The best Broadway shows you need to see

If theater is your religion, and the Broadway musical your particular sect, it’s time to rejoice. This gleefully obscene and subversive satire is one of the funniest shows to grace the Great White Way since The Producers and Urinetown. Writers Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park, along with composer Robert Lopez (Avenue Q), find the perfect blend of sweet and nasty for this tale of mismatched Mormon proselytizers in Uganda.—David Cote

The outlines of James Ijames's delicious riff on Hamlet are Shakespearean, but the point and the punch lines are the playwright’s own. Morose college student Juicy (an endearing Marcel Spears) is upset that his widowed mom Tedra (Nikki Crawford) has remarried his scheming uncle Rev (Billy Eugene Jones). Can the queer and clever Juicy choose pleasure over pain? His spiritual journey takes place at a boisterous Southern backyard barbecue that is funny and fabulous, terrifying and touching, as seven souls—each as messy as the meat they're devouring—clash, connect and push against their expected roles.—Raven Snook

Composer-lyricist-star Lin-Manuel Miranda forges a groundbreaking bridge between hip-hop and musical storytelling with this sublime collision of radio-ready beats and an inspiring, immigrant slant on Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. A brilliant, diverse cast takes back American history and makes it new.—David Cote 

The world of Harry Potter has arrived on Broadway, Hogwarts and all, and it is a triumph of theatrical magic. Set two decades after the final chapters of J.K. Rowling’s world-shaking kid-lit heptalogy, Jack Thorne's epic (richly elaborated by director John Tiffany) combines grand storytelling with stagecraft on a scale heretofore unimagined. It leaves its audience awestruck, spellbound and deeply satisfied.—Adam Feldman

Sixteen is not sweet for the heroine of this bruisingly joyful new musical by David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori: Played by the wonderful Victoria Clark, she has a disease that makes her age at a superfast rate. But two agents of disruption shake up her perspective: her aunt Debra (the unstoppable Bonnie Milligan), a hilarious gale force of chaos, and Seth (a winsome Justin Cooley), an anagram-loving classmate. Clever, touching and idiosyncratic, Kimberly Akimbo was the best new musical of 2021, and it works even better on Broadway.—Adam Feldman

Alfred Uhry and Jason Robert Brown’s 1998 musical tragedy, about the trial and lynching of a Jewish man in 1913 Georgia, lasted only a few months in its original incarnation. But director Michael Arden’s heart-piercing new production makes a masterful case for giving the show a new hearing—and what you hear at this Parade, as sung by a splendid cast led by Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond, will echo for a long time to come.—Adam Feldman

The multitalented comic actor Sean Hayes stars as the witty pianist, composer, actor and talk-show mainstay Oscar Levant in a bioplay by the expert Doug Wright, which finds Levant appearing on a 1958 episode of Jack Paar's Tonight Show while wrestling with mental-health demons. Hayes inhabits the role with uncanny physical and emptional commitment.—Adam Feldman

Go to hell—and by hell we mean Hadestown, Anaïs Mitchell’s fizzy, moody, thrilling new musical. Ostensibly, at least, the show is a modern retelling of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. But the newness of Mitchell’s score and Rachel Chavkin’s gracefully dynamic staging bring this old story to quivering life.—Adam Feldman

For Jews in certain situations, white privilege is only skin deep—as the sharp-witted comedian Alex Edelman learned that lesson firsthand when he infiltrated a meeting of white nationalists in Queens. His account of reactionary repartee serves as a framing device for a portrait of the entertainer as a young Jewish man in a polarized society. But despite the incendiary issues lurking at the edges of his tale, Just for Us is more focused on comedy than catharsis. He doesn't pull any punchlines.—Raven Snook

The 85-year-old master playwright Tom Stoppard draws on his own family history in his latest drama, set in Vienna over the course of 50 years, starting at the turn of the 20th century. Patrick Marber directs this solemnly epic production, whose enormous cast tracks generations of a Jewish family through a period that—despite their seeming integration and success within a larger gentile world— inevitably leads them to slaughter.—Adam Feldman  

Director-designer Julie Taymor surrounds the Disney movie’s mythic plot and Elton John–Tim Rice score with African rhythm and music. Through elegant puppetry, Taymor populates the stage with a menagerie of African beasts; her staging has expanded a simple cub into the pride of Broadway.—Adam Feldman

Natalie Mendoza and Aaron Tveit play lovers caught in a bad romance in this gorgeous, gaudy, spectacularly overstuffed  adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 movie. Directed with opulent showmanship by Alex Timbers and drawing music from more than 75 pop hits, this jukebox megamix may be costume jewelry, but its shine is dazzling.—Adam Feldman

The jokes pop like corn on a cast-iron stove in this tasty bag of puff, a “farm to fable” tale that pits the slickness of the city against the hickery of the sticks. The country-fried score, by Nashville songwriters Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, includes rollicking comedic numbers alongside sincere character songs; the cast is game and endearing, and Alex Newell soars to stratospheric vocal heights in a barn-burner solo. Robert Horn's script is stuffed with laugh-out-loud puns and one-liners, and the sheer volume of old-fashioned silliness wins you over. It’s a cornucopia.—Adam Feldman

Who doesn’t enjoy a royal wedding? Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss's zingy musical Six celebrates, in boisterous fashion, the union of English dynastic history and modern pop music. On a mock concert stage, the six wives of the 16th-century monarch Henry VIII air their grievances in song, and most of them have plenty to complain about. In this self-described “histo-remix,” members of the long-suffering sextet spin their pain into bops; the queens sing their heads off and the audience loses its mind.—Adam Feldman 

Some Like It Hot is a well-aimed throwback: a jubilant, crowd-pleasing musical comedy, adapted from Billy Wilder's beloved 1959 film. Christian Borle and J. Harrison Ghee star as Prohibition-era musicians, on the run from the mob, who pose as women in an all-girl band fronted by Adrianna Hicks. Staged with zest by Casey Nicholaw, the musical reheats its story with abundant production values and canny attention to modern sensibilities. If it wobbles a little in its borrowed heels at first, it finishes in the confident stride of a hit.—Adam Feldman

Ladies and gentlemen, dinner is served. Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s 1979 killer-cannibal tale may well be the greatest of all Broadway musicals: an epic combination of horror and humor, cynicism and sentiment, Victorian melodrama and sophisticated wit. Its thrilling new revival, directed by Hamilton’s Thomas Kail, stars Josh Groban as the titular throat-slitting barber and Annaleigh Ashford, in a priceless comic turn, as his pie-making accomplice. Sondheim’s meaty Grand Guignol score sounds as grand here as it deserves to.—Adam Feldman

This musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz addresses surprisingly complex themes, such as standards of beauty, morality and, believe it or not, fighting fascism. Thanks to Winnie Holzman’s witty book and Stephen Schwartz’s pop-inflected score, Wicked soars.—David Cote