Beyond Broadway

Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera as you've never been allowed to see it: at arm's length, in a Paris Opera House you walk through, with the cast moving around you. Sixty guests per show, no proscenium, no balcony. Tony winner Diane Paulus directs, with the Phantom rotating across a roster of seasoned veterans including Hugh Panaro.

Two NHL stars on rival teams sneak away to the same hotel room every time they meet. Their fans don't know. Their teammates don't know. The musical-parody of the bestselling queer romance plays it sweaty and earnest at once, with Broadway's Jay Armstrong Johnson and Jimin Moon belting through a hockey-locker-room love story. Late-night camp.

1967. A teenager checks into a psychiatric hospital under murky circumstances and finds herself caught between the doctors deciding her future and the young women on the ward who actually see her. The world premiere stage adaptation of Susanna Kaysen's memoir, with songs by Aimee Mann from her Queens of the Summer Hotel album and King Princess in the cast.

Six middle-school misfits walk onstage to compete in a county spelling bee, each one armed with a complicated home life and a single shot at the trip to Nationals. The Tony-winning musical's first major New York return in twenty years, with Jon Cryer, Kevin McHale, and Laura Marano in the cast. Funny, surprisingly moving, the rare family musical that's actually written for adults too.

Defend yourself, protect your career, or betray your peers. The choice Hollywood artists faced when called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the late 1940s. Eric Bentley assembled the docudrama from the original transcripts, and a rotating cast (Bob Odenkirk, Molly Ringwald, Norbert Leo Butz, Santino Fontana, and more) reads the words of Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman, and Elia Kazan across the 15-week run.

Summer 1969. A Brooklyn housewife arrives at the same Catskills bungalow colony she goes to every year, only this time the country is putting a man on the moon, Woodstock is happening around the corner, and a charming stranger turns up at her door. The 1999 film becomes a musical at the Laura Pels, with Talia Suskauer leading and songs by AnnMarie Milazzo.

An amateur theater troupe is staging The Murder at Haversham Manor, and absolutely everything that can go wrong does. The corpse can't lie still, the leading lady gets knocked unconscious, the set keeps collapsing, and the actors keep performing anyway. Olivier Award-winning slapstick at New World Stages since 2019. Good for ages 8 and up.

Built around a story of childhood wonder rather than a string of tricks, Jamie Allan's show fuses 80s nostalgia with high-tech illusion, the audience close enough to spot the seams (and still miss them). The highest-rated magic show in New York, direct from London's West End. Penn and Teller went, and signed off. Family-friendly without trying too hard.

A doctor with serious credentials is nominated for Surgeon General, until a minor personal lapse (missed jury duty) gets seized by the press and turns the confirmation into a public referendum on ambitious women. Wendy Wasserstein's 1997 political comedy gets a sharp revival at Pershing Square Signature, with Montego Glover, Robert Sean Leonard, and Jean Lichty leading.

Ten young adult performers take turns telling real stories about identity, family, sexuality, and not fitting the box they were handed. The score moves between original songs and familiar anthems like "Born This Way" and "Rise Up," created by Drew Lachey (98 Degrees) and his wife Lea. At The Duke on 42nd Street, 90 minutes, no intermission.

A tech entrepreneur tells his three closest friends he's built an algorithm that knows them better than they know themselves, and they should let it run their lives. The thriller asks whether that's friendship or recruitment. John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman, Tenet) makes his off-Broadway turn at the Pershing Square Signature, in a new play by Andrew Stein.

HERE Arts Center hosts exactly the kind of show it was built for: one comedian, seventy minutes, and no fourth wall to hide behind. Bryan Safi's Edinburgh Fringe hit blends stand-up, storytelling, music, and theatrical confession into a spiral of anxiety and people-pleasing that lands hardest in a small room where he can see your face.

Atlantic Theater Company's Linda Gross Theater stages the new drama from playwright Bubba Weiler and director Jack Serio, fresh off their acclaimed Well, I'll Let You Go. When a lost young man takes shelter in their church, two altar boys hold on to each other as changing faiths and changing bodies threaten to pull them apart. Five weeks only, in the kind of intimate Chelsea house this story was written for.

Comedian Cat Cohen turned a stroke at 30 (caused by an actual hole in her heart) into a one-woman musical comedy, now at the West Village's Lucille Lortel through Sep 5. She sings her way through mortality, hypochondria, and the refusal to surrender main-character status, in the kind of intimate room where confessional comedy actually lands. Sold out the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe before crossing the Atlantic.