The best theater and shows to see in Miami in fall 2024

Riffing on the classic detective stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, this comedic feminist homage from Kate Hamill imagines an unlikely crime-solving duo: Baker Street roommates Shirley Holmes and Joan Watson, who, in a contemporary post-pandemic London, find themselves continually entangled in the nefarious plots of a seemingly uncatchable supervillain. 

The Mothman mythology—an enduring example of Appalachian folklore about a prophetic, man-sized bird spotted in Point Pleasant, West Virginia in the mid-1960s—helped inspire this world-premiere play by Riley Elton McCarthy. In the post-apocalyptic Ragweeds, a cryptozoologist and a doomsday prepper gather in Point Pleasant to finally solve the Mothman mystery, even if their revelations will be heard by no one.

This paranormal musical, based on a 1984 novel by John Updike, concerns a coven of divorced and unsatisfied witches in a fictional New England town, who, in their attempt to conjure the perfect man, end up materializing a charismatic demon who seduces them, teaches them supernatural powers, and wreaks havoc on their picturesque town. Suffused as it may seem with death and sorcery, expect a show that is heavy on humor and whimsy.

Playwright Martin McDonagh’s trenchant, Kafkaesque Tony winner of 2004 is set in a generic totalitarian state, where a writer of mostly unpublished horror fiction is confronted by Gestapo-like officers when a series of child murders appears to mirror his ominous stories. “The Pillowman” is a complex work about internal and external stimuli, about the limits of free speech, and about the effects of life on art and vice versa.

LeBron James’ historic career with the Cleveland Cavaliers—and his period of defection with the Miami Heat—frame the backstory of this moving and comic study of platonic friendship between a bartender with Cavs tickets to sell and a writer with a passion for all things LeBron. Rajiv Joseph’s play spans 13 pivotal years for James and his characters, as esoteric basketball jargon gives way to impactful reflections on life, career and what it means to be a sports fan.

The edgy, breakout musical from Jonathan Larson—who went on to compose Rent—Tick, Tick … Boom is a semiautobiographical account of a restaurant server and aspiring musical-theater composer who faces mounting pressures to abandon his passion for a more lucrative career in the corporate world. Larson died six years after its completion, but the musical has enjoyed a posthumous shelf life in both regional theaters and through a film adaptation in 2021.

In this sparkling celebration of the music and legacy of Cher, three actresses, referred to in the show as Babe, Lady and Star, portray different eras of Cher’s life, and occasionally interact with each other, temporal logic be damned (she did write “If I Could Turn Back Time,” after all). The music, 35 songs deep, is nearly all Cher’s, and the show’s dazzling costumes earned it a Tony Award in 2019.

Like the 1959 Hollywood classic on which it’s based, this gender-switching, Prohibition-era musical follows two male jazz musicians who witness a mob hit. Suddenly on the lam from gangsters, they pose as women to join an all-female band on its tour bus to safer climes. Witty repartee, hot jazz, lightning-fast tap dancing and other tropes of the Roaring Twenties helped elevate the show’s Broadway premiere to 13 Tony Awards in 2023, the most of any musical of its season.

Playwright Aaron Mays’ zeitgeist-capturing satire Black Santa is set in an upper-crust day school, where, in the days before holiday break, in the classroom of the school’s only African-American teacher, a third grader named Sharifa declares “Santa Claus is a Black man from Detroit.” The comment sets off a firestorm that spreads to the school’s administration, which pressures the teacher to create an ad campaign that reinforces Kris Kringle’s essential whiteness.

Born in Canada nine years apart, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen overlapped in life, love and their shared fan bases, as undisputed giants of arty folk music. In this cabaret-style production, accomplished musicians Danielle Wertz and Robbie Schaefer share anecdotes from these icons and perform their immortal tunes, from “Big Yellow Taxi” and the title song to “Suzanne” and “Hallelujah.”