The Broadway season doesn’t lend itself comfortably to Best of the Calendar Year Stories — my choices for the first six months of 2024 were made and announced last June in a Tony Award predictions column. So no need to reiterate my undying love for Stereophonic, Illinoise, Appropriate, et. al. Instead, let me bring you up to date, with my look at what came after the Tonys — and, oh, Mary, are there some treats —Â and what the 2024-25 still has in store through the next Tony Awards.
So, preamble done, here are my five picks for Broadway’s Best of Fall 2024 (and some honorable mentions), followed by the five shows I’m most looking forward to in spring 2025 (and some hopefully honorable mentions).
And happy new year — the calendar one — to everyone who makes Broadway what it is, and everyone who loves and appreciates their efforts.
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The Best of Summer-Fall 2024: No. 1 ‘Oh, Mary!’
Image Credit: Emilio Madrid WHAT I SAID THEN: When I posted my review after the masterpiece Oh, Mary! last July, I wrote, “There’s funny, there’s very funny, and then there’s Oh, Mary!, Cole Escola’s riotous new comedy.”
WHAT I THINK NOW: My “there’s funny” quip made the posters and TV commercials and is perhaps my only such blurbing that doesn’t make me cringe in embarrassment. I rarely revisit productions after I’ve already seen and reviewed them — who has the time? — but I made an exception for Cole and company, and if possible I laughed even more the second time, with the giggles starting well in anticipation of the jokes I knew were coming.
SEE IT: Oh, Mary! currently is at Broadway’s Lyceum Theater through June 28, though Escola is taking a least a temporary break beginning January 29, with Betty Gilpin – said to be a worthy successor — taking over thereafter. While Escola is a marvel as Mary Todd, the play itself is a wonder, and the supporting cast terrific. Don’t be scared off by Cole’s absence.
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No. 2-3 (tie) ‘Maybe Happy Ending’ & ‘Death Becomes Her’
Image Credit: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman Maybe Happy Ending
WHAT I SAID THEN: In my November 12 review I wrote: “A tenderhearted meet-cute rom-com tinged with poignance, laughs and break-your-heart melancholy, Maybe Happy Ending just might be this season’s answer to Kimberly Akimbo. A near-perfect little fable of set-for-the-scrap-heap robots learning to love and knowing whatever happiness they find will be short-lived, Maybe Happy Ending is, of all things, a musical about androids that absolutely brims with humanity.”
WHAT I THINK NOW: This adorable musical is every bit the match for the splashier Death Becomes Her, so let’s call it a tie. When I made the reference to Kimberly Akimbo in my Maybe Happy Ending review, I did so with a bit of trepidation, so much do I love that 2023 production of the Jeanine Tesori/David Lindsay-Abaire musical. But no regrets — the compassionate, wondrous Maybe Happy Ending does nothing if not make space in the hearts of all who have the privilege of witnessing it.
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No. 2-3 (tie) ‘Maybe Happy Ending’ & ‘Death Becomes Her’
Image Credit: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman Death Becomes Her
WHAT I SAID THEN: My November 21 review for Death Becomes Her began: “A perfect rejoinder to the ubiquitous Broadway Sucks These Days gripe about the too-many movie-to-stage adaptations has arrived at long last, and it’s a simple three-word response: Death Becomes Her. A virtually perfect big-budget, broad-appeal musical comedy that improves in every way over the 1992 film, director-choreographer Christopher Gattelli’s wildly entertaining vehicle for two of our best singer-actor-comedians on any stage today renders the movie-as-source snipe worthless.”
WHAT I THINK NOW: My affection for this show and its cast has only grown since my first and only viewing, with my conviction that Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard will be treating us to one of the fiercest Tony Award competitions in years. They’re that good. And their co-stars haven’t left my mind either — Christopher Sieber, Michelle Williams and Josh Lamon, each as intrinsic to the show’s success as the impeccable and gorgeous physical production on stage at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.
SEE BOTH DEATH BECOMES HERE AND MAYBE HAPPY ENDING. Death Becomes Her is on an open-ended run at the Lunt-Fontanne, and Maybe Happy Ending just delighted the Broadway community by announcing that a new block of tickets at the Belasco had gone on sale through September 7, no doubt an extension with an eye toward Tony nominations.
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No. 4 ‘Eureka Day’
Image Credit: Jeremy Daniel WHAT I SAID THEN: My December 16 review began: “Quick, think of something really humorous about vaccinations. No? Me neither, but playwright Jonathan Spector has done us all a favor and molded one of the most divisive, inane, grotesque and newly resurgent issues of the day and polished it into a shiny, insightful and damn funny little gem so that all of us can ogle and ponder and reconsider just how in the name of Jonas Salk did we get here.”
WHAT I THINK NOW: I’m still chuckling over the hilariously cutthroat insults spewed out by those invisible keyboard warriors from the safety of their anonymity, but what’s really stuck with me about Eureka Day is the quiet sidelong glances that one onstage character after another shoots toward another, whether out of rage or tenderness or even lust. Our society is so used to debates that shake rafters we forget the deep power of silence.
SEE IT: Eureka Day is playing at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.
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No. 5 ‘Sunset Blvd.’
Image Credit: Marc Brenner WHAT I SAID THEN: “Nicole Scherzinger Steals Broadway With One Look.”
WHAT I THINK NOW: She hasn’t returned so much as a stolen glance, nor should she. Despite the smoke and noise that accompanies the mere name Donald Trump, Broadway’s little Sunset tempest couldn’t diminish the power and weird grace of Scherzinger’s Norma Desmond. And if it’s good enough for Patti LuPone…
SEE IT: Sunset Blvd. is currently running at the St. James Theatre.
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Honarable Mentions
Image Credit: Julieta Cervantes Swept Away (pictured), Gypsy, The Hills of California, McNeal
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Honarable Mention: ‘Gypsy’
Image Credit: Julieta Cervantes Audra McDonald in Gypsy(review)
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Honarable Mention: ‘The Hills of California’
Image Credit: Joan Marcus The Hills of California (review)
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Honarable Mention: ‘McNeal’
Image Credit: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman Robert Downey Jr. in McNeal (review)
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A Look Ahead to Spring 2025
Image Credit: Matt Crockett/ Marc Brenner/Courtesy/Instagram Clockwise from top left: Operation Mincemeat – A New Musical, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends, Flloyd Collins and Glengarry Glen Ross
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‘Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical’
Image Credit: Matt Crockett Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical (John Golden Theatre, previews Saturday, February 15, opens March 20). Certainly an Olivier Award-winning cast doesn’t hurt, nor does the little-show-that-could cult-like momentum, but all that aside, how can you not look relish the prospect of a musical based on that endlessly intriguing real-life World War II footnote in which British Intelligence gussied up a stolen corpse with fake military plans just to throw the Germans wildly off course?
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‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’
Image Credit: Marc Brenner The Picture of Dorian Gray (Music Box Theatre, previews Monday, March 10, opens Thursday, March 27; 14-week engagement). Arriving on Broadway after a sold-out run in London’s West End, this adaptation of the Oscar Wilde classic boasts what might be the single most compelling idea of the upcoming spring: Succession‘s Sarah Snook plays every last role in the play, all 26 of them. I’d have been happy watching Snook play every character in Succession. Count me in.
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‘Glengarry Glen Ross’
Image Credit: Glengarry Glen Ross Broadway Instagram Glengarry Glen Ross (Palace Theatre, previews Monday, March 10, opens Monday, March 31; 12-week run). Even those who’ve bailed from the Mamet train in recent years can’t really argue with Glengarry, and if they can, well then, argue with this cast: Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr, Michael McKean and Donald Webber Jr., and that’s just for starters. Hot ticket, folks.
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‘Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends’
Image Credit: Courtesy Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends (Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, previews Tuesday, March 25, opens April 8). Still, if Glengarry is just too, too Mamet for your taste, take heart in what might just be the most Sondheimian Sondheim of the year:With a made-in-musical-theater-heaven pairing of Bernadette Peters (pictured) and Lea Salonga, Old Friends will feature no fewer than 40 classics from the great composer-lyricist. How’s this for an enticement: “Sunday in the Park with George,” “Not a Day Goes By,” “The Ladies Who Lunch,” “Children Will Listen,” “I’m Still Here,” “Losing My Mind,” “Comedy Tonight,” “Somewhere,” “You Gotta Get a Gimmick,” “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” and “Send in the Clowns.” And those are just my favorites. (Read Deadline’s West End review here.)
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‘Floyd Collins’
Image Credit: Courtesy Floyd Collins (Vivian Beaumont Theater, previews Thursday, March 27, opens Monday, April 21). I missed this Tina Landau-Adam Guettel folksy cult musical the first time around in 1996 at Playwrights Horizons, and it’s been bugging me ever since. Like Mincemeat, Floyd Collins is based on a true story: Back in 1925 Kentucky, the cave explorer who gives the musical its name got stuck 200 feet underground and became an overnight tourist attraction — launching what some consider the first media circus. The grim tale inspired the 1951 Kirk Douglas film classic Ace in the Hole. I won’t miss Floyd Collins this time around.
Also on the lookout for:
English; John Proctor is the Villain; Boop! The Betty Boop Musical, Smash and — if only to see Jonathan Groff as that ultimate hepster Bobby Darin — Just In Time. And though it’s technically not Broadway, no way could we ignore the British import A Streetcar Named Desire starring Paul Mescal as Stanley Kowalski, kicking off at BAM in Brooklyn on February 28 and running through April 6.
