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

Jonathan Silverstein directs the world premiere of Adam Kwon's chamber musical, the first tuner to be commisioned by Silverstein's Keen Company. Fresh from his fast-singing turn as the panicky gay groom in the national tour of Company, Matt Rodin stars as a small-town high school teacher in the 1990s whose efforts to help an ambitious theater kid run afoul of the local church. The rest of the cast comprises Jon-Michael Reese, Eliza Pagelle and the versatile Broadway leading lady Elizabeth Stanley (Jagged Little Pill).

The jokes are well-worn but the costumes are worn well in this campy new musical, which is exactly what you'd expect: high heels, big hair, sassy one-liners and enough RuPaul’s Drag Race contestants to fill their own season. The script—by Tomas Costanza, Ashley Gordon and Justin Andrew Honard (a.k.a. Alaska Thunderf**k)—provides a fishnet-thin plot about two rival drag clubs facing different sets of troubles. But Marco Marco’s sculptural outfits are bejeweled works of art, the wigs are amazing and director-choreographer Spencer Liff works in some terrific hairography.—Melissa Rose Bernardo

The prolific Bob and Tobly McSmith, who specialize in silly musicals based on nostalgia objects like Saved by the Bell and Beverly Hills 90210, take a shot at America's favorite six 1990s white people. Assaf Gleizner, who wrote music for the McSmiths' The Office! A Musical Parody, is there for them like he's been there before, and Ryan David Barto directs.

The brilliant librettist Howard Ashman laid the groundwork for the renaissance of musical theater in recent decades. But after when he wrote Little Shop of Horrors with Alan Menken, and before he reunited with Menken to bring Disney musicals back to life with The Little Mermaid, he made his Broadway debut with a flop: Smile his 1986 collaboration with composer Marvin Hamlisch (A Chorus Line), which ran for fewer than 50 performances and left no cast album behind for its trouble. The J2 Spotlight Musical Theater Company—which, like Encores! and Musicals in Mufti, specializes in brief rivals of underexposed musicals of yore—christens its fifth season by revisiting this cult musical comedy about tensions, pressions and friendships at a California beauty contest (adapted from the 1975 film). Sophie Stromberg and Bridget Delaney play the two contestants we get to know best, and Lauren Weinberg and Christopher Deprophetis play the frazzled couple running the show. Company cofounder Robert W. Schneider directs. 

Milo Manheim, Elizabeth Gillies and Jeremy Kushnier currently star in the latest revival of this dark, tuneful and utterly winsome 1982 horror-camp musical about a flesh-eating plant who makes dreams come true for a lowly flower-shop worker. Composer Alan Menken and librettist Howard Ashman wrap a sordid tale of capitalist temptation and moral decay in layers of sweetness, humor, wit and camp. Michael Mayer directs the feeding frenzy in this deeply satisfying revival.

Whitney White has become one of the industry's leading directors, earning a Tony noms for last season's Jaja's African Hair Braiding and helming Liberation at the Roundabout this spring. In April, however, she takes center stage as the writer and performer of this musical dive into the dark soul (and R&B and gospel and pop and rock) of Lady Macbeth, as seen therough a lens of Black womanhood. The play is directed by Tyler Dobrowsky and Taibi Magar, the married artistic directors of Philadelphia Theatre Company, where the musical was seen in 2023; Raja Feather Kelly is the choreographer, and Charlie Thurston (who is in the cast of Liberation) reprises his role as Macbeth. 

Zip Zap Circus visits the New Vic with a distinctively South African show that infuses circus arts (such as aerialism, Cyr wheel and juggling) and local dance forms (such as gumboot and pantsula) with the generous communitarian spirit known in Bantu cultures as ubuntu. Founded in 1992, the troupe draws performers from its youth and outreach programs in the Cape Town area. Families can participate in free lobby activities for 45 minutes before every show and 20 minutes after. 

The boys are back in town! Five nice-looking men take it all off and vocalize in this collage of musical vignettes on gay themes, revamped since its 1999 debut with new jokes and more up-to-date references. Although sex is central to most of the numbers, the goofy nudism has no erotic charge (and when the show tries to be serious, it's sometimes hard to watch). After a hiatus of several years, NBS has returned to NYC at a new venue in 2023.

Having already created goofy musical spoofs of shows including Saved by the Bell and Beverly Hills 90210, Bob and Tobly McSmith—joined again by composer Assaf Gleizner, who wrote the score for Friends! The Musical Parody—take on yet another TV institution. Donald Garverick directs a cast led by Caleigh Lozito, in male drag, as paper tiger Michael Scott.

Company XIV's seductive take on Alice in Wonderland is a singular sexcess: a transporting fusion of haute burlesque, circus, dance and song. Impresario Austin McCormick has assembled an array of alluring and highly skilled artists, who look smashing in Zane Pihlstrom's lace-and-crystal-encrusted costumes. With its soundtrack of pop songs, attractive ensemble cast and immersive aesthetics—plus chocolate and specialty cocktails—Queen of Hearts feels like Moulin Rouge! for actual bohemians. Hell, it even has a cancan.—Raven Snook