The Best Broadway Shows Right Now (2024)

If theater is your religion, and the Broadway musical your particular sect, it’s time to rejoice. This gleefully obscene and subversive satire is one of the funniest shows to grace the Great White Way since The Producers and Urinetown. Writers Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park, along with composer Robert Lopez (Avenue Q), find the perfect blend of sweet and nasty for this tale of mismatched Mormon proselytizers in Uganda.—David Cote

Buy ticket

Composer-lyricist-star Lin-Manuel Miranda forges a groundbreaking bridge between hip-hop and musical storytelling with this sublime collision of radio-ready beats and an inspiring, immigrant slant on Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. A brilliant, diverse cast takes back American history and makes it new.—David Cote

Buy ticket

The world ofHarry Potter has arrived on Broadway, Hogwarts and all, and it is a triumph of theatrical magic. Set two decades after the final chapters of J.K. Rowling’s world-shaking kid-lit heptalogy,Jack Thorne's epic(richly elaborated by director John Tiffany)combines grand storytelling with stagecraft on a scale heretofore unimagined.It leaves its audience awestruck, spellbound and deeply satisfied.—Adam Feldman

Buy ticket

Cole Escola'sdizzyinghistorical burlesqueimagines a boozy, vicious and miserable Mary Todd Lincoln in the weeks leading up to her husband’s assassination. Escola playsMary with magnetic zaniness, poise and total moment-to-moment comic commitment; director Sam Pinkleton never lets the comic energy flag, and the supporting cast is delicious. (Conrad Ricamora and James Scully play the men in Mary's life.) Everything comes together to create an instant downtown classic, and thefunniest stage comedy in years. After a talk-of-town Off Broadway engagement, the show now moves to Broadway for a limited run.—Adam Feldman

Buy ticket

Go to hell—and by hellwe meanHadestown, Anaïs Mitchell’s fizzy, moody, thrilling new musical. Ostensibly, at least, the show is a modern retelling of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. But the newness of Mitchell’s score and Rachel Chavkin’sgracefully dynamicstaging bring this old story to quivering life.—Adam Feldman

Buy ticket

The creators ofHell's Kitchenhave found the right recipe for tis coming-of-age jukebox musical drawn from the pop catalog of Alicia Keys—and, in its vivid dancers and magnificent singers, just the right ingredients. Together they've cooked up aheck of ablock party. The show hasthe sensibly narrow scope of a short story, loosely inspired by Keys's life. Maleah Joi Moon makes a stunning debut as a1990s teenager; Shoshana Beanis her protective mother, Brandon Victor Dixonis her absent father and Kecia Lewisis her teacher.—Adam Feldman

Buy ticket

Director-designer Julie Taymor surrounds the Disney movie’s mythic plot and Elton John–Tim Rice score with African rhythm and music. Through elegant puppetry, Taymor populates the stage with a menagerie of African beasts; her staging has expanded a simple cub into the pride of Broadway.—Adam Feldman

Book now

Casey Cott and Courtney Reed play lovers caught in a bad romance in thisgorgeous, gaudy, spectacularly overstuffed adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 movie.Directed with opulent showmanship by Alex Timbers and drawing music from more than 75 pop hits, this jukebox megamixmay be costume jewelry, but its shine is dazzling.—Adam Feldman

Buy ticket

Who doesn’t enjoy a royal wedding? Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss's zingy musicalSixcelebrates, in boisterous fashion, the union of English dynastic history and modern pop music. On a mock concert stage, the six wives of the 16th-century monarch Henry VIII air their grievances in song, and most of them have plenty to complain about. In this self-described “histo-remix,” members of the long-suffering sextet spin their pain into bops; the queens sing their heads off and the audience loses its mind.—Adam Feldman

Buy ticket

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, to the greatest—well, okay, not the greatest show on Broadway, but a dang fine show nonetheless. Set at a one-ringcircus inthe Depression, this original musical (byRick Eliceand thecollective PigPen Theatre Co.)knows how to craft magic out of spare parts. Director Jessica Stoneembraces overt theatricality—animal puppetry, shadow play,aerialism—as an invitation to imagination, evenas the performers show off impressive real-life physical talents.Grant Gustin, Isabelle McCalla and Paul Alexander Nolan do fine work in the show's central romantic triangle, but they are effectively the sideshow here. The main attraction is the pull of the circus itself.—Adam Feldman

Buy ticket

This musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz addresses surprisingly complex themes, such as standards of beauty, morality and, believe it or not, fighting fascism. Thanks to Winnie Holzman’s witty book and Stephen Schwartz’s pop-inflected score, Wicked soars.—David Cote

Buy ticket