By Elazar Abrahams
January is here, which means it’s time to speculate about the pop culture year ahead. What has the potential to be good? What’s going to bomb hard? Who will Chicago stunt cast as the next Roxie Hart? Only time will tell, but sometimes the speculation and waiting game can be just as fun as the actual releases. So without further ado, here are TV and City’s five most anticipated New York theater productions of 2025.
Othello (Begins February 24)
Broadway is going to be even more star studded than usual over the next few months. George Clooney, Nick Jonas, Idina Menzel, and many more have shows opening this year, and that’s to say nothing of names like Nicole Scherzinger and John Mulaney that currently light up on marquees. The cast of Othello, Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, trumps and overshadows them all. This winter, Denzel Washinton will take on the title role, and Jake Gyllenhaal will join him as the deceitful Iago. This level of raw acting talent in one room is a generational theater event that is going to be a hard ticket to get. The play is of course excellent, but it is up to Tony Award winning director Kenny Leon to craft a compelling production. The less said about the recent Daniel Craig Macbeth, the better.
Purpose (Begins February 25)
Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Appropriate was the surprise hit of last theater season, and that work was so good that his follow up, Purpose, deserves to be mentioned here. Again, this play will explore complex sibling relationships, unveiling a dark underbelly of familial secrets. With Appropriate, Jacobs-Jenkins wrote a spectacular send-up of a white family, and this time around the cast is African American, so I’m intrigued to see how that aspect is handled. A good adult drama that’s not relegated to a downtown venue is rare these days, so this premiere is very welcome.
Glengarry Glen Ross (Begins March 10)
Speaking of star power, that’s really the draw of this revival for me. David Mamet’s play Glengarry Glen Ross may have won a Pultizer, but the last work I saw of his, American Buffalo, was so dreadful that I can’t get my hopes up about this. However, what does earn this show a tremendous amount of hype is the killer trio of celebrities that headline it: Bill Burr, Kieran Culkin, and Bob Odenkirk. The three of them each have an incredible energy, and I know it will be such fun to see them bounce off each other. Burr in particular intrigues me, because although he’s had plenty of film and TV roles, I still view him as a standup comic, not an actor. Culkin and Odenkirk are just top-tier talent and warrant audiences to get their butts in seats.
Smash (Begins March 11)
The state of musicals this year is not looking great, unless you are one of the dozen people particularly excited about Boop! The Betty Boop Musical. What is a bright spot in the field is the long awaited Smash. Smash, the beloved cult favorite NBC series that followed the creation of a Broadway show, is now a Broadway show itself. Watch the two seasons and you’ll understand why the fun melodies mixed with rivalries and romances are going to be such a dream come true when this opens at the Imperial Theatre.
Twelfth Night (Summer TBA)
The best place in New York City is the Delacorte Theater, nestled in the thick of Central Park. For a fan of live theater, there is truly nothing like a chilly July evening in the back bleachers of the Delacorte, silently taking in a performance of Shakespeare in the Park and watching the sun set over Belvedere Castle, then walking out through the illuminated park paths after Act 2. All at no cost! Since September 2023, the open-air space has been under construction for a much needed revitalization. The plan is for the theater to reopen in time for this summer’s staging of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, starring Peter Dinklage, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Lupita Nyong’o, and Sandra Oh. Hopefully the facelift hasn’t taken away the Delacorte’s charm. This production is going to be a joyous return to one of Manhattan’s landmarks, made sweeter by the fact that all tickets to the shows remain completely free.
TV and City 