If the last season on Broadway overflowed with new musicals, this fall is looking like the beginning of the season of the diva. We’ve got Nicole Scherzinger in Sunset Boulevard, Audra McDonald in Gypsy, and dueling musical-comedy treasures Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard in Death Becomes Her, with more to come in the spring, and a few divas having already debuted over the summer (shout-out to raging misfits Princess Winnifred and, well, Mary Todd Lincoln). But if you zoom out a bit, the larger theme may just be stardom in general. In the wake of that post-strike Hollywood contraction, the serious men of film and television are coming to New York’s stages too, with Robert Downey Jr. alighting at Lincoln Center and Adam Driver and Kenneth Branagh squeezing into smaller spaces Off Broadway. There are also new productions about chasing fame, as with The Hills of California or even Tammy Faye; plays that might launch lesser-known names into greater fame; and return engagements of famed productions, as with Gatz. Curtain up! Light the lights!


September

McNeal

Lincoln Center Theater, September 5–November 24

While Kylo Ren sings the blues downtown, Iron Man (and, I guess, Doctor Doom?) is coming to Broadway in Pulitzer Prize-winner Ayad Akhtar’s new play. Bartlett Sher directs Robert Downey Jr. as Jacob McNeal, a “great American novelist” with an estranged son and a sinister obsession with AI. He may not have an arc reactor implanted in his chest, but through his increasingly maniacal ambition, is McNeal becoming less and less human? — Sara Holdren

The Hills of California

Broadhurst Theatre, previews begin September 11

The playwright Jez Butterworth swings big — his sprawling, rollicking Jerusalem (anchored by a blow-your-hair-back central performance by Mark Rylance) was up for the Best Play Tony in 2011, and eight years later his haunted Irish family drama The Ferryman (anchored by a real goose and a real baby) walked away with the prize. His new play, The Hills of California, follows the reunion of four sisters, once a childhood singing group, at the bedside of their dying mother in the rundown amusement park town of Blackpool, England. Sam Mendes directs this musical, multigenerational drama-with-a-capital-D in its transfer from London’s West End. — S.H.

Yellow Face

Roundabout, Todd Haimes Theatre, September 13–November 24

David Henry Hwang became the first Asian American playwright to win the Best Play Tony with M. Butterfly in 1988. Now Leigh Silverman directs the Broadway premiere of his sharp-fanged, semi-autobiographical farce about the tricky forging of art and identity. In Yellow Face, a beleaguered Asian American playwright (Daniel Dae Kim) speaks out against the titular toxic casting trend in a production of Miss Saigon… and then proceeds to inadvertently cast a white actor as the Asian protagonist in his own play. What could possibly go right? — S.H.

Safety Not Guaranteed

BAM Harvey Theater, September 17–October 20

Obie winner Lee Sunday Evans directs this new musical adaptation of the 2012 indie film, in which a disillusioned magazine intern forms an unlikely friendship with a local weirdo who’s placed a classified ad looking for someone to join him to go back in time. (“I have only done this once before,” reads the ad. “Safety not guaranteed.”) If all of that isn’t nerd-nostalgia coded enough, Guster’s Ryan Miller wrote the score. If you still get “Barrel of a Gun” stuck in your head, this year’s Next Wave fest is for you. —S.H.

Hold On to Me Darling

Lucille Lortel Theatre, September 24–December 22

The overwhelmingly large Adam Driver returns to the stage this fall in Kenneth Lonergan’s play about a country-western star in freefall after the death of his mother. Hold On to Me Darling follows Strings McCrane as he abandons fame and fortune to return to his small town roots in Tennessee. Our burning questions include: Is there a better country singer name than Strings McCrane? Will Adam Driver play guitar? And will he have to duck on the Lucille Lortel stage? —S.H.

Romeo + Juliet

Circle in the Square, previews begin September 26

Sam Gold is more than fond of recontextualizing a classic, whether he’s reconsidering the depiction of disability in The Glass Menagerie or serving Aquavit at intermission at An Enemy of the People. It’s hard to know what direction he’ll take with Shakespeare’s tragic teen romance, but he’s cast two screen stars: Kit Connor, of Netflix’s cozy romance Heartstopper, and Rachel Zegler, who played another version of Juliet in the 2022 film of West Side Story, both making their Broadway debuts. There will also be singing, with music by pop whisperer Jack Antonoff. — Jackson McHenry

Sunset Boulevard

St. James Theater, previews begin September 28

This upcoming Broadway season is fully dominated by divas, and it kicks off with the greatest star of all (according to herself): Norma Desmond, a fading silent film star with dreams of a return to cinema. The original run of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s pop operatic adaptation of the classic Billy Wilder film was famous for its sumptuous sets, its behind-the-scenes drama, and for Glenn Close’s Tony-winning turn as Norma. Director Jamie Lloyd’s production is more stripped-down, European-style, now starring former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger in what London critics have referred to as a career-defining role of its own. We’ll see if the hosannas continue as her Norma comes home to America at last. — J.M.