Trends that appeared on Broadway in the 2024-25 season

From broad common themes like family drama to specific details like scene-stealing plants, this season's plays and musicals had many fun similarities to spot.

To borrow a lyric from A Chorus Line, every Broadway show — whether it’s a musical, play, or special event — is one singular sensation. Like each performance, every production is wonderfully one of a kind.

At the same time, variations on similar themes emerge across shows. In the 2024-25 Broadway season, broad and subtle connections tied various musicals and plays together.

From recurring subjects to shared narrative techniques and special effects, multiple productions — each distinct in its own right — reveal common threads. As the 2024-25 season is about to conclude with the Tony Awards on June 8, New York Theatre Guide recaps the trends that shaped Broadway over the past year. If a particular detail or theme appeals to you, the shows that share that theme might be next on your must-see list.

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The 2024-25 Broadway season: Facts and stats

What was your favorite show from the last year? Relive the season with these quick stats about the Broadway shows that premiered in the past season, which ran from April 26, 2024 to April 27, 2025. Click on the link to each show name below to get tickets, and read our rundown of the 2025 Tony Awards by the numbers for even more stats.

43 shows opened on Broadway this season.

Broadway dazzles with its mix of shows, from classic musicals to bold new plays. Like kids in a candy store, audiences revel in all the choices. Whether you’re after laughter, drama, or inspiration, Broadway delivers something for everyone.

The 43 shows on Broadway in the 2024-2025 season comprise 14 new musicals, 7 musical revivals, 14 new plays, 7 play revivals, and one special. Seven of these productions transferred from London’s West End, England’s theatre district akin to Broadway.

This tally is on trend with past years: An average of 35-40 productions open each Broadway season.

Celebrities were center stage on Broadway.

Stars on stage make live theatre exciting. This Broadway season's productions shone exceedingly bright with luminaries, a quartet of Oscar-winning actors among them. Here’s a quick rundown of this year's A-listers on stage — many of whom you can see right now.

• George Clooney makes his Broadway debut in in Good Night, and Good Luck.
• Sarah Snook makes hers in The Picture of Dorian Gray.
• Michelle Williams, of Destiny's Child, stars opposite Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard in Death Becomes Her.
• Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga star in Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends.
• Jonathan Groff plays Bobby Darin in Just in Time.
• Sadie Sink leads the ensemble play John Proctor Is the Villain.
• Darren Criss is irresistibly robotic in Maybe Happy Ending.
• Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk, and Bill Burr star in Glengarry Glen Ross.
• Nicole Scherzinger makes her Broadway debut in Sunset Boulevard.
• Audra McDonald, now the most Tony-nominated performer ever, stars in Gypsy.
• Nick Jonas and Tony Award winner Adrienne Warren are troubled lovers in The Last Five Years.
• Jeremy Jordan plays the titular role in Floyd Collins.
• David Hyde Pierce, Ramin Karimloo, and Jinkx Monsoon lead Pirates! The Penzance Musical.
• Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal star in Othello.
• Idina Menzel leads Redwood, her first Broadway show in a decade.

Stars in now-closed shows from earlier this season include Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone (The Roommate), Robert Downey Jr. (McNeal), Julianna Margulies and Peter Gallagher (Left on Tenth), Daniel Dae Kim (Yellow Face), Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler (Romeo + Juliet), and Sutton Foster, Michael Urie, and Ana Gasteyer (Once Upon a Mattress).

Cult of Love, All In: Comedy About Love, and Our Town featured full ensembles of stars such as Shailene Woodley, John Mulaney, Fred Armisen, Zachary Quinto, Mare Winningham, Jim Parsons, Katie Holmes, Zoey Deutch, Bill Irwin, and Jessica Hecht.

2024-25 Broadway trends

From real-life retellings to family drama, check out the broad themes echoed among Broadway plays and musicals this season. Click on the link on a show name for tickets and more information.

Shows retraced real-life people and events.

Figures from history — from the 1800s to the recent past — appear in this season's Broadway plays and musicals. Some stuck to the facts, while others played fast and loose with reality. They all highlighted personal struggles, triumphs, and legacies.

• Oh, Mary!: First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln is imagined as a boozy wannabe cabaret star.
• Good Night, and Good Luck: Legendary TV newsman Edward R. Murrow takes on Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s.
• Just in Time: 1950s and ’60s pop star Bobby Darin’s life and times are filtered through his music.
• Buena Vista Social Club: The same-named band's catalogue powers this soulful celebration of Cuban music, culture, and rhythms.
• Operation Mincemeat: A daring WWII British mission uses a dead body to mislead Nazis about Allied invasion plans.
• Dead Outlaw: Elmer McCurdy, an Old West robber, is killed, embalmed, and toured posthumously in this quirky musical.
• Left on Tenth: Writer Delia Ephron gets a second chance at life and love in this play based on her memoir.
• A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical: That subhead sums up the show, seen through the lens of Satchmo’s wives.
• Tammy Faye: The musical charts the rise, fall, and resurgence of televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker.
• Swept Away: Four shipwrecked men confront survival in this folk-rock musical inspired by the real sinking of the Mignonette.

Revivals displayed innovative concepts.

New takes on old plays and musicals pushed boundaries in their approaches to stagings of classics and more contemporary works. Modernized settings, diverse casting, and high-tech stagings helped deliver distinct takes on familiar stories.

• Romeo + Juliet: The up-to-date staging blended a house-party vibe, stuffed animals, and original pop songs to captivate Gen Z.
• Gypsy: For the first time on Broadway, the revival features a predominantly Black cast, led by Audra McDonald, and creative team.
• The Picture of Dorian Gray: The solo show, in which Sarah Snook plays 26 parts, uses cameras extensively to create a unique theatrical experience.
• Sunset Boulevard: The minimalist vision of the musical blends cinematic screens and close-ups with live theatre.

Mortality mattered.

Themes of death, longevity, and legacy loomed large on Broadway stages, reminding theatregoers that life goes on — until it doesn’t — and that the afterlife can surprise you.

• Death Becomes Her: Aging women strike supernatural bargains to regain youth.
• Dead Outlaw: A gun-toting bandit's mummified remains became a sideshow attraction.
• Sunset Boulevard: A faded film star desperately craves immortality on the big screen.
• Maybe Happy Ending: Two lovable, and in-love, robots have batteries running fatally low on juice.

Everything was relative(s).

If you’re looking for drama, look no further than the family unit and the generational struggles, love, sacrifice, and cultural expectations that go with it.

• Real Women Have Curves: A Mexican-American family sewing factory sets the scene for a musical about body image, identity, and empowerment.
• Purpose: The Pulitzer-winning play explores a prestigious Black family's unraveling as its members confront legacy, love, and identity.
• Our Town: Thornton Wilder's classic highlights family connections, daily life, and the passage of time in small-town America.
• The Hills of California: Set in England, the play explores family dynamics and dreams gone wrong for four girls and their mother.

Specific 2024-25 Broadway trends

Brilliant minds think alike. That may explain why there is exciting overlap when it comes to specifics such as plot points, settings, and visual ingredients. Check out how noteworthy elements pop up in various different stories, and click on the link on a show name to get tickets.

Shows had the write stuff.

Age-old advice is to “Write what you know,” and playwrights understand what it’s like to put words on a page. Hence, this season's Broadway shows centered on authors of every stripe.

• The Last Five Years: A novelist and an actress fall in and out of love.
• Real Women Have Curves: A young woman in 1987 Los Angeles is torn between her dream of becoming a writer and her family duty.
• Sunset Boulevard: A struggling screenwriter gets involved with an actress aching for a comeback.
• Floyd Collins: A young journalist becomes a key player in a cave explorer’s tragic entrapment.
• Smash: The writers of a Broadway musical about Marilyn Monroe struggle to get the story right.
• McNeal: A celebrated novelist grapples with the ethical implications of using artificial intelligence.
• Yellow Face: An outspoken writer confronts identity, race, and truth after a casting error sparks controversy.
• Left On Tenth: A New York writer faces a late-in-life romance and a life-and-death crisis.

Characters found themselves in precarious places.

Every role comes with challenges. Broadway shows pushed stars into physically demanding roles, placing them in uncomfortable positions for dramatic effect.

• Dead Outlaw: Lead actor Andrew Durand must stand motionless in a coffin for half the show.
• Floyd Collins: Jeremy Jordan spends most of the musical acting like he’s pinned in a narrow cave crevice.
• Redwood: Playing a woman in search of herself, Idina Menzel dangled from a giant tree, defying gravity with the help of a harness and a climbing rope.

Corpses piled up.

Dead bodies were here, there, and everywhere on Broadway, thanks to stories that wove them into the plot in ever-fascinating ways. Multiple shows collectively turned Broadway into the Grave White Way.

• Dead Outlaw: The second half centers on the exploits of a mummy in a coffin.
• Operation Mincemeat: The musical comedy tells the true story of how a cadaver helped turn the tide for the Allies in WWII.
• Death Becomes Her: The two leading ladies and many ensemble members are, thanks to an eternal-youth potion, "dead but alive."
• Sunset Boulevard: This revival begins with a slain screenwriter emerging from a body bag.

Plants grew into featured roles.

Trees and plants were firmly rooted in the Broadway lineup this season.

• Maybe Happy Ending: A fan-favorite potted plant called HwaBoon acts as the main character's best friend, sweetly evoking the theme of connection.
• Redwood: Nature’s power is central to the story, and scenic magic puts a towering conifer named Stella center stage.
• Our Town: In this revival, the scent of heliotrope was pumped into the theatre to stir the senses and the imagination.

School was in session.

Educational settings get an A-plus as microcosms of societal conflict and personal growth. They’re ideal places to examine power dynamics, identity, and the tension between idealism and reality.

• John Proctor Is the Villain: High schoolers reexamine The Crucible through a feminist lens in their honors literature class.
• Eureka Day: The show imagines a progressive school spinning into chaos as a mumps outbreak ignites debates over freedom and science.
• English: The Pulitzer Prize-winning play follows Iranian students navigating language, identity, and societal expectations in an ESL class for adults.

The stage met the screen.

Digital projections, video montages, and multimedia elements enhanced this season's stories and created visually stirring experiences on Broadway.

• Sunset Boulevard: The Hollywood-set show uses jumbo screens and handheld cameras to track and supersize actors’ moves — both on stage and, in one memorable scene, outside.
• The Picture of Dorian Gray: Sarah Snook acts opposite camera operators and pre-recorded projections of herself in an unsettling story that’s all about appearances.
• Good Night, and Good Luck: The show, set in CBS's broadcast studios in the 1950s, uses screens to capture the terrain of TV news.
• Redwood leads audiences into a California forest with ingenious use of projected images.

Lead actors were just as important behind the scenes.

This season on Broadway, multiple stars' credits went beyond acting to include writing or producing shows. And why not? Having creative control lets them shape stories they believe in and influence theatre’s direction.

• Good Night, and Good Luck and Oh, Mary!: George Clooney and Cole Escola wrote the shows they star in. (Clooney co-wrote his with Grant Heslov, with whom he penned the Good Night, and Good Luck film 20 years ago.)
• Redwood: Idina Menzel contributed additional material to Tina Landau's script, having formulated the show's concept with Landau over a decade ago. Menzel is also a producer.
• Maybe Happy Ending and Just in Time: Darren Criss and Jonathan Groff, respectively, star and produce.

Keep up with the latest trends on Broadway by checking out a new show. Get Broadway tickets on New York Theatre Guide.