New and upcoming Broadway shows headed to NYC in 2024

Robert Downey Jr. is set to return to the Avengers movie franchise next year, but first he is making his Broadway debut in a play that explores storytelling and the nature of originality. Downey plays a world-famous writer drawn into the web of Artificial Intelligence in this 90-minute drama by Ayad Akhtar, who won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Disgraced. Lincoln Center Theater resident director Bartlett Sher helms the world premiere, whose supporting cast comprises Andrea Martin, Melora Hardin, Ruthie Ann Miles, Rafi Gavron, Brittany Bellizeare and Saisha Talwar. In addition to those very human assets, the production boasts what it calls "a highly realistic Metahuman Digital Likeness" of Downey.

The most recent Broadway collaboration between British playwright Jez Butterworth (Jerusalem) and director Sam Mendes (The Lehman Trilogy) was 2018's superb The Ferryman. The duo now returns with another ambitious family drama; this one is set in a seaside English town in the 1970s, where sisters reunite at the deathbed of the mother who, decades earlier, drilled them into a child singing act. The eight leading actors from the show's premiere production in London earlier this year reprise their roles: The Ferryman's Laura Donnelly as well as Leanne Best, Ophelia Lovibond, Helena Wilson, Nancy Allsop, Sophia Ally, Lara McDonnell and Nicola Turner. 

Lost star Daniel Dae Kim finds himself on a Broadway stage for the first time in more than a decade, playing the central character in David Henry Hwang's quasi-semi-pseudo-autobiographical 2007 comedy about Asian identity and representation (inspired by his own experience in American theater and by the spy-trial ordeal of scientist Wen Ho Lee). Leigh Silverman, who directed the original production at the Public, returns to steer the play's revival at the Roundabout; the cast this time includes Kevin Del Aguila, Ryan Eggold,  Marinda Anderson, Greg Keller, Shannon Tyo and—reprising his 2007 role as the playwright's father—the priceless Francis Jue. 

Thornton Wilder's 1938 masterpiece, a staple of high school drama programs for generations, is thornier than you might remember: It's a frighteningly profound exploration of life and death in a sleepy New England town. The play's latest Broadway revival—its first in more than 20 years—is directed by Kenny Leon (Topdog/Underdog) and features a large ensemble that is notably mutiracial: Black actors Billy Eugene Jones, Michelle Wilson and Ephraim Sykes play members of the Gibbs family, while white actors Richard Thomas, Katie Holmes and Zoey Deutch spin the Webbs. Julie Halston and Donald Webber Jr. are also in the cast; recent Broadway mainstay Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory) plays the omniscient Stage Manager.  

Delia Ephron's husband died of cancer in 2015, just three years after the cancer death of her sister Nora (with whom she cowrote the smash romcom You've Got Mail). Her 2022 book Left on Tenth: a Second Chance at Life chronicles her surprise reconnection, in the wake of those deaths, with a man she had dated half a century earlier—only to find herself in a cancer struggle of her own. In Ephron's stage adaption of her own memoir, stage and screen vets Julianna Margulies and Peter Gallagher play the late-in-life lovers, with support from Peter Francis James and Kate MacCluggage. Susan Stroman (The Producers) directs the premiere.

Rachel Zegler's first film appearance was in West Side Story, playing a young lover loosely inspired by Shakespeare's Juliet. Now she makes her Broadway debut as the original article, cooing and crying opposite Heartstopper's Kit Connor. Sam Gold (An Enemy of the People) directs this latest Broadway account of the Bard's beloved family-feud tragedy, in which rebellious kids come to a bad end after having sex and scoring drugs from a local priest. The production features movement by Sonya Tayeh (Moulin Rouge!) and original music by pop hitmaker and Swift whisperer Jack Antonoff. 

Sunset Boulevard rises again with a new version of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Don Black and Christopher Hampton's sweeping musical, adapted from Billy Wilder's classic 1950 film. Playing the delusional silent-screen star Norma Desmond this time around is Pussycat Dolls frontwoman Nicole Scherzinger, who earned ecstatic reviews in this revival's original London production. In a striking departure from the lavish design of the original production, director Jamie Lloyd employs a minimalist style (akin to his approach to A Doll's House last year) that makes plentiful use of live video. The Broadway transfer will maintain Scherzinger's London costars: Tom Francis as her young lover Joe, Grace Hodgett-Young as his colleague and David Thaxton as Norma's loyal majordomo. (Mandy Gonzalez plays Norma at some performances.)

In this idiosyncratic original musical, Darren Criss (Glee) and Helen J Shen (The Lonely Few) star as obsolescent robots who make an unexpected Seoul connection. A Korean-language version of the show, also written by composer Will Aronson and lyricist Hue Park, won several awards for its 2016 premiere in South Korea; an earlier version of this incarnation—directed by Michael Arden (Parade) and designed by his frequent collaborator Dane Laffrey—debuted in Atlanta in 2020. 

James Monroe Iglehart, who won a Tony as the Genie in Alladin, tries to make magic again as Louis Armstrong in this new biomusical about the soaring jazz trumpeter and gravel-voiced entertainer. Conceived by Andrew Delaplaine and director Christopher Renshaw, the show features an original book by Aurin Squire (This Is Us) and, natch, many of Satchmo's signature songs, such as “It Don’t Mean A Thing It Ain’t Got That Swing,” "When You're Smiling" and “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby.” Darlesia Cearcy, Dionne Figgins, Kim Exum and Jennie Harney-Fleming play four of the charismatic jazzman's brightest flames. 

The disgraced 1980s televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker—long beloved by gay men for her outrageous makeup, extravagant emotionality and tolerant attitudes—is the subject of this new musical, with a book by the English political-theater specialist James Graham (Ink) and original songs by Elton John and Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears. Katie Brayben, who originated the title role in the show's well-received London premiere (and won a 2003 Olivier Award for her troubles), reprises the part on Broadway, once again under Rupert Goold's direction but now flanked by a new pair of men: Christian Borle as her husband, Jim Bakker, and Michael Cerveris as their rival and nemesis, Jerry Falwell.

Two of Broadway's funniest women, Megan Hilty (Smash) and Jennifer Simard (Once Upon a One More Time), face off as enemies bent on eternal youth in a musical dark comedy adapted by Marco Pennette from the 1992 film (with Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn). Christopher Sieber, who wrestled Simard in Company, plays the man at the center of their rivalry; Michelle Williams, of Destiny's Child, is the Mephistopholean purveyor of the mysterious serum they seek. The original score is by Broadway newcomers Julia Mattison and Noel Carey; Christopher Gattelli (Newsies) serves as director and choreographer. 

In the wake of well-received pre-Broadway runs at Berkeley Repertory and Arena Stage, this musical drama about a 19th-century shipwreck makes port on the Great White Way. The book by John Logan (Moulin Rouge!), inspired by real events, incorporates songs from the catalogue of the folk-rock group the Avett Brothers, especially the 2004 album Mignonette. John Gallagher Jr. (Spring Awakening), Stark Sands (Kinky Boots), Adrian Blake Enscoe and Wayne Duvall play the four main sailors; Michael Mayer (Little Shop of Horrors) directs.

The entertaining 2010 Broadway musical adaptation of the Will Ferrell film comedy returns for another limited holiday engagement, its fourth encore run in New York City. Grey Henson (Shucked) dons his gay apparel to play Santa’s least helpful helper: Buddy, a human boy raised as an elf at the North Pole who finds his way to NYC in search of his birth family. The amiable score is by Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin (The Prom); Bob Martin (The Drowsy Chaperone) and the late Thomas Meehan (The Producers) handled the adaptation. This latest production is directed by Philip Wm. McKinley (Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark), whose 2022 restaging has been a hit in London. 

Playwright Leslye Headland (Russian Doll) and director Trip Cullman (Significant Other) have previously collaborated on the Off Broadway premieres of Bachelorette, Assistance and The Layover. Now they reunite for the acerbic writer's Broadway debut, set at a holiday family gathering that is—when aren't they?—fraught with strife. Shailene Woodley (Big Little Lies) and Zachary Quinto (Star Trek) lead the cast of this Second Stage production, which also features Molly Bernard, Roberta Colindrez, Barbie Ferreira, Rebecca Henderson, Christopher Lowell and Christopher Sears.

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 (perhaps definitively) Patti LuPone. George C. Wolfe (Angels in America) directs the production, which marks the reopening of the Majestic Theatre for the first time since its 35-year occupation by The Phantom of the Opera. Broadway mensch Danny Burstein plays her long-suffering manager, and Joy Woods is her neglected tomboy daughter.

Five years after its memorable Off Broadway run, Jonathan Spector's award-winning dark comedy, about a mumps outbreak at an ultraliberal elementary school, arrives on Broadway in an all-new production directed by Anna D. Shapiro for Manhattan Theatre Club. The first half mines comic gold from the tugs-of-war for control among the members of the school's executive committee; in the second act, this comedy of manners yields to a serious probing of interpersonal responsibility and the limits of consideration. The formidable cast of five comprises Bill Irwin, Jessica Hecht, Amber Gray, Zoë Chao and Silicon Valley's Thomas Middleditch.

One of the country's foremost comedians, John Mulaney, leads the rotating cast in thuis collection of stories by his fellow Saturday Night Live writing alumnus Simon Rich, based on material that Rich created for The New Yorker. Mulaney will appear for only the first half of the show's strictly limited 10-week run, joined by Fred Armisen, Richard Kind, Renée Elise Goldsberry (through December 30) and Chloe Fineman (January 2–12); casting for the second half of the run has not yet been announced. The show is directed by Mulaney's longtime collaborator Alex Timbers (Moulin Rouge!), who oversaw his hilarious Broadway debut in 2016's Oh, Hello.