There is always a glut of openings on Broadway during the months and weeks leading up to May. That is because the nomination process for the Tony Awards ends in April. 2025 is an especially fervid year: The amount of shows is staggering; even more so is the quality of the theater. These five new shows stun with both their production quality and the profundity of their storytelling. None of them will run forever, so get in while you can.
‘Dead Outlaw’
The team behind the sublime musical “The Band’s Visit” is back, and this time they have brought the dead to life. “Dead Outlaw” is about the death and life of Elmer McCurdy, a real person who was born in the late 1880s, died in a shootout in 1911, then became a mummified sideshow and film star in the ensuing decades. A kooky story, sure. What “Dead Outlaw” does, with razor-sharp comedy and sensitive country-rock numbers, is interrogate what makes a life valuable. This is a show that ticks every beat like a well-calibrated grandfather clock. (runs through Oct. 12)
‘Floyd Collins’
This deep-cut, true-story musical about a Kentucky dreamer who gets stuck in a cave in 1925 had its New York debut in 1996. Nearly 30 years later, the show is having its Broadway debut at Lincoln Center’s stunning Vivian Beaumont theater. Floyd Collins, the trapped spelunker, is the centerpiece of the tale, and Jeremy Jordan embodies Collins with pathos and virtuosic singing, as composer Adam Guettel’s wide-ranging score demands. But the story is as much about the media brouhaha that spread across the States during Collins’ entrapment. Think of Collins’ entrapment as the country’s first viral news story, one hundred years early. This is a thinking person’s musical, but, oh, how it bleeds, too. (runs through June 22)
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‘Gypsy’
The 1959 show by Arthur Laurents, Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim is one of only a small handful of perfectly constructed shows. The story of a mother trying anything — and most everything — to have her two daughters succeed in the vaudeville circuit rockets along, the songs both amplifying the action and deepening the characters’ aches. The current Broadway revival, starring the peerless Audra McDonald as the desperate, domineering Mama Rose, colors the musical with new pens: This is the tale of a Black mother in America, who simply — and impossibly — wants the same opportunities as white people. “Rose’s Turn,” the closing number in “Gypsy,” has been likened to one of King Lear’s monologues. McDonald bares it all in the song, hurling both her soul and that of her ancestors on the stage of the Majestic Theater. This is a once-in-a-lifetime performance and production. (runs through Oct. 5)
‘Maybe Happy Ending’
There is a lot of humanity on Broadway this season, yet the most human of the shows playing right now might be this intimate musical about robots. It is a tale of two retired Helperbots, humanoid robots designed to, yes, help humans as mechanical assistants. One Helperbot is looking to reunite with his former human master; the other Helperbot realizes she is no longer keeping a charge, meaning her demise is imminent. The two escape their retirement pens and go on a road trip. The result is a tender, charming, technologically advanced show that drives straight to the heart. (runs through Jan. 18)
‘Oh, Mary!’
The rumors are true: Cole Escola’s one-act gambol about the final days of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency as (mostly) seen through the eyes of Mary Todd Lincoln is brash, hysterical, raunchy, absurd and a backhand of fresh comedic air. Escola wrote the show and also plays Mary Todd Lincoln, imagining her as a disenchanted, would-be cabaret star. Abe is a closet case. The Civil War is coming to a bloody end. And Mary Todd just wants to sing. The show’s broad comedic strokes belie the subversive queer vision at the core of “Oh, Mary!” That’s quite alright: no better way to be seen than to trick audiences into opening their minds while they’re crying their eyes out with laughter. (runs through Sept. 28)
