Discover new Broadway shows and Off-Broadway shows to check out across New York City in May 2025, including star-studded plays, original musicals, and more.
May is the height of the theatre awards season — now that all this season's Broadway shows have opened ahead of the June 8 Tony Awards ceremony, it's campaign time, so keep an eye out for articles, subway ads, posters, and more featuring the hopeful honorees everywhere you turn. But even though there are only a few new Broadway musicals and plays this month, that doesn't mean there's any lack of theatre to see.
You can still catch performances of many Tony Awards contenders that opened throughout the season. There are also plenty of Off-Broadway shows opening anew, so why not check some of those out and go to a theatre you might not otherwise visit? Here are our picks for Broadway and Off-Broadway theatre to see in May, and visit the links below to discover even more hot shows playing now.
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Winner of four Best Musical prizes for its 2024 Off-Broadway premiere, Dead Outlaw tells the story of a bandit whose corpse was embalmed and displayed as a carnival sideshow and museum attraction for decades. It's told with rollicking folk rock music — and it's 100% true.
Get Dead Outlaw tickets now.
A World War II mission — one involving a stolen corpse, no less — doesn't sound like a musical comedy, but this hit British show proves that wrong. With catchy tunes and plenty of laughs, Operation Mincemeat tells the story of the real-life operation that turned the tide in the Allies' favor and the mad geniuses behind it.
Get Operation Mincemeat tickets now.
The best-reviewed musical of the season, Maybe Happy Ending is your typical love story — almost. Boy (Darren Criss) meets girl (Helen J. Shen), and after a rocky start, they go on an adventure through South Korea and maybe fall in love. Did we mention they're robots?
Get Maybe Happy Ending tickets now.
Now a warning? Death Becomes Her has made audiences die of laughter on Broadway since the fall. The no-holds-barred musical comedy is adapted from the 1992 Meryl Streep/Goldie Hawn film about frenemies who each take an anti-aging potion to remain young and beautiful forever. And ever.
Get Death Becomes Her tickets now.
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Regularly named one of the city’s best bagel shops, the unassuming Liberty Bagels is the perfect spot to get a classic NYC breakfast sandwich.
One of the world’s largest stores, Macy’s is a sight to behold, especially when it’s decked out for the holidays.
Let the music move you at this vibrant new musical about the Grammy Award-winning Cuban music group. Decades after the Cuban Revolution upended their careers, older musicians reunite to make a record that will usher in a renaissance of old-school Latin sounds — and we defy you not to dance in your seat.
Get Buena Vista Social Club tickets now.
This celebratory new musical, adapted from the hit play and film, tells a story of coming-of-age, acceptance, and ambition. Eighteen-year-old Ana must choose between pursuing her dreams of college and a career in NYC and staying in Los Angeles to work at her immigrant family's dress factory.
Get Real Women Have Curves tickets now.
Nicole Scherzinger is ready for her close-up. Now extended through July 13, Sunset Boulevard is a thrilling, cinematic Broadway musical about a film star obsessively clinging to the fame she thinks she still has.
Get Sunset Boulevard tickets now.
It's six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald's turn as Momma Rose, one of the most iconic roles in musical theatre. Gypsy follows this stage mother's obsessive attempts to make her two daughters into stars, and it features classic songs like "Everything's Coming Up Roses" and "Together Wherever We Go."
Get Gypsy tickets now.
One of the best-reviewed new plays of the season, John Proctor Is the Villain turns a classic story on its head. A group of high school girls studying The Crucible start to question what they're being taught in light of shocking scandals in their rural Georgia town.
Get John Proctor Is the Villain tickets now.
Playwright Cole Escola and the full original cast of this hit comedy have returned! Escola stars as Mary Todd Lincoln, who grapples with desire, alcoholism, and an all-consuming desire to be a cabaret star in the weeks before her husband's assassination.
Get Oh, Mary! tickets now.
Succession's Sarah Snook delivers an unmissable solo performance in the first Broadway adaptation of Oscar Wilde's novel, playing dozens of characters in the story of a man who remains young while his portrait reveals his deteriorating soul.
Get The Picture of Dorian Gray tickets now.
Stranger Things's Maya Hawke plays the title role in Sarah Ruhl's adaptation of a classic Greek myth. When Eurydice dies shortly after her marriage to Orpheus, she reunites with her father in the underworld, complicating her decision to go back to the world of the living or not when Orpheus comes for her.
Get Eurydice tickets now.
Bowl EP features something most plays don't: live skateboarding. As Kelly K Klarkson and Quentavius da Quitter try to figure out a name for their rap group, they flirt, skate, rap, open up, and get closer to their goal — and to each other.
Get Bowl EP tickets now.
Inspired by the African myth of Marimba, a deity who made music out of heartbreak, Goddess follows a mysterious woman who enchants everyone she meets and upends the future of a young man who visits her Afro-jazz club in Kenya.
Get Goddess tickets now.
The New York Post once captioned an iconic paparazzi photo of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears "the three bimbos of the apocalypse" — but there's a fourth person in the picture. Who is she? In this pop-fueled musical, a group of young internet sleuths are determined to find out.
Hugh Jackman and Ella Beatty star in this slippery new play about university professor and novelist Jon (Jackman), already nearing the end of his third marriage. He ends up in dangerous territory with the arrival of 19-year-old Annie (Beatty), with whom he shares a dangerous mutual attraction.
Deception, seduction, and revelation arise when struggling painter Adi sparks an intimate connection with Gustav, who in turn becomes interested in Adi's wife, Tekla. Liev Schreiber, Justice Smith, and Maggie Siff lead August Strindberg's twisted psychological thriller.
Check back for information on Creditors tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
On the day of the final broadcast of Nat King Cole's variety show, he can either exit quietly — or, in the advice of Sammy Davis Jr., "go out with a bang." Emmy Award nominee Dulé Hill and Tony Award nominee Daniel J. Watts star as the two iconic singers in this new musical featuring Cole's hit songs.
Check back for information on Lights Out: Nat "King" Cole tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
Elizabeth Marvel leads this new play as a visionary fashion photographer whose dream gig — a Vogue cover shoot at a crumbling European estate — turns out to be a nightmare in which she must still find and capture the beauty.
Check back for information on Five Models in Ruins, 1981 tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
William Inge's classic play gets a new spin as an all-Asian American cast takes on his Midwestern tale. When bus passengers are forced to stop at a diner on a snowy night, strangers collide and find unexpected warmth in each other. Midori Francis (Dash & Lily) stars.
Check back for information on Bus Stop tickets on New York Theatre Guide.
