Spring Preview 2018: 30 Must-See Shows from the Upcoming Season
Queen Elsa has been hard at work this winter, but spring is on the horizon and Broadway.com is warming up for the exciting season ahead. The Spring Preview series features interviews, photo shoots and videos of the stars and shows you don't even know you love yet. To help keep track, here is your guide to the buzziest plays and musicals, new works and revivals, off and on Broadway— a bouquet, if you will, of must-see spring theater.
AMY AND THE ORPHANS
DRAMA, OFF-BROADWAY
American Horror Story regular Jamie Brewer stars in the titular role of Amy, a woman with Down Syndrome who reunites with her two siblings following their father’s death. Family drama and life-altering revelations are both drudged up on this raucous ride penned by Lindsey Ferrentino. | Now in previews | Laura Pels Theatre
THE LOW ROAD
COMEDY, OFF-BROADWAY
Michael Greif directs this new comedy skewering inequality and capitalism from Clybourne Park scribe Bruce Norris. The play features 17 actors, including Daniel Davis, Kevin Chamberlin and Harriet Harris, in 50 roles. Talk about capitalism! | Now in previews | Joseph Papp Public Theater
ADMISSIONS
DRAMA, OFF-BROADWAY
Significant Other playwright Joshua Harmon takes aim at white privilege in his new work. A liberal admissions officer (Jessica Hecht) at an elite prep school wants to get her son into an Ivy League school, but the family’s progressive values throw a wrench in the plan. | Now in previews | Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater
ESCAPE TO MARGARITAVILLE
MUSICAL, BROADWAY
An original story and new music ushers 27 beloved Jimmy Buffett tunes to Broadway. Paul Alexander Nolan stars as the ladykiller beach bum to Alison Luff’s buttoned-up environmental scientist in this paradise-set love story. | Now in previews | Marquis Theatre
FROZEN
MUSICAL, BROADWAY
The newest Disney musical is everything you love from the animated blockbuster movie and so much more. The show's creators have doubled the amount of music, adding new numbers and deeper thematic moments to the songs you know. Elsa may freeze all of Arendelle, but Caissie Levy will melt your face off with her rendition of “Let It Go.” | Now in previews | St. James Theatre | CLICK TO READ MORE
ANGELS IN AMERICA
DRAMA, REVIVAL, BROADWAY
After the original production shook the theater scene 27 years ago, the Gay Fantasia on National Themes from Tony Kushner is back on Broadway. Set in 1980s New York, the cast of characters negotiate the AIDS crisis, Reaganism, McCarthyism, immigration, religion and climate change. This revival’s London transfer promises a starry cast (Andrew Garfield and Nathan Lane) as well as buzzy newcomers like Olivier winner Denise Gough. | Starts February 23 | Neil Simon Theatre
THREE TALL WOMEN
DRAMA, REVIVAL, BROADWAY
Two-time Oscar winner Glenda Jackson makes her long-awaited Broadway return after a 26-year stint in British Parliament. She joins Tony winner Laurie Metcalf and Tony nominee Alison Pill in Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a nonagenarian mother troubled by her past. | Starts March 1 | John Golden Theatre
CAROUSEL
REVIVAL, MUSICAL, BROADWAY
Broadway faves Jessie Mueller, Joshua Henry and Lindsay Mendez bring the Rodgers & Hammerstein Tony-winning musical back to the Great White Way. A young millworker girl’s head-over-heels romance with a New England carnival barker tragically unravels in this story about passion, love and redemption. Oh, and there’s a real nice clambake in there, too. | Starts February 28 | Imperial Theatre
M A R C H
LOBBY HERO
DRAMA, REVIVAL, BROADWAY
Kenneth Lonergan’s drama serves as the inaugural play for the newly refurbished Hayes Theater, the first Broadway home for one of New York's top off-Broadway theater companies, Second Stage Theatre. Michael Cera, playing a hapless lobby security guard caught up in a murder investigation, stars opposite Chris Evans, who will make his Broadway debut. | Starts March 1 | The Hayes Theater
BOBBIE CLEARLY
COMEDY, OFF-BROADWAY
Residents of a small Nebraska town tell the tale of a murder that took place in the middle of (where else?) a cornfield, two years later. Will Davis directs Alex Lubischer’s new “comedy-about-a-tragedy” featuring a sprawling cast of eccentric characters. | Starts March 8 | Roundabout Underground's Black Box Theatre
MEAN GIRLS
MUSICAL, BROADWAY
"Is butter a carb?" "That's so fetch!” "She doesn't even go here!" Have you memorized them all? Brush up on your lines from the uber-quotable 2004 hit movie before its energetic Broadway musical adaptation—with a book by original screenwriter Tina Fey—bows. | Starts March 12 | August Wilson Theatre | CLICK TO READ MORE
THE STONE WITCH
DRAMA, OFF-BROADWAY
Dan Lauria plays an illustrious, but washed-up, children’s book author and illustrator, who is thrown together with a talented starving artist by an ambitious editor. | Starts March 12 | Westside Theatre
MY FAIR LADY
REVIVAL, MUSICAL, BROADWAY
Lauren Ambrose stars as Eliza Doolittle in this Lerner and Loewe classic about a young Cockney flower seller and the linguistics professor who transformrs her into his idea of a "proper lady." British imports Harry Hadden-Paton and Dame Diana Rigg join Ambrose and Norbert Leo Butz in Bartlett Sher’s production. | Starts March 15 | Vivian Beaumont Theater | CLICK TO READ MORE
HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD
DRAMA, BROADWAY
This two-part magical spectacle catches up with the famous Hogwarts alums 19 years after the events of The Deathly Hallows, the last book in J.K. Rowling's juggernaut series. See Harry, Hermione, Ron and more as they cope with Voldemort PTSD, their legacies and parenting pre-teens. The award-winning London transfer will be saying lumos! to the newly redesigned Lyric Theatre. | Starts March 16 | Lyric Theatre | CLICK TO READ MORE
MISS YOU LIKE HELL
MUSICAL, OFF-BROADWAY
Daphne Rubin-Vega and Gizel Jimenez stars in this musical about a troubled girl who roadtrips with her estranged, undocumented mother days before her immigration hearing. Pulitzer winner and In the Heights scribe Quiara Alegría Hudes penned the book for what’s becoming a timely story. | Starts March 20 | Joseph Papp Public Theater | CLICK TO READ MORE
ROCKTOPIA
MUSICAL, BROADWAY
What happens when Mozart, Bach and Beethoven meet Led Zeppelin? Find out at this multimedia production that mashes up classical works and 20th-century rock—the collab of the last five centuries! | Starts March 20 | Broadway Theatre
THE ICEMAN COMETH
DRAMA, REVIVAL, BROADWAY
Two-time Oscar winner and Tony winner Denzel Washington bellies up to the bar in the return of Eugene O’Neill’s masterwork. After Washington's last two Broadway ventures (in Fences and A Raisin in the Sun), you could say the acting giant knows a thing or two about dismantling the myth of the American Dream. | Starts March 22 | Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD
DRAMA, REVIVAL, BROADWAY
Tony winner Kenny Leon directs the revival of this unconventional love story that exposes all the ways we fail to truly hear each other. Mark Medoff's Tony-winning play chronicles the intense romance between a teacher at a school for the deaf (The Affair’s Joshua Jackson) and the deaf young woman he meets there (newcomer Lauren Ridloff). | Starts March 22 | Studio 54 | CLICK TO READ MORE
MLIMA'S TALE
DRAMA, OFF-BROADWAY
Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage returns to The Public with a story about Mlima, a special elephant who is captured and sold into the clandestine international ivory market. | Starts March 27 | Joseph Papp Public Theater
SUMMER: THE DONNA SUMMER MUSICAL
MUSICAL, BROADWAY
In this bio-jukebox musical, three actresses play the chart-topping disco diva at different stages in her life. One of them is Tony winner LaChanze, so secure your wigs. Get ready to love to love her, baby! | Starts March 28 | Lunt-Fontanne Theatre | CLICK TO READ MORE
TRAVESTIES
DRAMA, REVIVAL, BROADWAY
Tom Hollander stars in this revival of Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, reprising his role from the acclaimed in London as Henry Carr. The drama finds Carr foggily detailing his interactions with Tristan Tzara (Seth Numrich) during the rise of Dada, James Joyce (Peter McDonald) while he was writing Ulysses, and Lenin (Nicholas Woodeson) leading toward the Russian Revolution. | Starts March 29 | American Airlines Theatre
A P R I L
SAINT JOAN
DRAMA, REVIVAL, BROADWAY
The revival of George Bernard Shaw’s play follows a young French warrior on a mission from God, whose meteoric rise threatens French rulers, and gives way to a trial for her life. The iconic role of Joan of Arc has been filled by the likes of Uta Hagen, Diana Sands, Imelda Staunton, Judi Dench, and now three-time Tony nominee Condola Rashad. | Starts April 3 | Samuel J. Friedman Theatre | CLICK TO READ MORE
TRANSFERS
DRAMA, OFF-BROADWAY
In Lucy Thurber's new work, two talented community college students from the South Bronx compete for a scholarship to a pretigious university. They must confront their shared past while trying to enter an institution that seems designed to exclude them. | Starts April 5 | Lucille Lortel Theatre
PARADISE BLUE
DRAMA, OFF-BROADWAY
In the first of three plays from Dominique Morisseau for Signature Theatre. A troubled night club owner has to decide between abandoning his home, and a traumatic past, in the face of a gentrifying Detroit neighborhood. A mysterious woman's arrival raises tensions, making the fate of the club even more precarious. | Starts April 24 | The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre at the Pershing Square Signature Center
THE BOYS IN THE BAND
DRAMA, REVIVAL, BROADWAY
Bring out the Ryan Murphy types! Set in 1960s New York City, the landmark Mart Crowley play follows a group of gay men convening for a birthday party that implodes from self-loathing and catty humor. The guest list includes a veritable who’s who of gay Hollywood brunettes: Matt Bomer, Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, Andrew Rannells and more. | Starts April 30 | Booth Theatre
M A Y
OUR LADY OF 121ST STREET
COMEDY, OFF-BROADWAY
Students of a recently deceased school teacher gather at a funeral home to pay their respects. One problem: Her corpse has been stolen. After the well-recieved Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train , Stephen Adly Guirgis returns with this dark comedy for Signature Theatre. | Starts May 1 | The Pershing Square Signature Center
THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE
DRAMA, OFF-BROADWAY
This new musical from John Kander and David Thompson stars Tony Yazbeck as a young man who is so sure of his spectacular demise, he refuses to get close to the love of his life. Susan Stroman directs the adaptation of Henry James’ classic 1903 novella. | Starts May 4 | Vineyard Theatre
DAN CODY'S YACHT
DRAMA, OFF-BROADWAY
Anthony Giardina's new play follows a broke schoolteacher and the father of one of her students who enter a financial arrangement that could change her and her daughter’s life. | Starts May 15 | Manhattan Theatre Club
SUGAR IN OUR WOUNDS
DRAMA, OFF-BROADWAY
A part of new playwright Donja R. Love’s series exploring queer love in Black History, the play follows a young slave who is thrown into limbo and an unexpected romance, when a brooding stranger arrives on his plantation. | Starts May 22 | Manhattan Theatre Club
SKINTIGHT
DRAMA, OFF-BROADWAY
Tony winner Idina Menzel makes her return to the New York stage, and this time it's in a play. Joshua Harmon (Significant Other) tells the story of Jodi, a divorcee who might be dating an adult film star, in this scathing indictment of beauty, youth and sex. | Starts May 31 | Laura Pels Theatre