On stages all over the United States, intriguing new works are percolating. With notable creators, and in some cases notable stars, quite a few take their inspiration from literature and film: familiar titles freshly remade for the theater. With some imports and originals among them, these plays and musicals are worth putting on your radar now.
‘Hamnet’
The central character of this play, adapted (like the 2025 film) from Maggie O’Farrell’s ethereal novel, isn’t Shakespeare’s treasured son, Hamnet, who died in childhood and may have inspired “Hamlet.” It is Agnes, historically better known as Anne Hathaway: Shakespeare’s beguilingly clever wife, who stayed in Stratford with their children while he went into the world to make his name. With a script by Lolita Chakrabarti (“Life of Pi”), Erica Whyman first staged this show for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2023. Now that production crosses the Atlantic for a U.S. tour. Through March 8, Chicago Shakespeare Theater; March 17-April 12, Shakespeare Theater Company, Washington, D.C.; April 22-May 24, Toni Rembe Theater, San Francisco.
‘The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao’
Junot Díaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel from 2007, about a comic book-loving, Dominican American teenager, has come to the stage before, in a Spanish-language version by Marco Antonio Rodriguez for Repertorio Español in New York. With this production, Rodriguez’s adaptation makes its English-language debut. Wendy Mateo directs. Feb. 21-April 5, Goodman Theater, Chicago.
‘When Playwrights Kill’
The critical mass of Tony Award winners among the cast is the eye-catcher here. Beth Leavel (“The Prom”) portrays a troublemaking star, Matt Doyle (“Company”) the playwright forced to endure her and Marissa Jaret Winokur (“Hairspray”) the stage manager in this new backstage farce by Matthew Lombardo (“Tea at Five”). April 3-18, Huntington Theater, Boston.
‘Windfall’
A grieving father who could use the money is offered a substantial cash settlement after his child’s encounter with the police. To take it or not to take it? Awoye Timpo directs the world premiere of this play by Tarell Alvin McCraney, with a cast that includes Alana Arenas, Glenn Davis, Jon Michael Hill and Namir Smallwood. April 9-May 31, Steppenwolf Theater Company, Chicago.
‘Wilderness Generation’
Love and trauma, reunion and reckoning are all on the menu at the barbecue in James Ijames’s “Hamlet” riff, “Fat Ham,” which won him a Pulitzer in 2022. Some of the same touchpoints figure in his new family drama, as five cousins spend a summer weekend at their grandmother’s Southern home. Taibi Magar directs the world premiere. April 10-May 3, Philadelphia Theater Company.
‘Flower Drum Song’
It’s been more than 20 years since David Henry Hwang revised the original book to this 1958 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, in which a young Chinese immigrant begins her American life in San Francisco’s Chinatown. For this East West Players revival, directed by Lily Tung Crystal, Hwang takes a fresh crack at it. April 16-May 31, Aratani Theater, Los Angeles.
‘Alien Girls’
This comedy by Amy Berryman (“Walden”) is a kind of love story, about the decades-spanning friendship between two women who want to set the world ablaze with their writing, and how motherhood, envy and ambition come to figure in that. Jaki Bradley directs the world premiere. April 18-May 10, Old Globe, San Diego.
‘Recon$truxion’
Sifting through the soil of American history and myth is what the playwright Robert Schenkkan does in works like “All the Way,” which won the Tony for best play in 2014, and “The Kentucky Cycle,” which won the Pulitzer in 1992. Here he turns his gaze on the life of John Lynch, a Mississippian who was born into slavery and, after the Civil War, served three terms as a United States congressman. April 23-May 3, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Montgomery.
‘The Lunchbox’
In the filmmaker Ritesh Batra’s 2013 rom-com, lives change course when the lunch a Mumbai woman makes for her husband is misdelivered to a far more attentive man. This musical adaptation has a book by Batra, music by the brothers Daniel and Patrick Lazour (“We Live in Cairo”) and lyrics by all three of them. Rachel Chavkin (“Hadestown”) directs the world premiere. May 17-June 28, Berkeley Repertory Theater, Berkeley, Calif.
‘Freak the Mighty’
This musical is adapted from Rodman Philbrick’s 1993 young adult novel about two picked-on boys with complementary strengths and weaknesses who become friends, team up and dub themselves Freak the Mighty. Written by Anthony Drewe and Ryan Fielding Garrett and directed by Michael Barakiva, it’s a world premiere co-production with Seattle Repertory Theater. May 22-June 21, Cleveland Play House.
‘Black Swan’
The ballet-world psychological thriller that made a big-screen splash for Darren Aronofsky in 2010 is reinvented as a musical, with a book by Jen Silverman (“Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties”) and music and lyrics by Dave Malloy (“Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812”). Sonya Tayeh directs and choreographs the world premiere. May 26-June 28, American Repertory Theater, Cambridge, Mass.
‘Brokeback Mountain’
The 1997 short story by Annie Proulx, not the 2005 movie that Ang Lee made it into, was the jumping-off point for this cowboy-romance play by Ashley Robinson. With original country music by Dan Gillespie Sells (“Everybody’s Talking About Jamie”), it’s directed by Jonathan Butterell (ditto), who staged the 2023 world premiere in London. May 28-June 28, Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
‘Basura’
Gloria Estefan and her singer-songwriter daughter, Emily Estefan, team up to write the score for this new musical, whose title translates as “Garbage.” The show is based on the 2015 documentary “Landfill Harmonic,” about the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura, a poor community in Paraguay, whose young musicians’ instruments are remade from trash. With a book by Karen Zacarías and orchestrations by the Tony winner Alex Lacamoire (“Hamilton”), Michael Greif directs. May 30-July 12, Alliance Theater, Atlanta.
‘Elephant Shoes’
Jeff Calhoun, who directed and choreographed Deaf West Theater’s lush, landmark Broadway revival of “Big River” in 2003, does the same for this world-premiere musical by Ivan Menchell and Caroline Kay. A Deaf West-Two River Theater co-production performed in English and American Sign Language, it’s a contemporary riff on “Cyrano de Bergerac,” with its central character a genius inventor and underachieving suitor named Cy. June 4-28, Two River Theater, Red Bank, N.J.
‘Iceboy!’
Megan Mullally stars as a 1930s Broadway luminary who adopts a Neanderthal long frozen in Arctic ice, not suspecting that, once thawed, he could turn out to be a limelight-stealing showman. Written by Mark Hollman (“Urinetown”), Jay Reiss and Erin Quinn Purcell, it’s a musical comedy whose subtitle — “Or, the Completely Untrue Story of How Eugene O’Neill Came to Write ‘The Iceman Cometh’” — more than hints at daffiness. Marc Bruni (“The Great Gatsby”) directs. June 9-July 19, Goodman Theater, Chicago.
‘Eugene Onegin: A Bluegrass Musical’
The Obie Award winner Sarah Gancher (“Russian Troll Farm”) reimagines Tchaikovsky’s opera and Pushkin’s novel, setting the action in 1940s rural Arkansas and 1960s Nashville, with Eugene a bluegrass musician and Tanya a songwriter besotted with him. Rachel Chavkin directs the world premiere. June 10-28, TheatreSquared, Fayetteville, Ark.
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