29 Plays and Musicals We Can’t Wait to See This Fall

Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski

David Strathairn has made a nearly decade-long project of playing Jan Karski, a Polish resistance fighter and Holocaust witness, developing and refining this solo performance piece along the way. (Theater for a New Audience, previews start September 10; opens September 15.)

Cost of Living

Four years after winning the Pulitzer, Martyna Majok’s finely observed play about two couples (one member of each lives with a disability) comes to Broadway. (Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, previews start September 13; opens October 3.)

Leopoldstadt

Tom Stoppard again grapples with a big cast and big themes but also gets personal in a sprawling play depicting the changing fortunes of a Jewish family in early-to-mid-20th-century Vienna; inspired by his own family’s experiences in Czechoslovakia. (Longacre Theatre, previews start September 14; opens October 2.)

1776

Post-Hamilton success comes a revival of another famous Founding Fathers musical, first produced in 1969, recast with female, nonbinary, and trans actors and directed by Jeffrey L. Page and Waitress’s Diane Paulus. (American Airlines Theatre, previews start September 16; opens 0ctober 6.)

Death of a Salesman

Director Miranda Cromwell has reframed Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer-winning American tragedy around a Black family with the great Wendell Pierce and Sharon D. Clarke returning to the production after a praised run on the West End. (Hudson Theatre, previews start September 17; opens October 9.)

The Piano Lesson

A dramatic family affair: LaTanya Richardson Jackson directs her husband, Samuel L. Jackson, in a revival of August Wilson’s drama (also a Pulitzer winner). Filling out the cast are Danielle Brooks and John David Washington, who happens to be playing the role that Jackson originated at the play’s premiere at the Yale Rep in 1987. (Ethel Barrymore Theatre, previews start September 19; opens October 13.)

A Raisin in the Sun

Robert O’Hara (Bootycandy, Slave Play, Shakespeare in the Park’s Richard III) directs this revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s classic drama, which likely means it will be presented in a way that’s anything but expected. (The Public Theater, previews start September 27; opens October 19.)

Topdog/Underdog

Suzan-Lori Parks’s Pulitzer-winning drama about two brothers, Lincoln and Booth (as in, you know), with a past in street card-game hustling was first on Broadway in 2002 with Jeffrey Wright and Yasiin Bey, then known as Mos Def. It’s back with new stars Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. (John Golden Theatre, previews start September 27; opens October 20.)

Almost Famous

Cameron Crowe went back to write the book for this musical based on his semi-autobiographical film about being a hotshot young rock journalist. We’re excited to see how exactly quotes like “I’m a golden god” and “It’s all happening” might end up in song. (Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, previews
start October 3; opens November 3.)

Only Gold

British pop singer-songwriter Kate Nash collaborated with Hamilton choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler on this musical about “a royal family’s arrival in Paris” that includes a lot of dance — a curious-sounding mélange. (MCC Theater, previews start October 5; opens November 7.)

The Winter’s Tale and Hedda Gabler

Bedlam Theatre Company has a knack for coming up with intriguingly down-to-earth and engaging spins on major classics, and now they’re taking on Shakespeare’s off-kilter late work and Ibsen’s grand tragedy in repertory, adapted by Jon Robin Baitz (Other Desert Cities). Hopefully whoever plays Hedda also does the bear who causes that famous exeunt, chased by stage direction. (Irondale Center, opens October 5.)

A Man of No Importance

Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory, The Boys in the Band) goes all-in on a musical, playing the leader of a Dublin amateur theater troupe in a revival of Ahrens + Flaherty and Terrence McNally’s show. (Classic Stage Company, previews start October 11; opens October 30.)

Kimberly Akimbo

This musical gem, which premiered Off Broadway last season, stars stage veteran Victoria Clark as a New Jersey teenager with a rare disorder that makes her age at several times the normal rate, alongside a cast of charming teens and a swaggering Bonnie Milligan, who’s sure to have a breakout moment as Kimberly’s aunt. (Booth Theatre, previews start October 12; opens November 10.)

KPOP

In 2017, KPOP was an immersive Off Broadway theater project that invited audiences on tours through the rehearsal rooms of a K-pop label trying to break its artists in the U.S. Five years later, it has been reconfigured into a stage show with a starring role for Luna of the real-life K-pop group f(x). (Circle in the Square Theatre, previews start October 13; opens November 20.)

Straight Line Crazy

A drama about Robert Moses, played by Ralph Fiennes, performed in Hudson Yards. The surrounding terrible urban planning is the message. (The Shed, previews start October 18; opens October 26.)

A Little Life

Ivo van Hove, a director enamored with pushing theater to the limits, and Hanya Yanagihara’s epic novel of gay male suffering are a match destined to, at the very least, short-circuit the discourse. (BAM Next Wave, opens October 20.)

Evanston Salt Costs Climbing

Will Arbery, who has recently covered Catholic firebrands in Wyoming and family dynamics in small-town Texas, turns his eye to municipal public servants in this play “about climate and change.” (The Pershing Square Signature Center, previews start October 25; opens November 15.)

Becky Nurse of Salem

You always want to see whatever Deirdre O’Connell (Dana H.) is up to, and this time it’s playing a “modern-day descendant of accused witch Rebecca Nurse” in a dark comedy by Sarah Ruhl. (Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, previews start October 27; opens November 21).

Downstate

Not for the faint of heart: Bruce Norris’s drama about convicted sex offenders living in a group home and the man who arrives to confront one of them makes its debut in New York after a 2018 run at Steppenwolf in Chicago. (Playwrights Horizons, previews start October 28; opens November 14.)

& Juliet

Broadway has indeed hit us with a jukebox musical one more time, folding the songs of Max Martin into a story about the title character, who survives at the end of this version of Romeo and Juliet and sets off on her own campy adventure. Of course it’s a British import. (Stephen Sondheim Theatre, previews start October 28; opens November 17.)

Some Like It Hot

Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman wrote the songs for the fake Marilyn Monroe musical on NBC’s Smash, and now they’ve written the songs for an actual musical based on a Monroe movie. The book is by the unexpected pairing of The Inheritance’s Matthew López and comedian–late-show host Amber Ruffin. (Shubert Theatre, previews start November 1; opens December 11.)

A Beautiful Noise

No Broadway season is complete without a bio-musical. This one is about Neil Diamond. (Broadhurst Theatre, previews start November 2; opens December 4.)

Ain’t No Mo’

You don’t expect a rowdy, all-arms-swinging comedy like this to make it to Broadway, which could use the shaking up. In it, playwright Jordan E. Cooper conjures up a series of sketches all within the premise that the U.S. government has instituted a program that gives Black Americans free one-way flights to Africa. (Belasco Theatre, previews start November 3; opens December 1.)

Plays for the Plague Year

Even with Topdog/Underdog back on Broadway, Suzan Lori-Parks is still keeping busy Off Broadway with these works, which she started writing as the pandemic hit New York in March 2020. She’s also written the book for The Public’s musical adaptation of the Jimmy Cliff film The Harder They Come. (The Public Theater, previews start November 4; opens November 16.)

Ohio State Murders

The former Cort Theatre has its grand reopening with Audra McDonald starring in the Broadway debut of Adrienne Kennedy, the playwright who turns 91 this September. (James Earl Jones Theatre, previews start November 11; opens December 8.)

The Far Country

After last year’s return of The Chinese Lady, Lloyd Suh, who has a keen eye for Asian American history, has written an “intimate epic” about a family traveling from Taishan to California after the Chinese Exclusion Act. (Atlantic Theater Company, previews start November 17; opens December 5.)

Merrily We Roll Along

Like moths to a flame, Merrily always draws a crowd. The Sondheim and Furth musical with incredible songs and a humdinger of a premise tells the story of a dissolving three-way friendship in reverse. Actor-director Maria Friedman won acclaim in London with her take in 2012; Daniel Radcliffe and Jonathan Groff star in the New York revival. (New York Theatre Workshop, previews start November 21; opens December 12.)

The Collaboration

Paul Bettany plays Andy Warhol, with Jeremy Pope (a recent double Tony nominee for Choir Boy and Ain’t Too Proud) as Basquiat in Anthony McCarten’s drama. It’s already had a test run in London; please go look up the photos of the wigs yourselves. (Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, previews start November 29; opens December 20.)

Between Riverside and Crazy

The fifth Pulitzer winner of the season, Stephen Adly Guirgis’s drama about a man trying to hold onto his rent-stabilized apartment on Riverside Drive premiered Off Broadway in 2014, and now finally makes its Broadway debut. (Hayes Theater, previews start November 30; opens December 19.)

*Correction: This post previously misstated Marianne Elliott as a co-director on the New York production of Death of a Salesman. We apologize for the error.