OnBroadway
All 41 active Broadway theaters in Manhattan, the last of them on 28 February 2025 at the Minskoff. That finished the map, not the habit — the most recent night in this log is April 2026, and the list is still growing. What follows is all of it: what I saw, where I sat in each run, and the ones I'd happily see again. You came a fair way off the main path to get here — glad you did.
The 15 I'd see again
10 musicals and 5 plays — 31% of every play I saw, against 19% of the musicals. Covers are my own Playbills. Where there is a line underneath, it is why that one made the list.
The 1970s and the present argue with each other in real time. Best Play in 2026, its first Broadway season.
Seen with my dad — a powerful story of six women fighting to be heard and seen, told through real struggles and the price of pushing for change. It traces how legacy forms across generations, drawing a sharp parallel between the fights women faced in the 1970s and the ones they still face today. A reminder that progress isn't always a straight line.
112 performances · 1 TonyMarianne Elliott's revival turned Bobby into Bobbie and won Best Revival of a Musical.
I saw this on the eve of turning 34 — one year shy of Bobby's own milestone birthday in the story — which made it an unexpectedly personal night of reflection on what society expects of us versus what we actually want. Sondheim's storytelling is sharp, funny, and genuinely enjoyable from start to finish.
265 performances · 5 TonysA rumble staged in real falling rain, and Best Musical of 2024 — produced by Angelina Jolie with Coppola's American Zoetrope, which made the 1983 film.
A love story that transcends where you come from, built around trust, connection, and the support systems — chosen or otherwise — that carry us through life. Not everyone will agree on every choice, but the music and the emotional connection are undeniable.
946 performances · 4 TonysThe DeLorean takes off over the audience — projection mapping and practical effects, years in the perfecting.
One of my favorite movies, brought to life onstage — and I went back multiple times. Great story, great cast, and a genuinely impressive stagecraft trick: making the DeLorean actually appear to fly in front of you.
589 performances · seen twiceThe plot was written to fit ABBA's back catalogue, not the other way round — and a curtain call the entire house gets up for.
Energetic and fantastic — a full-throttle celebration of ABBA that makes it nearly impossible to sit still. The cast could be sharper, but the production values and the pure joy of singing and dancing along carry the night.
195 performances · ✒ signed by the castTwelve actors play an entire Newfoundland town in a hundred minutes, no interval. The real Gander still holds reunions with the passengers it took in.
This one introduced me to a whole different side of Broadway — theater that teaches real history. It tells the true story of 38 planes grounded in Gander, Newfoundland on 9/11, and the unlikely friendships that formed between stranded passengers and the small town that took them in. Funny, moving, and rooted entirely in fact.
1,669 performancesThree pairs of actors play the same couple at three ages, sharing the stage at once.
A story told through three different actors playing the same two characters across different stages of their lives. I needed a box of tissues the entire time — the emotional weight of watching a love story unfold across a lifetime hits differently live than on screen. Hard to put into words.
317 performancesStage effects that made the reviews in London and New York both reach for the word impossible.
A surreal deep dive into backstory the show never gave us — what shaped the main characters before everything we know from the series. The scenography, sound design, and effects pull you completely into the world.
508 performances · 3 TonysDefying Gravity, and the act-one curtain that made the show a phenomenon — Elphaba's flying rig checked before every single performance.
One of my all-time favorites — I've seen it twice and would happily go again. The music, the characters, the sheer craft of the performances pull you so deep into the story that the outside world disappears. Pure magic, every time.
8,843 performances · seen twiceMiranda read Chernow's biography on holiday and had the opening number almost at once. The score changed what a musical was allowed to sound like.
Electrifying doesn't even cover it. We scored $10 lottery tickets and ended up front row — and for all that it's streaming on Disney+, nothing comes close to seeing it live.
3,925 performances · ✒ signed by the castThe South Park creators' satire, written with Avenue Q's Robert Lopez — still selling out fifteen years after it opened.
My very first Broadway show, caught during Broadway Week — which is exactly why it holds a permanent spot in my heart. It was the opening night of what's become countless hours in front of stage lights since. Joyful, irreverent, and insightful, it remains one of my favorite places on earth.
5,683 performancesNathan Lane, Danny Burstein and Zoë Wanamaker, three-handed — from Larry Sultan's photo book on photographing his own parents.
This one hit differently — it brought back my grandfather, who loved photography and old home movies, the slide projectors and reels I remember from childhood. Beyond that, it's a beautifully told story about family, memory, and how we choose to preserve the people we love.
86 performancesRob McClure's quick-changes — some in seconds, some in full view of the house, eight shows a week.
Hilarious from start to finish, and Rob McClure's ability to flip between two roles within the same show is a genuine feat to witness live. I saw it twice — the second time with visiting family, who loved it just as much. Between the physical comedy and the sharp writing, it's a guaranteed good time for any crowd.
83 performances · seen twiceDebra Messing never leaves the stage and never changes costume — ninety minutes, seventeen years old to a hundred and one.
Decades of one woman's life in a single kitchen. It captures how quickly it all moves — how people enter and leave, how some stay and some don't. A gentle nudge to own your life while you still can. This one hit close to home and left me reflecting long after.
57 performancesStage illusions people argue about on the way out. Six Tonys, including Best Play.
Set after the books and films end, this one dives into what life after Hogwarts might look like for the next generation. It's a long sit, but the new characters and jaw-dropping stagecraft — illusions that feel genuinely impossible — make it worth every minute.
2,693 performancesEvery run, and the night I was in it
69 of the 69 productions, one line each. First preview to closing, or to today for the 16 still running, every run drawn the same width so the shapes compare. The tick is my seat. 13 of my 76 nights were previews, before the show had officially opened; 18 were in a run's final six weeks.
Three tracks — Company, Mrs. Doubtfire and Six — show a preview period of close to two years. All three started previews in the weeks before Broadway shut down in March 2020, and none of them opened until the autumn of 2021. On those rows the hatch is the pandemic, not a preview run.
Times in a seat, by year
Which night, and which month
By night of the week
Monday is hatched rather than empty — Broadway houses are dark on Mondays. The shaded foot of each bar is a matinee: 12 of the 76 nights whose curtain time I still have a stub for — 11 on a weekend and one on a weekday.
By month of the year
Jun is the busiest month at 11 nights, Jan the quietest at 1.
What I saw, and what I loved
These count productions, not nights. The middle bar is the point: plays are 23% of the productions I saw and 33% of the ones I loved, so a play I saw was roughly 1.7 times likelier to end up one I would see again. On 16 plays and 15 favorites that is a description of this log, not a reliable rate — it would move if I saw four more plays.
What the industry picked
| Year | Play | Musical | Revival of a Play | Revival of a Musical |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | The Lehman Trilogy | A Strange Loop — saw it | Take Me Out — saw it | Company ★ — saw it |
| 2023 | Leopoldstadt | Kimberly Akimbo — saw it | Topdog/Underdog | Parade |
| 2024 | Stereophonic | The Outsiders ★ — saw it | Appropriate | Merrily We Roll Along |
| 2025 | Purpose | Maybe Happy Ending | Eureka Day | Sunset Boulevard |
| 2026 | Liberation ★ — saw it | Schmigadoon! | Death of a Salesman | Ragtime |
● marks the 6 of these twenty I had a ticket for; ★ marks one that became a favorite. I saw 3 of the five Best Musical winners and 1 of the five Best Play winners.
Every competitive Tony awarded between 2022 and 2026 — 130 of them, 26 a year. 47 went to a production I had a ticket for, spread across 20 shows. The filled part of each bar is my share of that year.
The productions that won more than once, most first. Green and ★ mark one of my 15 favorites.
The 13 that won more than once; 7 more took a single award. 4 of my 15 favorites won a Tony in these five years, and 18 of those 47 awards went to a show I had already been to before that June's ceremony.
What a seat cost me
76 of my 76 nights still have a stub. Across the 76 that do: $4,154 in total, $54.65 a night, and 79% of them came from a lottery or a rush queue rather than being bought at the going rate.
Every ticket I still have, in ten-dollar bands. Anything under $60 on this stretch of Broadway was a lottery or a rush seat, and the green columns are those — 60 of 76, or 79%. The seller cannot tell you this; the same platforms issue a rush ticket and a full-price one, so the price is the only honest signal. The cheapest night was $10, Hamilton, and the dearest $201, Mamma Mia!.
A Broadway house in section. The orchestra is the ground floor in front of the stage, the mezzanine the first tier above and behind it, and the balcony the one above that — so the three words are heights, not directions. The darker a tier, the more of my nights were spent in it.
Where I actually sat, what each part of the house averaged, and how much of each tier came from a lottery or a rush queue — the green share of every row. The orchestra is not the expensive habit it looks like — on these stubs it cost about what the mezzanine did.
What 41 of 41 means
The rooms, not the shows. "Every active Broadway theater" is a claim about 41 buildings, so here is what they are.
The Gershwin holds 3.2 times what the Hayes does, which is why the average and the median sit 135 apart — a handful of very large houses pull the mean up.
When each house opened, and the answer is mostly a long time ago: 35 of the 41 were open before 1930, 19 of them in the twenties alone, with the hatched columns marking decades that built nothing still standing. The newest is the Lyric, 1998. 3 of them opened in 1903 — the Hudson, the Lyceum and the New Amsterdam — which makes them older than the Chrysler Building by more than a quarter of a century.
Who owns the rooms
On the map the three largest landlords — Shubert, Nederlander and Jujamcyn — have a color each and every smaller owner shares one grey. The bars count productions, not rooms: Shubert owns 17 of the 41 houses, and 5 owners hold a single theater each.
Everything, in order
All 69 productions, most recent first. Titles link to the production on Playbill.
69 of 69 shown
- Titanique St. JamesCéline Dion explains what really happened on the Titanic.
- Liberation James Earl JonesSix women in a 1970 Ohio consciousness-raising group, seen through a daughter's eyes.
- Stranger Things: The First Shadow MarquisHawkins, 1959, and the boy who becomes the monster.
- Mamma Mia! Winter GardenA bride invites the three men who might be her father, set to ABBA.
- Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club August WilsonA Berlin nightclub keeps dancing as the Nazis take hold.
- The Outsiders Bernard B. JacobsGreasers and Socs collide in 1967 Tulsa.
- Redwood NederlanderA woman running from grief climbs into the canopy of a redwood.
- The Lion King MinskoffA lion cub flees after his father's death, then returns to claim his place.
- Gypsy MajesticThe ultimate stage mother pushes her daughters into vaudeville, then burlesque.
- Water for Elephants ImperialA young man jumps a train, joins a Depression-era circus, and falls in love.
- Tammy Faye PalaceTammy Faye and Jim Bakker build a televangelist empire, and lose it.
- Suffs Music BoxThe American suffragists fighting for the vote, and with each other, from 1913.
- Hell’s Kitchen Sam S. ShubertA 17-year-old finds music in 1990s Manhattan, set to Alicia Keys's songs.
- The Great Gatsby BroadwayFitzgerald's Jazz Age novel: Gatsby's fortune, and the woman he built it for.
- The Heart of Rock and Roll James Earl JonesA rom-com built out of Huey Lewis and the News songs.
- The Notebook Gerald SchoenfeldA decades-long love story, remembered by a man reading it back to his wife.
- Lempicka LongacreThe Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka, from revolutionary Russia to Hollywood.
- The Who’s Tommy NederlanderA boy struck deaf, dumb and blind becomes a pinball champion, then a messiah.
- Gutenberg! James Earl JonesTwo friends pitch a wildly misguided musical about the printing press.
- Here Lies Love BroadwayImelda Marcos's rise and fall, staged as a disco.
- The Cottage HayesA 1923 English affair confessed, and the tangle that follows.
- Sweeney Todd Lunt-FontanneA barber returns to London for revenge; his neighbor bakes the evidence into pies.
- Hadestown Walter KerrOrpheus goes down to the underworld for Eurydice.
- Back to the Future Winter GardenMarty McFly is stranded in 1955 and has to get his parents together.
- The Shark Is Broken John GoldenThree actors stuck on a boat while the shoot for Jaws falls apart.
- Once Upon a One More Time MarquisFairy-tale princesses discover feminism, set to Britney Spears.
- New York, New York St. JamesArtists trying to make it in the city just after the war.
- Peter Pan Goes Wrong Ethel BarrymoreAn amateur company stages Peter Pan and everything collapses.
- Bad Cinderella ImperialCinderella as the one misfit in a kingdom obsessed with beauty.
- Shucked NederlanderA corn-farming town sends someone to the city for help.
- Life of Pi Gerald SchoenfeldA boy adrift in the Pacific in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger.
- A Doll’s House HudsonIbsen: a wife discovers what her marriage has really cost her.
- Dancin’ Music BoxBob Fosse's plotless dance revue, revived.
- Camelot Vivian BeaumontArthur builds the Round Table; Guenevere and Lancelot pull it apart.
- MJ the Musical Neil SimonMichael Jackson in rehearsal for the 1992 Dangerous tour.
- & Juliet Stephen SondheimJuliet doesn't die, and goes to Paris instead, set to Max Martin pop.
- Pictures from Home Studio 54A photographer spends years shooting his own parents.
- A Beautiful Noise BroadhurstNeil Diamond's life, told through his own songs.
- Kimberly Akimbo BoothA teenager with a condition that ages her four times too fast.
- Some Like It Hot Sam S. ShubertTwo musicians witness a mob hit and flee Chicago hidden in a women's band.
- A Christmas Carol NederlanderDickens's Scrooge, with one actor playing more than fifty roles.
- Six Lena HorneHenry VIII's six wives retell their marriages as a pop concert.
- The Phantom of the Opera MajesticA disfigured genius haunts the Paris Opera, and the singer he loves.
- KPOP Circle in the SquareA K-pop label's one-night showcase, and the singer coming apart inside it.
- The Kite Runner HayesA man returns to Afghanistan to face what he did to a childhood friend.
- Almost Famous Bernard B. JacobsA 15-year-old writes a Rolling Stone cover story from inside a 1973 rock tour.
- Moulin Rouge! Al HirschfeldA writer and a courtesan fall in love in bohemian Paris.
- 1776 Todd Haimes — the American Airlines when I wentThe Continental Congress argues its way to the Declaration of Independence.
- Wicked GershwinOz before Dorothy: how one witch became wicked and the other good.
- A Strange Loop LyceumA Black, queer writer trying to write a musical about a Black, queer writer.
- POTUS Sam S. ShubertSeven women scramble to contain a presidential PR disaster.
- Company Bernard B. JacobsTurning 35 and still single, Bobbie weighs marriage against her married friends.
- Funny Girl August WilsonFanny Brice's rise to Ziegfeld stardom, and her marriage to a gambler.
- Girl from the North Country BelascoA Depression-era Minnesota boarding house, set to Bob Dylan songs.
- The Music Man Winter GardenA con man sells band instruments to an Iowa town he never intends to teach.
- Dear Evan Hansen Music BoxA lie about a dead classmate spirals into the life a lonely teenager wanted.
- Hamilton Richard RodgersAlexander Hamilton's life and death, told in hip-hop.
- Come from Away Gerald SchoenfeldThirty-eight planes grounded in Gander, Newfoundland on 11 September 2001.
- How I Learned to Drive Samuel J. FriedmanA woman looks back at the uncle who groomed her, through driving lessons.
- Take Me Out HayesA baseball star comes out, and his team fractures around him.
- American Buffalo Circle in the SquareThree small-time crooks plan to steal a coin collection.
- Mrs. Doubtfire Stephen SondheimA divorced father disguises himself as a nanny to stay near his children.
- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child LyricHarry's son and Draco's son meddle with time.
- Mr. Saturday Night NederlanderAn old comedian takes one more run at the fame he had in the 1950s.
- Birthday Candles Todd Haimes — the American Airlines when I wentOne woman's life from 17 to 101, one birthday cake at a time.
- Paradise Square Ethel BarrymoreIrish immigrants and free Black New Yorkers in the Five Points, 1863.
- Aladdin New AmsterdamA street thief, a genie, and three wishes.
- Chicago AmbassadorTwo murderesses compete for the headlines and the same slick lawyer.
- The Book of Mormon Eugene O’NeillTwo mismatched missionaries are sent to Uganda.
Nothing matches those filters.
For my mother with love. 1 March 2025.