The Stars and Stories Hitting Broadway Stages This Year
The closing months of the 2016–17 season brought a glut of extraordinary music and dance to Broadway’s stages, and the superabundance has left 2017–18 looking a bit anemic.
Partly it’s real estate—there are only so many Broadway theaters; in June, nearly three dozen were occupied. The only musical scheduled to open this summer was Prince of Broadway. A retrospective look at the life and legacy of one of the American musical’s most influential luminaries, producer/director Harold Prince, it is co-directed by Prince and Susan Stroman, and features numbers from his iconic shows—they include West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof and Sweeney Todd.
The Band’s Visit, PC Ahron R. Foster
The rest of this new season may not provide musicals with that kind of success and staying power, but the hopefuls are listed here in order of appearance. The usual warnings apply—things could change between press time and opening night—names, dates and entire shows can disappear before the first rehearsal. And it’s worth noting that the last three Tony Awards for Best Musical went to shows that began off-Broadway.
The Band’s Visit
Based on a 2007 movie about a group of Egyptian musicians who take the wrong bus and land in a remote desert backwater instead of the Israeli city where they were supposed to perform, this was an off-Broadway hit last season at the Atlantic Theater Company. It arrives on Broadway with laurels from the New York Drama Critics’ Circle, who named it best musical, and again stars Tony Shalhoub as the bandleader. David Yazbek is the composer, Itamar Moses wrote the book, David Cromer directs and Patrick McCollum does the choreography. Starts Oct. 7 at the Ethel Barrymore.
The Band’s Visit, PC Ahron R. Foster
M. Butterfly
The 1988 Tony winner for best play, David Henry Hwang’s drama about a French diplomat who falls for a Chinese opera star is not, strictly speaking, a musical. But this revival starring Clive Owen earns a place here by dint of its director, the extraordinary Julie Taymor, who won a Tony for The Lion King; its composer, Elliot Goldenthal, who wrote the score for American Ballet Theatre’s Othello; and its choreographer, China-trained, Tulsa-based Ma Cong, who was one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” in 2006. Starts Oct. 7.
SpongeBob SquarePants
The Spongebob Musical, PC Joan Marcus
The eponymous hero and the other underwater creatures of Bikini Bottom swim from Nickelodeon’s animated television series to the Broadway stage in this pop-music anthology co-conceived and directed by Tina Landau. Steven Tyler, John Legend, Cyndi Lauper and David Bowie are just a few of the stars contributing to the score and giving choreographer Christopher Gattelli a multitude of styles to play with. Starts Nov. 6 at the Palace.
The Spongebob Musical, PC Joan Marcus
Once on This Island
When a show begins with a song called “We Dance,” you know the choreography will be important. For this revival of the 1990 Caribbean-flavored musical by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, the assignment falls to Camille A. Brown, whose Black Girl: Linguistic Play was nominated for a 2016 Bessie Award. Michael Arden, who did the 2015 sign-language revival of Spring Awakening, is the director. Starts Nov. 9 at Circle in the Square.
Escape to Margaritaville
Inspired by Jimmy Buffett’s 1977 hit song about a beach bum “wasting away again in Margaritaville,” the show relocates the Come From Away team—Tony-winning director Christopher Ashley and Tony-nominated choreographer Kelly Devine—to a different kind of island. This one’s a tropical resort, and Buffett’s patented flip-flop songs are both old and new. Starts Feb. 16 at the Marquis.
Escape to Margaritaville, PC Matthew Murphy
Carousel
Christopher Wheeldon created a beautiful evocation of this classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical when he was resident choreographer at New York City Ballet. Now his successor in that job, Justin Peck, is choreographing the whole clambake, in which raffish barker Billy Bigelow falls fatally in love with prim New Englander Julie Jordan. Jigger, the show’s villain, is not usually a dance role, but that’s sure to change with NYCB principal Amar Ramasar in it. His colleague in the company, Brittany Pollack, will dance the famous dream ballet. Tony-winning Jack O’Brien, who did Hairspray and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, is the director. Starts Feb. 27.
My Fair Lady
They could have danced all night when this glorious musical, by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, arrived on Broadway in 1956. It hasn’t been back since 1993, and Lincoln Center Theater is correcting that oversight with a new production directed by Bartlett Sher. The choreographer will be Sher’s partner on South Pacific and The King and I, Christopher Gattelli. Starts March 15 at the Vivian Beaumont.
Escape to Margaritaville, PC Matthew Murphy
Frozen
Based on the Oscar-winning Disney animation about princesses Elsa and Anna of Arrendelle, the show includes new songs by the film’s composers, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. Anderson-Lopez created the a cappella score and the concept for last season’s In Transit, and Lopez won Tonys for The Book of Mormon and Avenue Q. They are joined by Tony winners Michael Grandage and Rob Ashford, doing the direction and choreography. Starts in spring.