Speaking of American lit, S.E. Hinton’s 1967 novel The Outsiders has such a staying power in young adult literature due to its blistering portrayal of class, poverty, rage, and brotherhood. Adapting the novel and the Francis Ford Coppola film, The Outsiders musical is bringing the famous teenage gangs — the blue-collar Greasers and the wealthy Socs — to the Broadway stage.

Ponyboy, a 14-year-old Greaser, narrates the violence and terror of their gang wars. Perhaps one of the scariest milestones Ponyboy has to undergo is acknowledging his empathy for the rival gang members who terrorize his brothers.

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Loaded with Alicia Keys’s best hits, Hell’s Kitchen charts the coming-of-age of 17-year-old Ali (Tony Award winner Maleah Joi Moon), loosely based on Keys herself. Ali wants to escape her mother's stern supervision and enjoy what her beloved and musically thunderous Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood has to offer, especially a handsome drummer. Along the way, Ali also discovers a passion for music.

Hell’s Kitchen brims with mother-daughter tensions, Keys's passionate score, tenacious artists, and Camille A. Brown’s energetic choreography.

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The blockbuster hit Netflix show Stranger Things has a huge teen fanbase, but fans of all ages will find excitement and fun in this stage prequel to the TV series. Fan-favorite characters like Joyce Byers, Jim Hopper, and Bob Newby are teenagers themselves in this play set in 1959, when a mysterious new kid shows up in sleepy Hawkins, Indiana, and starts to turn it upside down.

You can expect as much sci-fi spectacle as on TV — you'll have to see for yourself how it translates to Broadway.

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Six gets the impulse to project on historical figures, especially suffering royal women, whether or not you studied the ex-wives of King Henry VIII in high school. Composer/lyricists Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss fittingly reimagine those royals as pop stars, communicating their pain and comebacks through contemporary songs and goofy wordplay in a concert style.

Countless teens and young adults are already devotees of the bedazzled queens of Six (who are the stars of young people's TikToks and YouTube fan animatics) because they see themselves in the characters' hardships and aspire to their glamor and resilience.

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A great jukebox musical understands that we sang pop mega-hits to ourselves because they made us feel powerful. Filled with hits from Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, Kelly Clarkson, and more, & Juliet is a fanfic-like sequel to William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. What if the teenage Juliet survives and takes charge of her own life?

One telling number is “Teenage Dream,” originally by Katy Perry and here sincerely sung by two middle-aged characters reveling in the joys of love. & Juliet invites young and old audiences — no one is too old to dance their cares away.

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The Great Gatsby musical might not work as a CliffsNotes for your literature exams, but it promises a fascinating musical interpretation of the high school lit class staple. In the Roaring Twenties, the bootlegger Jay Gatsby seeks to win back the heart of his first and only love, the married Daisy. But the American Dream — Gatsby’s dream — is more elusive than he thought.

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