'Hamilton,' 'Kimberly Akimbo' and 'The Wiz': Orpheum announces next Broadway season
Alexander Hamilton, Michael Jackson, the Cowardly Lion and Bob Dylan are among the notables who will be showcased during the Orpheum's 2024-2025 "Broadway Season," theater executives announced Monday night.
The eight-show season will feature the return of "Hamilton" and "The Wiz," along with the Memphis debuts of five plays, including "Kimberly Akimbo" — winner of the 2023 Tony Award for Best Musical — and musicals inspired by the songs of Bob Dylan and Michael Jackson.
"I always want the newest and biggest and best from Broadway," said Orpheum President Brett Batterson, citing "Kimberly Akimbo" and the musical adaptation of the classic 1959 comedy "Some Like It Hot," another Memphis debut.
Referencing "Peter Pan" and "Hamilton," Batterson added: "I always want at least one family musical, and then I want to bring back the shows that I think Memphis wants to see. I think we've done a great job this year hitting all the marks."
Batterson said this production of "Peter Pan" has been "reimagined" with input from Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse, who revised the problematic depictions of such "Indian" characters as Princess Tiger Lily that are found the original 1954 play.
The schedule was announced during the annual "Big Reveal" party at the Orpheum, the historic theater at 203 S. Main that not only books touring versions of Broadway plays but invests in Broadway productions. In fact, as a member of the Independent Presenters Network, a national consortium of theaters and performing arts centers, the Orpheum is among the co-producers of "Some Like It Hot" and the Dylan musical; the theater also is an investor in "Kimberly Akimbo."
Orpheum's 2024-2025 Broadway season:
"MJ the Musical," Sept. 17-22: A "jukebox" musical that showcases such numbers as "Beat It," "Billie Jean," "ABC," "Man in the Mirror" and 20 others, this play focuses on Michael Jackson as he prepares his "Dangerous World Tour" in 1992, at a time of increased pressure on his life and career. Characters in the play include producer Quincy Jones, Motown head Berry Gordy and such Jackson family members as Jermaine, Marlon, Randy and Tito.
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"Girl from the North Country," Oct. 8-13: An unwed pregnant teenager, a Bible salesman and an unlucky boxer are among the characters in this musical, which incorporates 20 Bob Dylan compositions — including "Like a Rolling Stone," "Ballad of a Thin Man" and "Forever Young" — into a story that takes place in a Duluth, Minnesota, guest house during the Great Depression. (A question: Instead of inventing a bunch of Dylanesque characters, why not just make a musical out of "Black Diamond Bay"?)
"Moulin Rouge! The Musical," Oct. 29-Nov. 3: Winner of ten 2020 Tony Awards, this production — making its Memphis debut — is based on the 2001 Baz Luhrmann film about a struggling young composer who falls in love with a cabaret star in turn-of-the-20th-century Paris. The hit pop songs fused into the score include "Lady Marmalade," "Tainted Love" and "Seven Nation Army."
"Peter Pan," Nov. 26-Dec. 1: One hundred-and-twenty years after they debuted in J.M. Barrie's stage play and 70 years after their appearance in a Broadway musical adaption, ageless Peter Pan and Tinker Bell the fairy return to the Orpheum, to dazzle the Darling children with pixie dust and with such songs as "I'm Flying" and "I Won't Grow Up."
"Hamilton," Feb. 18-March 2, 2025: Presented as a "season option," Lin-Manuel Miranda's smash musical about the Founding Fathers makes its third visit to the Orpheum, for a two-week engagement that is likely to sell out (as did previous runs of the play).
"Some Like It Hot," April 8-13, 2025: The classic Jack Lemmon-Tony Curtis-Marilyn Monroe movie about a pair of musicians who don drag to hide in an all-girl band after they witness a mob hit has been transformed into what Deadline calls “a tap-dancing, razzle-dazzling embrace of everything you love about musical theater.”
"Kimberly Akimbo," June 24-29, 2025: Described by The New Yorker as a “howlingly funny heartbreaker of a show,” this song-filled adaptation of a 2000 play by David Lindsay-Abaire features an unusual heroine, especially for a musical: Kim is a lonely teenage girl who suffers from a disease that causes her to age more than four times as fast as an average girl.
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"The Wiz," July 22-27, 2025: The Orpheum Broadway season begins with a work inspired by Michael Jackson and ends with a revival of the musical that many people first encountered in its 1978 movie adaptation, in which Michael Jackson played the Scarecrow: a funkified twist on "The Wizard of Oz," with a soul-gospel score that was groundbreaking when it hit Broadway in 1975.
Current season ticket holders can renew their season passes now by logging onto Orpheum-Memphis.com/Account. Ticket packages for new season ticket holders become available April 18. The public on-sale for individual shows and group tickets will be announced later. For more information visit orpheum-memphis.com/season.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: What Broadway shows are coming to Memphis' Orpheum? The 2024-25 lineup
