Marsha Stephanie Blake, Lily Rabe and Raúl Esparza in The Winter’s Tale. Photo: Joan Marcus

Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale has always been a peculiar creature. Watching Daniel Sullivan’s production at the Delacorte Theater, one can almost believe three different playwrights wandered into the room, each wrote a section, and Shakespeare somehow decided to keep them all.

The first gives us jealousy and tragedy. The second practically abandons that world for pastoral comedy. The third turns toward repentance, spirituality, forgiveness and something perilously close to resurrection.

That extraordinary construction can be thrilling when the pieces somehow find one another. Here, despite some truly exceptional performances, magnificent design and a final sequence that approaches theatrical magic, they don’t always.

The difficulty begins with Leontes. Shakespeare gives us remarkably little preparation for the Sicilian king’s sudden conviction that his pregnant wife Hermione (Lily Rabe) has been unfaithful with his closest friend, Polixines, King of Bohemia (Gilbert Owuor). There is no Iago whispering poison into his ear, no gradual accumulation of evidence, not even much indication that this particular demon has been living inside Leontes waiting to escape. Hermione is essentially doing what her husband has asked of her—encouraging Polixenes to extend his visit—and suddenly Leontes sees betrayal. One wants a crack before the earthquake. A line, a look, some indication that jealousy has always been Leontes’ private monster would make the catastrophe that follows infinitely more psychologically plausible. Instead, the audience is left wondering not merely why he believes this, but: Has he always been like this?

Raúl Esparza in The Winter’s Tale. Photo: Joan Marcus

That is hardly Raúl Esparza’s fault. Esparza is, as always, a formidable actor, and once Leontes is inside the madness, he commits to it completely. He gives the king intelligence, fury and ultimately genuine remorse. The problem is that Shakespeare asks the actor to make an enormous psychological leap before giving him much of a runway. Esparza can make us believe the man. The text doesn’t always help us understand how the man arrived there.

Gilbert Owuor, Lily Rabe Photo by Joan Marcus

Lily Rabe has the opposite challenge as Hermione. Her performance is utterly human and wonderfully raw. There is nothing remote about her suffering. Her bewilderment at being accused by the man who should know her best, the indignity of having to defend what should never have required defending, and the devastating consequences of Leontes’ obsession give Rabe some of the production’s strongest dramatic material.

Yet the person who ultimately holds The Winter’s Tale together is neither Leontes nor Hermione. It is Paulina, Marsha Stephanie Blake. Superb in the role, in a play populated by kings, queens, lovers, clowns and improbable transformations, Paulina somehow emerges as its most recognizably human being.

She is the one person who refuses to surrender either her morality or her character simply because a king demands it. When Leontes constructs a false reality and expects everyone around him to inhabit it, Paulina says no. She speaks truth when truth is dangerous. She protects the infant Perdita—played as a young woman with an incandescent openness by Isabela Ferrer—and it is Paulina who persuades her husband, Antigonus, to take responsibility for saving the child.

Steven Skybell Photo by Joan Marcus

Stephen Skybell is wonderful as Antigonus, taking a comparatively small role and creating some of the most memorable moments of the evening. Skybell has that rare ability to make Shakespeare sound not like language being performed but like thoughts occurring to him for the first time. His Antigonus is funny, warm and wonderfully alive, which makes what happens to him matter far more than the famous theatrical joke that ultimately awaits him. Because Antigonus’ act of mercy places him in the chain of events leading to perhaps Shakespeare’s most celebrated stage direction: “Exit, pursued by a bear.” The audience may laugh—and Shakespeare certainly intended them to—but Paulina loses her husband and Paulina pays dearly for doing the right thing.

That matters because almost everyone at the center of the tragedy is eventually given something back. Leontes is offered the possibility of redemption. Hermione is restored. Perdita returns, and a family shattered by jealousy is astonishingly reconstructed. Paulina participates in creating that restoration for everyone else, even though the person she lost cannot be restored to her. Antigonus remains dead.

That is what makes Paulina’s eventual role in the miracle so extraordinary. She does not guide others toward forgiveness because life has spared her. She does it while carrying a loss that the play itself cannot undo. She may, in fact, have lost more permanently than anyone else in the play, yet she becomes its guardian rather than its victim. She remains beside Leontes through his years of repentance, never allowing him to forget what he did but also never preventing him from becoming something better than the man who did it.

Blake gives Paulina an earthbound authority that gradually begins to feel almost otherworldly. She becomes the play’s guardian angel, quietly steering something beneath the visible story. And by the end, Shakespeare entrusts the impossible to her. That is where The Winter’s Tale finally becomes extraordinary.

Chuck Cooper, Steven Skybell, Michael Khalid Karadsheh Photo by Joan Marcus

Before we get there, however, Sullivan’s direction has to navigate Shakespeare’s wild transition into Bohemia, where Perdita is being raised by elderly shepherd (Chuck Cooper). This is where the production becomes particularly disjointed. Some of the characters seem to have wandered in from Twelfth Night, played with a broadness and comic eccentricity that belong to an entirely different theatrical vocabulary from the severe emotional landscape established earlier.

Certainly, Shakespeare intended the rupture. Sicilia is a place where jealousy has frozen everything it touches; Bohemia bursts with youth, sex, foolishness, music and life. Winter has to become spring. However knowing that the fracture is intentional doesn’t automatically make every theatrical choice cohere. Sullivan’s production too often feels as though it is presenting the different personalities of The Winter’s Tale rather than revealing the invisible thread connecting them.

Fortunately, Stephen Skybell seems entirely at home in both worlds Shakespeare has created. Doubling as Antigonus and Autolycus, Skybell gives two wonderfully distinct performances, in the process, practically steals the evening. As Antigonus, he brings warmth and humanity to the darker world of Sicilia, making his loss register as more than the setup for Shakespeare’s famously absurd bear. Then, as Autolycus, he seems to reinvent himself completely, embracing the mischief and theatricality of Bohemia without losing the truth underneath it. Skybell has that rare gift of making Shakespeare sound less like literature being performed than thoughts occurring spontaneously inside another human being. His work has wit, ease and specificity, and some of the most alive moments of the production belong to him. In a play that sometimes struggles to make its wildly different worlds coexist, Skybell moves between them effortlessly.

The production is also frequently gorgeous. The set by Maruti Evans gives the Delacorte a visual world worthy of Shakespeare’s strange geography, while Linda Cho’s costumes are sumptuous without becoming imprisoned by period. Bradley King’s lighting is particularly beautiful, shifting the emotional temperature of the enormous outdoor space and becoming increasingly important as the play moves toward its final mystery.

Tom Kitt’s music is glorious. Rather than merely accompanying the production, it helps supply some of the connective emotional tissue missing elsewhere. Kitt understands that underneath Shakespeare’s structural peculiarities is a movement from destruction toward possibility, and his music allows us to feel some of what the direction doesn’t always articulate.

Then comes the statue, suddenly everything stops. Years have passed. Leontes has lived with what he did. Perdita has returned. The oracle has been fulfilled. Paulina brings everyone before what appears to be a statue of Hermione. What follows at the Delacorte is spectacular. The transformation from statue into living woman is handled with such beauty that, for several moments, all the structural arguments one has been having with the production become irrelevant. Hermione moves. Stone becomes flesh. Lily Rabe returns not as an image, memory or symbol but as a living woman, and theatre performs the trick it has been promising since the evening began. It makes us believe the impossible.

Importantly, Paulina controls the moment. She determines when they may see Hermione. She commands their attention. She summons music. She asks them to awaken their faith. In a fascinating sense, Paulina becomes the director of Shakespeare’s final scene. The most practical, morally grounded person in the play is ultimately entrusted with its miracle. Perhaps that is the secret of The Winter’s Tale.

 The Winter’s Tale isn’t really a play about jealousy. It isn’t even ultimately about forgiveness. It is about whether something destroyed can ever truly live again. Leontes cannot undo what he did. Sixteen years of repentance cannot return Antigonus. It cannot erase Hermione’s suffering or give Perdita back her childhood. Shakespeare is too intelligent to pretend otherwise. What he offers instead is grace. Not restoration without consequence. Not forgiveness through forgetting. Grace after consequence.

That is why Paulina is so essential. She remembers everything. She compromises nothing. She demands accountability from Leontes and still becomes the person who eventually opens the door to forgiveness.

Daniel Sullivan’s production never entirely reconciles the strange collection of theatrical worlds Shakespeare handed him. At times it feels fractured; at others unnecessarily broad. The direction doesn’t always illuminate why these radically different pieces belong together.

Yet surrounded by beautiful design, Tom Kitt’s evocative music and exceptional performances—Rabe’s wounded humanity, Esparza’s ferocity and remorse, Blake’s magnificent moral authority and Skybell’s scene-stealing ease—the production keeps reaching toward something larger.

Then, finally, Hermione moves. For one astonishing moment at the Delacorte, we awaken our faith. Shakespeare’s strange, fractured Winter’s Tale becomes whole.

The Winter’s Tale: Delacorte Theatre, Central Park, Three hours and 30 minutes with one intermission. Runs through August 23

One of New York’s favorite summer traditions continued this week as Broadway in Bryant Park once again turned the Midtown lawn into an open-air theatre, bringing together performers from The Book of Mormon, The Great Gatsby, Heathers: The Musical and Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody for an afternoon of free performances.

Helen Little

Ashley De La Rosa

Ashley De La Rosa, Helen Little

Presented by 106.7 LITE FM, the afternoon was hosted by the station’s Helen Little, with Ashley De La Rosa joining as co-host. Broadway in Bryant Park has long been one of those quintessentially New York events: office workers on lunch breaks, theatre lovers and tourists gathering on the lawn while Broadway performers trade their usual proscenium arches for sunshine, skyscrapers and a decidedly less formal audience.

J. Casey Barrett. Vance Klassen, Andrew Nelin, Kevin Clay. Andrew Stevens Purdy, Thomas Doelger, Diego Enrico, Joshua Keen and Henry McGuiness

Diego Enrico and Kevin Clay

Thomas Doelger and Charlie Franklin

Diego Enrico and Kevin Clay

The Book of Mormon, still one of Broadway’s most irreverent long-running hits, was represented by J. Casey Barrett, Vance Klassen, Andrew Nelin, Kevin Clay, Andrew Stevens Purdy, Thomas Doelger, Diego Enrico, Charlie Franklin, Joshua Keen and Henry McGuinness. More than a decade after arriving on Broadway, the musical continues to demonstrate the remarkable staying power of a show that turned religious satire, outrageous comedy and an unexpectedly traditional musical-theatre heart into a theatrical phenomenon.

Alex Prakken, Brandon J. Large, Nathaniel Hunt, Traci Elaine Lee, Drew Lake, Justin Keats, Emily Anne Nester, Matt Wiercinski and Kurt Csolak

The Cast of The Great Gatsby that includes, Brandon J. Large, Nathaniel Hunt, Traci Elaine Lee, Drew Lake, Justin Keats, Emily Anne Nester, Matt Wiercinski and Kurt Csolak

Alex Prakken

Alex Prakken

Alex Prakken

The Cast of The Great Gatsby that includes, Brandon J. Large, Nathaniel Hunt, Traci Elaine Lee, Drew Lake, Justin Keats, Emily Anne Nester, Matt Wiercinski and Kurt Csolak

The glamour of the Jazz Age arrived courtesy of The Great Gatsby, with Alex Prakken, Brandon J. Large, Nathaniel Hunt, Traci Elaine Lee, Drew Lake, Justin Keats, Emily Anne Nester, Matt Wiercinski and Kurt Csolak taking the Bryant Park stage. The Broadway musical, inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quintessential American novel, brought a splash of Gatsby excess to the lawn—a fitting contrast to the decidedly democratic pleasure of seeing Broadway for free in the middle of Manhattan.

John Cardoza, Thalia Atallah, Ava DeMary, Jackera Davis, Zan Berube, Kiara Michelle Lee, Emma Benson and Syd Sider

John Cardoza and Kiara Michelle Lee

John Cardoza and Kiara Michelle Lee

John Cardoza

Jackera Davis, Zan Berube and Ava DeMary

Things became considerably darker—and deliciously more dangerous—with Heathers: The Musical. John Cardoza, Kiara Michelle Lee, Thalia Atallah, Ava DeMary, Jackera Davis, Zan Berube, Emma Benson and Syd Siderrepresented the cult musical, whose wicked combination of teenage cruelty, black comedy and infectious pop-rock music has given Heathers a devoted following that has only grown since the show first arrived in New York.

Jay Armstrong Johnson and Ryann Redmond

Kevin Clay

Ryan Duncan

Daniel Brackett, Ryan Duncan, Shelby Acosta, Jay Armstrong Johnson, Cherry Torres and Ryann Redmond

Daniel Brackett

Jay Armstrong Johnson

Ryann Redmond

Then came one of the afternoon’s cheekier offerings, Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody. Daniel Brackett, Ryan Duncan, Shelby Acosta, Jay Armstrong Johnson, Cherry Torres and Ryann Redmond brought the parody to Bryant Park, adding another flavor entirely to a program that happily jumped from established Broadway blockbusters to cult favorites and irreverent new work.

Jane Fujita

Daielle Dellilo

Eyllah Babbitt, Danielle Dellilo and Kelly Branco

Also participating in the afternoon were Eyllah Babbitt, Danielle Dellilo and Kelly Branco, along with Jane Fujita

and representatives from Taiwan Tourism, adding to an event that has increasingly become as much a Midtown summer gathering as a theatrical sampler.

That has always been the particular charm of Broadway in Bryant Park. Broadway can be expensive, carefully scheduled and sometimes intimidating to those who don’t regularly venture inside its theatres. Here, the walls disappear. There is no velvet rope separating the initiated from the curious. Someone can wander through Bryant Park, hear an extraordinary voice coming from the stage, sit down on the lawn and discover a show they had never considered seeing.

And for Broadway itself, that matters. A few songs performed on a summer afternoon can accomplish what an advertisement sometimes cannot: they allow an audience to experience the performers themselves. The theatre becomes immediate, accessible and wonderfully difficult to ignore.

Broadway in Bryant Park continues throughout the summer at Bryant Park, located along Sixth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets. Lawn seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis.

In a city where Broadway normally begins when the house lights go down, Bryant Park continues to prove that sometimes the best way to sell the magic of theatre is simply to bring it outside and let New York stumble upon it.

The curtain may come down, a production may close, and a performance may disappear into theatrical memory, but the cast album is where musical theatre gets its second life. This summer and fall, an unusually rich group of recordings is arriving across streaming platforms, CDs and increasingly coveted vinyl editions, preserving everything from intimate new musicals and Off-Broadway discoveries to major Broadway revivals, conceptual works and a Cats recording unlike any Andrew Lloyd Webber has made before.

Already available is Alone, a new concept album featuring music and lyrics by John Ertman and Joseph Mathusek and an impressive company that includes Taylor Iman Jones, Linedy Genao, Zachary Noah Piser, Adi Roy, Rachel Webb, Kim Onah, Michael Nigro, Nathan Levy, Claire Kwon, Cassidy Sledge, Ellis Gage, Andy Harman and Gray Watson. Released digitally August 7 by Picardee Records, the album introduces its musical world without waiting for a full production to arrive—a reminder that increasingly, new musicals are finding audiences through headphones before they ever find a theatre.

Also newly released is Sappho: The Poetess, a London EP written and performed by Hayley Canham. The August 12 Center Stage Records release gives the ancient Greek poet a contemporary musical voice, joining the continuing wave of theatre composers rediscovering women whose lives have survived history largely through fragments, mythology and the interpretations of others.

August 14 brought two dramatically different recordings. Good Guy With A Gun!, a concept album by Philip Labes and Micah O’Konis, arrives with one of the most eclectic casts of the season, including Chris Sullivan, Kimiko Glenn, Anthony Rapp, Yvette Nicole Brown, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Jason Alexander, Richard Kind, Kristen Schaal and Paul Walter Hauser. Even before a full stage production, that roster alone gives the project considerable curiosity value.

The same day, Center Stage Records and Yellow Sound Label released Empire: Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording, preserving Caroline Sherman and Robert Hull’s musical about the creation of the Empire State Building. Directed Off-Broadway in 2024 by Tony winner Cady Huffman, Empire looks at the audacity required to build upward during one of the most precarious moments in American history. Its characters include industrialists, immigrants and Mohawk ironworkers, turning the construction of a skyscraper into a story about ambition, labor and New York’s almost pathological refusal to believe something cannot be done.

The recording features Danny Iktomi Bevins, Devin Cortez, Morgan Cowling, Kaitlyn Davidson, Joel Douglas, Alexandra Frohlinger, Albert Guerzon, Kiana Kabeary, Howard Kaye, April Ortiz, Jessica Ranville, Paul Salvatoriello, J Savage, Robbie Serrano and Ethan Saviet, with an ensemble including Joseph Fierberg, Kennedy Perez, Matt Gibson, Julia Louise Hosack and TJ Newton. For a musical whose central character is essentially New York itself, the album gives Empire a chance to continue climbing long after its Off-Broadway run.

Then comes one of the most intriguing releases of August. Night Side Songs, Daniel and Patrick Lazour’s deeply human musical produced by Lincoln Center Theater at LCT3’s Claire Tow Theater earlier this year, arrives digitally and on streaming platforms August 21 through Octoverse Media and Warner Music Group’s Arts Music. The first single, “My Stuff,” is already available, with CD and vinyl editions planned later in the year.

Night Side Songs occupied an unusually delicate place in the theatrical landscape when it played LCT3 from February 14 through March 29. Rather than treating illness, caregiving and mortality as dramatic devices, the Lazours created a folk-inflected musical concerned with the conversations that happen around bedsides, the things people say and cannot say, the jokes that break unbearable tension and the strange community that forms around someone whose life has suddenly changed. The recording features the original Lincoln Center Theater company of Robin de Jesús, Brooke Ishibashi, Jonathan Raviv, Kris Saint-Louis and Mary Testa, joined in the studio by an audience that sings along in keeping with the score’s communal folk tradition.

The album is produced by Mara Isaacs, Todd Sickafoose and Andy Einhorn, with Daniel and Patrick Lazour co-producing. The stage production earned nominations from the Drama Desk, Drama League and Lucille Lortel Awards, including recognition for its music, ensemble and production. The album should allow one of the season’s quieter musicals to find the larger audience intimate work sometimes struggles to reach during a limited theatrical run.

Also arriving August 21 is Schmigadoon! (Original Broadway Cast Recording), with music and lyrics by Cinco Paul. The Joy Machine Records release features Alex Brightman, Sara Chase, Ana Gasteyer, Ann Harada, Brad Oscar, Isabelle McCalla, Ivan Hernandez, Maulik Pancholy, Max Clayton, McKenzie Kurtz and Ayaan Diop. What began as a television series lovingly skewering—and embracing—the conventions of classic musical theatre has now completed the circle by becoming a Broadway musical with its own cast recording. There is something wonderfully appropriate about a show born from affection for cast albums becoming one itself.

On August 28, Evita gets another major recording, this time preserving Jamie Lloyd’s London production starring Rachel Zegler, alongside Diego Andres Rodriguez, James Olivas, Aaron Lee Lambert and Bella Brown. The full album will be released digitally and as a triple-vinyl edition through The Other Songs. With Zegler bringing her acclaimed Eva Perón to Broadway in 2027, the recording arrives as both documentation of the London production and something of a preview for New York audiences. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s score has been recorded many times, but Evita has always been unusually dependent upon the personality of the performer standing at its center. Zegler now gets her own place in that lineage.

August 28 also brings Sara Bareilles’ Good Grief  through Epic Records on CD, digital and vinyl. Bareilles long ago crossed the line between pop songwriter and major theatrical voice with Waitress, and anything she releases now carries interest for both audiences. Her music has always lived comfortably in the space between confessional singer-songwriter intimacy and theatrical storytelling, making a new Bareilles album part of the broader musical-theatre conversation whether or not every song is headed for a stage.

September 4 brings the physical release Broadway collectors have been waiting for: the 2025 Broadway cast recording of Chess on CD and vinyl from Ghostlight Records, following its April digital release. The album preserves Nicholas Christopher, Lea Michele, Aaron Tveit, Hannah Cruz, Bradley Dean, Sean Allan Krill and Bryce Pinkham in Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Tim Rice’s gloriously oversized Cold War musical. Whatever one thinks of Chessdramatically, that score remains one of musical theatre’s great guilty-not-guilty pleasures, and this cast gives it formidable vocal ammunition.

On September 18, Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody enters the recording studio canon with a digital and triple-vinyl release from Center Stage Records. Dylan MarcAurele’s score is performed by Jay Armstrong Johnson, Jimin Moon, Ryann Redmond, Cherry Torres, Ryan Duncan, Shelby Acosta and Daniel Brackett. The fact that a knowingly outrageous Off-Broadway parody is getting a triple-vinyl edition tells you almost everything you need to know about the current cast-album market: audiences increasingly want theatre not simply as something they attended, but as something they can collect.

September 25 brings another kind of theatrical souvenir with Rise Up! Hamilton: The Anthology, arriving from Atlantic/Rhino on CD, digital and vinyl. More than a decade after Hamilton permanently altered the commercial expectations for Broadway cast recordings, the musical remains one of the rare modern theatre properties capable of generating the kind of ancillary releases normally associated with major recording artists.

And then there is CATS: The Jellicle Ball.

Atlantic Records has opened pre-orders for the forthcoming Original Broadway Cast Recording of the Tony-winning revival, produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alana da Fonseca. No firm release date has yet been announced, but this is arguably the recording collectors will be most curious to hear because The Jellicle Ball did something almost unimaginable: it made Cats culturally dangerous again.

The Broadway production reimagined Lloyd Webber’s musical through New York ballroom culture, transforming the Jellicle competition into a glittering collision of fashion, dance, queer history and theatrical spectacle. The company includes André De Shields, Ken Ard, Kya Azeen, Bryson Battle, Jonathan Burke, Baby Byrne, Tara Lashan Clinkscales, Bryce Farris, Elisa Galindez, Sydney James Harcourt, Dava Huesca, Dudney Joseph Jr., Junior LaBeija, Leiomy, Robert “Silk” Mason, Ernest Mingo, Tempress Chasity Moore, Primo Thee Ballerino, Xavier Reyes, Nora Schell, Bebe Nicole Simpson, Emma Sofia, Phumzile Sojola, Kendall Grayson Stroud, B Noel Thomas, Kalyn West, Garnet Williams, Teddy Wilson Jr., Darius Wright and Donté Nadir Wilder.

The production earned nine Tony nominations and won three, including Best Direction of a Musical, Best Choreography and Best Costume Design. Qween Jean’s costume win also marked a Broadway milestone as the first openly trans woman to win a Tony Award. The recording now has the unusual task of capturing a production whose impact was profoundly visual and physical—ballroom movement, fashion, attitude and audience energy—through sound alone.

Several other recordings remain on the horizon without firm release dates. Joy Machine Records will release Beau The Musical, with music by Ethan D. Pakchar and Douglas Lyons and lyrics by Lyons, featuring Matt Rodin, Jeb Brown, Max Sangerman, Miyuki Miyagi, Andrea Goss, Amelia Cormack, Ryan Halsaver and Derek Stoltenberg.

Ghostlight Records is also preparing a London concept album of Death Note, The Musical, with Frank Wildhorn’s music and Jack Murphy’s lyrics performed by a company including Adam Pascal, Joaquin Pedro Valdes, Dean John Wilson, Aimie Atkinson, Frances Mayli McCann, Rachel Clare Chan and Christian Ray Marbella. Wildhorn and Death Notehave long seemed destined for one another—large emotions, operatic stakes and characters who consider moderation an unacceptable personality trait.

JAY Records has two particularly traditional theatre recordings waiting in the wings. A new studio cast recording of The Fantasticks features Brad Oscar, Telly Leung, Elizabeth Teeter, Lewis Cleale and Ron Raines, arriving just as the famously long-running Off-Broadway musical prepares, astonishingly, for its first Broadway production. The label will also release Lovesong, Michael Valenti’s setting of lyrics by Dorothy Parker and Sir Walter Raleigh, performed by Jenn Gambatese, Lauren Molina, Matt Bogart and Jeff Kready.

Also forthcoming is the studio EP Salem, with music and lyrics by Amanda Ribnick and Jennifer Lucy Cook and performances by Bryce Pinkham, Kuhoo Verma, John-Andrew Morrison, Gabi Carrubba, Lizzy Murray and Katherine Lynn-Rose, while PS Classics will release Ricky Ian Gordon’s Sycamore Trees, featuring a mouthwatering company of Farah Alvin, Marc Kudisch, Judy Kuhn, Jessica Molaskey, Matthew Risch, Diane Sutherland and Tony Yazbeck.

What makes this particular stretch of releases interesting is how thoroughly the cast album has escaped its old definition. Once, the recording primarily existed to preserve the score of a Broadway musical. Now we have concept albums creating audiences before productions exist, limited-run Off-Broadway shows finding permanence after closing, London productions introducing themselves to American listeners, parody musicals getting elaborate vinyl editions and established Broadway properties becoming collectible objects in multiple formats.

Streaming should theoretically have made albums less precious. Instead, vinyl has made them objects again.

And musical theatre, perhaps more than almost any other form, understands why that matters. A performance is ephemeral by design. The actor sings the note, the orchestra plays the chord, the audience hears it—and then the moment is gone.

A cast album refuses to let it disappear.

This fall, there will be quite a lot worth keeping.

If New York theatre has been looking for a way to turn the coming season into an event, it may already have found it. The marquees are beginning to resemble an unusually eclectic awards ceremony, with movie stars, television favorites, Broadway royalty and even a genuine rock god heading for New York stages. Tom Hiddleston, Hayley Atwell, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ed Harris, Allison Janney, Billy Crystal, Bowen Yang, Tom Felton, Jim Parsons, Jeremy Jordan and Julianne Moore are either already here or on their way. Add Guns N’ Roses legend Slash making his Broadway debut tomorrow night, and the 2026–27 New York theatre season is beginning to look very starry indeed.

Slash

The fun begins immediately. On August 13, Slash is making his Broadway debut in The Lost Boys at the Palace Theatre tonight, joining the musical for a one-night-only appearance. The Guns N’ Roses guitarist already has a connection to the show’s music, having contributed a guitar solo to “Have to Have You” for the musical’s Santa Carla recordings. Now one of rock’s most instantly recognizable figures steps onto a Broadway stage for the first time, giving Michael Arden’s vampire musical an irresistible collision of Broadway and rock-and-roll mythology. The Lost Boys was always going to live or die by its ability to capture the dangerous, sexy, slightly decadent pulse of the 1987 cult film. Putting Slash into that world, even for one night, feels less like stunt casting than somebody finally noticing that he looks as though he should have been living in Santa Carla all along.

Felton is in costume as adult Draco for “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.”Warner Bros., Manuel Harlan

At the Lyric Theatre, Tom Felton has accomplished something equally clever by returning to the character who made him famous. Felton became the first performer from the original Harry Potter films to reprise his role on Broadway when he joined Harry Potter and the Cursed Child as the adult Draco Malfoy. The casting could easily have been nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, except Cursed Child gives Draco something the films never could: age. Felton is now playing the schoolboy antagonist as a father, confronting both his history and his relationship with his son Scorpius. His engagement has proven so popular that it has been repeatedly extended, with Felton now remaining in the production through January 3, 2027.

John Riddle, Jim Parsons, Melissa Barrera Photo by Evan Zimmerman

Over at the St. James Theatre, Jim Parsons has been enjoying an entirely different sort of transformation in Titaníque, playing Ruth DeWitt Bukater, the imperious mother of Rose, in the deliriously irreverent Céline Dion-infused parody of Titanic. Parsons remains aboard through the show’s September 20 closing. The production has never suffered from excessive respectability, and watching the Emmy and Tony-winning actor surrender himself to its particular brand of lunacy is exactly the sort of theatrical casting that makes New York fun. Parsons is surrounded by a company that includes Marla Mindelle as Céline Dion, Melissa Barrera as Rose, Constantine Rousouli as Jack and Deborah Cox as Molly Brown—a Ship of Dreams considerably more deranged than James Cameron ever imagined.

Then comes Bowen Yang, who begins performances September 15 as Mary Todd Lincoln in Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary! at the Lyceum Theatre. Yang’s Broadway debut feels almost inevitable now that one thinks about it. Escola created a Mary who is vain, frustrated, wildly theatrical, sexually complicated and spectacularly uninterested in behaving like the respectable First Lady history handed us. The role has become one of Broadway’s most delicious revolving doors, attracting actors willing to throw dignity overboard and commit completely to the madness. Yang’s particular mixture of intelligence, absurdity and comic fearlessness should fit Mary like a very badly behaved glove.

Off-Broadway is assembling its own formidable company. At The Public Theater, Ryan J. Haddad’s Good Time Charlie begins performances September 24 in Martinson Hall, with a Joseph Papp Free Performance launching the run. Danny Sharron directs the world premiere, which officially opens October 9 and continues through October 18. The autobiographically inspired play follows Charlie, a man who once dreamed of a theatrical life before his parents steered him toward dentistry. Instead, he poured his love of culture into his nephew Ryan, another gay, theatre-loving kid with Broadway dreams. Spanning more than three decades, the play examines the people who give us permission to imagine lives larger than the ones prescribed for us.

And the cast makes the production particularly enticing. Haddad appears as Ryan alongside Timothy Bagley as Lou, Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Michael Cristofer as Sheldon, Tony nominee Beth Malone as Janice, Nael Nacer as Charlie Sr./Bob, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia‘s Artemis Pebdani as Joan/Judy and The Band’s Visit‘s Jonathan Raviv as Charlie. That is an unusually rich ensemble for an intimate Public Theater world premiere, mixing actors from Broadway, television and some of New York’s most interesting recent plays.

Then Broadway brings out the heavy artillery. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ed Harris, Allison Janney, Joe Keery and Lily Rabe assemble at the Hudson Theatre for the first Broadway revival of Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities, beginning performances September 29. John Benjamin Hickey directs the family drama, which takes place over Christmas in Palm Springs as Brooke Wyeth returns to her politically prominent parents with a memoir threatening to expose a long-buried family secret. The play requires actors capable of making civilized conversation feel like armed combat, and this company certainly qualifies.

Louis-Dreyfus makes her Broadway debut opposite Harris, with Janney entering the family battlefield as Silda. Rabe plays Brooke and Stranger Things star Keery takes on her brother Trip. There is celebrity casting, and then there is assembling three actors of the caliber of Louis-Dreyfus, Harris and Janney in the same living room and allowing them to start disagreeing. Other Desert Cities already contains the ammunition. This cast should have no difficulty lighting the match.

Billy Crystal returns to Broadway October 1 at the Imperial Theatre with 860, a new solo work whose title comes from the address of the Pacific Palisades home he and his family lost in the 2025 fires. Written and performed by Crystal and directed by Scott Ellis, the 14-week limited engagement officially opens October 21 and continues through January 3. The piece looks at family, friendship, love, loss and the memories contained within a home over decades—the seemingly ordinary objects and moments that become irreplaceable only when they disappear.

Crystal has been here before, though never with quite this story. 700 Sundays, his autobiographical exploration of his father and family, became one of Broadway’s most successful and affecting solo shows. 860 begins with another profound loss, but Crystal’s great theatrical gift has always been his ability to let humor and grief occupy the same sentence without diminishing either. At 78, he isn’t returning to Broadway simply to perform another victory lap. He is bringing back something personal.

October then gets considerably more glamorous when Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell arrive at the Winter Garden Theatre in Jamie Lloyd’s production of Much Ado About Nothing. Performances begin October 31, with the strictly limited engagement continuing through January 10, 2027. The two reprise the roles of Benedick and Beatrice after leading Lloyd’s London production, bringing with them one of Shakespeare’s great romantic battles: two highly intelligent people using wit as armor while everyone around them conspires to make them admit the obvious.

Hiddleston already knows Broadway, having earned a Tony nomination for Betrayal, while Atwell makes her Broadway debut. Their screen fame inevitably brings another audience with them—yes, Loki and Peggy Carter are doing Shakespeare—but reducing either actor to Marvel celebrity misses the point. Both have substantial classical theatre backgrounds, and Much Ado lives or dies on whether its Beatrice and Benedick can make language feel like foreplay, combat and self-defense simultaneously. Lloyd has given them a very contemporary playground in which to do it.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Jordan continues his run as Bobby Darin in Just in Time at Circle in the Square through October 18. Jordan stepped into the role following Jonathan Groff, an unenviable succession on paper but a fascinating one theatrically. Bobby Darin requires swagger, musical command and the ability to make the audience believe that the performer needs the stage almost as much as he needs oxygen. Jordan possesses all three. The immersive production, which transforms Circle in the Square into something closer to a nightclub than a conventional Broadway house, also demonstrates that a star-driven musical can survive the departure of its originating star when the replacement has genuine theatrical firepower.

And the stars aren’t disappearing when the calendar turns. Julianne Moore returns to the New York stage in 2027 in the world premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s Faydra, giving the coming season another fascinating collision between one of America’s finest screen actors and one of its most distinctive playwrights. Moore has been away from the New York stage for two decades, having made her Broadway debut in David Hare’s The Vertical Hour in 2006. Her return in a new Ruhl work immediately makes Faydra one of the most intriguing theatrical prospects of 2027.

What is striking about this season isn’t simply the number of famous people involved. Broadway has always used celebrity, sometimes brilliantly and sometimes disastrously. A recognizable name above a title can sell tickets, but it cannot manufacture theatrical presence. The more interesting casting happens when the identity of the performer adds another dimension to the material. Felton confronting Draco Malfoy as a grown man does that. Crystal turning the destruction of his actual home into theatre does that. Hiddleston and Atwell bringing an already-tested Beatrice and Benedick partnership across the Atlantic does that. Slash walking into The Lost Boys does it in the most wonderfully literal rock-and-roll way imaginable.

Even the season’s revolving-door casting is becoming part of the entertainment. Oh, Mary! has discovered that Mary Todd Lincoln can apparently regenerate indefinitely as long as Broadway keeps finding sufficiently fearless people to put on the dress. Just in Time has moved from Groff to Jordan. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, long after becoming an established Broadway attraction, found an entirely new event in bringing one of the original film actors home to his character.

Streaming was supposed to make leaving the house increasingly unnecessary. Instead, theatre appears to be answering by making being in the room the commodity. You can watch Louis-Dreyfus, Hiddleston, Atwell, Moore, Parsons, Yang, Keery or Crystal on a screen whenever you like. You cannot replicate sitting in a theatre while they do something live, eight times a week, with no editing room and nowhere to hide.

That may be Broadway and Off-Broadway’s smartest weapon going into the 2026–27 season. Not celebrity for celebrity’s sake, but event theatre—the sense that something is happening in a particular room, for a finite period of time, and if you aren’t there, you really did miss it.

And if Slash walking onto a Broadway stage tomorrow night doesn’t make that point rather spectacularly, nothing will.

Dakin Mattews and Mary Beth Peil. Joan Marcus

There is something fascinating about reviving a play whose central premise should feel more relevant now than when it was written and discovering instead how thoroughly it belongs to another time.

Dakin Matthews, Jean Lichty, and Robert Sean Leonard. Photo by Joan Marcus

Wendy Wasserstein’s An American Daughter, which opened on Broadway in 1997 under the direction of Daniel Sullivan, was not particularly well received the first time around. Nearly three decades later, La Femme Theatre Productions has returned to the play at the Signature Center, and unfortunately this revival makes it easier to understand why.

Carmen Zilles, Ryan Spahn, Robert Sean Leonard, Mary Beth Peil and Jean Lichty. Photo by Joan Marcus

The problem is not that Wasserstein had nothing to say. Quite the opposite. Her subjects—female ambition, political power, media scrutiny, gender, race, privilege and the peculiar American pleasure of watching accomplished people publicly dismantled—have hardly disappeared. Yet under Sarna Lapine’s surprisingly listless direction, An American Daughter feels less like a play newly illuminated by our present moment than an artifact that has been taken out of storage without quite determining why we need to see it again.

Dakin Matthews, Jean Lichty Photo by Joan Marcus

At its center is Lyssa Dent Hughes, a physician, fifth-generation descendant of Ulysses S. Grant and daughter of a prominent senator, who has been nominated for Surgeon General. She is played by La Femme Theatre Productions Executive Director Jean Lichty, whom I last saw as Hannah Jelkes in the company’s production of Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana. Lichty has a recurring habit of casting herself in La Femme productions. It must be rather nice to possess that particular privilege, but it also makes the casting impossible not to scrutinize. Here and unfortunately in The Night of the Iguana, she doesn’t work.

Jean Lichty and Robert Sean Leonard. Photo by Joan Marcus

Lyssa needs to be formidable enough that we understand immediately why a president would nominate her to one of the country’s most visible medical positions, yet human enough that the gradual invasion of her private life carries emotional weight. Lichty never quite supplies either dimension. More damagingly, she seems strangely resistant to Wasserstein’s humor. The first act depends upon wit—sharp, socially observant, sometimes merciless wit—and while much of the company understands exactly where those lines need to land, Lichty rarely finds their rhythm.

Montego Glover and Jean Lichty. Photo by Joan Marcus

That becomes particularly noticeable whenever Montego Glover enters the room. As Judith B. Kaufman, Lyssa’s Jewish African-American oncologist friend, Glover is a scene-stealer in the best sense. Intelligent, alive and completely comfortable with Wasserstein’s verbal dexterity, she gives the production a charge it desperately needs. Every time she appears, the temperature rises.

Chris Ghaffari, Carmen Zilles, Dakin Matthews, Mary Beth Peil, Ryan Spahn, Robert Sean Leonard, and Jean Lichty. Photo by Joan Marcus

The household is populated by people who understand power because nearly everyone in the room wants some version of it. Quincy Quince (Carmen Zilles) an aggressively ambitious sociology professor whose bestseller, The Prisoner of Gender, has turned her into a television commodity. She has also had an affair with Lyssa’s husband, Walter Abramson, which is how Walter came to know her in the first place. Quincy isn’t merely interested in discussing the machinery of gender and influence; she understands how to use it.

Robert Sean Leonard, Ryan Spahn and Montego Glover. Photo by Joan Marcus

As Walter, Robert Sean Leonard remains, as always, worthwhile. He brings an intelligence and natural authority to the stage that doesn’t require announcing itself. Chris Ghaffari’s Timber Tucker, a magazine documentarian assigned to Lyssa, becomes another presence circling the increasingly embattled nominee, while Ryan Spahn’s Morrow McCarthy, Lyssa’s gay friend, proves considerably less appealing company.

Dakin Matthews, Jean Lichty, Robert Sean Leonard, Mary Beth Peil, Chris Ghaffari, and Will DeVary. Photo by Joan Marcus

The production’s real gravity arrives with Dakin Mathews as Lyssa’s father, Senator Alan Hughes. Mathews has always possessed that marvelous ability to command attention without appearing to demand it. The senator doesn’t necessarily agree with his daughter, but he believes absolutely in her right to the government position for which she has been nominated. That distinction—between agreeing with someone and defending that person’s right to stand—is one of the more intelligent ideas still living inside Wasserstein’s play.

Dakin Matthews, Jean Lichty, Robert Sean Leonard, Mary Beth Peil, and Chris Ghaffari. Photo by Joan Marcus

Then there is Mary Beth Peil, rather wonderful as Charlotte, the senator’s fourth wife, known as Chubby. Peil has the invaluable theatrical gift of making you want to watch her even when someone else has the line.

Carmen Zilles, Montego Glover and Jean Lichty. Photo by Joan Marcus

A completely unsolicited note to casting directors: put Mathews and Peil side by side and something rather extraordinary happens. They bear an uncanny resemblance to Winston and Clementine Churchill. Someone, somewhere, surely has a Churchill play waiting for them.

Chris Ghaffari and Montego Glover. c.Joan Marcus

All of these people converge in Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’ handsome Georgetown living room, crossing and recrossing a world in which intellectual achievement, political access and social privilege are practically pieces of furniture. During the first act, Wasserstein fires wisecrack after wisecrack, and most still hit precisely the target she intended. The cast generally knows how to land them, with the conspicuous exception of Lichty, whose lack of comic instinct leaves a hole exactly where the play most needs its center to hold.

Jean Lichty , Montego Glover. Photo by .Joan Marcus

An American Daughter is a 1997 dram-edy, and eventually the -edy must surrender to the drama. That is where things become considerably stickier. Lyssa’s nomination begins to buckle under the weight of political scrutiny, and Wasserstein turns toward the more serious question beneath the jokes: what happens when an accomplished woman’s entire life becomes public property simply because she has been offered power? That question should land like dynamite in 2026.

Will DeVary, Mary Beth Peil, and Jean Lichty. Photo by Joan Marcus

We live in a culture where a decades-old photograph, sentence, relationship or mistake can become ammunition within minutes; where public figures are examined simultaneously by television, social media, partisan media and millions of amateur investigators; and where women seeking power still encounter judgments their male counterparts frequently escape. Yet strangely, this production doesn’t make Wasserstein’s play feel prophetic. It makes it feel old.

Jean Lichty, Robert Sean Leonard. Photo by Joan Marcus

Part of that belongs to the text. The mechanisms of scandal have changed so radically since 1997 that the media ecosystem depicted here can seem almost quaint. But revival is supposed to create a conversation between the period in which a work was written and the period in which it is being performed. Lapine never discovers that bridge. Instead, the production proceeds with a curious lethargy, as if simply putting the play back onstage were sufficient reason for its return. It isn’t.

A revival needs to tell us why this play, now. There is potentially a terrific production of An American Daughter waiting inside our current political moment—one that could expose how much has changed since 1997 and, more disturbingly, how much hasn’t. It could examine the brutal evolution of public scrutiny, the commodification of outrage and the impossible standards applied to women who enter rooms traditionally controlled by men.

La Femme’s production never gets there. Instead, an unevenly cast company inhabits a handsome Georgetown living room while Wasserstein’s ideas flicker around them, occasionally reminding us of the sharper, funnier and more provocative play this might have been. Glover, Leonard, Mathews and Peil give us glimpses of it. Unfortunately, glimpses aren’t enough.

An American Daughter: La Femme Theatre Production, Signature Center,  runs through September 20.