With Broadway set to reopen, Hadestown announces itself as first show to welcome audiences back

Hadestown, the brooding musical about the underworld, has set its Broadway reopening date on 2 September, jumping ahead of such megahits as Hamilton and Wicked to position itself as the first show to welcome audiences on Broadway since the pandemic. Producers announced Monday that tickets will go on sale 11 June for the eight-time Tony Award winning musical and that the production will resume playing the Walter Kerr Theatre weeks before its rivals. The first Broadway show to welcome a live audience is likely to get a lot of attention. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo had said Broadway theaters could reopen 14 September but producers “may make their own economic decision as to when they reopen.” They also will be allowed to decide their own entry requirements, like whether people must prove they’ve been vaccinated to attend a show. Soon thereafter, Hamilton, Wicked and The Lion King announced they would restart their shows 14 September, as did the long-running revival of Chicago and the new Lackawanna Blues. Others have staked out spots further into fall and winter, including Six and David Byrne’s American Utopia for 17 September and Dear Evan Hansen in December. Some off-Broadway shows have already restarted with social distancing guidelines. The Broadway that reopens will look different. The big budget Disney musical Frozen decided not to reopen when Broadway theaters restart and producers of the musical Mean Girls also decided not to return. But there will be new shows, including Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s Pass Over that is slated to reopen the August Wilson Theatre, the same venue Mean Girls has vacated. And the Golden Theatre has been promised for playwright Keenan Scott II’s play Thoughts of a Coloured Man, which will begin previews 1 October. All city theaters abruptly closed on 12 March, 2020, knocking out all shows, including 16 that were still scheduled to open. Some scheduled spring 2020 shows — like a musical about Michael Jackson and a revival of Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite starring Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker — pushed their productions to 2021. But others abandoned their plans, including Hangmen and a revival of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — Feature image: A woman walks past the Walter Kerr Theatre in New York where Hadestown was showing before the coronavirus pandemic forced its closing a year ago. Photo credit: AP Photo/Mark Lennihan