The Playbill Podcast: A Show on Broadway

"Was there ever a Cat(s) so clever?" That is what people are saying about Cats: The Jellicle Ball, the outstanding revival based on the award-winning and long-running musical Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber, itself based on TS Elliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.  This reimagining has breathed extravagant new life into the work by setting Cats in an entirely different context: the l...

If you’ve ever moved to a new town, you know how much of a pain it is. For the Emerson family in the 1980’s, they feel that in a major way as they move to Santa Carla, California. Their biggest obstacles, it turns out? The vampires who reside there.  If this sounds familiar to you, then you remember the 1980’s classic Joel Schumacher movie with the same title, The Lost Boys. The stage musical...

Throughout his life, the legendary and groundbreaking playwright August Wilson wrote ten plays chronicling the Black experience, decade by decade, throughout the twentieth century; what has been referred to as The Pittsburgh Cycle.  Joe Turner’s Come and Gone takes us to the earliest chapter, 1911, just a few decades removed from the end of slavery, in the middle of the Great Migration, when...

How does a simple Chess rivalry become more than just one person against another? How about...when both players are involved in a love triangle? And the two players are American and Russian, with their nations locked in a Cold War? This is the backdrop of the musical CHESS, the epic tale by Sir Tim Rice and two members of ABBA, Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus. Originally conceived in the early 1...

Have you ever wished to find yourself IN a musical? That is the fate of boyfriend and girlfriend Josh and Melissa, who get trapped in the town of Schmigadoon, influenced by the Golden Age of musical theatre (and named after the Broadway classic Brigadoon). First performed at The Kennedy Center in 2025, the stage rendition of the streaming series of the same name (on AppleTV+) has just been nominat...

In this episode, we focus not on a particular show but on a remarkable talent who has helped change the landscape of the theatrical world, literally and figuratively: the renowned architect and Tony Award-winning set designer David Rockwell.  It is staggering to unpack all the sets he has designed in the last multiple decades, such as the Rocky Horror revival in 2000, Hairspray, Dirty Rotten...

What lengths would you go to for the person you loved, and what lengths would the public love you for it? Those are the central themes of the play Dog Day Afternoon, an adaptation of the 1975 movie, itself a dramatization of real-life events that happened in 1972. Adapted for the stage by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis, the story centers on two men, Sonny and Sal, and...

Have you ever been lucky enough to visit somewhere, or meet someone, and feel almost immediately that your life is about to change? That is what the character Dougal feels about New York and his unofficial tour guide, Robyn, in the Broadway musical Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York. First developed in England, the musical tells the story of Dougal’s 48-hour visit to New York on a mission...

In 1998, composer/lyricists Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, and book writer Terrance McNally brought a big, American musical to Broadway based on Ragtime, the acclaimed novel by EL Doctorow. It was a success; the production was nominated for 13 Tony Awards and won four of them. The show ran for multiple years, launched many careers, and brought new, beautiful music to the world.  That world...

The Lost Boys musical is on its way to Broadway, and it is one of the season’s most highly anticipated new shows. Previews start March 27th at the Palace Theatre, with tickets available now at lostboysmusical.com .  The production is in the middle of the final sprint to the finish that all new shows need to take on to open on Broadway successfully, and while there is rarely time to reflect in...

The Lost Boys musical is on its way to Broadway, and it is one of the season’s most highly anticipated new shows. Previews start March 27th at the Palace Theatre, with tickets available now at lostboysmusical.com .  The production is in the middle of the final sprint to the finish that all new shows need to take on to open on Broadway successfully, and while there is rarely time to reflect in...

The Lost Boys musical is on its way to Broadway and it is one of the season’s most highly anticipated new shows, with previews starting March 27th at the Palace Theatre. Tickets are available now at lostboysmusical.com .  The production is in the middle of the final sprint to the finish that all new shows need to take on to open on Broadway successfully, and while there is rarely time to refl...

Playbill went to New York Comic Con in October and hosted several panels on Broadway and beyond, including one on the highly anticipated new musical The Lost Boys, based on the cult classic film. On the panel were producer and stage/screen star Patrick Wilson, two-time Tony-winning director Michael Arden, and members of the cast: Ali Louis Bourzgui, LJ Benet, and Maria Wirries. Hosted by Emmy-nomi...

Playbill went to New York Comic Con in October and hosted several panels on Broadway and beyond, including one on the record-breaking off-Broadway revival of Little Shop of Horrors. On the panel were composer and EGOT winner Alan Menken, Thomas Doherty (Seymour), Madeline Brewer (Audrey), and Major Attaway (Audrey II). They discussed what it's like to put on this wacky and wild show eight times a...

What do you get when you combine more than 11,000 performances, 124 million attendees, and six Tony Awards? You have arguably the most successful and impactful Broadway show in its history. The Lion King debuted in 1997 and has since helped lift the art form and its patrons up, spreading the joy of its work across the world through its many productions. The show, helmed by multi-time Tony Award-wi...

Playbill went to New York Comic Con in October and hosted several panels on Broadway, including Beetlejuice's return, Hamilton's lasting legacy, the rise of Death Becomes Her, Little Shop of Horrors' impact on entertainment history, and a look into the new spring musical, The Lost Boys. We know everyone who'd want to hear these panels couldn't be there in person, so we're turning them into podcast...

Someone must have said his name three times again...since Beetlejuice is back on Broadway for a third time! Playbill went to New York Comic Con earlier this fall and hosted several panels on Broadway, including Beetlejuice's return, Hamilton's lasting impact, the rise of Death Becomes Her, Little Shop of Horrors' impact on entertainment history, and a look into the new spring musical, The Lost Boy...

Breaking the Binary Theatre is a new work development and community building hub wherein transgender, non-binary, and Two-Spirit+ artists come together to reclaim their artistic license and liberty. This year the theatre will celebrate the fourth annual Breaking the Binary Theatre Festival, opening on October 20 with a one-night-only concert of  The Drowsy Chaperone  at Carnegie Hall fea...

One of the recurring multimedia series we make at Playbill is called My Life In The Theatre, and you can find it in the Playbill programs on Broadway, on our YouTube page, and on our website. The premise is simple: we hand a theatre legend a binder filled with Playbills of their past stage shows, and they talk to us about their time in each. The first episode we edited for this podcast was wi...

The musical "Death Becomes Her" has become a Broadway mainstay, thrilling packed houses each night and building an impressive audience. For those of you who haven’t seen it, you may have heard a clip of it before, especially if you have a TikTok, as a sound from the song "Hit Me" has gone viral, heard by millions ("That. Was. Rude...."). Broadway star Jennifer Simard plays Helen Shaw, the fri...

On this episode of the Playbill Podcast, host Alex Birsh talks with "Roastmaster General" Jeff Ross about his new solo show, Take a Banana for the Ride. On Broadway through the end of September. Ross shines the spotlight on himself and his journey, which includes his upbringing in New Jersey and even his bouts with multiple conditions and illnesses, including alopecia. Birsh and Ross chatted on th...

We here at Playbill hope you are having a great summer. It was a whirlwind, wonderful season on Broadway, capped by the Tony Awards in early June. We have slowed down a bit on podcast episode production to take a little break to catch our breath, but fear not -- we will be back with more Broadway show-focused Playbill Podcast episodes later this summer. This episode is a special one, focused on a...

Hi Playbill Podcast listeners! We make a lot of content here at Playbill: for the Playbill programs, our website, and our social media/YouTube pages. While we’re working on future podcast episodes to be released later this summer, we thought you’d enjoy an audio version of an episode from  My Life in the Theatre , our video series where a theatre legend walks us through their career on the st...

The Tony Awards are on Sunday, June 8, and what better way to prepare for the big night than by talking about what could happen! As a Tony Awards partner, Playbill and host Alex Birsh (Playbill’s C.O.O.) can’t disclose too many opinions…but that’s why we brought on two people who CAN share their thoughts and are Tony Awards voters themselves.  Adam Feldman (Time Out) and Elysa Gardner (The Ne...

In the early 1990s, college students Adam Guettel and Tina Landau embarked on a wild idea: writing a musical based on the strange-but-true story of Floyd Collins, the Kentucky man who got stuck in a cave in 1925 trying to turn the cave into a tourist attraction. The topic was so intriguing because of what happened after he got stuck: the news story became one of the country's first "viral stories,...