The best Broadway shows you need to see

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

Audra McDonald is a revelation as Rose—the implacable stage mother who sacrifices everything to make her two daughters into stars, including those daughters—in George C. Wolfe’s deeply intelligent revival of the classic 1959 musical by Arthur Lawrence, Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim. Making the central family Black gives everything a fresh coloration and a sense of discovery. Every song is a rite of passaggio between McDonald's chest voice and head voice, but she makes that tension work to her advantage in an unforgettable star turn.—Adam Feldman

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

The world of Harry 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 satisfied.—Adam Feldman

Obsolescent androids in a near-future Korea try to make a Seoul connection in this highly original new musical by Will Aronson and Hue Park. The notion of robots discovering love could easily fall into preciousness. Instead—as charmingly acted by Darren Criss and Helen J Shen, and brilliantly staged by Michael Arden and set designer Dane Laffrey—it is utterly enchanting: an adorable and bittersweet exploration of what it means to be human, channeled through characters who are just learning what that entails. That this show is casting its firefly glow on Broadway feels like a gift.—Adam Feldman

Cole Escola's dizzying historical burlesque imagines a boozy, vicious and miserable Mary Todd Lincoln in the weeks leading up to her husband’s assassination. Escola plays Mary 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. Everything comes together to create an instant classic, and the funniest stage comedy in years. Betty Gilpin takes over the title role from January 21 through March 16.—Adam Feldman

The short humor pieces by Simon Rich collected in this anthology all touch on awkward modern love, be it romantic, familial or universal.The stories tend to resolve on awww-inspiring notes, but they're first and foremost funny—often very, very funny. The production evokes a live reading of The New Yorker; the literary-bohemian atmosphere is complemented by Emily Flake’s adorable illustrations and four songs by Stephin Meritt, performed by the Bengsons.—Adam Feldman

Aging parents and grown-up siblings reunite for Christmas in Leslye Headland’s stormy, compassionate, cuttingly observant new play. The Dahl family is close, but less in the sense of intimate than in the sense of stifling; they come together when they’re making music, but that can only do so much to distract from the characters' crises of faith: in their loved ones and in a higher power, but also in themselves. Whether singing or sniping or merely stewing, the ten actors—including Shailene Woodley, Zachary Quinto, Mare Winningham and Rebecca Henderson and David Rasche—don’t hit a false note.

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

Jonathan Spector’s dark comedy about vaccination is timely and sharply double-edged. At first, it pokes at wokeness; the characters lead an ultraprogressive private school in California. But when an outbreak of mumps threatens the student body, the school's ideal of personal discussion and consensus comes to seem less ridiculous, and the play even plays fair with the antivax contingent (led by a spoken-spoken, hard-willed Jessica Hecht). Eureka Day is often very funny, but it also contributes valuably to the discourse around public health; even as it needles the left, it offers an invigorating shot in the arm.—Adam Feldman

Go to hell—and by hell we mean Hadestown, 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’s gracefully dynamic staging bring this old story to quivering life.—Adam Feldman

The creators of Hell's Kitchen have 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 a heck of a block party. The show has the sensibly narrow scope of a short story, loosely inspired by Keys's life. Maleah Joi Moon makes a stunning debut as a 1990s teenager; Jessica Vosk is her protective mother, Brandon Victor Dixon is her absent father and Kecia Lewis is her teacher.—Adam Feldman

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

Solea Pfeiffer and John Cardoza play lovers caught in a bad romance in this gorgeous, 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 megamix may be costume jewelry, but its shine is dazzling.—Adam Feldman

Who doesn’t enjoy a royal wedding? Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss's zingy musical Six celebrates, 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

Jamie Lloyd’s very meta and very smart Broadway revival of this Andrew Lloyd Webber musical stars the entrancing Nicole Scherzinger as faded film star Norma Desmond and Tom Francis as Joe Gillis, the handsome screenwriter drawn into her web. The show's tension between the real and the imaginary is expanded here into a conceptual exploration of the filmic in modern life, when the pictures are smaller than ever. (This Norma sometimes explicitly evokes a thirsty social-media personality.) Giant images of live video tug at your eye; you sometimes can’t help choosing them over the small, real person who is actually there. In this revival, that doesn’t feel like a gimmick or a distraction. It’s a new way to see an old dream.—Adam Feldman

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