B'way/Off-Bway Update: Roundabout 2026-27 Season

Bill Irwin will star
in The Imaginary Invalid for
Roundabout.

Under the new leadership of incoming artistic director Christopher Ashley, Roundabout Theater Company has announced its schedule for the 2026-27 season. The productions will include revivals of classics and musicals as well as new plays.

“As we welcome Christopher Ashley into artistic leadership, this season is a bridge, grounded in what [the late] Todd [Haimes, previous artistic director] built, and intentionally making space for Chris to shape what’s next,” said Scott Ellis, Interim Artistic Director.   
 
“The season Scott and I have shaped builds on what Roundabout has always believed: that theatre can hold the classic and the urgent side by side. We’re proud to have new work anchoring our season, even as we revisit a landmark comedy with fresh eyes and make room for a big, unabashedly entertaining musical,” added Christopher Ashley, Incoming Artistic Director. 

The line-up begins with Tony winner Bill Irwin (Largely New York, Fool Moon) returning to Broadway starring in his own adaptation of Moliere's The Imaginary Invalid, directed by Brandon J. Dirden (Waiting for Godot). Irwin plays Argon, a wealthy hypochondriac who schemes to marry off his daughter to a doctor to save on medical bills. Performance begin in the fall at the Todd Haimes Theater. 

Also in the fall, The Heart, a new musical, will premiere at the Off-Broadway Laura Pels. A young surfer’s life is cut short. A stranger suddenly has a second chance. And the life-force of one beating heart drives two families and a medical team through 24 hours that couldn’t matter more. Playwright Kait Kerrigan (The Great Gatsby) and Anne Eisendrath and Ian Eisendrath (of KPop Demon Hunters) join forces with Tony Award-winning director Christopher Ashley (Roundabout’s incoming artistic director) and choreographer Mandy Moore (Taylor Swift’s Eras tour) to adapt Maylis de Kerangal's 2014 novel Réparer les vivants, in the company's first new Off Broadway musical in years. 

B'way/Off-B'way Update: MTC; Wanted Musical

School Girls or the African Mean Girls Play
at MCC Theater.
Credit: Craig Schwartz

Manhattan Theater Club has announced two productions for its 2026-27 season: The Broadway premiere of Jocelyn Bioh's School Girls; or The African Mean Girls Play and the American premiere of Nick Payne's The Unbelievers. School Girls debuts Off-Broadway at MCC Theater in 2017 and focuses on an elite all-girls school in Ghana where the students are obsessed with an upcoming beauty pageant. Previews begin Sept. 8 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater. Whitney White who has staged Bioh's Jaja's African Hair Braiding for MTC at the Friedman directs. Casting and an opening date TBA.

Off-Broadway, MTC presents Nick Payne's The Unbelievers at City Center Stage I with preview performances beginning Oct. 13. Tony nominee Knud Adams (English) directs. MTC previously presented Payne's Constellations and Incognito. The play is about a family dealing with the disappearance of their teenaged son and how it impacts their faith. Additional MTC productions for the 2026-27 season will be announced soon.

Gun & Powder (now retitled Wanted)
at the Paper Mill Playhouse.
Credit: Jeremy Daniel

In other 2026-27 Broadway news, Wanted, the new musical formerly known as Gun and Powder, will arrive at the James Earl Jones Theater this fall. Previews begin Oct. 15 prior to a Nov. 8 opening. Solea Pfeiffer (Hadestown) and Liisi LaFontaine (Moulin Rouge in the West End) will star as Mary and Martha Clarke, African-American twin sisters who passed as white in 1893 Texas. Wanted features a book and lyrics by Angelica Cheri (descendant of the Sisters Clarke), music by Ross Baum, and choreography by Chelsey Arce  (Sweeney Todd revival, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child).  Obie winner Stevie Walker-Webb directs.

Under the title Gun & Powder, the musical played the Paper Mill Playhouse in Spring 2024 and then had a workshop in June 2025.

Also, two-time Tony winner Kara Young (Purlie Victorious, Purpose) will join the cast of the revival of Proof, replacing Samira Wiley who had to withdraw due to a treatable medical condition. Young joins Ayo Edebiri, Don Cheadle and Jin Ha at the Booth Theater where previews begin March 31, opening April 16.

B'way/Off-B'way Review: Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York); Gruesome Playground Injuries

Sam Tutty and Christiani Pitts in
Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York).
Credit: Matthew Murphy

A pair of two-character shows with differing depictions of amorous connections have recently opened on and Off-Broadway. One is a charming rom-com musical replete with cliches and plot-holes you could drive a truck through. Despite these flaws, Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) is an engaging and lighthearted romp, perfect for holiday fun. Strangers arrives on Broadway after runs in London and the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass. The other Off-Broadway offering, Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries, has no songs, is much darker, complex and more honest in its portrayal of the dysfunctional relationship of two accident-prone outsiders who come in and out of each others’ lives from elementary school to young adulthood.

The elaborately titled Two Strangers takes the basic romcom trope of two previously unacquainted, dissimilar characters meeting in a tense situation, running into conflict and then into each others’ arms. There’s shopping, sightseeing, sex, heartbreak, and an ambiguous resolution. Luckily, Jim Barne and Kit Buchan’s songs and dialogue are snappy and cute enough to overcome the overly familiar story arcs. Tim Jackson’s slick and smooth direction and choreography works perfectly on Sutra Gilmour’s versatile revolving set, employing set pieces in the shape of luggage of varying sizes to suggest multiple scenes in Gotham. 

Sam Tutty and Christiani Pitts in
Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York).
Credit: Matthew Murphy

Sam Tutty and Christiani Pitts are bubbly, bright, and multifaceted as the mismatched pair. Tutt exudes boyish enthusiasm and gleeful hopefulness as Dougal, a lonely British bachelor in New York for the first time to attend the wedding of his estranged dad. Pitts is the somewhat depressed Robin, the sister of the bride (much younger than the groom), who has been tasked with shepherding Dougal and performing a million ceremony-related chores including transport of the titular gateau from Flatbush, Brooklyn to Manhattan. Of course, Dougal’s puppyish eagerness and excitement for the Big Apple at first grates against Robin’s cynical veneer, but they eventually wind up canoodling. Several secrets involving ruptured family relationships for the two are gradually revealed, but too many loose threads are left dangling by the end of their brief time together. 

B'way Update: Glengarry and Purpose Set Dates, Theaters, Etc.

Kieran Culkin

Two Broadway productions have set dates, theaters and casting to nail down the spring 2025 season. The star-studded revival of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross will begin previews at the Palace Theater on March 10 with an opening set for March 31. The play about ruthless Chicago real-estate salesmen will star Kieran Culkin (currently the Best Supporting Actor Oscar front-runner for A Real Pain), Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr, Michael McKean, Donald Webber Jr., Howard W. Overshown and, in his Broadway debut, John Pirruccello. Tony winner Patrick Marber (Leopoldstadt) directs. The Palace is an unusual choice since its large size normally calls for large-scale musicals rather than intimate straight plays. The only straight plays to play the theater have been Frankenstein (1981) which closed after one performance, and Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra (1977) with Rex Harrison and Elizabeth Ashley, which ran 12 performances. Musicals such as Sweet Charity, Applause, La Cage Aux Folles, and Woman of the Year had longer runs.

Tony winner Kara Young (Purlie Victorious) will star in

Kara Young

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Purpose set to begin previews at the Hayes Theater Feb. 25 with an opening set for March 17. Tony winner Phylicia Rashad (A Raisin in the Sun, Skeleton Crew) will make her Broadway directing debut, reprising her staging work with the play's world premiere at the Steppenwolf Theater of Chicago. LaTanya Richardson Jackson will also join the cast. Harry Lennix, Jon Michael Hill, Glenn Davis and Alana Arenas will repeat their Steppenwolf roles. The play centers on a prominent African-American family with each member hiding secrets. 

This accounts for all previously announced Broadway productions, but with the closing of Swept Away, the Longacre is available and a show might snap that one up before spring.