Broadway Roundup September 2025

By The Recs SCD - Steve Coats-Dennis 1 year ago

The latest theatre happenings on Broadway: Waiting for Godot, Punch, Cabaret and Evita

Welcome to our first compilation of the latest news and gossip surrounding The Great White Way, bringing you the headline news on who’s hot and who is not on Broadway and turning the spotlight on shows that are due to open or close this month. 

Waiting For Godot

Images by Andy Henderson

Given his Barnum-esque flair for capturing public attention, Jamie Lloyd‘s productions will top and tail this review. Given his penchant for minimalism, Waiting For Godot would seem a match made in heaven. Beckett’s sparse description of the play’s setting – “A country road. A tree.” – feels ideal for the 45-year-old British director’s canon of stripped-back, bare-bones aesthetics. 

But eyebrows were raised when rehearsal photos appeared to suggest that Lloyd has set his take on Samuel Beckett‘s groundbreaking drama…in a skate park! While this might lead into the essential dude-ness of his two leads, the Bill and Ted trilogy’s Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, it seems a surprise that the notoriously protective estate of the Irish writer would seem to have let “Skating on Godot” pass. After all, they objected to both a 1992 production in Paris (and stopped it from happening) and a 2006 Italian staging (which was legally overturned) because they intended to cast women as Vladimir and Estragon. 

With recent productions such as the Kieran Culkin-starred Glengarry Glen Ross and Operation Mincemeat putting the bro into Broadway and attracting above-average male attendance, it certainly looks like Reeves and Winter’s most excellent fanbase are ramping up the chances of this Godot! 

Broadway previews of Waiting For Godot at the Hudson Theatre begin 13 September, with opening night on September 28, 2025. It is scheduled for a limited run through January 4, 2026. BOOK NOW

Punch

Image by © Matthew Murphy

Too often in certain quarters, London and the West End are touted as the be-all and end-all of theatrical creativity. Such a myopic view of the British theatre landscape fails to take in those regional powerhouses. 

So it is a delight to be able to champion such a success story as Nottingham Playhouse‘s Punch. On 4 May 2024, they produced the world premiere of Olivier Award-winning playwright James Graham‘s drama about the catastrophic effects of a single punch. Directed by the venue’s artistic director, Adam Penford, and starring David Shields, Julie Hesmondhalgh and Tony Hirst, it won rave reviews and transferred to the Young Vic early this year.

With plaudits still ringing out for this intense and compelling drama, based on a real-life manslaughter case in the UK, Punch is about to achieve that very rare conjunction: a new play running simultaneously on Broadway and in the West End. 

Presented as part of the Manhattan Theatre Club‘s 2025-2026 season, the Broadway cast will include two-time Tony Award winner and five-time Tony nominee Victoria Clark, who will play the victim’s mother, Joan, and Will Harrison (who starred in the Emmy-winning TV series Daisy Jones & The Six), who will feature as Jacob, the young man who tears through life in a haze of drugs, girls, and fights until a fatal mistake has severe consequences.

Broadway previews of Punch began September 9, 2025, with opening Night September 29, 2025. It is booking until November 2, 2025. BOOK NOW

Cabaret

Image by Marc Brenner

Speaking of shows running productions on either side of the Atlantic, we are saying, “Auf wiedersehen, mein herr. Es war sehr gut, mein herr, und vorbei” to the 2024 Broadway revival of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club. For a show that garnered 9 Tony Award nominations in 2024 with a cast that included Eddie Redmayne and Bebe Neuwirth in its number, it’s a rather sad early closure. 

Audiences for the show, which gutted the August Wilson Theatre for an intimate in-the-round staging and was reported to need weekly grosses of about $1.2 million to break even, responded to the casting of Billy Porter and Marisha Wallace with a gross of just $648,886 for their first week. “I Don’t Care Much” was the public response, loud and clear. 

This week, the producers of Cabaret announced it would close 21 September 2025 (a month earlier than planned). The reason stated was Billy Porter’s unexpected health crisis — being suddenly hospitalised with a “serious case of sepsis”, forcing him to exit the show. 

What has added some extra eyeballs on this closure is the production is now being sued by one of its investors. In a scenario that apes the plot of The Producers, investor James Lorenzo Walker, Jr, has accused producers of engaging in “a deliberate scheme intended to strip him and other investors of their investments in, and partnership profits from, the Broadway production”.

Despite by the time that Porter reported sick, the show was already losing hundreds of thousands of dollars weekly and had little chance of recouping its massive investment. 

Could it be that this acrimonious lawsuit will run longer than the Broadway show?

Cabaret now runs on Broadway until September 21, 2025. BOOK NOW

Evita

“She had her moments, she had some style.”

Rachel Zegler‘s astonishing reign over the London Palladium (and indeed over Argyll Street) is over. What seemed like a worryingly late casting after Ariana DeBose ruled herself out of Jamie Lloyd‘s (there’s that name again) interpretation of Evita has been an unfettered triumph for the 24-year-old Hollywood actress. So this much-lauded production, which followed Lloyd’s much-lauded revival of Sunset Boulevard, surely must be heading to the Great White Way?

Well, to quote the show… “yes and no, and yes and NO!” While the money kept rolling in during its West End run – allegedly over £6 million in ticket sales during its 12-week run – you’d have thought the rainbow tour of this Evita heading to Broadway would be a shoe-in… 

But the show’s composer and theatre impresario Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber has been casting a gimlet eye over Broadway and seemingly doesn’t like what he sees! Perhaps the Lord was burnt by the much-lauded Sunset Boulevard, starring Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond, which, despite maintaining approximately 93% capacity throughout its run, did not recoup its investment. 

While fans of the show and Zegler’s outstanding performance (see The Recs’ 5-star review) may live in hope of an NYC transfer, it may be a lament that this show never makes it across the Pond.

Stay tuned to The Recs for more NYC theatre coverage!

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