Drama

A Bronx Tale is a relative newcomer to the Broadway stage but it’s already being lauded as a fantastic drama. The musical production even received the honor of being labeled a New York Times Critic’s Pick. This hard-edged drama is set in New York’s Bronx during the doo-wop days of the 1960s. Young Chazz Palminteri is torn between loyalty to his father and the potential to become a high-rolling mob boss. A Bronx Tale will leave you in fits of laughter and floods of tears. The dramatic tension between family, loyalty, respect, and attainment will keep you captivated until the final curtain falls.

Significant Other explores the anxiety around modern love as the main character, Jordan, struggles with his friends’ romances. Of course, Jordan is happy for his friends who are finding love and settling down – but he’s a little jealous too. Tasked with the job of supporting friends who have exactly what he wants, Jordan is forced to navigate changing friendships and dating at the same time. Significant Other is insightful and touching, following Jordan as a gay twenty-something with intuitive depth. His close friendships and supportive nature are laced with moments of humor, so Significant Other cleverly treads the balance between dramatic and depressing without going too far in either direction. If you’ve ever struggled to balance friendship with jealousy, Significant Other will thoroughly enthrall you.

From its excellent cast to the tense storyline, The Price is an outstanding Broadway drama. The play stars The Avengers’ Mark Ruffalo, Monk’s Tony Shalhoub, Breaking Bad’s Jessica Hecht, and film legend Danny DeVito. Indeed, with a cast like that, you’re already in for a great show! Luckily, the storyline is also fittingly dramatic and heart-wrenching. When Victor Franz gives up his dream of an education after his family loses their fortune in the Great Depression. Three decades later, Victor returns home to sell his parents’ estate. There, he contends with the agendas of his wife, estranged brother, and a sneaky furniture dealer. The Price considers questions of sacrifice and self-fulfillment in a profound and delicate manner.

Cate Blanchett makes her stunning return to Broadway in The Present, a nail-biting drama based on Anton Chekhov‘s Platonov. The play is set in the gritty post-Perestroika Russian countryside. There, Blanchett plays Anna, an independent and sensual widow who invites friends to her country house to celebrate her birthday. Once there, the passionate drama begins to unfold. Adding to the drama is Platonov, a married rogue who wins the affections of everyone at the gathering. Anna and Platonov share a smoldering connection. The Present explores the tangle of tense, unresolved relationships and the decades-long regret that rests beneath them.

Sweat follows three lifelong friends who share drinks, confidences, and laughter in working-class America. The girlfriends, Tracey, Cynthia, and Jessie, work on the line of a factory floor like generations of their families before them. When layoffs and picket lines begin to corrode their friendship, the women have some hard realities to face. The whole production plays out in the run-down neighborhood bar. However, the simplistic set hides the drama at the heart of this story. Sweat is a rare Broadway production plumbing the depths of life without any glitz, glamor, or pleasure. The heart of the story will capture your heart, however, and keep you rooting for the women at its center.

What’s more dramatic than a true story?
Well, a true story set on Broadway, for one thing! Indecent is inspired by the real-life events of the 1923 Broadway debut of Sholem Asch‘s God of Vengeance. The controversial production was viewed as a seminal Jewish cultural work by some audiences, and a faithless libel by others. This modern retelling lays bare the history of the production and the artists who risked everything to perform the play. From their careers to their very lives, God of Vengeance could be all-consuming. Indecent deftly portrays this conflict with the drama of Broadway and the heart of the tale pulled straight from history.

Henrik Ibsen‘s A Doll’s House, written in 1879, is an old Broadway landmark. Dramatists have long wondered what a sequel to the shocking events of the play would entail. Finally, A Doll’s House, Part 2, written by Lucas Hnath, has arrived to answer those questions. The previous work ended with the main character Nora storming out of her family home. Fittingly, the act of leaving her husband and children after being betrayed and humiliated gives the story an enduring relevance. This long-awaited follow-up explores what happens when Nora finally returns to the household. How have the events settled in her years-long absence? This strained Broadway drama centers on family, betrayal, and reunion and is slated for Tony Award success this season.