The best Broadway shows you need to see

If theater is your religion, and the Broadway musical your particular sect, it’s time to rejoice. This gleefully obscene and subversive satire is one of the funniest shows to grace the Great White Way since The Producers and Urinetown. Writers Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park, along with composer Robert Lopez (Avenue Q), find the perfect blend of sweet and nasty for this tale of mismatched Mormon proselytizers in Uganda.—David Cote

Composer-lyricist-star Lin-Manuel Miranda forges a groundbreaking bridge between hip-hop and musical storytelling with this sublime collision of radio-ready beats and an inspiring, immigrant slant on Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. A brilliant, diverse cast takes back American history and makes it new.—David Cote 

The world of Harry Potter has arrived on Broadway, Hogwarts and all, and it is a triumph of theatrical magic. Set two decades after the final chapters of J.K. Rowling’s world-shaking kid-lit heptalogy, Jack Thorne's epic (richly elaborated by director John Tiffany) combines grand storytelling with stagecraft on a scale heretofore unimagined. It leaves its audience awestruck, spellbound and deeply satisfied.—Adam Feldman

Cole Escola's dizzying historical burlesque imagines a boozy, vicious and miserable Mary Todd Lincoln in the weeks leading up to her husband’s assassination. Escola plays Mary with magnetic zaniness, poise and total moment-to-moment comic commitment; director Sam Pinkleton never lets the comic energy flag, and the supporting cast is delicious. (Conrad Ricamora and James Scully play the men in Mary's life.) Everything comes together to create an instant downtown classic, and the funniest stage comedy in years. After a talk-of-town Off Broadway engagement, the show now moves to Broadway for a limited run.—Adam Feldman

The notoriously disharmonious recording process that led to Fleetwood Mac’s classic 1977 LP Rumours is the inspiration for David Adjmi’s long and beautiful group portrait of a rock band riven along artistic, romantic and pharmaceutical fault lines. Every aspect of the show is excellent in isolation, from the ensemble acting to the heightened-verité design and the pitch-perfect original songs by Arcade Fire's Will Butler; meticulously layered and mixed by director Daniel Aukin, they cohere into a riveting multitrack production.—Adam Feldman

Go to hell—and by hell we mean Hadestown, Anaïs Mitchell’s fizzy, moody, thrilling new musical. Ostensibly, at least, the show is a modern retelling of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. But the newness of Mitchell’s score and Rachel Chavkin’s gracefully dynamic staging bring this old story to quivering life.—Adam Feldman

The creators of Hell's Kitchen have found the right recipe for tis coming-of-age jukebox musical drawn from the pop catalog of Alicia Keys—and, in its vivid dancers and magnificent singers, just the right ingredients. Together they've cooked up a heck of a block party. The show has the sensibly narrow scope of a short story, loosely inspired by Keys's life. Maleah Joi Moon makes a stunning debut as a 1990s teenager; Shoshana Bean is her protective mother, Brandon Victor Dixon is her absent father and Kecia Lewis is her teacher.—Adam Feldman

Director-designer Julie Taymor surrounds the Disney movie’s mythic plot and Elton John–Tim Rice score with African rhythm and music. Through elegant puppetry, Taymor populates the stage with a menagerie of African beasts; her staging has expanded a simple cub into the pride of Broadway.—Adam Feldman

Casey Cott and Courtney Reed play lovers caught in a bad romance in this gorgeous, gaudy, spectacularly overstuffed  adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 movie. Directed with opulent showmanship by Alex Timbers and drawing music from more than 75 pop hits, this jukebox megamix may be costume jewelry, but its shine is dazzling.—Adam Feldman

Who doesn’t enjoy a royal wedding? Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss's zingy musical Six celebrates, in boisterous fashion, the union of English dynastic history and modern pop music. On a mock concert stage, the six wives of the 16th-century monarch Henry VIII air their grievances in song, and most of them have plenty to complain about. In this self-described “histo-remix,” members of the long-suffering sextet spin their pain into bops; the queens sing their heads off and the audience loses its mind.—Adam Feldman 

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, to the greatest—well, okay, not the greatest show on Broadway, but a dang fine show nonetheless. Set at a one-ring circus in the Depression, this original musical (by Rick Elice and the collective PigPen Theatre Co.) knows how to craft magic out of spare parts. Director Jessica Stone embraces overt theatricality—animal puppetry, shadow play, aerialism—as an invitation to imagination, even as the performers show off impressive real-life physical talents. Grant Gustin, Isabelle McCalla and Paul Alexander Nolan do fine work in the show's central romantic triangle, but they are effectively the sideshow here. The main attraction is the pull of the circus itself.—Adam Feldman

This musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz addresses surprisingly complex themes, such as standards of beauty, morality and, believe it or not, fighting fascism. Thanks to Winnie Holzman’s witty book and Stephen Schwartz’s pop-inflected score, Wicked soars.—David Cote