Broadway will be closed for at least the rest of this year, and many shows indicate that they don’t expect to return to the stage until late winter or early spring.
The Broadway League said Monday that theater owners and producers are ready to refund or exchange pre-purchased tickets for shows through Jan. 3. But, given the unpredictability of the coronavirus pandemic that has caused the closure of Broadway, the League said it was not yet ready to specify a date when the shows will reopen.
The Broadway shows went down on March 12, and this has already been the longest closing in history. So far, three shows, the Disney musical “Frozen,” which premiered in 2018, a new play by Martin McDonagh called “Hangmen,” and a revival of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” both in previews, have announced they will not resume the proceedings when Broadway reopens.
Several producers have indicated that they wait several months in the new year for the resumption of Broadway shows. The earliest date chosen so far is for “The Minutes,” a new play by Tracy Letts, which is expected to open on March 15. A revival of “American Buffalo”, a work by David Mamet, points to April 14; A new show about Michael Jackson, “MJ the Musical,” says it will premiere on April 15, and “The Music Man,” a revival starring Hugh Jackman, plans to open on May 20.
Several other shows have said they plan to open next spring, but haven’t announced exactly when, including a revival of Neil Simon’s “Plaza Suite,” starring Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, as well as the new Lincoln Center Theater musical, “Flying Over Sunset”. , “And the revivals of the musicals” 1776 “and” Caroline, or Change “by Roundabout Theater Company.
Last week’s roundabout also announced it would present “Birthday Candles,” a new play by Noah Haidle that was slated to open this spring in the fall of 2021, and that in the winter of 2021-22 would feature the first Broadway production of “Trouble in Mind”, a 1955 work by Alice Childress. Directed by Charles Randolph-Wright, Childress is about racism in the theater, and is the first black writer play added to the Broadway calendar since the murder of George Floyd sparked an intensified national discussion of injustice. racial. while in police custody in Minneapolis.
