Lyric Stage Boston Announces 2025-2026 Season

Lyric Stage Boston has just announced its 2025/2026 season of shows. The season will run from Septemebr 2025 through June 2026, and will include shows like Our Town and Something Rotten! 

Our Town, written by Thornton Wilder and directed by Courney O'Connor, will open the season. It will run September 19 through October 19, 2025. The day starts and ends pretty much the same way in Grover’s Corner. Beyond the humdrum of daily life, glimmers of joy, flickers of melancholy, and secret desires are hidden away in the mundane. It’s in the eyes of young lovers, the silence of a lonely townie’s room, and the hearts of the wild and restless. Stars shine over this sleepy New England town, but are dimmed when compared with the wonderment tucked away within the seemingly ordinary moments of this place so many call “home.”  Even in the smallest of moments, beauty is there. The secret is to stop and take notice.

Next, A Sherlock Carol by Mark Shanahan will run November 1 through December 21, 2025. Moriarity is as dead as a doornail. Sherlock Holmes is depressed. Without his number one adversary, what’s the point of it all? Enter a grown-up Tiny Tim and the mysterious death of everyone’s favorite humbug and it’s a festive literary mash-up with surprises around every corner. This fresh and charming reimagining of two of the most beloved literary characters is a Dickens of a yuletide detective story that’s as “good as gold.” Six actors transform before your eyes in a playful, clever, and joyous holiday comedy that is “elementary” for a festive outing sure to delight audiences of all ages.

Penelope, with music, book, and lyrics by Alex Bechtel, book by Grace McLean and Eva Steinmetz, will feature Erica Spyres. It will run February 6 through March 1, 2026. A generous glass of bourbon, a five-piece band, and ninety minutes is all Penelope needs to tell her side of the story as she embraces her heartache, loneliness, and resolve during the wait for her husband Odysseus to return from a seemingly endless war. Her son has disappeared. Relentless suitors prance before her. Days drone on as she is left to wonder who she is if she is alone. From jazz to folk to indie rock, Penelope dishes the dirt in a captivating cacophony of emotions that redefines what we might know of her through a modern lens. Erica Spyres (Into the Woods, Avenue Q) triumphantly returns to Lyric Stage in a tour-de-force performance of crystalline beauty and enlightenment.

Next will be Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous by Pearl Cleage, running March 20 through April 12, 2026. As a young artist in the 1990s, actress Anna Campbell sparked a theatrical firestorm with a staging of August Wilson monologues spoken from a female perspective performed entirely in the nude. Decades later, her provocative performance that changed the trajectory of her career, rises like a ghost, when it is to be included at a woman’s theater festival. But there’s a catch. A much younger and inexperienced actress whose credits are less than desirable has been asked to perform, causing Anna to spiral in a whirlwind of insecurity and hesitancy. With support from her manager and long-time friend Betty, Anna grapples with the choice to step aside on a road she helped to pave so that a new generation can continue the journey.

Finally, Something Rotten! will close the season, running May 1 through June 7, 2026. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and then there’s Nick and Nigel Bottom. Two brothers stuck in the shadow of a certain Renaissance rock star (Shakespeare), set forth to knock him off his perch by writing the world’s very first musical.  A misinformed soothsayer plants the seeds for this brilliant idea as the task of how to upstage a literary genius without really trying hilariously unfolds. This history-twisting mash-up of sixteenth-century Shakespeare and twenty-first-century Broadway is a love letter to musical theater complete with outrageous characters, dazzling showstoppers, and all the winks and flourishes that make us feel that “with a musical we might have half a chance.”

History of the Lyric Stage Company of Boston

Founded in 1974 and in residence at 140 Clarendon Street since 1991, Lyric Stage Company is Boston’s longest-serving resident theater company. Its mission is to produce and present live theater in Greater Boston with an intimate approach that promotes inclusivity and connection. The Lyric Stage leads an effort to integrate live theater and theater education into the lives of all residents of greater Boston.

Lyric Stage and Beacon Communities, LLC, the owners of 140 Clarendon Street, have agreed that the building will be Lyric Stage’s “forever” home, ensuring that the theater will remain a vital and essential part of the cultural fabric of the city.