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

Singer-songwriter Dina Fanai's mythopoetic original musical, which draws inspiration from the Sufi mysticism of Rumi and the analytic acuity of Joseph Campbell, returns for an encore run after a successful workshop in January, directed once more by Dodd Loomis. Jenna Rubaii plays the title heroine on journey of spirtitual discovery; the large supporting cast is led by Broadway ringers Constantine Maroulis (Rock of Ages) and Maya Days (Aida), and also includes Madeline Serrano and Fanai herself.

Michael Sgouros and Brenda Bell's child-oriented musical adaptation of the classic folktale— as rendered in books by Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont and Madame De Villeneuve—celebrates a bookish girl's ability to see past the hirsute appearance or her kidnapper. Pierce Cassedy directs this 70-minute production; the first performance of each two-show day is preceded by an hour-long arts workshop at which kids can meet members of the company and create a mask to take home.

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

Fatgtasia's popular immersive camp extravanganzas reimagine Broadway musicals through a joyfully subversive queer lens. This time around, the series indulges its penchant for Phan fiction in a drag tribute that stars Charlene Incarnate as a closeted trans Phantom of the Opera and Fagtasia founder Baby Love as the cis soprano she's obsessed with. Baby Love also directs, and Jupiter Genesis choreographs. Because the show is only performed twice on a single day, tickets are scarce: The matinee is already sold out, as are non-VIP seats. (If you can't make it to this edition, Fagtasia's next target will be Hairspray on June 1.) 

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.

Writer-performer J.S. Streible synthesizes his experience growing up as a biracial man among the white mountain folk of rural Appalachia—some very rich, soime dirt poor—in a solo collection of original songs, poems and short tall tales. Inspired by Southern and West African storytelling traditions, the show desscribes itself as "the world’s first Neo-Appalachian, Afrolachian, Southern Pop Revusical."

Back in 2018, the oral historian and producer Jennifer Ashley Tepper—a gale force of musical-theater fandom—created a series of concerts at 54 Below devoted to airing unheard songs from the trunk of Jonathan Larson, who died suddenly on the eve of his breakthrough with Rent. Now that project has been expanded into an Off Broadway revue with a very talented cast: Adam Chanler-Berat, Taylor Iman Jones, Lauren Marcus, Andy Mientus and Jason Tam. John Simpkins directs; the orchestrations are by Charlie Rosen, co-arranged with Natalie Tenenbaum. 

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.

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.

The York Theatre Company's New2NY series offers spare stagings of original musicals. This year's spring lineup begins with Platinum Dreams, the latest effort to rescue the flop 1978 musical Platinum, which originally starred Alexis Smith as a 1940s movie-musical star striving to make a comeback in the 1970s. The score by composer Gary William Friedman and lyrics by Will Holt—who previously collaborated on The Me Nobody Knows—remains, but the books that Holt wrote with Bruce Vilanch for the Broadway production and by himself for a previous revision, Sunset, have been replaced with a new one by Friedman's wife, the singer-songwriter Stevie Holland (who also contributes new lyrics). The York's acting artistic director, Joseph Hayward, directs; Holland plays the central role, flanked by Conor Ryan (Desperate Measures) and Jovan E’Sean (Cats: The Jellicle Ball) as two younger men in the music industry.