May is peak season on Broadway. All the shows that want to meet the cutoff for Tony Award eligibility have opened. Now the Tony nominations have been announced, and not every show that opened this season will survive the coming months. All to say, now is your chance to see the best of Broadway’s new shows — while they’re still around.
‘Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman’
Two of the greatest theater actors of this generation: Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf. One of the finest theater directors of this era: Joe Mantello. Throw the trio together with one of American theater’s most studied texts, and the results are fireworks. Mantello’s production of “Death of a Salesman” plays fast and loose with the realism, as it should. This is the theater after all, where “real” is a construct, and the irreal tells us more about humanity than its inverse can. (through Aug. 9)
‘August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone’
August Wilson, the playwright who documented Black life across every decade of the 20th century in 10 plays, is back on the boards with this lively revival of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” the installment that occurs during the 1910s. As always, verisimilitude and the supernatural exist side by side in this tale of the denizens of a boardinghouse in Pittsburgh. The marquee names are Taraji P. Henson and Cedric the Entertainer as the owners of the boardinghouse, but Ruben Santiago-Hudson, an August Wilson stalwart, is the one to watch as the home’s resident conjure man. (through July 26)
‘Cats: The Jellicle Ball’
Joy was always at the core of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical “Cats,” based on the poetry of T.S. Eliot. Still, the joy was flattened in the original production: A litter box of dancing humans dressed in furry leotards as, well, cats has limited allure. Leave it to Black and queer people to give the beloved musical its tenth life, a glorious, ecstatic one. “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” changes not a sandpaper-tongue lick of the text but moves the story to the underground world of ballroom. The performers vogue, they preen, they dip, they shake their asses. Never has the fringe shown Broadway just exactly how to put on the show of shows. (through Sept. 6)
‘Chess’
A Cold War rock-pop musical about a love triangle between an American chess champion, a Russian chess champion and the woman the two men love — sounds absurd? Yes, and very much no. “Chess” was a monster concept-album hit during the 1980s, meaning you likely already know the show’s breakout song “One Night in Bangkok.” The revival, the first on Broadway, tries to solve the show’s famously creaky text. You can decide for yourself if it does. One truth is certain: The score, written by two members of Abba, is a full-bore banger, and the cast, led by Aaron Tveit, Lea Michele and Tony nominee Nicholas Christopher, launch the songs far into the rafters.
‘The Lost Boys’
Vampires have had a rough go of it on Broadway. Three bloodsucking musicals have tried over the last few decades to stick it out on the Great White Way, to no avail. “The Lost Boys,” an adaptation of the 1980s cult classic, might break the curse. It features a big-feeling score by the band The Rescues, a load of spectacular special effects and laudable performances by Tony nominees Shoshana Bean, as the family’s wayward mother, and Ali Louis Bourzgui as David, the town’s head rocker, er, vampire. (through Nov. 21)
‘Ragtime’
This musical adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s grand novel about the intersecting lives of a WASP family, an immigrant jew and his daughter, and a big-dreaming Black piano player has returned to Broadway in a production that strips the hopeful, tragic story to its beating core. In this moment’s fraught political climate where the American dream frays more every day, “Ragtime” is a balm and a beacon. It knows well how this country can both uplift and fail its populace. (through Aug. 2)
‘The Rocky Horror Show’
Long before the movie anchored itself as a midnight-showing stalwart, Richard O’Brien debuted “The Rocky Horror Show” in London as a stage production. That theater piece is currently being revived with direction by theater wunderkind Sam Pinkleton at Studio 54. Tony nominee Luke Evans stars as the “sweet transvestite” Dr. Frank-n-Furter, in a performance whose “magnetism is off the charts,” said Helen Shaw at The New York Times. Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Juliette Lewis, Tony nominee Stephanie Hsu: The entire cast is stacked. The show is a touch rough-hewn and teeming with sexual extravagance — precisely as it should be. (through Nov. 29)
‘Titaníque’
Imagine Céline Dion narrating the tale of the movie “Titanic” by way of her own hit songs and a whole lot of camp and wild improvisation. Welcome to “Titaníque,” the ludicrous, delirious, side-splitting musical that began years ago in the farthest reaches of Off-Broadway and has now splashed its way onto Broadway. Tony nominee Marla Mindelle, who plays Céline, is an estimable loon — a loon with enviable comedic chops and glorious vocals. Sometimes you just want to gawk and guffaw. (through Sept. 20)