Broadway Buying Guide: October 14, 2024- OUR TOWN, GYPSY, and More

Looking for the best deals on Broadway shows? Welcome to our new weekly guide to the most popular shows listed on BroadwayWorld.

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1) Our Town Buy Tickets from: $74 - Starring four-time Emmy Award® winner Jim Parsons, Our Town returns to Broadway for the first time in over 20 years. Hailed by Edward Albee as “the greatest American play ever written,” Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning classic will shine in a momentous new production. Directed by Tony Award® winner Kenny Leon (Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch, Topdog/Underdog, A Raisin in the Sun), this is an Our Town for our time. In Wilder’s timeless tale of a small town, a stage manager narrates the daily lives of its locals, depicts a childhood friendship turn into marriage, and sets the stage for magnificent truths of what it means to be alive. Don’t miss this strictly limited engagement of an essential American classic.

2) Gypsy Buy Tickets - According to The New York Times, “Audra McDonald has become to the American theater what Meryl Streep is to film — a star of unstinting polish and versatility. Ms. McDonald embosses any production in which she appears with a good-value guarantee.” GYPSY reunites George C. Wolfe, whom The New Yorker calls “a titan of the American theatre,” with Audra McDonald, after their collaboration on the 2016 Tony-nominated production of Shuffle Along, or, The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed. The Tony Awards Administration Committee recently announced that this June, George C. Wolfe will receive the 2024 Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre. Since GYPSY premiered on Broadway in 1959, starring Ethel Merman, many of the greatest performers in Broadway history have taken on the iconic role of “Rose”: Angela Lansbury in 1974, Tyne Daly in 1989, Bernadette Peters in 2003, and Patti LuPone in 2008. Now… it’s Audra’s turn.

3) Chicago Buy Tickets from: $75 - Set amidst the razzle-dazzle decadence of the 1920s, Chicago is the story of Roxie Hart, a housewife and nightclub dancer who murders her on-the-side lover after he threatens to walk out on her. Desperate to avoid conviction, she dupes the public, the media and her rival cellmate, Velma Kelly, by hiring Chicago's slickest criminal lawyer to transform her malicious crime into a barrage of sensational headlines, the likes of which might just as easily be ripped from today's tabloids. A true New York City institution, Chicago is the longest running American musical in Broadway history.

4) Hell's Kitchen Buy Tickets from: $55 - In the mid 90’s, in an apartment high above the energy and grit of Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, 17-year-old Ali squints toward the horizon until she can just see the Hudson River. Despite the warnings of her protective mother, the symphony of the street calls to her—promising freedom, excitement, and the possibility of love. Finding herself. When a wise piano teacher helps her find her voice, Ali learns she can make the city her own. Don’t miss this exhilarating, joyful, coming-of-age story filled with that New York Grit about chasing your dreams, honoring your roots, identity and finding your voice. Directed by four-time Tony Award® nominee Michael Greif, with choreography by Tony Award nominee Camille A. Brown, a book by Pulitzer Prize finalist Kristopher Diaz, and featuring Keys’ new original songs and iconic anthems—in a story inspired by her own NY experience—HELL’S KITCHEN is the kind of Broadway musical dreams are made of.

5) Hadestown Buy Tickets from: $62 - In Hadestown, a song can change your fate. This Tony-winning new musical by Anaïs Mitchell and innovative director Rachel Chavkin is a love story for today, and always. Intertwining two mythic Greek tales - that of young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice, and of King Hades and his wife Persephone - Hadestown invites you on a journey to the underworld and back. Mitchell's alluring melodies and Chavkin's poetic imagination pit industry against nature, doubt against faith, and fear against love, with art perhaps being the one thing that can save it all. Hadestown is a haunting and hopeful theatrical experience that grabs you and never lets go.

6) Suffs Buy Tickets from: $68 - Following a sold-out, extended run at The Public Theater, Suffs arrives on Broadway next spring — and not a moment too soon. From the singular mind of Shaina Taub, this “remarkable, epic new musical” (Variety), boldly explores the victories and failures of a struggle for equality that’s far from over. It’s 1913 and the women’s movement is heating up in America, anchored by the suffragists — “Suffs,” as they call themselves — and their relentless pursuit of the right to vote. Reaching across and against generational, racial, and class divides, these brilliant, flawed women entertain and inspire us with the story of their hard-won victory in an ongoing fight. So much has changed since the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment over a century ago, and yet we’re reminded sometimes we need to look back, in order to march fearlessly into the future.

7) Elf The Musical Buy Tickets - Elf The Musical is the hilarious and heartwarming tale of Buddy (Tony Award® nominee Grey Henson), a young orphan whose life is changed forever when he mistakenly crawls into Santa’s sack of toys one Christmas Eve. Raised by elves at the North Pole, Buddy’s enormous size and limited toy-making abilities make him realize he may not quite fit in! When he discovers he is actually human, Buddy embarks on a journey to New York City to find his birth father, and in turn, helps the Big Apple and the people he meets rediscover the true meaning of Christmas. Hailed by Time Out as “a slickly irresistible and fizzily enjoyable confection of a show” that will “whirl you up in a technicolor dream of Christmas,” this modern-day holiday classic returns home to Broadway in an acclaimed new, record-breaking production that “has the magic to send you out of the theatre smiling and singing” (The Times of London).

8) Wicked Buy Tickets from: $124 - Before Dorothy, before the flying house, and before the yellow brick road, there was Elphaba and Galinda. Born with emerald-green skin, Elphaba is smart, fiery, misunderstood and possesses extraordinary talent. When circumstances force her to room with the bubbly blonde and exceptionally popular, Galinda, their initial rivalry turns into the unlikeliest of friendships. From the first electrifying note to the final breathtaking moment, Wicked tells the story of Oz that you've never heard.

9) Hamilton Buy Tickets from: $124 - A revolutionary story of passion, unstoppable ambition, and the dawn of a new nation. HAMILTON is the epic saga that follows the rise of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton as he fights for honor, love, and a legacy that would shape the course of a nation. Based on Ron Chernow’s acclaimed biography and set to a score that blends hip-hop, jazz, R&B, and Broadway, HAMILTON has had a profound impact on culture, politics, and education. HAMILTON features book, music, and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, direction by Thomas Kail, choreography by Andy Blankenbuehler, and musical supervision and orchestrations by Alex Lacamoire. In addition to its 11 Tony Awards, it has won Grammy®, Olivier Awards, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and an unprecedented special citation from the Kennedy Center Honors.

10) Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club Buy Tickets from: $74 - Willkommen. Bienvenue. Welcome to the Kit Kat Club. Home to an intimate and electrifying new production of CABARET. Experience this groundbreaking musical like never before. The denizens of the Kit Kat Club have created a decadent sanctuary Inside Broadway’s August Wilson Theatre, where artists and performers, misfits and outsiders rule the night. Step inside their world. This is Berlin. Relax. Loosen up. Be yourself. London’s hottest ticket arrives on Broadway this Spring with Academy® and Tony Award® winner Eddie Redmayne reprising his Olivier Award-winning performance as the Emcee, and introducing Gayle Rankin as the Toast of Mayfair, Sally Bowles. CABARET has music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb and a book by Joe Masteroff – based on the play by John Van Druten and stories by Christopher Isherwood.

This Week's Top Off-Broadway Shows

1) King Lear Buy Tickets - Kenneth Branagh plays the title role in a new production of William Shakespeare’s King Lear, set in the barbarous landscape of Ancient Britain. Featuring a cast of rising stars from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art directed by Branagh, this production releases the play’s power and turmoil in a fast-paced staging. In playing Lear, Branagh completes a trifecta of great Shakespearean tragic roles, complementing past appearances as Hamlet in his Academy Award–nominated film version of the play (1996) and on stage as Macbeth in a celebrated immersive production (2014). This strictly limited, exclusive US engagement of King Lear runs for 50 performances only.

2) SHIT. MEET. FAN. Buy Tickets from: $118 - Here’s the game… Phones Out. Face Up. Volume High. Every text, every email, every call must be shared aloud. That’s what a group of long-time friends gather to play on the night of the eclipse. With the cocktails flowing among grownups who refuse to grow up, outrageous secrets and skeletons begin to emerge… SHIT. MEET. FAN. Are they ready for the ensuing chaos? Are you? The mayhem unfolds in real time in this World Premiere uproarious new satire written and directed by Tony Award nominee ROBERT O’HARA (SLAVE PLAY, MCC’S BLKS, BOOTYCANDY).

3) The Big Gay Jamboree Buy Tickets from: $43 - From the Oscar-nominated producer of BARBIE and the delulu creator of the Off-Broadway hit TITANIQUE comes THE BIG GAY JAMBOREE, a big new musical comedy that’s pushing the envelope…and the gay agenda. Help! Stacey’s fallen into a musical and she can’t get out. Last night, she got a little bit blackout drunk. This morning, she woke up in some b*tch ass Music Man world where everybody keeps bursting into song & dance, and where gay still just means happy. Maybe it’s a dream. Maybe it’s an allergic reaction to her birth control. Or maybe it’s Maybelline (don’t sue us! sponsor us? we’ll talk later). But if Stacey’s truly trapped inside a Golden Age musical, there’s only one way out: sing out! Or find the stage door. Whatever gets the most applause. Starring one of Vanity Fair’s “brightest stars of New York theatre” and the world’s second favorite Celine Dion, Marla Mindelle, The Big Gay Jamboree is here to make you laugh, make you cry laughing, and make you laugh crying.

4) Ragtime Buy Tickets from: $185 - Ragtime follows three fictional families in pursuit of the American Dream at the turn of the 20th century: Black pianist Coalhouse Walker Jr. (Joshua Henry) and his sweetheart Sarah, a wealthy white family led by Mother (Caissie Levy), and Latvian immigrant Tateh (Brandon Uranowitz) along with his Little Girl. This gala production is led by Tony-nominated Encores! Artistic Director Lear deBessonet (Once Upon a Mattress, Into the Woods).

5) The Counter Buy Tickets from: $63 - Every morning at the local diner in a small town, a waitress refills a regular’s coffee. An unlikely friendship develops and keeps him coming back for more. But when he asks for a shocking favor, it brings to light both of their deepest secrets. The Counter is a funny, surprising, and moving meditation on the everyday connections that can change our lives. After the success of Too Much, Too Much, Too Many and Napoli, Brooklyn, playwright Meghan Kennedy debuts her next Roundabout commission, The Counter. Directed by Tony Award® winner David Cromer (The Band’s Visit).

6) Little Shop of Horrors Buy Tickets from: $87 - Seymour is a down-on-his-luck florist with a crush on his co-worker Audrey. When he discovers a mysterious – and voracious – plant, suddenly Seymour and Audrey are thrust into an epic battle that will determine the fate of the entire human race. Little Shop of Horrors made its highly-anticipated return home to Off-Broadway, in an intimate new production directed by Michael Mayer that offers an unprecedented opportunity to get close — maybe too close — to an incredible plant with an insatiable appetite.

7) Drag: The Musical Buy Tickets from: $48 - In DRAG: The Musical, two Drag Houses, both alike in indignity, vie for supremacy in a wig-snatching journey of fashion, family, and forgiveness. After a bitter split, two estranged queens bring their already simmering tensions to a boiling point when they open competing clubs. In this queen-eat-queen tale of spite and survival, there’s only one rule: No Lip Synching Allowed. Entertainment Weekly calls it, “drag at its best” and BroadwayWorld raves, “They hit the ball out of the park. Rowdy fun with the glamor of a Broadway musical.” The “epic cast of drag, theater, and LGBTQ+ icons” (Entertainment Tonight) features Alaska Thunderf*ck (through 1/11/25), Jujubee, Jan Sport, Lagoona Bloo, J. Elaine Marcos and features New Kids on the Block’s, Joey McIntyre (through 11/24/24).

8) The Wind and The Rain: A Story about Sunny’s Bar Buy Tickets - At the end of Conover Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn, on the waterfront, there is a bar called Sunny’s. For over one hundred years, it’s been run by one family, through booms and busts, prohibition and pandemics, blight and gentrification. It’s been home to dreamers and immigrants, artists, bootleggers, longshoremen, union bosses, corrupt police, numbers runners, bluegrass musicians, and hipsters. And to Tone Johansen, who fought to save it after Hurricane Sandy, against incredible odds. Created by Obie Award winners Sarah Gancher (playwright) and Jared Mezzocchi (director/designer), [and produced by En Garde Arts in partnership with Vineyard Theatre], The Wind and The Rain uses cutting edge design technology to bridge the past and present of Red Hook. Beginning at the Waterfront Barge Museum and ending at Sunny’s Bar, this site-specific theatrical experience invites audiences to situate themselves within the history of a neighborhood, a family, a storied gathering place, and the currents of time and nature that have shaped it all.

9) Deep History Buy Tickets from: $82 - At the end of 2019, in the English countryside, Australian playwright David Finnigan began writing a play about the six turning points that have brought us to this moment in time—our ecosystems transformed, our planet on the brink of unthinkable climate disaster. But then Finnigan's hometown of Canberra was hit by bushfires. As an area the size of England burned and one billion animals perished, he started to receive texts from loved ones racing to evacuate amid the devastation. In a performance that interweaves 75,000 years of humanity with the incredibly personal account of his best friend’s escape, Finnigan calls on scientific research, phone footage, and a very personal story to illuminate the transforming planet and how we’ve arrived here. An extraordinary ride through human history, DEEP HISTORY is shot through with humor and glowing with hope.

10) Another Shot Buy Tickets from: $60 - Another Shot is a humorous and heartfelt ode to recovery and the community that makes it possible. It is based loosely on the real-life experiences of Chicago sports radio personality Harry Teinowitz, whose career and life were put in jeopardy following an arrest for DUI. Co-written by former ESPN personality and playwright Spike Manton (Leaving Iowa), Another Shot tells the outrageous, infuriating, and hilarious story of an alcoholic on the edge of blowing up his life when he finally confronts the inarguable truth of his behavior and how it is affecting his family, his life, and his liver.