Reasons To Get Excited: Broadway's April Openings

Here we go! With the Tony Award eligibility deadline looming, April is traditionally the busiest month of the Broadway calendar. This year's deadline is April 28th and there are seven big shows to get excited about.

THE FATHER (April 14th): Whenever 3-time Tony Award-winner Frank Langella takes the Broadway stage, it's a major event. Now he's in the center of the American premiere of a the new play by Molière Award winner Florian Zeller, in a translation by two-time Tony Award winner Christopher Hampton with Tony Award winner Doug Hughes directing. Langella plays an 80-year-old man who is starting to wonder if he's losing control of his mind.

AMERICAN PSYCHO (April 21st): BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON's Benjamin Walker returns to musical theatre mode after his dramatic turn as Brick in the 2013 revival of CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF. He's joined by NEXT TO NORMAL's mother/daughter team of Alice Ripley and Jennifer Damiano. Composer/lyricist Duncan Sheik will certainly give them plenty to sing about in Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' chiller set during the 1980s Wall Street boom.

WAITRESS (April 24th): The strong directing hand of Diane Paulus, currently represented in New York by FINDING NEVERLAND, leads Broadway's first four-woman creative team, including composer/lyricist Sara Bareilles, bookwriter Jessie Nelson and choreographer Lorin Latarro. BEAUTIFUL's Tony-winning Best Actress Jessie Mueller returns to town in an inspiring story of empowerment based on the hit movie.

FULLY COMMITTED: (April 25th): Roger Bart and Christopher Fitzgerald were among the stars who took on the multi-character demands of Becky Mode's solo showcase about the insanity of foodie culture during its hit 1999 Off-Broadway run. With a script revised for modern-day technology, Jesse Tyler Ferguson returns to Broadway to take on the 40-character marathon. The MODERN FAMILY star has been busy with television since last seen on the New York stage in THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE and it's great to have him back.

TUCK EVERLASTING (April 26th): With THE BOOK OF MORMAN, ALADDIN and SOMETHING ROTTON! packing them in, Casey Nicholaw is certainly Broadway's hottest director/choreographer. Fans of Chris Miller and Nathan Tyson's bluegrass-inspired score for THE BURNT PART BOYS will be looking forward to the latest from this Fred Ebb Award winning team. Playwright/performer Claudia Shear and former Broadway gypsy turned young readers novelist Tim Federle supply the book, adapted from Natalie Babbitt's award-winning novel, and the cast includes Broadway favorites like Carolee Carmello, Terrence Mann and Andrew Keenan-Bolger.

LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (April 27th): Considered the greatest play by the author many would call America's greatest playwright, Eugene O'Neill's autobiographical drama about a family haunted by a father's disillusions and a mother's addiction premiered sixty years ago with a cast that included Frederic March and Jason Robards. The past five Broadway revivals have attracted powerhouse performances by the likes of Jack Lemmon, Peter Gallagher, Kevin Spacey, Colleen Dewhurst, Brian Dennehy, Vanessa Redgrave and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Now it's time for Jessica Lange and Gabriel Byrne to tackle this demanding classic.

SHUFFLE ALONG, OR, THE MAKING OF THE MUSICAL SENSATION OF 1921 AND ALL THAT FOLLOWED (April 28th): Sure, there's the amazing cast led by Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Billy Porter, Joshua Henry and Brandon Victor Dixon, but a great deal of the excitement surrounding this behind-the-scenes telling of the musical that introduced the songs of Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle to Broadway, is that it's written and directed by George C. Wolfe, one of the theatre's great masters of dramatizing the issues of American race relations.

Which of these April Broadway openings are you most excited for?