3 Predictions for the Theater in 2025

1. Ticket Prices Will Continue to Rise
The Broadway League recently released eye-watering numbers for ticket sales during the week of Christmas, and I fully expect that the week of New Year’s Day will prove just as bountiful once it concludes on Sunday the 5th. While the top earners are all playing to capacity (and in some case, over-capacity) houses, the giant total numbers are undoubtedly boosted by another factor: record-high ticket prices. Yes, Wicked brought in over $5 million last week, but the average paid admission to get into the Gershwin Theatre was $290.61—the very highest on Broadway. Theater tickets are beginning to surpass airfare to many destinations, with premium tickets well into the business class range. The most expensive ticket on Broadway last week was the Kit Connor-led revival of Romeo + Juliet at $974.50.

Before you cry greed, it’s important to remember that the cost of everything is noticeably higher following the post-pandemic surge in inflation. Theater tickets are not immune, nor are all the elements that go into mounting a Broadway show. Broadway shows perform in landmarked theaters that cannot easily add seats to offset the rising costs. And with Broadway’s heavily unionized workforce and producers of big-budget musicals locked in a production-values arms race (essentially an effort to show theatergoers their money onstage), the cost of producing on Broadway will continue to climb, with those added expenses passed on to the consumer in the form of higher ticket prices.

There is only one winner in this situation, which leads me to a secondary prediction: Broadway publicists will issue an unprecedented number of press releases touting broken box office records in 2025. Is this a real achievement or merely inflation?

2. Plays and Musicals Will Get Weirder and Funnier
Theatermakers have made it their mission in recent years to teach audiences, with a slew of plays about very important issues dominating the stages of New York’s major not-for-profits. Often these plays address the subject of identity, with press releases heralding the arrival of the first [insert marginalized identity] play at [insert venue here]. But the reign of the 90-minute issue play is likely to come to an end in 2025 as playwrights and producers embrace subject matter that is less ripped-from-the-headlines and more timelessly fascinating — or just plain hilarious.

The runaway success of Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary! portends a bright future for stage comedy unencumbered by the demands of pedagogy. If you had to write a term paper on the Lincoln administration and your only source was Oh, Mary!, you’d be lucky to walk away with a D-. But that doesn’t matter because it’s the funniest Broadway comedy of the season, regularly earning over $1.2 million a week at the box office. Escola and company aren’t interested in teaching you anything, but they do want you to laugh your ass off.

Two likely contenders for the 2025 Best Musical Tony also point the way to an exciting new era for musical theater: Maybe Happy Ending, which I named the Best Musical of 2024, is set in a hypothetical future of personal assistant robots, but it is more about the mysteries of love and the inevitability of death. Dead Outlaw will open on Broadway just in time for the Tony cutoff and is already the winner of Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for its off-Broadway run. It’s about a train robber who spends the second act as a corpse, bouncing around from one custodian to another through much of the 20^th century — a decidedly strange (and surprisingly hilarious) premise for a musical.

All of this suggests a major shift when it comes to subject matter onstage: Identity politics are out, but offbeat contemplations of mortality are in.

3. WickedMania will Persist Into 2026
I was skeptical when it was announced that the Jon M. Chu-helmed film adaptation of Wicked would be split into two movies, each covering roughly one act of the stage musical. I wondered if the weight of two nearly three-hour films would collapse into a heap of self-indulgence best appreciated by superfans. But after seeing the ways in which the first film incorporated the complexity of the novel while delivering a faithful screen adaptation of the stage musical, I walked away a true believer — and I’m not alone judging by the endless river of Wicked-themed drag performances streaming across my Instagram feed.

Wicked recently surpassed Mamma Mia! as the highest-grossing movie-musical of all time (not adjusted for inflation — see prediction 1) and it is set to make a boatload more now that the film has entered the streaming market. I suspect many fans will be watching it on repeat until November 21, when the second part comes out. It’s going to be one of the most anticipated releases of 2025 —The Avengers for musical theater nerds. And it’s all because Chu and Universal Pictures left them wanting more.