Pal Joey Tickets

A new production of Pal Joey will be presented on Broadway in the 2022-23 season. Pal Joey tickets will be available soon.

The titular character, Joey Evans, is a nightclub performer in Chicago with bigger goals in life: He wants to own his own nightclub. His playboy nature and the lies he tells about the career he doesn't yet have fail to impress the ingenue Linda, but he impresses socialite Vera Simpson enough that she uses her riches to make his dreams come true. It's only a matter of time, however, before his fortune comes crashing down.

Original bookwriter John O'Hara based the story of Pal Joey on a set of short stories he wrote for the New Yorker, which he later published as a novel. Though the plot remains largely the same for the new production, a new book by Richard LaGravenese has replaced O'Hara's original. LaGravenese sets the story in Chicago's South Side in the 1940s, a decade later than originally written.

Linda's occupation was also changed for the new production, as she was originally a stenographer and later a clerk. The changes have allowed the creative team, with the permission of the Rodgers and Hart estate, to add more of the duo's hits into the existing Pal Joey score. These include "Where or When", "The Lady is a Tramp", "It Never Entered My Mind", "My Heart Stood Still", "Falling in Love With Love," and "There's A Small Hotel."

The Pal Joey Broadway premiere was in 1940 at the Barrymore Theatre, with a cast that included Gene Kelly as Joey and Vivienne Segal as Vera. It ran for 397 performances, but the success of that run was soon trumped by the musical's 1952 revival. That cast saw Segal reprise her role alongside Harold Lang as Joey, with a then-unknown Elaine Stritch as Melba and Bob Fosse (who would go on to play Joey full-time in the 1963 City Center revival) understudying the title role. The 1952 revival played for 540 performances, won three Tony Awards, and was the longest-running revival in Broadway history at the time.

The show has since played the West End twice and had two more Broadway revivals in 1976 and 2008. The Pal Joey musical has also been adapted into a 1957 film starring Frank Sinatra, Rita Hayworth, and Kim Novak.

Tickets to Pal Joey will be available soon.

By: Richard LaGravenese, from the original book by John O'Hara
Songs by: Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart
Director: Tony Goldwyn and Savion Glover
Producer: Jeffrey Richards with Funny World Productions, Willette Klausner and Irene Gandy
Design: Derek McLane
Lighting: Natasha Katz
Costume: Emilio Sosa
Choreography: Savion Glover
Other info: Orchestration, arrangements, and music supervision by Daryl Waters