When We Were Twenty-one

One day, I thought, you know what? There's one group of songs from the Disney studios, their animated films, that we all grew up with. So many songs that have become part of the American consciousness.

MUSE/IQUE will present BACK TO OZ, tracing Oz from the 1939 MGM film to THE WIZ to WICKED, at the Mark Taper Forum in April 2026, led by Artistic Director Rachael Worby.

For me, the message of this play is that family is the most important thing. Having, keeping, and surviving those family ties and those memories.

Strange Fruit, directed by Venus Cuffs at Joe's Pub on 2/26, is a multimedia protest performance inspired by Billie Holiday's 1939 anti-lynching anthem. An all-LGBTQIA+ cast of Black artists explores resilience and resistance.

Entr'Acte Theatrix is set to stage THE WIZARD OF OZ at the William G. Skaff Center in West Palm Beach from February 26 to March 14. This production, based on the beloved 1939 film, features classic songs and timeless characters, offering a nostalgic experience for audiences.

In PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK: THE MUSICAL, Gold’s score makes it clear that this is not a mystery you simply watch. It’s a mystery you enter. The music becomes a kind of weather system that circles, shifts, and pulls the audience along.

It wasn’t until later on in theatre history that revivals began including shows that weren’t initially well received or financially successful in their initial engagements. As musical theatre continued to evolve, and more shows entered the canon, a consensus began to grow about shows being worthy of additional exploration even if they hadn’t been hits the first time around. What about musicals that had been ahead of their time, musicals that had fallen prey to circumstances, early works by writers who became successful later on, and of course, shows that found an audience after closing via their cast recordings?

Center Theatre Group is offering a slate of artistic programming that helps identify and support the next generation of great plays and playwrights. Learn more!

The benefit of a stage production means it will always be malleable to change, always willing to look at how a story written in the past can still be relevant in the present, and remain timeless for the future. What follows in this new production of The Wiz is a recontextualization of our favorite characters. While the structure of the story is faithful to the Baum novel and MGM film, it comes with small, but noticeable details that reframe this familiar story not just as a fantastical quest, but as a bildungsroman and revenge tale at the same time.

Broadway currently boasts 41 theaters. This number has always been ever-changing—since even before the first time the word “Broadway” was used to describe professional theater in New York.

Each adaptation and retelling of the story brings a fresh perspective to the classic tale about Dorothy, Toto, The Scarecrow, The Tinman, The Cowardly Lion, The Wicked Witch of the West, Glinda the Good Witch, and The Wizard.

Next week, 54 BELOW will present some of the brightest stars from Broadway, cabaret, jazz, and beyond, including Jenn Colella, and more. See the full lineup here.

A new version of the classic, The Pirates of Penzance, is currently commanding the stage at Roundabout’s Todd Haimes Theatre on 42nd Street—formerly the American Airlines and before that, the Selwyn. This revisal of the beloved show is titled: Pirates! The Penzance Musical.

Next month, 54 BELOW will present some of the brightest stars from Broadway, cabaret, jazz, and beyond, including Tracie Thoms, Jenn Colella and more. See the full lineup here!

May at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts will feature the New York premiere of Backbone, and more. See the full lineup here and learn how to attend upcoming events!

Main Street Theater (MST) is celebrating 50 years of engaging theater for curious and thoughtful audiences of all ages. 2025-2026 marks the 50th Season for Main Street Theater and will include seven productions.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has unveiled its 2025–26 season running from September 17, 2025, through May 3, 2026. Learn more about the season programming here!

Broadway stars and real-life couple and triple-threat performers Nicolas Dromard and Desiree Davar are making their debut at the Catalina Jazz Club with Nic & Desi: From Broadway to Hollywood on Thursday May 10. I decided to speak with them about their illustrious careers, how they met, and what led to bringing their new show to Los Angeles prior to taking the show on the road.

Some of the shows that the Orpheum has been best known for are Stomp, which ran there for an astounding 29 years, from 1994 to 2023, and the original production of Little Shop of Horrors which spent over five years at the theater from 1982 to 1987. 

This past season was the year of the drama in St. Louis Theater. Patrons returned to the theatre in droves and many of the regional companies experienced strong box office with sold-out or extended runs. Tesseract Theater Company had a breakout year, placing two productions on this top 10 list. The Black Rep, ERA, They Muny, New Jewish Theater, The Repertory Theater of St. Louis, and STAGES St. Louis all benefited from positive word of mouth and strong single ticket box office sales thanks to their marvelous seasons and well-reviewed productions.  

Led by a brilliant performance by Jason Alexander, this lively, emotionally-grounded, classic-leaning staging still somehow manages to feel fresh, reinvigorated, and much more searing than prior iterations.This latest SoCal-area revival of the landmark 1964 musical—here directed by Lonny Price—is, at its most impressive core, one of the most thoughtful, winningly-engaging stage musicals of the year thus far, and is a definite must-not-miss production.

If you are seeing any of the below productions in 2024/25, check out how you can study up beforehand or unpack afterwards!

To prepare for the big moment of seeing the tale on screen, BroadwayWorld has put together a list of film projects that we think are worth viewing or revisiting before Wicked flies into theaters on November 22.

STAGES St. Louis production of RAGTIME is exquisite and an important piece of Americana. The symphonic quality of the Ahrens and Flaherty score has many beautiful sections, and the relevance of the story is timeless. The slowly unfolding narrative is told nicely through Goodwin’s focused direction, the competent performances of the accomplished cast, the gifted musical direction and accompaniment, and the polished work of the technical theater professionals. RAGTIME does not reach the grand heights of the other epic musicals that have become a global phenomenon. But, it is certainly monumental in its storytelling and deserves to be seen, especially this beautifully staged production at STAGES St. Louis.

America's oldest Bach Choir, the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, has announced that the Moravian Church Settlements of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, together with Herrnhut, Germany, and Gracehill, UK have just been granted UNESCO World Heritage status.