryant Park Week 1: Hadestown, &Juliet, Just in Time, Maybe Happy Ending, The Lost Boys, and Moulin Rouge the Musica
