If Friday was Broadway’s arrival in the country, Saturday was the moment it unpacked its bags and decided to stay awhile.

Photo by Austin Ruffer

Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Photo by Austin Ruffer

Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Day Two of The Festival, held Saturday, August 15 at Kingston’s Hutton Brickyards Riverfront Hotel + Venue, took the ambitious premise introduced on opening day—a destination festival devoted entirely to musical theatre—and turned up the volume. The Broadway Direct Stage filled with Tony winners and Broadway favorites, composers stepped out from behind their scores, unlikely musical moments appeared, and after dark the Hudson River became part nightclub, part theatrical summer camp.

But the emotional heart of Saturday belonged to a musical that changed Broadway 30 years ago.

Adam Pascal and Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Wilson Jermaine Heredia. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Fredi Walker-Brown. Photo by Austin Ruffer

No Day But Today: RENT at 30

Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Daphne Rubin-Vega and Kristen Lee Kelly. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Anthony Rapp. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Anthony Rapp, Fredi Walker-Brown, Gwen Stewart. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Three decades after RENT exploded onto Broadway and changed the sound, look and audience of the American musical, members of its original Broadway company reunited at The Festival. Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Taye Diggs came together again, transforming what could easily have become a nostalgia exercise into something considerably more moving.

Anthony Rapp and Taye Diggs. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Adam Pascal and Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Adam Pascal and Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Because RENT is no longer simply a Broadway musical.

Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Taye Diggs. Photo by Austin Ruffer

For an entire generation, Jonathan Larson’s work became a marker of time. It arrived speaking about AIDS, art, poverty, friendship, sexuality, chosen family and the terrifying uncertainty of whether tomorrow would arrive at all. Its young artists were trying to create lives in a city that increasingly seemed determined to price them out of existence. Thirty years later, some of those ideas feel less like period details than unfinished conversations.

RENT 30th Reunion. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Fredi Walker-Brown. Photo by Austin Ruffer

RENT 30th Reunion. Photo by Austin Ruffer

And there they were again…. Rapp,Pascal, Rubin-Vega, Diggs. Older, certainly. So was the audience that first loved them.

RENT 30th Reunion. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Fredi Walker-Brown and Lauren Patten. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Fredi Walker-Brown and Lauren Patten. Photo by Austin Ruffer

But RENT has always contained that strange contradiction: a musical obsessed with mortality that somehow refuses to age. Hearing its music sung by the people who helped introduce it to the world created one of those rare theatrical collisions between memory and the present. The people onstage had lived 30 more years. So had many of the people watching them.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes suddenly seemed like a very small unit of measurement.

Kelli O’Hara

Kelli O’Hara Raps. Because Apparently Anything Can Happen Upstate.

Kelli O’Hara Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Kelli O’Hara and daughter, Charlotte Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Saturday wasn’t entirely interested in reverence. One of The Festival’s strengths is its ability to remove Broadway performers from the carefully constructed environments in which audiences normally encounter them. Here there are no characters to disappear behind and no fourth wall demanding obedience. The artists can play. And Kelli O’Hara rapping certainly qualifies.

Kelli O’Hara Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

One of Broadway’s most exquisite singers—an artist associated with Rodgers and Hammerstein, Adam Guettel and some of the most beautifully controlled vocal performances of her generation—allowed herself to venture considerably outside the territory in which Broadway audiences usually encounter her. That sense of mischief is exactly what an event like The Festival should encourage. We already know what these performers can do eight times a week. The fun is discovering what they do when somebody hands them a microphone beside the Hudson and lets them loose.

Jason Robert Brown Photo by Michaelah Reynold

Norbert Leo Butz. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Norbert Leo Butz. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Norbert Leo Butz. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Norbert Leo Butz Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Norbert Leo Butz offered a different kind of pleasure, returning to Big Fish, while Jason Robert Brown sat at the piano and performed selections from his own formidable catalogue. Brown remains one of contemporary musical theatre’s most distinctive composer-lyricists, and there is something particularly satisfying about hearing theatre songs stripped back to the person who first imagined them.

Jenn Colella. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jenn Colella. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jenn Colella. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jenn Colella. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jenn Colella. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Dasia Thomas, Jenn Colella and others to perform songs from Brown’s past and present shows.

Kelli O’Hara, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Renee Elise Goldsberry Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Renee Elise Goldsberry Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Renee Elise Goldsberry Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Renee Elise Goldsberry & Kelli O’Hara

Kelli O’Hara, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Renee Elise Goldsberry

Lena Hall, Norbert Leo Butz, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Lena Hall, Norbert Leo Butz, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Lena Hall, Norbert Leo Butz, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Lena Hall, Norbert Leo Butz, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Lena Hall, Norbert Leo Butz, Renee Elise Goldsberry

Lena Hall, Norbert Leo Butz, Renee Elise Goldsberry

The Saturday Big Show, featuring Renée Elise Goldsberry, Kelli O’Hara, Norbert Leo Butz, Jenn Collela,

Lena Hall. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Lena Hall. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Lena Hall. Photo by Austin Ruffer

and Lena Hall.

Solea Pfeiffer. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Solea Pfeiffer. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Solea Pfeiffer. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Solea Pfeiffer, Liisi LaFontaine, and Tyler Joseph Ellis. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Krystina Alabado and Isabelle McCalla. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

A Preview of New Musicals, hosted by NY1’s Frank DiLella, highlighting seven new musicals in development: Autopilot, Bludline, Huzzah, Love Somebody, Regency Girls, Someday Soon, and Star Machine. The talented Solea Pfeiffer, Solea Pfeiffer, Liisi LaFontaine, Krystina Alabado, Isabelle McCalla and Tyler Joseph Ellis joined.

Some Broadway performances become permanently attached to the actor who introduced them, regardless of how many talented performers inherit the role. Angelica Schuyler’s breathtaking rewind through desire, sacrifice and split-second decision-making is one of those moments, and Goldsberry remains inseparable from it. Bringing “Satisfied” out of the Richard Rodgers Theatre and onto an open-air stage gave Saturday another jolt of Broadway history suddenly living in the present.

That mixture became the defining character of Day Two. This wasn’t merely a collection of performers singing their biggest numbers. The Festival was beginning to demonstrate the value of placing artists from different corners and generations of Broadway beside one another and seeing what happens when the usual theatrical architecture disappears.

When Broadway Goes to Camp

Lauren Patten. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Fredi Walker-Brown and Lauren Patten. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jenn Colella, Lauren Patten, and Norbert Leo Butz. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Then the sun went down. This may ultimately be where The Festival separates itself most successfully from the endless parade of Broadway concerts, conventions and benefit evenings already filling the theatrical calendar. The programming didn’t simply end after the marquee performances. Instead, Broadway nightlife followed Broadway upstate. A cozy campfire set featuring performances from Kelli O’Hara, Jenn Colella, Lauren Patten, Norbert Leo Butz, and more.

Krystina Alabado and Isabelle McCalla. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

A pop-up edition of Club Cumming, the East Village playground created by Alan Cumming and a gathering place for performers, musicians and assorted creatures of the night, brought some downtown Manhattan energy to Kingston. The elegant Hudson Valley retreat suddenly acquired a little glitter around the edges.

Elsewhere, Broadway performers gathered around campfires for acoustic music along the river.

Amber Ardolino. Photo by Austin Ruffer

That image may actually capture the entire weekend better than the “Coachella for Broadway” label that has followed The Festival since it was announced. Coachella suggests scale, spectacle and celebrity. The Festival certainly had all three. But Broadway is fundamentally a community of storytellers, musicians and performers, and some of the weekend’s most appealing moments came when the machinery disappeared.

Seth Rudetsky and Tommy Bracco. Photo by Austin Ruffer

A singer, a song, a fire, the Hudson and people listening. There is something wonderfully old-fashioned about that, particularly for an industry increasingly obsessed with grosses, celebrity casting, social-media engagement and whether a production can survive another week. Remove the commercial machinery for a moment and you’re left with the reason people entered this profession in the first place. They wanted to tell stories.

Photo by Michaelah Reynolds (

Hovering over Saturday was RENT, the musical that once told Broadway audiences that community could become family and that the meaningful measurement of a life wasn’t money, possessions or even time. It was love. Thirty years later, on the banks of the Hudson, the people who first delivered that message found themselves together again. Perhaps that is why the reunion belonged here.

The Festival was attempting to build something Broadway desperately needs and rarely has enough time to create: community without a curtain call waiting at the end of it. Saturday proved there may indeed be an audience for that. And there was still one day left.

Next: Day Three — Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell and the finale of Broadway’s first weekend on the Hudson.

Broadway packed a weekend bag, left Times Square behind and headed north. On Friday, August 14, the inaugural The Festival opened at Hutton Brickyards Riverfront Hotel + Venue in Kingston, New York, transforming the Hudson River waterfront into something Broadway has rarely attempted: a true destination festival built around the people, music and community of the theatre.

Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Produced by Joshua Saltman and David B. Schwartz, The Festival ultimately drew 2,875 attendees from 48 states over its three-day debut, with 165 performers taking part in more than 30 programs. There were 30 musicians, 14 ensemble members and 13 apprentices, but numbers only begin to describe the ambition of what Saltman and Schwartz were attempting. This wasn’t Broadway presenting another concert. It was Broadway borrowing the language of the great music festivals and asking what happens when musical theatre gets out of the theatre.

Campfire Stage photo by Austin Ruffer

The answer, at least on Friday, was that it rather liked the fresh air. At the center of the sprawling weekend was the Broadway Direct Stage, an open-air covered venue surrounded by the Hudson Valley landscape. Instead of velvet seats, chandeliers and the compressed electricity of a Broadway house, audiences found themselves experiencing some of the theatre world’s most recognizable voices against water, sky and the industrial remnants of the historic brickyards. There was something wonderfully incongruous about it: Broadway glamour meeting Hudson Valley earthiness without either having to apologize to the other. The opening day’s lineup immediately established that this wasn’t going to be a modest experiment.

Gianmarco Soresi. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Gianmarco Soresi. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Comedian and actor Gianmarco Soresi hosted the inaugural “The Festival”(The Broadway Festival). He served as the host and emcee

Alex Newell. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Alex Newell. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Alex Newell. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Alex Newell

Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Mandy Gonzalez

Christopher Jackson. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Christopher Jackson and Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Christopher Jackson and Mandy Gonzalez. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Christopher Jackson

Javier Muñoz. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Christopher Jackson and Javier Muñoz. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Javier Muñoz

Solea Pfeiffer. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Solea Pfeiffer. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Solea Pfeiffer

Jasmine Amy Rogers. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jasmine Amy Rogers. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jasmine Amy Rogers. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Jasmine Amy Rogers

Cara Rose DiPietro. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Cara Rose DiPietro

Tyler Joseph Ellis. Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

Tyler Joseph Ellis and Matt Rodin were among the artists helping launch the weekend, while SiriusXM’s Seth Rudetsky did what Rudetsky does particularly well—turn Broadway history, personalities and musical obsession into entertainment.

Tommy Bracco Photo by Michaelah Reynolds

One of Friday’s most charming ideas belonged to Tommy Bracco, the Newsies alum and Big Brother favorite, who hosted a celebration of Disney music. Bracco began with “Out There” from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but it was Solea Pfeiffer who provided one of the afternoon’s genuine reminders of how much extraordinary music remains trapped inside Disney’s animated catalogue. Her performances of “Colors of the Wind” from Pocahontas and “Reflection” from Mulan made a fairly persuasive argument for why Broadway has yet to get its hands on either score.

Reeve Carney and Eva Noblezada. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Eva Noblezada. Photo by Austin Ruffer

Then came Reeve Carney and Eva Noblezada, whose musical and personal history has become its own little piece of contemporary Broadway mythology. They originated Orpheus and Eurydice together in Hadestown, fell in love, married, and have continued sharing stages since. At Hutton Brickyards, the scale shifted. Away from the machinery of a Broadway production, the two were able to offer something more intimate—a reminder that before scenery, costumes and theatrical spectacle arrive, musical theatre begins with people telling stories through music.

Campfire Stage 2 photo by Austin Ruffer

That intimacy was one of the more intriguing elements of The Festival’s concept. Broadway normally asks audiences to enter its buildings. Here, Broadway entered the audience’s world. People wandered between performances, conversations and events rather than sitting obediently in one seat for two and a half hours. Artists who normally disappear through stage doors after a performance were suddenly part of a larger weekend community.

By evening, however, subtlety was finished.

The Big Show. Photo by Austin Ruffer

The Big Show. Photo by Austin Ruffer

The Big Show Night 1 Company photo by Austin Ruffer

Friday culminated with The Big Show, and the Broadway Direct Stage became exactly what its name promised: a full-scale concert designed to let Broadway voices loose. Cara Rose DiPietro, Tess Soltau and original Rent star Adam Pascal opened with an inspired piece of theatrical mischief, turning Stephen Sondheim’s “A Weekend in the Country” into a self-referential welcome to the weekend, accompanied by more than a dozen Broadway dancers.

It was an appropriate choice. Sondheim’s number is itself about people converging upon a destination carrying expectations, desires and complications with them. Here came thousands of Broadway devotees doing essentially the same thing, only their weekend in the country involved considerably more belting.

And that may be the cleverest thing about The Festival. Broadway has spent decades trying to expand beyond the geographic boundaries of Broadway while still treating the Broadway theatre as the center of the universe. Touring companies travel. Cast albums travel. Stars perform concerts. BroadwayCon created its own gathering place for fans. But the great American music-festival model—travel somewhere beautiful, stay for several days and immerse yourself in the music and the people who make it—has largely belonged to other genres.

Saltman and Schwartz decided musical theatre deserved one too.

They assembled an astonishing inaugural roster across the weekend: Audra McDonald, Kelli O’Hara, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Norbert Leo Butz, Jason Robert Brown, Lena Hall, Tom Kitt, Andrea McArdle, Alex Newell, Adam Pascal, Anthony Rapp, Jenn Colella, Andrew Barth Feldman, Lauren Patten, Denée Benton and many more, culminating in something irresistible to Broadway devotees—a 30th anniversary reunion of the original Broadway cast of Rent.

Behind that amount of talent was an equally formidable creative operation. Tony winner Jerry Mitchell and Jon Rua choreographed the event, with Mitchell and D.B. Bonds directing. Dan Lipton handled musical supervision, Julie McBride served as musical director, and Michael Downs oversaw creative direction and experience design. David Rees provided lighting, Cody Spencer sound, Caite Hevner video and Ryan Park costumes, while Lana Schwartz directed The Festival Apprentices. Chris Gratton served as production manager, technical director and site manager, with Lisa Iacucci as production supervisor.

That is an enormous amount of Broadway infrastructure to transport to the banks of the Hudson, and Friday proved that the concept could actually work.

By the time the weekend ended Sunday, Saltman and Schwartz were already prepared to announce that The Festival will return in 2027.

“We are absolutely thrilled with how The Festival went this weekend,” the producers said following its conclusion, thanking both the fans who had created the weekend’s community and the artists who had filled it. “We couldn’t be prouder of the experience and the incredible team that put it all together. We can’t wait to see you in 2027!”

Neither, apparently, can Broadway. Friday was only the overture.

Next: Day Two of The Festival — when Broadway’s weekend in the country really got underway.

For most of musical theatre history, getting a Broadway musical onto the big screen meant Hollywood had arrived to transform it. Sets became locations. Stage actors were frequently replaced by movie stars. Songs disappeared, new scenes appeared, orchestrations expanded and the musical that audiences had loved in the theatre could emerge from the process either gloriously cinematic—or almost unrecognizable. But something fascinating has happened over the past year.

Hollywood is once again mining Broadway for material, with Kiss of the Spider Woman and Wicked: For Good reaching movie theatres and adaptations including Octet and Merrily We Roll Along underway. Yet simultaneously, another model has moved decisively into the mainstream: don’t adapt the Broadway show at all. Film the damn thing.

Hamilton went to movie theatres. Suffs went to PBS. Frozen went to Disney+. Hadestown went to cinemas. And this weekend, SIX The Musical Live! arrived on American movie screens.

Suddenly the interesting question isn’t simply which Broadway musical Hollywood will adapt next. It’s whether some Broadway musicals need Hollywood at all.

Kiss of the Spider Woman: Prestige Doesn’t Guarantee an Audience

Bill Condon’s film of Kander and Ebb’s Kiss of the Spider Woman arrived October 10, 2025, starring Jennifer Lopez, Diego Luna and Tonatiuh. On paper, it made enormous sense. Condon understands movie musicals. Lopez possessed exactly the old-fashioned movie-star glamour required for Aurora, and the show’s fantasies seem almost designed for cinema. Audiences, however, largely stayed home.

The result demonstrated one of the persistent problems facing Broadway adaptations: theatrical prestige doesn’t automatically translate into mainstream recognition. Theatre people know Kiss of the Spider Woman. That doesn’t mean millions of moviegoers were waiting for it.

Sometimes Broadway’s enthusiasm exists almost entirely inside the Broadway bubble.

Wicked: For Good: When Broadway Becomes a Brand

Then there was Wicked: For Good, released November 21, 2025. Wicked presented Hollywood with the opposite situation. After more than two decades onstage, Elphaba and Glinda had escaped Broadway long before Hollywood came calling. “Defying Gravity” was already part of popular culture. The characters were recognizable. Generations had grown up with the musical.

Hollywood wasn’t introducing Wicked. It was delivering something audiences already believed belonged to them. That distinction matters enormously when trying to understand why some Broadway properties explode cinematically while others disappear.

Hamilton: Broadway Invades the Multiplex

Perhaps the more consequential development came September 5, 2025, when Disney finally put the filmed original Broadway production of Hamilton into American cinemas. Audiences had been able to watch the production on Disney+ since 2020, but the theatrical version added “Reuniting the Revolution,” a special prologue featuring new interviews with Lin-Manuel Miranda and members of the original company reflecting on the show’s extraordinary cultural journey.

Suddenly something filmed at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in 2016 was playing movie theatres nearly a decade later. Think about that. No Hollywood recasting. No attempt to turn Revolutionary America into a sprawling location shoot. No replacing Broadway actors with stars considered more commercially recognizable.

There was Daveed Diggs, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Christopher Jackson, Leslie Odom Jr., Phillipa Soo, Jonathan Groff, Anthony Ramos, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Okieriete Onaodowan and Miranda—the people who created the phenomenon. Hollywood wasn’t remaking Broadway. It was exhibiting it.

Frozen: Broadway Comes Home to Disney

Disney made a similarly interesting decision with Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical. Rather than create another movie adaptation of a stage musical that was itself adapted from a movie—a cultural hall of mirrors if ever there was one—Disney captured the West End production starring Samantha Barks as Elsa and released it on Disney+ in June 2025.

It preserved something audiences outside London might otherwise never have experienced while allowing Disney’s stage version—with its additional songs by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez—to exist independently from the animated film that created it.

Suffs: PBS Does What PBS Has Always Done Best

Then came Suffs. Shaina Taub’s Tony-winning musical about the American suffragist movement was recorded during its Broadway run in December 2024 and premiered on PBS’s Great Performances on May 8, 2026.

That recording preserved Taub, Nikki M. James, Jenn Colella, Hannah Cruz, Grace McLean, Emily Skinner and the Broadway company rather than allowing those performances simply to disappear after the production closed. Suffs particularly demonstrates why filmed theatre matters. Broadway is expensive. Geography is limiting. A production can run for months and still be inaccessible to most of the country.

PBS effectively removed the theatre walls. Suddenly a musical about American history wasn’t available only to people capable of buying a Broadway ticket and getting themselves to West 45th Street.

Hadestown: Don’t Reinvent It—Capture It

That argument becomes even stronger with Hadestown. Anaïs Mitchell’s folk opera depends upon theatrical artifice. The musicians, lighting, movement and physical descent into the underworld aren’t limitations cinema needs to overcome. They’re part of the language of the piece.

Preserving performers intimately associated with the show’s original Broadway success gives audiences something Hollywood adaptations frequently take away: the performances that helped make people fall in love with the musical in the first place.

Perhaps some shows don’t need to become more cinematic. Perhaps cinema needs to become better at capturing theatre.

SIX: The Queens Have Entered the Building

Now comes SIX The Musical Live! The live capture opened in American cinemas August 14, reuniting the six original West End Queens—Jarnéia Richard-Noel, Millie O’Connell, Natalie Paris, Alexia McIntosh, Aimie Atkinson and Maiya Quansah-Breed—at London’s Vaudeville Theatre. Of all Broadway and West End musicals, SIX may be particularly suited to this treatment because it has always existed somewhere between theatre and pop concert.

There is comparatively little cinematic realism to gain by transforming it into a conventional movie. The audience is part of its electricity. The lighting is part of it. The band is part of it. Six women standing on a stage behaving like Tudor history’s most improbable girl group is the concept.

Why dismantle something that already works? Film it beautifully and let another audience into the room.

Octet: Of All the Musicals…This One?

Hollywood, however, isn’t abandoning traditional adaptations. Perhaps the most intriguing forthcoming example is Dave Malloy’s Octet.

Lin-Manuel Miranda is directing the film with a formidable cast including Amanda Seyfried and Jonathan Groff. I admit it: strange choice. Octet is an intimate chamber musical built around a cappella singing and people confronting their relationship with technology. It is deliberately enclosed, cerebral and theatrical—not exactly material screaming for panoramic cinema. Which may be precisely why Miranda finds it interesting.

A conventional adaptation of something already cinematic presents one challenge. Taking a piece that seemingly doesn’t want to be a movie and discovering its cinematic language presents another.

Octet’s examination of technological dependency certainly hasn’t become less relevant since its stage premiere. Strange choice? Absolutely. But potentially a fascinating one.

Merrily We Roll Along: Ask Me Again in Twenty Years

Then we have Richard Linklater’s adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Merrily We Roll Along. Linklater is filming it across approximately two decades so Paul Mescal, Ben Platt and Beanie Feldstein actually age as the film moves through its characters’ lives.

It sounds insane. It could also be brilliant. Merrily has always been about what time does to people—how ambition, compromise and disappointment gradually transform the idealistic young people we once were. Allowing actual time to alter the actors could give Sondheim’s musical something makeup and prosthetics never could.

There is only one obvious drawback. Some of us would actually like to see the thing.

And Still Waiting in the Wings…

Adaptations of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Sunset Boulevard, Once on This Island and Guys and Dolls remain somewhere in Hollywood’s famously elastic development process. Some will happen. Some may not.

Sunset Boulevard remains the most wonderfully absurd proposition of all: Billy Wilder made a movie about Hollywood, Andrew Lloyd Webber turned the movie about Hollywood into a Broadway musical, and Hollywood now wants to make a movie of the Broadway musical based on the movie about Hollywood. Norma Desmond really is ready for her close-up.

The Real Revolution May Be the Pro-Shot

The most significant development may not be any individual adaptation. It may be the increasing legitimacy of the professionally filmed stage production. For years, theatre fans begged producers to film Broadway shows before they closed. The answer was invariably some combination of economics, union agreements, rights issues and the fear that a filmed version might cannibalize ticket sales. That thinking appears to be changing.

Recent pro-shots are demonstrating that filmed theatre can itself become commercially valuable, with Hadestownreportedly surpassing $20 million theatrically and SIX adding further evidence that audiences will pay to experience captured stage productions on movie screens.

That changes the equation. A Broadway production no longer necessarily has to choose between being ephemeral and becoming a Hollywood movie. There is now a third possibility: Preserve the Broadway production itself.

Let someone in Iowa see what New York saw. Let a teenager who cannot afford a $200 Broadway ticket encounter a performance that might change what they believe theatre can be. Let extraordinary performances survive beyond closing night. Let future generations see not merely what Hamilton or Suffs or Hadestown was, but something remarkably close to what it felt like when those actors stood on that stage.

Hollywood will continue adapting Broadway, and it should. Some musicals genuinely demand the possibilities of cinema, but others don’t need helicopters, locations, movie stars or $100 million budgets. They need the actors. They need the orchestra. They need the stage. They need someone to have the foresight to turn on the camera before the lights go out.

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.