” ….a rich Broadway season is coming—and you’d do well to start booking your tickets now. Here’s a list of 8 must see musicals and plays this winter and spring.”
The following written content by MARLEY MARIUS
With the cutoff date for Tony Award eligibility typically falling in late April, autumn is typically for films, the spring traditionally for theatre. At this particular moment, however, things are a little bit different: The 2020 Tonys took place some 15 months late, shows that should have been up for over a year by now are only just beginning previews…you get the idea.
In any case, between the plays and musicals delayed by the pandemic and brand-new productions, a rich Broadway season this way comes—and you’d do well to start booking your tickets now. Below, find a list of the musicals and plays on our must-see list this winter and spring.
Plaza Suite: previews begin February 25, opens March 28:
When Neil Simon’s suite of one-act comedic “playlets”—each set in room 719 at the Plaza Hotel—premiered at the Plymouth (now the Gerald Schoenfeld) Theatre in 1968, Maureen Stapleton and George C. Scott played its three central couples: the first, celebrating their wedding anniversary; the next, a film producer and his former high-school sweetheart; and finally, a husband and wife trying to coax their soon-to-be-married daughter out of the bathroom. (In his review for Vogue, Anthony West called the work, directed by Mike Nichols, “genuinely and refreshingly funny.”) Now, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick assume those roles, marking the starry real-life couple’s first time performing together since a late-’90s production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. John Benjamin Hickey, who could be seen last season as Henry Wilcox in Matthew Lopez’s The Inheritance, directs.
Company: previews begin November 15, opens December 9:
More than 50 years after its Broadway premiere, Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s genre-defying musical Company opens at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, in a production directed by Marianne Elliott (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time; 2018’s Angels in America). It arrives from London, where audiences first encountered Bobby, the 35-year-old confirmed bachelor originated by Dean Jones, transformed into Rosalie Craig’s commitment-shy Bobbie. (In New York, Katrina Lenk—who won a Tony in 2018 for her performance in The Band’s Visit—takes over from Craig, while the great Patti LuPone reprises her role as Joanne.)
If the gender-swap creates compelling new stakes—the dance number “Tick-Tock,” for instance, once a dreamy, sexy romp, now alludes to Bobbie’s biological clock—the deeply witty score that made Company a hit in 1970 remains as incisive as ever. Among the musical’s best-loved songs: “Another Hundred People,” “The Ladies Who Lunch,” and the rousing “Being Alive.”
Funny Girl: previews begin March 26, opens April 24:
In its first-ever Broadway revival, Funny Girl will star Booksmart and American Crime Story: Impeachment’s Beanie Feldstein as Fanny Brice, a brassy Ziegfeld girl who begins a turbulent romance with the gambler Nicky Arnstein in early 20th-century New York. Reclaiming a role made famous by Barbra Streisand in 1964 (and then again in 1968, when she starred in the Oscar-winning movie adaptation), Feldstein has called the casting her “lifelong dream come true”: “The first time I played Fanny Brice was at my third birthday party, in a head-to-toe leopard print outfit my mom made for me,” she recalled in a statement. (Ramin Karimloo and Jane Lynch will co-star as Nicky and Mrs. Brice, respectively.) Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening) directs, with Harvey Fierstein revising Isobel Lennart’s original book.
Macbeth: previews begin March 29, opens April 28:
This recently announced production of the so-called Scottish Play stars Daniel Craig—fresh from his final turn as James Bond in No Time to Die—and Ruth Negga, making her Broadway debut. (She previously appeared on the New York stage in Hamlet at St. Ann’s Warehouse.) Additional casting information is yet to be announced.
In a statement, director Sam Gold (Fun Home, A Doll’s House, Part 2) expressed his enthusiasm for the new staging. “I am beyond thrilled to be participating in this historic season as theatre re-emerges, and to be working with two such masterful actors on one of dramatic literature’s most challenging and epic dramas,” he said. Read more from Vogue.
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