There is something about a cast album that keeps theatre alive long after the curtain comes down. This late-summer crop is particularly eclectic: vampires, Eva Perón, 1979 New York nightlife, memory and mortality, a queer singer-songwriter discovering a family secret, and a developing musical using its music to support Alzheimer’s care. Some are full cast recordings, some are singles offering the first glimpse of what’s coming next, and one is finally getting the vinyl treatment it deserves.

The Lost Boys Sinks Its Teeth Into Vinyl

Atlantic Records’ The Lost Boys (Original Broadway Cast Recording), already available digitally, will arrive physically on October 30 on CD and as a two-LP black-and-red vinyl edition—a color combination that seems almost mandatory for a musical about the vampires of Santa Carla. The 27-song album features music and lyrics by Tony-nominated trio The Rescues—Kyler England, AG and Gabriel Mann—and includes the bonus track “Brother,” which was cut during Broadway previews.

The recording features the Broadway company led by LJ Benet, Shoshana Bean, Ali Louis Bourzgui, Benjamin Pajak, Maria Wirries and Paul Alexander Nolan, with fan favorites including “Secret Comes Out,” “Now, Forever,” “Superpower” and “If We Make It Through the Night.”

It also preserves a show that emerged from the 2026 awards season with four Tony Awards, including Featured Actress in a Musical for Bean, Featured Actor in a Musical for Bourzgui, Scenic Design for Dane Laffrey and Lighting Design for Michael Arden and Jen Schriever.

Listen to or preorder The Lost Boys

Rachel Zegler’s Evita Comes Home From London

Jamie Lloyd’s electrifying London revival of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita has released EVITA: The Full Album, recorded live at the London Palladium in July 2025. The 30-track recording is available digitally and as an extravagant three-LP vinyl set, arriving ahead of the production’s planned Broadway transfer in spring 2027.

Rachel Zegler leads the company as Eva Perón, joined by Diego Andres Rodriguez as Che, James Olivas as Juan Perón, Aaron Lee Lambert as Agustín Magaldi and Bella Brown as The Mistress. Zegler’s “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” previously reached No. 1 on the UK’s Official Vinyl Chart, while the Palladium production collected two Olivier Awards, two London Standard Theatre Awards and five WhatsOnStage Awards.

The beauty of recording this particular Evita live is that Lloyd’s production wasn’t conceived as a museum piece. It had heat, theatricality and controversy, and the album captures a company performing the score rather than politely preserving it. Broadway audiences now have something of a musical preview before Eva arrives in New York.

Listen to EVITA: The Full AlbumBat Boy Is Back—and Still Delightfully Insane

Ghostlight Records and Yellow Sound Label have released Bat Boy: The Musical (New York City Center Cast Recording), preserving the terrific 2025 City Center Gala revival directed by Alex Timbers.

The recording features Taylor Trensch as Edgar/Bat Boy, alongside Kerry Butler, Gabi Carrubba, Andrew Durand, Mary Faber, Alan H Green, Evan Harrington, John-Michael Lyles, Tom McGowan, Jacob Ming-Trent, Alex Newell, Olivia Puckett, Christopher Sieber, Rema Webb and Marissa Jaret Winokur. The new album contains 23 tracks, including three songs receiving their world-premiere recordings, and expanded orchestrations for 12 musicians by Laurence O’Keefe and Ben Green.

Inspired by the infamous 1990s tabloid story, Bat Boy remains an outrageous mixture of horror, satire, tragedy, religion, sexuality and small-town hysteria. More than two decades after its 2001 Off-Broadway premiere, the score has lost none of its wonderfully warped personality. As T2C said of the City Center production, it was “absurd, hilarious, and weirdly unforgettable.”

Stream Bat Boy: The Musical

Beau: The Musical Offers Two More Songs Before the Album Arrives

Joy Machine Records has released “Crush” and “It Couldn’t Be,” two new singles from the forthcoming Beau: The Musical (Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording). “Crush” features Matt Rodin and Miyuki Miyagi, while “It Couldn’t Be” pairs Rodin with Max Sangerman. The full recording is expected this fall.

Conceived and written by Douglas Lyons, with music by Lyons and Ethan D. Pakchar and lyrics by Lyons, Beaufollows Ace Baker, a young queer singer-songwriter who discovers that Beau—the grandfather he believed was dead—is actually alive. As family secrets unravel, a guitar becomes the connection between generations and a way of recovering years that can never quite be returned.

The Off-Broadway production earned an impressive 10 Drama Desk nominations, including Outstanding Musical, along with nominations from the Outer Critics Circle, Drama League and Off-Broadway Alliance. The forthcoming album also features Jeb Brown, Andrea Goss, Amelia Cormack, Ryan Halsaver and Derek Stoltenberg.

Listen to the new Beau singles

Kevin Chamberlin Takes a “Wander” With Big Man

The developing Big Man: A New Musical releases its second single, “Wander,” on September 4, performed by three-time Tony nominee Kevin Chamberlin. The musical features music by Billy Recce, book and lyrics by New York Timesbestselling author Sheryl Berk, arrangements by Lena Gabrielle, with the single produced and orchestrated by Nick Anton.

Inspired by Berk’s own family experience, Big Man enters the imagination of Albert, whose modest memory-care room gives way to the swagger and fantasy of 1960s Las Vegas. “Wander” is Albert’s assertion that age and circumstance do not erase identity, dignity or the desire to determine one’s own life.

The song follows the musical’s first single, “Wanted to Believe,” performed by Ramin Karimloo. There is also a purpose beyond introducing a developing show: proceeds from 99-cent downloads of both songs benefit the Alzheimer’s Association.

Big Man: A New Musical

This Ain’t No Disco Goes Back to New York in 1979

For those who prefer their musical theatre with considerably more downtown grit, Center Stage Records has released This Ain’t No Disco: World Premiere Recording—Songs from the Musical by Stephen Trask, the composer behind Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Peter Yanowitz.

Part rock opera and part impressionistic portrait of New York City in 1979, the musical moves between Studio 54, the Mudd Club, downtown lofts and the art world, following strivers, artists, dreamers and beautiful disasters searching for identity and belonging in a city about to undergo enormous cultural change.

And what a recording cast: John Cameron Mitchell, Lena Hall, Sean Ono Lennon, Jake Shears, Miriam Shor, Brandon Uranowitz, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Lilli Cooper, Taylor Hanson, Chilina Kennedy, Adam Chanler-Berat and more.

The musical originally premiered at Atlantic Theater Company in 2018 under the direction of Darko Tresnjak with choreography by Camille A. Brown. Eight years later, the recording gives Trask and Yanowitz’s score an entirely new opportunity to find its audience.

Stream This Ain’t No Disco

Night Side Songs Preserves One of the Season’s Most Intimate Scores

Finally, Octoverse Media and Warner Music Group’s Arts Music have released the cast album of The Lazours’ Night Side Songs, following its 2026 Lincoln Center Theater engagement at LCT3’s Claire Tow Theater.

Featuring Robin de Jesús, Brooke Ishibashi, Jonathan Raviv, Kris Saint-Louis and Mary Testa, the album captures Daniel and Patrick Lazour’s folk-inflected score and its examination of illness, caregiving, faith, fear, memory and the strange intimacy created when someone’s life changes irrevocably. An in-studio audience even joins the company in song, giving the recording the communal quality at the heart of the piece.

The stage production earned a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Music, a Drama League nomination for Outstanding Production of a Musical and Lucille Lortel nominations for Outstanding Musical and Outstanding Ensemble. The digital album is available now, with CD and vinyl editions planned for later this year.

What connects these recordings isn’t style—there could hardly be more distance between Evita, Bat Boy and Night Side Songs. It is preservation. Theatre disappears nightly, even while a production is still running; no two performances are precisely the same. A cast album catches one incarnation before everyone moves on.

And this summer, Broadway and Off-Broadway have given us quite a lot worth keeping.

September arrives with the U.S. Open in full swing at Flushing Meadows, followed almost immediately by Fashion Week, Broadway Week, major art fairs, Harry Styles taking over Madison Square Garden, the Feast of San Gennaro and the first real surge of New York’s fall cultural season. Summer isn’t quite gone, but the city is already moving at full speed again.Continuing 9/13: The U.S. Open Tennis Championships take over the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, bringing the world’s greatest tennis players to Queens for the final Grand Slam tournament of the year.

9/2, 4-5, 9-12, 16-19, 23, 25-26 & 30: Harry Styles begins his massive Together, Together residency at Madison Square Garden, turning September at MSG into something close to Harry Styles month.

9/3: Bryant Park Picnic Performances presents saxophonist and singer Grace Kelly with Ashni as the Asian American Arts Alliance takes over the Lawn for a free evening of music beginning at 7 p.m.

9/4: Bryant Park’s Brass Festival fills the Lawn with brass bands and big sound during another free Picnic Performance beginning at 7 p.m.

9/4–5: Ed Sheeran brings his 2026 tour to MetLife Stadium for two nights.

9/6: Islands in the Park: A Caribbean Jam transforms Smorgasburg Prospect Park into a Caribbean celebration with DJs, live steel pan, Caribbean food vendors, arts and crafts and guest chef Scotley Innis. Admission is free.

9/7: The West Indian American Day Carnival Parade explodes across Eastern Parkway on Labor Day with spectacular costumes, steel-pan and calypso bands, floats, Caribbean food and an estimated crowd approaching two million.

9/8 – 20: If you’re looking to add a can’t-miss theater night to your September plans, Broadway Week returns to New York City from September 8–20, 2026, offering 2-for-1 tickets to select Broadway shows.

Sara Kerens, Times Square Alliance, Taste of Times Square

9/9: The Annual Taste of Times Square, one of NYC’s most beloved and longest-running food events, is returning to Midtown this September. The four-hour outdoor festival features 30+ restaurants serving everything from Mexican street tacos and Caribbean classics to Italian pasta, Indian curries, and American BBQ all for under $10per plate!

9/9: New York Fashion Week gets an early start, with Ralph Lauren, Coach and other designers presenting ahead of the official CFDA calendar.

9/10–15: New York Fashion Week unveils the Spring/Summer 2027 collections as designers, models, celebrities, editors and the fashion circus descend upon New York.

9/10: Bryant Park Picnic Performances: Dance Party All-Stars brings Alfredo de la Fé All Star Band and the George Gee Swing Orchestra to the Lawn for a free night of salsa and swing.

9/11: New York commemorates the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001, with the annual reading of victims’ names at the 9/11 Memorial and observances throughout the city.

9/11: American Symphony Orchestra performs at Bryant Park in a special free Picnic Performance commemorating the 25th anniversary of September 11.

9/13: The U.S. Open Men’s Singles Final brings two weeks of extraordinary tennis to its climax at Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing Meadows.

9/15 -10/15: Hispanic Heritage Month in NYC  a month-long celebration recognizing the rich cultures, histories, and contributions of Hispanic and Latino communities.

9/17–20: Clio Art Fair launches the first of two consecutive September editions in Chelsea, showcasing independent and emerging artists outside the traditional gallery system. Admission is free.

9/17–27: The Feast of San Gennaro celebrates its 100th anniversary, filling Little Italy with eleven days of Italian food, music, processions, entertainment and one of New York’s most beloved street traditions.

Photography by Teddy Wolff

9/18–19: Return of the Buffalo: Tatanka Owe Akupi sends 40 life-sized buffalo puppets through Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn in an extraordinary free public-art event created with Lenape and Lakota elders.

9/19: The German-American Steuben Parade marches up Fifth Avenue, celebrating German-American heritage with marching bands, traditional costumes and organizations from across the country.

9/20-27: Climate Week: The week attracts decision makers from across society. Leaders set the strategies here that drive pollution reduction and business growth.

9/22: Fall officially arrives in New York with the Autumnal Equinox, as the city trades summer for one of its most beautiful seasons.

The Armory Show

9/24–27: Armory Week brings collectors, galleries, artists and the international art world to New York, led by The Armory Show and a constellation of satellite fairs and exhibitions.

9/24–27: Clio Art Fair returns for its second September edition, offering another roster of independent artists in Chelsea.

9/25: The Museum of the City of New York opens Halumii Ktapihna, exploring the enduring presence and living cultures of the Lenape/Lunáapeew, the original people of the land that became New York City.

9/25: The Museum of the City of New York also opens Raise Your Voice, tracing more than 250 years of New York activism and the ways generations of New Yorkers have fought to create change.

9/26: Global Citizen Festival with Ms. Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean, Lenny Kravitz, John Legend, Lainey Wilson, Shaboozey, and TOMORROW X TOGETHER (TXT). The concert is free, you’ll have to earn your ticket by taking action through the Global Citizen app or website, such as signing petitions and completing quizzes on global issues. New this year, fans can also get automatic entry with a $25 charitable donation, with proceeds supporting local New York causes.

“Dusting off the old robes. New York — see you all in February,” Grint announced on Instagram.

It took 25 years, eight films and one very famous redheaded wizard, but Rupert Grint is heading back to Hogwarts.

Grint, who first became Ron Weasley at just 11 years old, will reprise the role that made him famous in Broadway’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Now 38, Grint will play the adult Ron for a four-month engagement at the Lyric Theatre beginning February 2, 2027, through May 30.

There is something deliciously full-circle about the casting. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child begins 19 years after the events of the original Harry Potter story, finding Harry, Ron and Hermione firmly in adulthood. Ron and Hermione are married, have children of their own, and are now sending the next generation off to Hogwarts. Grint, too, has grown up, become a father and built a career beyond the franchise that first introduced him to the world.

“Ron Weasley has been a part of me since I was 11 years old and I can’t wait to meet him again in this stage of life,” Grint said in announcing his return. “There is something so full-circle and so special about stepping back into Ron’s shoes now when we are both fathers; it is somehow both very familiar and completely new.”

For Grint, Broadway itself won’t be new territory. He made his Broadway debut in 2014 in Terrence McNally’s star-packed comedy It’s Only a Play, opposite Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Stockard Channing, F. Murray Abraham and Megan Mullally. His stage work also includes the West End productions of Mojo and For the Love of a Primary School.

Since hanging up Ron’s wand after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 in 2011, Grint has deliberately moved into decidedly non-Hogwarts territory, with television work including Sick Note, Snatch and M. Night Shyamalan’s unsettling Apple TV+ series Servant. Yet he has never pretended Ron disappeared entirely. Speaking to the BBC last year about remaining associated with the character, Grint was refreshingly uncomplicated: “I’m fine with that. I think it’s great.”

He now becomes the first of the original film’s central trio—Grint, Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson—to reprise his Harry Potter role onstage.

There is another familiar Hogwarts face currently roaming the Lyric Theatre. Tom Felton, who originated Draco Malfoy onscreen, is presently playing the adult Draco in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Alas, anyone dreaming of a Ron-and-Draco reunion will need a Time-Turner: Felton’s engagement ends January 3, a month before Grint arrives.

Producers Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender noted that Grint isn’t simply revisiting his past but continuing a character’s journey with everything he himself has experienced since leaving Hogwarts behind.

And that’s what makes the casting irresistible. Audiences aren’t getting an actor impersonating the Ron Weasley they remember. They’re getting Ron Weasley himself, grown up alongside the actor who created him.

Twenty-five years ago, an 11-year-old Rupert Grint stepped aboard the Hogwarts Express. This February, he’s getting back on—only this time, Ron Weasley has grown up right alongside him.

Broadway history, Marc Shaiman and the man who apparently invented that little tab on your coffee-cup lid walk into a theatre. No, this isn’t the beginning of a joke. It’s what’s happening at AMT Theater this weekend.

On Saturday, August 29 at 6 p.m., Tony and Emmy Award winner and seven-time Oscar nominee Marc Shaiman will lead a post-screening conversation and Q&A following the Peabody Award-winning documentary Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy at AMT Theater, 354 West 45th Street.

The 2013 documentary explores the extraordinary influence Jewish composers and lyricists have had on the American musical—from Irving Berlin and the Gershwins to Rodgers and Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and beyond. Joining Shaiman for the conversation will be the film’s producer Al Tapper and historian Laurence Maslon.

At $10, this may be one of the best Broadway bargains currently sitting on West 45th Street.

Shaiman certainly knows something about the musical theatre. With longtime collaborator Scott Wittman, he gave Broadway Hairspray, Catch Me If You Can, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Some Like It Hot. His film credits stretch from When Harry Met Sally… and Sleepless in Seattle to Sister Act, The American President and Mary Poppins Returns. He’ll also be signing copies of his memoir, Never Mind the Happy, following the screening.

The evening serves as something of an amuse-bouche for AMT’s next production, After All These Years: The Musicals of Al Tapper, beginning performances September 9 and opening September 10 for a four-week engagement.

Tapper has one of those résumés that sounds as though several people’s lives were accidentally stapled together. He’s written eleven musicals, hundreds of songs and produced acclaimed films including Broadway: The Golden Age, By the Legends Who Were There and Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy. And yes, according to the production, he invented the little tab on the lid of your coffee cup.

Naturally, somebody decided this man needed his own musical.

Part concert, part comedy and part affectionate roast, After All These Years travels from Stephen Sondheim to Joey Buttafuoco, stopping for Doris Day, Vladimir Putin, teenage lust, middle-aged regret and the occasional dirty martini along the way. Tapper appears onscreen while a live company performs the songs and excavates a life apparently incapable of staying in one lane.

The cast features Lara Allison (Waitress), Emily Taylor Kaufman (Legally Blonde), Dan Olson (Kinky Boots) and Nathan Pecchia (Fly By Night), with Reese Henrick and Lawson Lewallen serving as swings.

Brian Childers directs, with musical direction by David Wolfson. The creative team includes Christian Specht and Samantha Weiser on lighting, Mark Childers on projections, Cathy Small on costumes, Steven Fine on sound and Pete Dorton directing the filmed sequences.

After All These Years plays Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7 p.m., with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 3 p.m., through October 10. Tickets are $50, with $25 tickets available for seniors and students.

But first comes Saturday night: a landmark Broadway documentary, three people who know more than a little about musical theatre, and Marc Shaiman with a microphone.

For ten bucks, that’s a pretty good reason to head to Theatre Row.

Tim Curry, the deliciously subversive British actor whose Dr. Frank-N-Furter changed popular culture forever, died Tuesday night at his home in Los Angeles. He was 80.For millions, Curry will always be the corseted, fishnet-clad mad scientist of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or the terrifying Pennywise of Stephen King’s It, the magnificently suspicious Wadsworth of Clue, Rooster Hannigan in Annie, or the demonic Darkness in Legend. But before Hollywood discovered that extraordinary face, voice and capacity for making danger irresistible, Curry belonged to the theatre. And throughout his career, he kept coming back to it.

Born April 19, 1946, in Warrington, England, Curry studied drama and English at the University of Birmingham before beginning his professional career in the original London production of Hair in 1968, appearing as Woof and as a member of the Tribe. From there came an astonishingly eclectic collection of classical, experimental and musical theatre: Titus Andronicus, Man Is Man, The Maids, Life of Galileo, Loot, Danton’s Death and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which he played Puck.

Then, in 1973, came the role that changed everything.

Curry originated Dr. Frank-N-Furter in Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show at London’s tiny Royal Court Theatre Upstairs. The production moved through London, then to the Roxy in Los Angeles, and finally to Broadway’s Belasco Theatre in 1975. Broadway wasn’t ready for it: the show closed after only 45 performances. History, however, had considerably different plans. Curry’s Frank-N-Furter—seductive, outrageous, dangerous, funny and utterly unconcerned with anyone else’s definition of normal—became one of the defining theatrical creations of the era. Curry received a Drama Desk nomination for the Broadway performance, and the 1975 film adaptation transformed what Broadway had rejected into a cultural phenomenon.

It would have been easy for an actor to spend the rest of his career trapped inside those fishnets. Curry did precisely the opposite.

Later in 1975, he returned to Broadway as the Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara in Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, transferring with the Royal Shakespeare Company production from London to the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. It was an early demonstration of something audiences would discover repeatedly: Curry could be flamboyant without being frivolous and intellectually formidable without losing the wicked glint that made watching him such fun.

In 1980, Curry took on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart opposite Ian McKellen’s Salieri in Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus on Broadway. His Mozart earned Curry his first Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play as well as a Drama Desk nomination. The role demanded exactly the contradiction Curry did so well: vulgarity and genius occupying the same body, childishness sitting beside something almost touched by God.

London theatre continued to claim him. He played the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance at Theatre Royal Drury Lane, earning an Olivier nomination, and later worked extensively at the National Theatre in The Rivals, Love for Love, Dalliance and The Threepenny Opera, playing Macheath—Mack the Knife—in the latter. He was an actor who could move from Gilbert and Sullivan to Brecht without surrendering the unmistakable quality that made him Tim Curry.

He returned to New York theatre as William Hogarth in The Art of Success at Manhattan Theatre Club and then, in 1992, returned to Broadway in the musical My Favorite Year. As the drunken, fading movie star Alan Swann, Curry found both the comedy and sadness beneath the character’s theatrical excess and earned his second Tony nomination, this time for Best Actor in a Musical.

In 2001, he played Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol at the Theater at Madison Square Garden. Then came the Broadway role that introduced an entirely new generation to Tim Curry onstage.

Eric Idle asked Curry to play King Arthur in Monty Python’s Spamalot. Curry led the original Broadway company alongside David Hyde Pierce, Hank Azaria and Sara Ramirez when the musical opened in 2005. His wonderfully exasperated, magnificently straight-faced Arthur earned him a third Tony nomination for Best Actor in a Musical. He subsequently took the role to London’s West End, earning another Olivier nomination.

Three Tony nominations across three very different performances—Mozart in Amadeus, Alan Swann in My Favorite Yearand King Arthur in Spamalot—tell their own story about his range.

His later stage appearances included The Player in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at Chichester and Reverend Whoopsie in Eric Idle’s What About Dick? in Los Angeles in 2012. That July, Curry suffered a major stroke that left him using a wheelchair and significantly altered the course of his performing life. He nevertheless continued working, particularly as a voice actor, and remained connected to Rocky Horror, including appearing as the Criminologist in Fox’s 2016 television version.

The screen career, of course, was extraordinary in its own right. The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Annie, Clue, Legend, Home Alone 2, Muppet Treasure Island and his unforgettable Pennywise in It made Curry recognizable to generations who may never have seen him walk onto a Broadway stage. His voice alone became an instrument, leading to decades of animation and voice work and a Daytime Emmy Award.

There was something inherently theatrical about Tim Curry even when no theatre was involved. He understood entrance. He understood timing. He understood that outrageousness works best when the performer underneath it possesses absolute control. And he possessed that rare quality that cannot be taught in acting school: when Tim Curry entered a scene, your eyes went to him.

He could be sinister and hilarious in the same breath. He could make villainy seductive, absurdity sophisticated and camp genuinely dangerous. Most importantly, he never seemed to apologize for taking up the space a performance required.

Yesterday we lost Dolly Parton. Today we have lost Tim Curry. They say these things come in threes. For once, I would be delighted for the old saying to be wrong.