After a summer marked by depressing news about the state of Broadway and the early closure of acclaimed productions like Cats: The Jellicle Ball and Chess, theater fans can gear up for a fall season where some of the biggest and starriest productions are due to open Off Broadway. An Olivier-winning musical based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald story! A musical adaptation from Lynn Nottage and EGOT-winning composer John Legend! And an Arthur Miller revival starring Oscar winner Sam Rockwell!
Not that the Main Stem is going dark — we’re looking forward to Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Broadway debut in Jon Robin Baitz’s dramedy Other Desert Cities and Bradley Whitford’s return to the show on which he made his own Broadway debut: Aaron Sorkin’s courtroom drama A Few Good Men. There are plenty more shows due to open on and off Broadway this fall — including Billy Crystal’s latest autobiographical solo show 860 — and more that are likely to be announced in the coming weeks and months. But here are the 18 productions that, sight unseen, that have emerged at the top of our can’t-wait list.
PRE-EXISTING CONDITION
Greenwich House Theatre, Off Broadway
Previews begin Sept. 1; opens Sept. 14; tickets on sale through October 24
Two years after its memorable premiere run in a tiny Off Off Broadway space, actress-turned-playwright Marin Ireland’s dissection of domestic violence returns in the more capacious Greenwich House Theatre. A rotating cast of luminaries (including Lupita Nyong’o, Phillipa Soo, and Edie Falco) will play the Everywoman central character, joined by Dael Orlandersmith as a comforting therapist as well as Greg Keller and Sarah Steele as friends and acquaintances offering varying degrees of empathy and support.
SCHOOL GIRLS; OR, THE AFRICAN MEAN GIRLS PLAY
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, Broadway
Previews begin September 8; opens September 28; tickets on sale through Nov. 1
Jocelyn Bioh’s dramedy, set in a girls boarding school in Ghana in 1998, won widespread acclaim when it debuted Off Broadway nearly a decade ago by tapping into the dynamics of female competition in a way that made them truly universal. Whitney White, who directed Bioh’s 2023 Broadway debut, Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, reprises her duties from the original production.
DELIRIUM
The Space at Irondale, Brooklyn
Previews begin September 8; opens Sept. 24; tickets on sale through Oct. 24
Igor Golyak, who brought a visual flourish to the Holocaust drama Our Class a few years ago, has adapted a rarity from the Eugène Ionesco catalog, Frenzy for Two, about a couple who are so absorbed in a petty dispute about animals that they ignore the collapse of the world just outside their window. This one promises to be similarly inventive and engaging.
MIDNIGHT
Daryl Roth Theatre, Off Broadway
Previews begin September 12; opens September 27; tickets on sale through Nov. 8
Todrick Hall has been an American Idol contestant, star YouTuber, RuPaul’s Drag Race choreographer, and occasional Broadway musical star (Kinky Boots, Chicago, Waitress). The multihyphenate is now starring in an ambitious, original sung-through musical that he both wrote and directs. The story is set in the 19th-century American South where two slave owners forge complicated and unlikely relationships with their (and each other’s) enslaved people.
KRAMER/FAUCI
St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn
Previews begin September 27; opens October 4; tickets on sale through October 24
Long before MAGA Republicans made Anthony Fauci a scapegoat for just about every ill in society, the renowned epidemiologist was the target of critics on the left — in particular, playwright-activist Larry Kramer who railed against Fauci’s handing of AIDS research at the height of that epidemic. Writer-director Daniel Fish has adapted a real 1993 C-SPAN debate between the two very public figures that reveals the clash between an artistic temperament seeking action right away and the more measured approach of a public health expert seeking to balance competing interests.
DEGENERATES
Playwrights Horizons, Off Broadway
Previews begin September 29; tickets on sale through Oct. 11
Last year, playwright Else Went and their romantic/creative partner, director Emma Rose Went, collaborated on Initiative an exquisite coming-of-age epic centered on a Dungeons & Dragons-playing group of high schoolers in the early 2000s. The Wents now reteam for a new play that digs into the plight of lonely and isolated young men who seek solace and comfort in the darker corners of the internet know as the manosphere.
OTHER DESERT CITIES
Hudson Theatre, Broadway
Previews begin September 29; opens October 18; tickets on sale through January 17
Jon Robin Baitz’s Palm Springs-set family dramedy is getting a starry revival led by Julia Louis-Dreyfuss (in her Broadway debut) and Ed Harris as former Hollywood bigwigs who learn that their wayward grown daughter (Lily Rabe) has written a tell-all memoir threatening to air several walk-in closets worth of soiled laundry. The cast also includes Allison Janney and Joe Keery (Stranger Things).
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
Public Theater, Off Broadway
Previews begin October 8; opens October 21; tickets on sale through Nov. 15
The musical version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story about a man who ages backward, a collaboration of composer-lyricist Darren Clark and writer-lyricist Jethro Compton, became a sensation on London’s West End and won the 2025 Olivier Award for Best Musical. But the show, which changes the original setting from 19th-century America to an English fishing village in the 20th century, is bypassing Broadway for a run in the more modest Public Theater.
A FEW GOOD MEN
Vivien Beaumont Theatre, Broadway
Previews begin October 8; opens October 29; tickets on sale through January 10
Can you handle the truth? It’s been nearly four decades Aaron Sorkin’s military courtroom drama debuted on Broadway and launched a career marked by rapid-fire document and ripped-from-the-headlines dramas like The West Wing and The Social Network. Now his breakout show returns to Broadway in a production starring West Wing alum Bradley Whitford and British actor Tom Blyth (People We Meet on Vacation), under the direction of Tony winner Michael Arden.
THE UNBELIEVERS
Manhattan Theatre Club/New York City Center Stage I, Off Broadway
Previews begin October 13; tickets on sale through the fall
Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under) and Tom Riley (Arcadia) star as a couple whose teenage son has disappeared and their efforts to absorb that tragedy and piece together the semblance of a life. The show got mixed reviews during its original London run two years ago, but it’s the latest drama from the always-interesting Nick Payne (Constellations).
WANTED
James Earl Jones Theatre, Broadway
Previews begin October 15; opens November 8; tickets on sale through March 31
There has been a buzz building around this new fact-based musical since its 2020 premiere at Virginia’s Signature Theatre and a 2024 run at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse. The fact-based story follows Mary and Martha Clark, twin African American sisters in 1890s Texas who decide to pass as white outlaws to settle the burdensome sharecropper debt that threatens to uproot their mother from her home.
THE FANTASTICKS
Hayes Theater, Broadway
Previews begin October 22; opens November 16; tickets on sale through February 7
The homespun Harvey Schmidt-Tom Jones musical that ran a record 42 years Off Broadway (until closing in 2002) makes its belated Broadway debut — with an updated book that original author Tom Jones (not the Welsh pop singer) completed before his death in 2023 at age 95. This time, the putative young lovers Matt and Luisa are Matt and Lewis, and the fathers who try to engineer their romance are instead two meddling moms who try to remember that sweet song of September.
WE’LL SEE
Public Theater, Off Broadway
Previews begin October 25; opens November 3; tickets on sale through Nov. 22
For the better part of two decades, it’s become a tradition for certain New York theater fans to spend the night of a major election at the Public Theater with a new play by Richard Nelson. This time, we revisit the three Apple sisters from Rhinebeck, New York, just north of NYC — whom we last saw in a livestreamed 2020 production set in early days of the COVID pandemic. These are quiet, precisely observed character studies that seem to be set in real time (and often updated just before opening night), full of intelligent, often artistically inclined folks grappling with real-world issues both at home and in the world at large.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
Winter Garden Theatre, Broadway
Previews begin October 31, 2026; opens November 19, 2026; Tickets on sale through January 10, 2027
Cue the 1990s dance music for this spirited revival of the classic Shakespeare comedy starring Marvel movie alumni Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell as acid-tongued frenemy-to-lovers Benedick and Beatrice. The show, with both actors, snagged rapturous reviews when it played in London’s West End last year.
SEVEN GUITARS
Lincoln Center Theater/Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Off Broadway
Previews begin November 5; opens November 23; tickets on sale soon
Ruben Santiago-Hudson, seen last spring in an acclaimed revival of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, is an apt choice to direct a new revival of Wilson’s 1940s-set drama about a blues singer just out of prison hoping to restart both his music career and his romance with his ex-girlfriend.
INTER ALIA
Music Box Theatre, Broadway
Previews begin November 10; opens December 1; Tickets on sale through Feb. 21
In this London transfer, Rosamund Pike reprises her Olivier Award-winning role as a maverick London judge famed for her handling of sexual violence cases whose life is upended when her teenage son is accused of raping a classmate at a party. This is the latest hot-button collaboration from playwright Suzie Miller and director Justin Miller, whose similarly legal-themed 2023 Broadway debut Prima Facie earned Jodie Comer a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Drama.
THE CONVERSATION
Astor Place Theatre, Off Broadway
Previews begin November 17; opens TBA; tickets on sale soon
Newly crowned Tony winner Joshua Henry has teamed with Hamilton alum Julia Harriman on the score for a new musical about a young couple’s journey from the goosebumps of their first date through the hectic move-in to the various milestones as they evolve as a couple. Henry and Harriman also star in the show, which will be directed by Kenny Leon.
IMITATION OF LIFE
The Shed, Off Broadway
Previews begin November 21; opens TBA; tickets on sale through Jan. 3
The fall’s most anticipated new musical isn’t opening on Broadway. Two-time Pulitzer winning playwright Lynn Nottage has teamed with EGOT winning composer John Legend on a tune-filled adaptation of the 1933 Fannie Hurst novel that inspired two successful films. The story follows two single mothers in 1920s and ’30s New York — one white, one Black — and their not-always-quite-parallel journeys to find financial and romantic security. Legend has written an entirely original score for this one.
WILD ROSE
New York Theatre Workshop, Off Broadway
Previews begin November 24; opens TBA; tickets on sale through January 10
John Tiffany, who won a Tony for directing the film-to-stage musical Once, helms another adaptation of a music-filled indie film, the 2018 charmer Wild Rose that starred future Oscar winner Jessie Buckley. As in the film, the show follows a single mother of two who yearns to escape her native Glasgow, Scotland, to become a country music star. The score is studded with tunes by Nashville staples like including Wynonna Judd, Caitlyn Smith, The Chicks, and Patty Griffin.
A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE
La MaMa, Off Broadway
Previews begin Nov. 27; opens TBA; tickets on sale through Feb. 27
The tiny East Village venue La Mama has one of the fall’s starriest productions: a revival of Arthur Miller’s classic A View From the Bridge starring Sam Rockwell as the Italian American longshoreman in 1950s Brooklyn whose overprotectiveness of his nearly 18-year-old niece warps into self-destructiveness. Marin Ireland and Alfred Molina join the cast under the direction of Neil Pepe (English, Buena Vista Social Club).