Story of the Week: The 2023-24 Broadway Season Is Already Shaping Up

Yesterday’s Tony Awards cutoff officially marks the end of the 2022-23 Broadway season, but next season is already heating up, with several major shows set to open over the summer. Story of the Week will peer at the horizon and let you know which shows are worth booking now, before everyone else does.

What’s up next? 

The first new show of the 2023-23 season opens in May. That’s Grey House, which begins preview performances at the Lyceum Theatre this weekend. With the feeling of a haunted Catholic elementary school, it’s the ideal venue for Levi Holloway’s horror drama about a couple seeking shelter from a blizzard in an isolated cabin in the mountains. Two-time Tony winner Laurie Metcalf returns to Broadway for the first time since her very brief run in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (it never opened due to the pandemic, but will live on in my dreams as the revival that got away). Frankly, the plot description of Grey House recall happy memories of her uproarious performance in Misery. Any Broadway appearance by Metcalf is worth seeing, and I suspect this one will be particularly memorable with a cast that includes Paul Sparks and Sophia Anne Caruso. Book it now if you haven’t already.

Constantly replaced by Britney Spears?

The first new musical of the season will be the Britney Spears jukebox Once Upon a One More Time. Previews start May 13 and I am genuinely excited as a homosexual millennial, despite the obvious warning signs. It’s premised on a book club for fairytale heroines who set aside their usual reading by the Brothers Grimm to crack open Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. Naturally, the lessons learned within are best expressed through the music of Britney Spears. The cast features funny lady Jennifer Simard, Justin Guarini, and Adam Godley (yes, the same one from The Lehman Trilogy).

Having suffered through too many self-serving memoirs disguised as bio-musicals, I’m firmly of the belief that jukebox musicals are best when they’re fun, dumb, and have little to do with the musical artist. Once Upon a One More Time promises to be the dumbest new jukebox musical in a very long time, so I feel like I’ve just begun (having my fun).

With the opening of Once Upon a One More Time, three currently running Broadway musicals will feature songs made popular by Britney (& Juliet and Moulin Rouge! are the other two), making her the unlikely queen of Broadway. Get her a spot on the Tonys, guys.

Are there any other musicals opening on Broadway this summer?  

The David Byrne-Fatboy Slim collaboration Here Lies Love begins performances on June 17 and is poised to be the most significant Broadway musical in years. Set designer David Korins has transformed the Broadway Theatre into a nightclub for this immersive musical about former first lady (and current first mother) of the Philippines Imelda Marcos. I loved it when it debuted downtown at the Public Theater a decade ago, and I expect the Broadway iteration to be even more fabulous. Director Alex Timbers has experimented with immersive staging on Broadway before, most notably in Rocky, the final scenes of which turned the Winter Garden into a boxing arena. But Here Lies Love will be on a scale far grander. If it is successful, it will herald a new era for Broadway musicals as participatory events.

On June 30, Back to the Future: The Musical begins performances at the Winter Garden. Based on the popular 1985 sci-fi movie (a staple of my childhood) about a teenage rocker and his mad scientist friend who builds a time machine, it was well-received in London, where it won the WhatsOnStage Award for Best New Musical. Tony winner Roger Bart reprises his role as Doc Brown opposite Casey Likes (Almost Famous) as Marty McFly. Nostalgia is the obvious selling point, but this new musical might just win over a new crop of fans.

What else is happening on Broadway this summer?

I was thrilled to learn that Alex Edelman is bringing his solo comedy act, Just for Us, to the Hudson Theatre from June 22 to August 19. The show was a sleeper hit downtown last year, jumping from the Cherry Lane to the SoHo Playhouse to Greenwich House Theater. Edelman uses a story about attending a white nationalist meeting in deepest, darkest Queens as the structure on which he hangs his hilarious observations about life and society in the digital age. It’s an unlikely subject for comedy, which makes it all the more impressive that Edelman has us laughing all the way through.

Jason Alexander will make his Broadway directorial debut with Sandy Rustin’s sex farce, The Cottage, set to begin performances July 7 at the Hayes Theatre. Laura Bell Bundy plays a woman having an affair with her brother-in-law, Beau (Eric McCormack). She decides to tell her husband (SNL‘s Alex Moffat) and Beau’s wife (Lilli Cooper), but matters become hairier with the arrival of two other individuals (played by Nehal Joshi and Dana Steingold). Expect a hot, hilarious summer romp.

Just this week we learned that The Shark Is Broken, a behind-the-scenes comedy about the movie Jaws, will play a limited engagement at the Golden Theatre starting July 25. Ian Shaw (who wrote the play with Joseph Nixon) plays his father, the actor Robert Shaw, in this story about the collision of alcohol and egos during a watery on-location shoot. The show was a hit at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe, eventually transferring to London’s West End where WhatsOnStage called it “utterly splendid.”

Finally, Spanish illusionist Antonio Díaz will spend a brief stint at the Barrymore Theatre (current home of Peter Pan Goes Wrong) from August 17 through August 27. The show is called El Mago Pop and promises close-up magic and spectacular illusions. The show is only 18 performances, so magic fans should plan ahead.

What about the fall?

Presently, the most anticipated show of the fall is the revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Merrily We Roll Along, which moves into the Hudson after Edelman vacates (previews start September 19). An infamous flop during its initial Broadway run, this told-in-reverse musical about three creative friends trying to make it in New York City haunts the dreams of musical theater aficionados, most of whom have ideas about how to make it work. Director Maria Friedman has come the closest I’ve ever seen with this production starring Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff, and Lindsay Mendez, which TheaterMania critic David Gordon rightly called “something of a miracle.” It was the impossible-to-get ticket of the season when it played at New York Theatre Workshop last winter, but now that it’s on Broadway a lot more people will get to experience it for themselves.

Just this morning, we learned that the Barry Manilow musical, Harmony, would be making its Broadway debut at the Barrymore, with performances starting October 18.

After that, we have titles with no set dates: Jocelyn Bioh’s Jaja’s African Hair Braiding is set to open MTC’s Broadway season (I really enjoyed Bioh’s previous works, School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play and Nollywood Dreams). Leslie Odom Jr. has been announced as the star of the Broadway revival of Ossie Davis’s Purlie Victorious, which will be helmed by Kenny Leon sometime in the late summer. Danny and Lucy DeVito are set to open the Broadway season at Roundabout’s American Airlines Theatre in a new Theresa Rebeck play about a hoarder facing eviction, somewhat darkly titled I Need That. And Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, which has played in London since 1952, is supposed to make it long-awaited Broadway debut sometime this year.

There are sure to be surprises ahead, but from where things stand so far, 2023-24 is going to be a very big season on Broadway.