Broadway star map: Where to see big names on Broadway this spring

TV powerhouse Edie Falco (The Sopranos, Nurse Jackie) returns to the stage in Liz Flahive's dramedy about a schoolteacher who abandons her familiar life. Leigh Silverman (Chinglish) directs the world premiere for MTC, with a cast also comprising John Ellison Conlee, Phoebe Strole, Christopher Evan Welch, Heidi Schreck and theater treasure Frances Sternhagen.

One of the late Nora Ephron's final projects was this drama about the life and career of crusading newspaperman Mike McAlary, who helped break open the Abner Louima police scandal in 1997 and died a year later from colon cancer. Tom Hanks takes on the main role, with George C. Wolfe directing.

Squeaky-voiced ’80s pop star Cyndi Lauper makes her Broadway debut—behind the scenes. She's composer-lyricist for this musical adaptation of the 2005 English movie about a man trying to save his father’s shoe factory, and the drag diva whose unshod feet fire his imagination. Lauper crafts high-energy and very danceable tunes, while the book is by old pro Harvey Fierstein (Newsies).

Richard Greenberg (Take Me Out) adapts the 1958 Truman Capote novella about the fascinating, socially ambitious Holly Golightly. Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen from HBO’s Game of Thrones) takes on the glamorous role in this classic New York tale of self-reinvention, romance and escape.

In Christopher Durang’s sketchy riff on Chekhovian themes, sad-sack heroes lash out at accelerated, soulless modern life to hilarious effect. Vanya (David Hyde Pierce) and his adopted sister Sonia (Kristine Nielsen)—named thus by their Chekhov-loving, community-theater parents—each delivers vertiginous comic arias of social malaise and romantic frustration as they waste away in their Pennsylvania country home. Sigourney Weaver costars as their fabulous movie-star sister.

Now that 30 Rock has joined the choir of heavenly sitcoms, Alec Baldwin returns to Broadway in a revival of Lyle Kessler's 1983 drama, which helped launch the worldwide reputation of Chicago's Steppenwolf company. Ben Foster (Kill Your Darlings) and Being Julia's Tom Sturridge costar as a pair of desperate brothers who abduct Baldwin's wealthy businessman.

The latest new work by the very clever and very busy Douglas Carter Beane stars Nathan Lane—one of the great male Broadway stars of our (or any) generation—as a gay actor of effeminate comic roles in the dodgy world of 1930s burlesque. Jack O'Brien (Hairspray) directs a cast that also includes Lewis J. Stadlen, Andréa Burns, Jenni Barber and Lane's erstwhile Producers costar Cady Huffman.

African-American acting icon Cicely Tyson stars in an all-black revival of Horton Foote's touching drama, in which an elederly woman endeavors to return to her hometown in Texas. The cast of this limited engagement, directed by Michael Wilson, also includes Cuba Gooding Jr., Vanessa Williams and rising scion Condola Rashad.

Bette Midler comes back to the Great White Way for her first nonconcert show since playing Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof some 45 years ago. Her vehicle is a one-woman show about the late Sue Mengers, survivor of Hitler's Germany and quippy superagent of 1970s Hollywood. John Logan, of the Mark Rothko bioplay Red, wrote the script; Joe Mantello (Wicked) directs.

Renowned Scot thespian Alan Cumming—a performer whose impish mien and propensity for displaying his bum belie a surprising variety of dramatic gifts—stars in this nearly solo version of the Scottish play, set in a psychiatric hospital and directed by John Tiffany (Once). The production was a hit at the 2012 Lincoln Center Festival; now it transfers to Broadway for a three-month run.