It’s taken years, but Broadway has almost returned to pre-pandemic levels in terms of ticket sales, thanks to some strong revivals and plenty of nostalgic hooks. This year promises several more high-profile shows: musical adaptations of The Notebook and Water for Elephants, the Broadway debut of Steve Carell and Rachel McAdams, Succession’s Jeremy Strong in an Ibsen revival, a jukebox musical from Alicia Keys and more. Here are 11 of the most anticipated shows of 2024:
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Days of wine and roses
The new year begins with the story of a hard-drinking couple in Days of Wine and Roses, which transfers from a well-reviewed off-Broadway run to Studio 54 on January 6. Based on the 1962 film of the same name, itself based on a teleplay from 1958, Days of Wine and Roses stars Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James as Kirsten and Joe, an attractive couple whose lives fall apart due to alcoholism in 1950s New York. . This jazzy, sad spin on a piece of mid-century addiction canon comes from Adam Guettel (music and lyrics) and Craig Lucas (book), the duo behind the 2005 musical The Light in the Piazza.
The notebook
The appeal of The Notebook, the 2004 film starring Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, is still going strong: a new musical adaptation will hit Broadway in March. This version of the decade-long Nicholas Sparks romance features music and lyrics by pop singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson, as well as tearjerkers, with a book by Bekah Brunstetter of This Is Us. Michael Greif (Dear Evan Hansen, Next to Normal, Rent) and Schele Williams (Aida, The Wiz) direct this story of star-crossed lovers and sodden reunions, starring Joy Woods (Six) and Jordan Tyson as Allie and Ryan Vazquez and John Cardoza as Noah.
Mary-Jane
Speaking of McAdams, the Mean Girls star turned A-list actress will make her Broadway debut in Mary Jane, a play by Amy Herzog, in April. McAdams plays a struggling single mother caring for her chronically ill young son, who bonds with several women to form a makeshift family. The play received critical acclaim when it premiered at the Yale Repertory Theater in 2017, and will be directed for its Broadway premiere by Anne Kauffman, who directed last year’s celebrated Broadway run of Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.
Water for elephants
Another romance novel turned Hollywood film turned Broadway musical: Water for Elephants, based on Sara Gruen’s book that became the 2011 film starring Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson, premiering at the Imperial Theater in March go. Directed by Tony nominee Jessica Stone (Kimberly Akimbo) with a book by three-time Tony nominee Rick Elice (Jersey Boys), this thrilling romance promises to be set in a traveling 1930s circus where a veterinarian falls in love with a star performer , many exciting adventures. spectacle (although probably not real elephants).
An enemy of the people
Fresh off the end of Succession (and possibly another Emmy win for his portrayal of tragic number one boy Kendall Roy), Jeremy Strong returns to Broadway for the first time in 16 years in Henrik Ibsen’s classic 1882 drama, readapted by the very busy Herzog. , who also helmed the 2023 adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House starring Jessica Chastain. Strong takes on the role of Dr. Thomas Stockmann, a medical officer at a small Norwegian spa town who becomes the target of public opprobrium after he jeopardizes the town’s reputation by exposing contamination in the lucrative spa pools. (The play is loosely based on events in Ibsen’s life; Stockmann is considered a stand-in for the playwright.) The Sopranos’ Michael Imperioli and You’s Victoria Pedretti also star as Peter and Petra Stockmann.
Uncle Vanya
In other classic revival-meets-Hollywood news: a new version of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya – the first on Broadway since 2000 – starring Steve Carell in his Broadway debut. This production features an all-new, “strikingly immediate” (according to Playbill) translation of Chekhov’s story about a family turned upside down by newcomers, from Pulitzer and Tony nominated writer Heidi Schreck. Schreck’s version, which also stars Love Life’s William Jackson Harper and is directed by Lila Neugebauer (most recently of the critically acclaimed play Appropriate), will premiere at Lincoln Center in April.
The Wiz
The Wiz, the groundbreaking 1975 musical that put an all-black soul spin on the Wizard of Oz, returns to Broadway this spring for its first major revival. Schele Williams (Disney’s Aida) directs this extravagant outing, which launched a national tour last September and will reprise its cast on Broadway: Nichelle Lewis as Dorothy, Deborah Cox as Glinda, Melody A Betts as Aunt Em and Evillene, Kyle Ramar Freeman as the Lion, Phillip Johnson Richardson as Tinman and Wayne Brady as The Wiz himself. JaQuel Knight, who worked with Beyoncé on Single Ladies and Black is King, will choreograph the production, which premieres at the Marquis Theater in April.
The outsiders
The remarkable life of The Outsiders – a real-life high school student’s best-selling 1967 novel about rival high school gangs, which became an iconic Francis Ford Coppola film in the 1980s – continues as a folk musical at the Bernard B Jacobs Theater from April. Featuring a book by Adam Rapp and Justin Levine and music by Texas folk duo Jamestown Revival (Zach Chance and Jonathan Clay), the new adaptation of SE Hinton’s book will, according to the logline, be “the timeless story of ‘haves and have nots’ Reviving. ‘, of protecting what is yours and fighting for what could be.”
Playing mother
With a name like Mother Play, you can imagine a show that describes itself as “bitingly funny” and “unflinchingly honest,” also starring Jessica Lange. She is the matriarch, Phyllis, a DC suburbanite we meet in 1962 who has strong ideas for the future of her two teenage children, Carl (Jim Parsons of The Big Bang Theory) and Martha (Celia Keenan-Bolger). This new family drama from acclaimed playwright Paula Vogel – winner of the 1998 Pulitzer for How I Learned to Drive, and one of the profession’s foremost teachers – directed by Tina Landau (Spongebob Squarepants) is produced by Second Stage Theatre, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the work of living American writers that recently performed Appropriate, starring Sarah Paulson, to rave reviews at the Helen Hayes Theater.
The kitchen of hell
Alicia Keys’ semi-autobiographical jukebox musical, which earned rave reviews (and a five-star rating from the Guardian’s Lauren Mechling) during its sold-out off-Broadway run at the Public Theater, moves to Broadway this spring at the Shubert. The coming-of-age story directed by Michael Greif, loosely based on Keys’ own upbringing in Manhattan, depicts a short chapter in the life of a 17-year-old growing up in a New York housing project subsidized for artists; she falls in love with the piano, develops an attraction to an older man, and resists her single mother’s attempts to protect her. The musical features reworked versions of many Keys hits, including Fallin’, Empire State of Mind, No One and Girl on Fire. The 15-time Grammy winner, who spent more than a decade working on the musical, has vowed to continue refining Hell’s Kitchen as it heads to the main stage. “Of course you can always refine, you can always find places where you want to take more or less, try this, do that, and of course that’s going to happen as we transition to make it just better and better and better,” she said after the news about the transfer, which the cast has yet to announce.
Doubt: a parable
John Patrick Shanley’s 2004 Pulitzer-winning play about abuse within the Catholic Church, later turned into an Oscar-nominated film starring Meryl Streep, Viola Davis and Philip Seymour Hoffman, returns to Broadway at the American Airlines Theater in February. This first revival, directed by Scott Ellis, stars Tony winner Tyne Daly as Sister Aloysius, the principal of a Catholic school in a working-class section of the Bronx, who struggles with how to deal with suspected abuse by Father Flynn, played by Liev Schreiber. of young students. Zoe Kazan also plays Nurse James, with Quincy Tyler Bernstine as Mrs. Muller.