Interview: Executive Director Eric Olmscheid Speaks on Wharton Center's 2025-26 Broadway Series

East Lansing’s Wharton Center has officially announced their 2025-26 Broadway series. The season ticket package includes A Beautiful Noise in September, The Wiz in December, Back to the Future: The Musical in January, Kimberly Akimbo in March, Clue in April and & Juliet in June. There are also two add-on productions, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast in October and Hadestown in January / February. 

BroadwayWorld Michigan had the pleasure of speaking with Wharton Center's Executive Director Eric Olmscheid about their upcoming Broadway series. Read our conversation below!
 

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BroadwayWorld Michigan: Can you tell me a bit about your role and helping to choose the shows that come to Wharton Center? 

Eric Olmscheid: I serve as the executive director at Wharton Center. In that role, I am the primary curator of our performing arts and Broadway series events. I’m also a Tony voter, so I’m in New York 6-8 times a year to see the shows as they open and wear a dual hat – both thinking about the Tony Awards and recognition of our industry, but also previewing all [of the new shows] to see what will come to East Lansing in the subsequent seasons. 

What did you find unique about each of the Broadway shows coming to Wharton Center next year? 

What’s really great, is [that] out of the 8 shows, 3 won Best Musical for their original productions. That’s Hadestown, Kimberly Akimbo and The Wiz. Pretty remarkable. That’s all 3 in the same season. 

A Beautiful Noise is the true life retelling of Neil Diamond’s story. It includes all of his favorite songs and hits that audiences know. What I think is really interesting about this show is that it tells the story of this artist that everyone knows, even if they don’t know who he is; every audience member of every age is going to know a lot of the music. He’s permeated our culture with his music and A Beautiful Noise tells his life story in a really compelling way.

[Next comes] the 30th anniversary production of Beauty and the Beast on Broadway. Disney is fully invested in making this a spectacular and new production for the anniversary. I personally am thrilled because Beauty and the Beast was the very first show I saw on Broadway in high school. Nearly 30 years later, seeing it come back full circle on tour is a special moment for me. [Disney has] been playing around with a revised revival production in several different formats over the last few years, so they’re taking all the best of those pieces to push into this new tour. 

The Wiz is the brand new revival that was just revived on Broadway in 2024. It premiered on Broadway in 1975 and won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1975, and has not been revived on Broadway since then. It’s been a 50 year journey to bring it back to Broadway. I’m ecstatic to have the show here because it’s a reinterpretation of The Wizard of Oz, a different take on it. 

What I love about Back to the Future is it has all of the hallmarks that you want from the film on stage. I think they carefully selected those moments from the movie to make happen on stage and they executed on that, including the theatre magic of the DeLorean going 88 miles an hour on stage. It’s one of the most impressive technical feats; how are they physically going to get this vehicle that is actually operational to have the feeling and look and energy of moving 88 miles an hour? They spent a lot of time and used a lot of gaming technology to make it happen. 

Hadestown won the Tony Award in 2019 for Best Musical, blending two Greek mythology tales together. It was the very first musical we had after reopening from the pandemic. We know there were a lot of audiences who may not have seen it but who wanted to see it at that time, so we’re happy to bring it back as an add-on to the season. It’s a really great show and it’s powerful. It’s [also] just a spectacular cast. A remarkable feat is that this show is still on Broadway and running a national tour six years after it opened. A lot of times these tours have a short life, but Hadestown has found cultural relevance in a beautiful way. 

Kimberly Akimbo is likely the show in the season that people may not be as familiar with, but it won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2023. It’s the charming, heartwarming story of a 16 year old girl who has a significant medical condition, in a new community, living with a dysfunctional family. Kimberly Akimbo is her journey of navigating through life and how people overcome the challenges that face them every day. [Also,] the music is luscious; they won the Tony Award for Best Musical for a reason. 

Clue is so fun. Based on the film and the Hasbro game, it’s an 80-minute whodunit murder mystery on stage. Like Back to the Future, all those moments you love and you want are there. The property and board game have been around for a very long time, but the play is relatively new. It’s really fun, an enjoyable day in the theatre. The plays of recent years have been a little bit more serious in nature, but Clue is much more lighthearted. 

& Juliet is the retelling of Romeo and Juliet if Juliet wrote her own story. The story picks up as if she wrote her own ending. It is so fun because there are many pop hits mixed in [with the story]. I felt like I was reliving some ‘90s and 2000s’ jukebox music because it’s all Max Martin; from Backstreet Boys, to Katy Perry, to Kelly Clarkson. & Juliet is also really powerful because it’s about taking control of your own story and your own destiny, and not letting someone else write your story. There’s that beautiful message woven through this fun story with great music. 

Can you talk about the subscriber process and what that entails?

There are six shows that are part of our Broadway series package and then there are two add-ons, Beauty and the Beast and Hadestown. Season tickets for the Broadway series start at $238; you get all six shows at Wharton Center. Of course, [prices] go up from there depending on night of week and price level, but we try really hard to make sure pricing remains accessible for the region.

With subscriptions, you get the best seats with the best prices. You can also, if you need to, move your seats around or add seats (before tickets go on sale to the general public). So there’s some really good subscription benefits that are available, including interest-free payment plans, discounts to area merchants, etc. Individual tickets will go on sale later. 

We are hoping that many people join us as season ticket holders; subscriptions for us are the lifeblood of being able to take the risk with producers to book these shows. I feel strongly that, at this moment in time, theatre is one of the unifying forces across everything that we do. We can sit in the same space and share the same air as the storytellers on stage and the community around us, many of whom we may share the same beliefs with and many of whom we may not, and together we can have this communal shared experience. I think that’s one of the reasons why the arts are so vital for our community and our time right now. 

Is there anything else you’d like to mention for readers to know?

The other piece of what makes Wharton Center unique is that, in addition to the shows we have, the amount of education programs we build around each of these engagements. As the season unfolds, we oftentimes do masterclasses and workshops with local schools, our Sutton Foster Awards program and special initiatives for ticket access for students to see performances.

We try to build in programs that engage young people who might not otherwise be able to see the shows; we have a pretty extensive Arts Within Reach program, which is a scholarship program to provide tickets to those who would not otherwise be able to attend, as well as a fairly robust education initiative where we do stuff with the schools. It’s one of those things that I think is unique to who we are, as a nonprofit performing arts presenter committed to education.

While we oftentimes don’t talk about it as headline news because we’re selling tickets, this is really one of the unique pieces of supporting Wharton Center that our subscribers and donors enable us to do throughout the year. We engage more than 25,000 learners of all ages throughout the school year. Being part of our family allows us to do that kind of arts education. 

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Season tickets for Wharton Center's 2025-26 Broadway Series are on sale now at whartoncenter.com / whartonseason.com. Contact the Ticket Office with any questions by phone at (517) 432-2000, or email wharton@msu.edu.

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