The top Broadway and off broadway musicals in NYC: complete A-Z list

Disney's latest toon tuner is a tourist-family–friendly theme-park attraction, robed in the billowing fabrics of orientalist Arabian fantasy. As in the 1992 film, the Genie (a charismatic James Monroe Iglehart) steals the show from its eponymous “street rat” hero (Adam Jacobs). Stuffed with glitz, the musical is a carpet with little texture but colorful patterns aplenty.—Adam Feldman

“Keep it light, keep it tight, keep it fun, and then we’re done!” That’s the pithy advice that the indignant 16th-century housewife Anne Hathaway (Betsy Wolfe) imparts to her husband, William Shakespeare (Stark Sands), as a way to improve his play Romeo and Juliet. It is also the ethos of the new Broadway jukebox musical & Juliet, a quasi-Elizabethan romp through the many pop megahits of the Swedish songwriter-producer Max Martin. This show is what it is: It gives you the hooks and it gets the ovations.—Adam Feldman

Broadway travels back in time to the 1950s, by way of the 1980s, in a musical adaptation of the hit 1985 movie that offers comedic science fiction with an Oedipal twist. Bob Gale adapts his screenplay (cowritten with Robert Zemeckis) around key songs from the movie, such as "The Power of Love," as well as new ones by original composer Alan Silvestri and Jagged Little Pill songsmith Glen Ballard. John Rando (Urinetown) directs the production, Casey Likes (Almost Famous) plays Michael J. Fox role of Marty McFly, and two actors from the show's 2020 U.K. premiere reprise their roles: Roger Bart as Doc Brown and Hugh Coles as George McFly.

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

Eddie Redmayne returns to Broadway as the sinister Emcee of a Weimar Era nightclub in another revival of John Kander, Fred Ebb and Joe Masteroff's exhilarating, harrowing 1967 masterpiece. This London import—directed by Rebecca Frecknall and designed by Tom Scutt—emphasizes the material's sordid underbelly in an environmental staging: The August Wilson Theatre will be extensively reconfigured into an in-the-round space, and audience members with money to spare can buy special packages that include preshow dining and drinks. Gayle Rankin, who memorably appeared in the last revival, now costars as the desperate Sally Bowles; Steven Skybell, Ato Blankson-Wood, Natascia Diaz, Henry Gottfried and the delectably tart Bebe Neuwirth.

This John Kander–Fred Ebb–Bob Fosse favorite—revived by director Walter Bobbie and choreographer Ann Reinking—tells the saga of chorus girl Roxie Hart, who murders her lover and, with the help of a huckster lawyer, becomes a vaudeville star.—David Cote

There’s a big twist at the end of the first act; the plot of the second includes a giant hole. Those are just two of the injuries that two old frenemies inflict on each other in this new Broadway musical, a savagely funny dark comedy about the quest for eternal youth. Adapted by Marco Pennette, Julia Mattison and Noel Carey from the 1992 film, and directed by Christopher Gattelli, the show is a catty, campy delight. The terrific Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard, two of Broadway’s most gifted musical comedians, make musical-comedy magic together—and musical comedy, when performed this well, never gets old.—Adam Feldman

Christmas has come early to Broadway this year: the latest Broadway revival of this 2010 holiday musical is really elfin’ good. Based on the 2003 Will Ferrell movie, the show follows a grown man named Buddy, raised in holly as one of Santa’s helpers, who travels to New York in search of his father. This new production is directed by Philip Wm. McKinley, and Grey Henson is the bright new star at the top of its tree. His guileless Buddy is a creature of twinkle from his eyes down to his toes—an overgrown sweetie with a gentle heart and penchant for mild mischief—and it’s a pleasure to take off with him on Elf’s magic ride.—Adam Feldman

Set your boats against the current and prepare to be borne back into the Jazz Age as F. Scott Fitzgerald's quintessentially American novel comes to Broadway. Jeremy Jordan (Newsies) and Eva Noblezada (Hadestown) headline this musical adaptation by Kait Kerrigan, Jason Howland and Nathan Tysen, directed by Marc Bruni (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical)  and choreographed by Dominique Kelley. The supporting cast for the production, which originated at New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse last year, has not yet been announced. 

Every Broadway diva worth her salt dreams of playing the greatest musical-theater role of them all, sometimes called the King Lear of musicals: Mama Rose, the all-but-unstoppable stage mother of the world-renowned ecdysiast Gypsy Rose Lee. Now it's Tony Award hoarder Audra McDonald's turn, and show queens are salivating to see how she will compare to such prior Roses as Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone. George C. Wolfe directs the production; Broadway mensch Danny Burstein plays her long-suffering manager, and Joy Woods is her neglected tomboy daughter.