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

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

Rachel McAdams plays the mother of a severely disabled child in Amy Herzog’s exquisitely empathetic portrait of everyday strength, which won the 2018 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play. Under Anne Kauffman's attentive direction, original cast members Susan Pourfar and Brenda Wehle reproduce their priceless supporting performances, joined now by April Matthis and Lily Santiago. Herzog shows the strain of the situation, but also succeeds in dramatizing kindness, attentiveness, honesty, connection; the play shines like a candle in the dark.—Adam Feldman

It's finally Merrily’s time. Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez do exceptional work as three old friends whose paths diverge in Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's rueful and tuneful cult-fave 1981 musical flop, whose brilliant score is melded to a tricky back-to-front narrative about lost ideals. The very fine supporting cast of director Maria Friedman’s first-class revival includes Reg Rogers, Katie Rose Clarke and Krystal Joy Brown.—Adam Feldman

The notoriously disharmonious recording process that led to Fleetwood Mac’s classic 1977 LP Rumours is the inspiration for David Adjmi’s long and beautiful group portrait of a rock band riven along artistic, romantic and pharmaceutical fault lines. Every aspect of the show is excellent in isolation, from the ensemble acting to the heightened-verité design and the pitch-perfect original songs by Arcade Fire's Will Butler; meticulously layered and mixed by director Daniel Aukin, they cohere into a riveting multitrack production.—Adam Feldman

In Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's trenchant 2014 dark comedy, scattered members of an estranged Arkansas family return to their late patriarch's crumbling manse to sort through the ugly detritus of multiple generations. In the play's first Broadway production, directed by Lila Neugebauer, Sarah Paulson etches a star performance in acid; the very fine cast also prominently includes Corey Stoll, Michael Esper, Ella Beatty and Natalie Gold. The play mines dysfunctional-family drama to highly entertaining effect, then puts it all in larger perspective in a wild finale that brings down the house.—Adam Feldman

Jeremy Strong plays the besieged hero of Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 social drama—a doctor who discovers that the spa water in his small resort town is polluted with deadly bacteria—in this timely and engrossing revival. Michael Imperioli is his imperious brother, Victoria Pedretti is his luminous daughter and Thomas Jay Ryan is a hilariously complacent local tradesman. The play suggests that a passionate crusader can sometimes be his own worst enemy: As his frustration mounts, Strong’s tweedy manner gives way to a righteous indignation that doesn’t help his case. But director Sam Gold’s production comes down firmly on his side: It's a plea to the audience.—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

The creators of Hell's Kitchen have found the right recipe for tis coming-of-age jukebox musical drawn from the pop catalog of Alicia Keys—and, in its vivid dancers and magnificent singers, just the right ingredients. Together they've cooked up a heck of a block party. The show has the sensibly narrow scope of a short story, loosely inspired by Keys's life. Maleah Joi Moon makes a stunning debut as a 1990s teenager; Shoshana Bean is her protective mother, Brandon Victor Dixon is her absent father and Kecia Lewis is her teacher.—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

Playwright Paula Vogel has drawn on veins of autobiography throughout her distinguished career as a playwright, and this time she hits the mother lode. A magnificent Jessica Lange stars as Phyllis, a gin-swilling divorcée struggling and often failing to raise her two gay children, played by Celia Keenan-Bolger and Jim Parsons. While Mother Play sometimes seems punitive, it is never pitilessly so—and in putting her mother onstage, Vogel effectively puts her on a kind of pedestal. She’s not just a character; she’s a star. And not just any star; she’s Jessica Lange.—Adam Feldman

Casey Cott and Courtney Reed 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

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 

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 latest revival, directed by Hamilton’s Thomas Kail, now stars Aaeron Tveit as the titular throat-slitting barber and Sutton Foster as his pie-making accomplice. Sondheim’s meaty Grand Guignol score sounds as grand here as it deserves to.—Adam Feldman

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, to the greatest—well, okay, not the greatest show on Broadway, but a dang fine show nonetheless. Set at a one-ring circus in the Depression, this original musical (by Rick Elice and the collective PigPen Theatre Co.) knows how to craft magic out of spare parts. Director Jessica Stone embraces overt theatricality—animal puppetry, shadow play, aerialism—as an invitation to imagination, even as the performers show off impressive real-life physical talents. Grant Gustin, Isabelle McCalla and Paul Alexander Nolan do fine work in the show's central romantic triangle, but they are effectively the sideshow here. The main attraction is the pull of the circus itself.—Adam Feldman

Adapted from the Who's 1969 concept album, this nostalgia-trippy 1993 musical centers on Tommy (Ali Louis Bourzgui, a powerful singer), who has gone deaf, blind and mute in a psychosomatic reaction to childhood trauma. Director Des McAnuff has retained some signature elements of his original staging while souping up the rest as a sleek, creepy retrofuturist playground for his designers and choreographer Lorin Latarro; it makes the audience feel a bit like a pinball, batted and bounced from one flashy moment to the next. The story is unwieldy and sometimes nonsensical, but Pete Townshend’s score delivers punch after punch of classic rock, and the epic choral finale is genuinely rousing. As musical theater, Tommy is limited. On its own terms, it’s often sensational.—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