Old Globe 2025 Season Includes World Premiere Musical from LEGALLY BLONDE Writers & More
Season also includes West Coast and San Diego premiere plays and two of Shakespeare's popular comedies.
By: A.A. Cristi Sep. 13, 2024
The Old Globe has announced its 2025 Season, including a lineup of new musicals and plays, West Coast and San Diego premieres, and two of Shakespeare’s popular comedies.
The season features two world premiere musical comedies, Regency Girls with book by Emmy Award-winning writers Jen Crittenden (“Seinfeld”) and Gabrielle Allan (“Scrubs”), music by three-time Emmy-nominated composer Curtis Moore (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”), lyrics by two-time Tony and Grammy nominee Amanda Green (Bring It On: The Musical), and directed and choreographed by Josh Rhodes (Broadway’s Spamalot, The Old Globe’s Cabaret); and Huzzah! with book, music, and lyrics by Olivier Award winners and Tony Award nominees Nell Benjamin (Legally Blonde, Mean Girls, The Old Globe’s Come Fall in Love – The DDLJ Musical) and Laurence O’Keefe (Legally Blonde, Heathers the Musical, Bat Boy), and directed by Lortel Award winner Annie Tippe (Off Broadway’s Octet).
The lineup also has three world premiere plays: the Globe-commissioned, poignant and funny new work Empty Ride by San Diego Theatre Critics Circle winner Keiko Green (The Old Globe’s Exotic Deadly, Or the MSG Play) and directed by Sivan Battat (Playwrights Horizons’ In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot; the heartwarming comedy House of India by MacDowell Colony fellow Deepak Kumar and directed by Drama Desk nominee Zi Alikhan (Primary Stage’s On That Day in Amsterdam, Pasadena Playhouse’s Sanctuary City); and the evocative and powerful play The Janeiad by Anna Ziegler (The Old Globe’s The Wanderers, The Last Match) and directed by Tyne Rafaeli (Second Stage’s Spain, Lincoln Center Theater’s The Coast Starlight).
The Globe will also produce two West Coast premiere plays, starting with the psychological thriller Deceived by playwrights Johnna Wright and Patty Jamieson (Shaw Festival’s Gaslight), adapted from Gas Light by Patrick Hamilton, and directed by NAACP Award-winner Delicia Turner Sonnenberg (The Old Globe’s Trouble in Mind, Skeleton Crew); and the critically-acclaimed autobiographical tour-de-force Small written and performed by Drama Desk nominee Robert Montano (Off-Broadway’s Small, Broadway’s On the Town as Ozzie) and directed by Drama Desk nominee Jessi D. Hill. And the season will feature two San Diego premiere plays: the acclaimed family drama Appropriate by Pulitzer Prize Finalist Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Signature Theatre’s The Comeuppance, Yale Repertory Theatre’s Girls), which will kick off the theatre’s season in January 2025. Appropriate will be directed by Steve H. Broadnax III (Broadway’s Thoughts of a Colored Man, The Public Theater’s Sally and Tom); and the hilarious comedy One of the Good Ones by Gloria Calderón Kellett (Netflix’s Emmy Award–winning “One Day at a Time,” Pasadena Playhouse’s One of the Good Ones) and directed by Kimberly Senior (Broadway’s Disgraced).
The Globe’s Summer Shakespeare Festival includes two of the Bard’s most popular comedies, All’s Well That Ends Well and The Comedy of Errors. Craig Noel Award nominee James Vásquez (The Old Globe’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas!) will direct The Comedy of Errors.
The Old Globe’s fourth production of the 2025 Season, which will play on the Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage, will be announced at a later date.
“The Old Globe’s 2025 lineup has it all: musicals, comedy, drama, and Shakespeare: something for everyone, and everything that makes this theatre one of the nation’s greatest,” said Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director Barry Edelstein. “The stories we’re telling in this season are bright and meaningful, fun and moving. They focus on big American themes: family, legacy, heritage, and community. And they do so with a light touch, making us laugh as much as they make us think. As always at the Globe, the artists coming to San Diego are theatre-makers at the top of the field. These are the directors, writers, composers, choreographers, designers and actors who shape American entertainment and forge the future of the American stage. In a range of styles, about a range of communities, this slate of shows is as exciting as any the Globe has presented. I’m proud to share it with our audiences and delighted to invite San Diego to join us for a brilliant year of great theatre!”
The Old Globe 2025 SEASON:
Appropriate
San Diego premiere
By Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Directed by Steve H. Broadnax III
January 25 – February 23, 2025 (opening: Thursday, Jan. 30)
The comic drama from Pulitzer Prize finalist Branden Jacobs-Jenkins that The New York Times called “subversively original… remarkable and devious.” The estranged siblings of the Lafayette family gather to settle their late father’s Arkansas estate. Amid the clutter they uncover a shocking relic, forcing them to confront long-buried secrets and decades of resentment. As tensions boil over and the cicadas roar, the family faces unsettling truths about their past and how it has shaped them. Directed by Steve H. Broadnax III (Broadway’s Thoughts of a Colored Man), this Tony Award–winning play is a searing and bitingly funny portrait of family, history, and legacy.
Regency Girls
World premiere musical
Book by Jen Crittenden and Gabrielle Allan
Music by Curtis Moore
Lyrics by Amanda Green
Directed and choreographed by Josh Rhodes
April 2 – May 4, 2025 (opening: Thursday, April 10)
A world premiere musical comedy from the brilliant minds of two-time Tony and Grammy nominee Amanda Green (Mr. Saturday Night, Hands On A Hardbody, Bring It On: The Musical), three-time Emmy-nominated composer Curtis Moore (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”), and Emmy-winning writers Jen Crittenden (“Seinfeld”) and Gabrielle Allan (“Scrubs”). Elinor Benton is in a predicament: she’s pregnant, unmarried, and living in 19th-century England. What’s a young woman to do? Facing certain ruin, she gathers up her best friends and sets off on the ultimate road trip to find the one woman who might offer a chance to change her fate. This epic journey, equal parts hilarious and profound, transforms each of them as they try to shape their own futures. This raucous and daring new musical, directed and choreographed by Josh Rhodes (Broadway’s Spamalot, the Globe’s Cabaret), is a riotous adventure of love, rebellion, autonomy, and self-discovery.
One of the Good Ones
San Diego premiere
By Gloria Calderón Kellett
Directed by Kimberly Senior
May 24 – June 22, 2025 (opening: Thursday, May 29)
A hilarious and heartwarming new comedy from acclaimed writer Gloria Calderón Kellett (Netflix’s Emmy Award–winning “One Day at a Time”). When Yoli brings her new boyfriend home to meet her Latino American parents, he’s not exactly what they were expecting. Everyone tries to be on their best behavior, but generational differences and cultural assumptions collide. Through equal measures of comedy and compassion, they all discover what it truly means to be a family. Directed by Kimberly Senior, the laugh-out-loud One of the Good Ones was acclaimed by the Los Angeles Times as “a theatrical comedy in the sitcom tradition of Norman Lear.”
July – August, 2025 - Production to be announced
Huzzah!
World premiere musical
Book, music, and lyrics by Nell Benjamin and Laurence O’Keefe
Directed by Annie Tippe
September 13 – October 19, 2025 (opening: Thursday, Sept. 25)
Gather ye lords and ladies, fairies and wizards, knights and dragons at the Kingsbridge Midsummer Renaissance Faire, which comes to glorious life in the world premiere musical comedy Huzzah! Two sisters, one a princess and one who works in insurance, must stop fighting to save their father’s Renaissance Faire from financial ruin (and the occasional mead based fire). When they gamble the payroll to hire the greatest swordsman on the whole Ren Faire circuit, will things go fair or foul at the Faire? Don thy doublet, cinch thy corset, and grab a turkey leg for a midsummer night’s screamingly funny musical by Olivier Award winners and Tony Award nominees Laurence O’Keefe (Legally Blonde, Heathers the Musical, Bat Boy) and Nell Benjamin (Legally Blonde, Mean Girls, the Globe’s Come Fall in Love – The DDLJ Musical), and directed by Lortel Award-winning Annie Tippe (Off Broadway’s Octet).
Empty Ride
Globe-commissioned world premiere
By Keiko Green
Directed by Sivan Battat
February 8 – March 2, 2025 (opening: Thursday, Feb. 13)
A major new American play that first launched in the 2024 Powers New Voices Festival. Kisa, a painter in Paris, returns to her small Japanese hometown after the 2011 tsunami to help her ailing father by driving his taxi cab. But as she navigates the winding streets and transports her eccentric passengers, she is haunted by the supernatural remnants of what the floodwaters left behind. This Globe-commissioned world premiere from Keiko Green (Exotic Deadly, Or the MSG Play) is a funny and poignant story that explores the uncanny ways that love can transcend loss.
House of India
World premiere
By Deepak Kumar
Directed by Zi Alikhan
May 10 – June 1, 2025 (opening: Thursday, May 15)
Ananya runs House of India, a once-successful restaurant in a strip mall outside of Cleveland. Her cook Jacob has an idea to bring in more customers: ditch the traditional dishes and embrace a trendy, fusion-forward menu (think “Indian Chipotle”). Her two grown children have their own views too. As the bills and worries pile up, Ananya must choose: hold on to her late husband’s vision, or compromise in the name of progress. Directed by Zi Alikhan, this heartwarming world premiere comedy from San Diego playwright Deepak Kumar features a vibrant cast of characters who work to build a restaurant, a legacy, and a new kind of American Dream.
The Janeiad
World premiere
By Anna Ziegler
Directed by Tyne Rafaeli
June 21 – July 13, 2025 (opening: Thursday, June 26)
In The Odyssey, Penelope’s long wait is rewarded when her husband Odysseus returns home 20 years after leaving to fight in the Trojan War. Will the same be true for Jane in modern-day Brooklyn, 20 years after her husband left for work one fateful September morning? The acclaimed Tyne Rafaeli directs this poetic and touching play about longing, hope, and the myths we tell ourselves just to get through the day. The Janeiad, a wry contemplation of the evocative power of storytelling, marks the Globe’s third collaboration with Anna Ziegler, following The Wanderers and The Last Match.
Deceived
West Coast premiere
By Johnna Wright and Patty Jamieson
Adapted from Gas Light by Patrick Hamilton
Directed by Delicia Turner Sonnenberg
August 9 – August 31, 2025 (opening: Thursday, Aug. 14)
Deceived, based on the classic play Gas Light, is a psychological thriller that will enthrall Globe audiences, as did 2022’s smash hit Dial M for Murder. Bella Manningham’s new husband seems the doting partner, but when she sees the gaslights dim and he claims they have not, she begins to suspect the strange occurrences aren’t just in her head. Johnna Wright and Patty Jamieson’s exhilarating new adaptation of the beloved mystery, directed by Globe Resident Artist Delicia Turner Sonnenberg (The Old Globe’s Trouble in Mind, Skeleton Crew), blows the dust off a classic, and is “a very satisfying piece of theatrical reinvention” (Toronto Star).
Small
West Coast premiere
Written and performed by Robert Montano
Directed by Jessi D. Hill
September 27 – October 19, 2025 (opening: Thursday, Oct. 2)
An autobiographical tour-de-force that The Wall Street Journal called “a gripping and vividly acted one-man show.” Bobby from Long Island is a small kid with a big dream. Bullied since childhood, his small stature finally wins him respect and success on the racetrack as a jockey.
But when his body begins to grow, his dreams seem to slip away, and he must decide how far he’ll go to hold on to glory. From racing horses at Belmont Park to dancing on Broadway stages, Robert Montano brings his own breathtaking career to life onstage under the direction of Jessi D. Hill.
All’s Well That Ends Well
By William Shakespeare
June 8 – July 6, 2025 (opening: Saturday, June 14)
One of Shakespeare’s wittiest comedies comes to life on the Globe’s outdoor stage. Helena is in love with the aristocrat Bertram, while he’s more interested in running off to war than in romance. But strong-willed Helena can’t be deterred, and as she moves mountains and conjures miracles to gain his affection, the play winds into flights of hilarity and passion. Clever and charming, this romantic comedy is the perfect night of theatre under the stars.
The Comedy of Errors
By William Shakespeare
Directed by James Vásquez
July 27 – August 24, 2025 (opening: Saturday, Aug. 2)
Merriment and mayhem come to life in Shakespeare’s uproarious comedy, last produced at The Old Globe in 2015. Immediately after arriving in a new town, a young man and his sidekick are mistaken for their own long-lost twins, and everyone’s lives are turned upside down as mistaken identities, confused lovers, and all kinds of shenanigans ensue. Globe Resident Artist James Vásquez makes his triumphant return to the Summer Shakespeare Festival after directing 2023’s knockout comic hit The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Additional programming will be announced throughout the season.
Tickets for The Old Globe’s 2025 Season are currently available by subscription only. Five play subscription packages start at $125. For more information or to purchase a subscription, visit www.TheOldGlobe.org or call at (619) 23-GLOBE (234-5623).
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