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Broadway's Best

A Season of Famous Faces and Theatrical Joy

Broadway, in 2026, feels expansive—open to possibility, collaboration, and a renewed sense of play. Names that echo from film, television, music, and beyond, gathering here not as a novelty, but as a celebration, and audiences are surely enjoying the ride. 

Daniel Radcliffe, in Every Brilliant Thing, draws the audience into something quietly profound; while Adrien Brody, in The Fear of 13, brings a thoughtful intensity that seems to deepen in the presence of a live audience. 

Photo by Emilio Madrid

Nearby, Ayo Edebiri offers a beautifully measured turn in Proof, revealing a versatility that feels powerful and delightful. And Rose Byrne, in Fallen Angels, is theatrical elegance with a lightness that makes the form feel fresh and alive.

Photo by Joan Marcus

Then there is Death of a Salesman, led by Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf—a pairing of artists whose mastery turns a familiar text into something newly resonant. Watching them is less about witnessing celebrity than about experiencing craft at its most refined.

Megan Thee Stallion brings her unmistakable presence to Moulin Rouge!, infusing the production with a fresh, kinetic energy. In Six, Dylan Mulvaney steps seamlessly into a show already attuned to contemporary voices, creating a connection that feels immediate and celebratory.

In Giant, John Lithgow, already an Olivier Award winner for the role, brings his Roald Dahl stateside in a masterful performance that’s making waves on Broadway as well.

Meanwhile, Lea Michele and Aaron Tveit, in Chess, offer something like a homecoming—they’re already Broadway icons who are giving performances that feel rooted, expansive, and deeply connected to the musical theatre tradition.

Photo by Matthew Murphy

And in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Taraji P. Henson and Cedric the Entertainer bring warmth and presence to a breathtaking story that continues to resonate, inviting new audiences into its world.

Photo by Julieta Cervantes

What distinguishes this moment is not simply the number of recognizable names, but the spirit in which they are arriving. For artists like Don Cheadle and Tessa Thompson, the stage offers a chance to reconnect with the immediacy of live performance—a space where storytelling unfolds in real time, shared between actor and audience.

This season sparkles with Hollywood stardust and Broadway royalty, and we love it!

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Broadway's Best

Headlines and Footlights: The Theatre’s Love Affair with Journalism

Playwrights are consistently drawn to newsrooms and broadcast desks because these environments act as a perfect, ready-made pressure cooker for dramatic conflict. Here’s a sampling of plays that center around journalism.

The Front Page (1928) by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
A fast-talking, definitive comedy about a star reporter trying to quit the tabloid business, and his ruthless editor who will go to illegal extremes to keep him on a breaking story. This play has had 4 revivals, most recently in 2016 starring Nathan Lane, John Slattery, and John Goodman.

Night and Day (1978) by Tom Stoppard
Set during a violent African rebellion, this play contrasts a cynical veteran reporter and an idealistic freelancer to debate press freedom, ethics, and the dangerous pursuit of an exclusive scoop. The lead role was created by Diana Rigg in London and Maggie Smith on Broadway.

Frost/Nixon (2006) by Peter Morgan
Recreates the high-stakes 1977 television interviews between David Frost (Michael Sheen) and Richard Nixon (Frank Langella), highlighting the psychological warfare and accountability demanded by broadcast journalism.

Time Stands Still (2009) by Donald Margulies
An emotional drama about a wounded photojournalist (Laura Linney) and a foreign correspondent (Brian d’Arcy James) recovering in Brooklyn, wrestling with the moral ambiguities and exploitative nature of documenting human tragedy.

Lucky Guy (2013) by Nora Ephron
Ephron’s final play captures the gritty, hard-drinking 1980s tabloid culture through the meteoric rise, scandalous fall, and redemption of Pulitzer-winning columnist Mike McAlary, played by Tom Hanks in his Broadway debut.

The Lifespan of a Fact (2018) by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Gordon Farrell
A high-stakes ideological battle between an overzealous fact-checker and an acclaimed author, questioning the value of verifiable facts versus emotional truth in storytelling. This three actor play starred Bobby Cannavale, Cherry Jones, and Daniel Radcliffe.


With a built-in ticking clock, moral and ethical dilemmas, and naturally sharp dialogue, there’s a clear intersection for theatre and journalism. With the internet and the 24 hour news cycle making the news move faster than ever before, what can we expect to see from future playwrights? Only time will tell.

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Broadway's Best

Then & Now: Daniel Radcliffe’s Broadway Journey — From Wizard to Tony Award-Winning Powerhouse

There are Broadway journeys… and then there’s the arc of Daniel Radcliffe, a career that began under the global spotlight of a wand and Hogwarts robes, and evolved into one of the most surprisingly fearless stage reinventions of a generation.This is a story of transformation through the stage.

When Daniel Radcliffe first stepped onto Broadway, it wasn’t as a safe post-franchise transition, it was a shock to the system. A young Radcliffe, barely out of his teens, chose one of the most psychologically intense plays in modern theatre, Equus (2008). The role demanded vulnerability, physical exposure, and emotional extremity that intentionally shattered audience expectations.

Then came the pivot to pure musical comedy in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (2011). We didn’t see that coming. Radcliffe didn’t just survive Broadway; he was becoming a Broadway baby (and at just 21, he still was!) Dances, comedic timing, and full-scale musical performance showed a different kind of craft: discipline without spectacle, his charm was undeniable. The message was clear: he wasn’t testing Broadway, he was building a second career in it.

Between major headlines, Radcliffe kept returning to stage work that prioritized complexity over scale, including the plays The Cripple of Inishmaan (2014), a dark comedy in which he played the titular character, a 17 year old orphan with physical disabilities whose life changes when a Hollywood crew begins filming on his isolated island in Ireland.

Next up was The Lifespan of a Fact in 2018, a three-hander in which he starred opposite heavyweights Bobby Canavale and Cherry Jones. Radcliffe held his own as a determined young factchecker forced to contend with a challenging author (Canavale) and demanding editor (Jones.)

With a third play under his belt, and fourth Broadway production within a 10 year span, Radcliffe continued showing the world that Broadway was where he wanted to be.

In the critically acclaimed revival of Merrily We Roll Along, Radcliffe stepped fully into ensemble-driven emotional storytelling alongside powerhouse co-stars. The role demanded restraint, musical precision, and emotional aging, winning him a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical

If Merrily We Roll Along showed Radcliffe as a fully integrated Broadway performer, Every Brilliant Thing shows something even more revealing: an actor comfortable with silence, improvisation, and vulnerability without theatrical armor.

In a way, it echoes the earliest intention of his stage career. It shows his willingness to step into discomfort — but with none of the distance of spectacle.

Every Brilliant Thing is perhaps where his performance isn’t about becoming someone else, but about standing in front of an audience and simply holding a shared emotional space. What a fantastic journey for Daniel.

We are no longer seeing “Daniel Radcliffe doing Broadway.”

Daniel Radcliffe’s Broadway journey is about consistency over spectacle. He has expanded beyond the silhouette of a major franchise, one role, one risk, one performance at a time. And on Broadway, that kind of patience is its own kind of stardom.

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Creative

Spotlight on Plays

Updated May 13, 2026

Oh, Mary!

The chaos queen of the season, and still the play everyone points to when they say, “Yes, comedy can sell on Broadway.” Cole Escola’s deranged Mary Todd Lincoln fantasia has become a genuine Broadway phenomenon, now extended through January 3, 2027. It is short, sharp, filthy-smart, and proof that a very specific comic voice can become commercial when it is truly undeniable.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

The long-running spectacle play that keeps reminding Broadway there is more than one way to make a “play” feel like an event. It is still the big magic-machine of the category, built for tourists, families, fans, and anyone who wants theatrical wizardry without needing a song cue every seven minutes. The current one-show version follows Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the next generation 19 years later.

Proof

A prestige revival with a killer package: Ayo Edebiri, Don Cheadle, Jin Ha, Kara Young, David Auburn’s Pulitzer and Tony-winning play, and Thomas Kail directing. The play’s central question, whether Catherine has inherited her father’s genius, madness, or both, still lands because it is really about belief, family, grief, and the terrifying possibility of your own brilliance.

Becky Shaw

A dark comedy with teeth. Gina Gionfriddo’s play turns a blind date into a social grenade, with marriage, obligation, class, kindness, cruelty, and emotional neediness all getting dragged into the room. It feels like one of those plays where everyone thinks they are the sane one, which is usually when theatre gets fun.

Every Brilliant Thing

The heart-warmer, but not in a soft-focus way. This solo play uses a list of life’s small joys to talk about depression, survival, memory, and hope. Daniel Radcliffe leads the Broadway run through May 24, with Mariska Hargitay stepping in for 40 performances beginning May 26. It is intimate, interactive, and emotionally direct without feeling like homework.

Joe Turner’s Come and Gone

A major August Wilson revival, and one of the season’s weightier American classics. Set in Pittsburgh in 1911, it centers on a boardinghouse during a moment of migration, identity, and spiritual searching. With Taraji P. Henson, Cedric the Entertainer, Joshua Boone, and Ruben Santiago-Hudson, this has the potential to be both literary and star-powered.

The Balusters

David Lindsay-Abaire doing neighborhood warfare, which is exactly the kind of petty American comedy that can become weirdly profound if handled right. The setup is almost beautifully ridiculous: a neighborhood association spirals over porch railings, trash protocol, and a proposed stop sign. Translation: it is about control, taste, community, and people absolutely losing their minds over small things because the big things are harder to say out loud.

The Fear of 13

True crime, justice, wrongful conviction, death row, Adrien Brody, Tessa Thompson, David Cromer, Lindsey Ferrentino. That’s the sell. Based on the story of Nick Yarris, the play follows how a traffic stop became a murder conviction, 22 years on Death Row, and a shocking request for an execution date. It is built like a moral thriller, but the real hook is truth versus the system that claims to protect it.

Fallen Angels

Noël Coward, Rose Byrne, Kelli O’Hara, champagne, husbands out of town, and a shared former lover possibly arriving from France. It is elegant bad behavior, which is the best kind because everyone is dressed well while making terrible decisions. At 90 minutes with no intermission, this feels like a sleek comedy revival built for people who want wit, glamour, and a little marital panic.

Death of a Salesman

The heavy hitter. Nathan Lane and Laurie Metcalf in Arthur Miller’s American tragedy, directed by Joe Mantello. This is one of those productions where the casting alone becomes the event, because Willy and Linda need actors who can carry national disappointment in their bones. Miller’s story of a family crushed by the American Dream remains brutally current, because, well, have you looked around?

Stranger Things: The First Shadow

A play, yes, but also basically Broadway’s blockbuster franchise experiment. Set in Hawkins in 1959, it serves as a prequel to the Netflix series and leans hard into special effects, lore, and theatrical scale. For non-theatre audiences, this may be one of the easiest bridges into Broadway because it sells itself less like “a play” and more like stepping inside the mythology.

Giant

A serious, awards-shaped drama about Roald Dahl, legacy, apology, and public reckoning. John Lithgow reprises his Olivier-winning performance as Dahl following the play’s West End run. Set across a single afternoon in 1983, the play confronts Dahl after the backlash to his antisemitic article, asking whether a public apology can repair private conviction or public damage.

Dog Day Afternoon

A true-crime pressure cooker with major actor heat. Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach lead Stephen Adly Guirgis’ stage adaptation of the famous 1972 bank robbery story, directed by Rupert Goold. This one has commercial muscle: recognizable title, New York grit, prestige playwright, hot TV actors, and a story that already knows how to hold an audience hostage, pun unfortunately earned.