Broadway San Diego (San Diego, CA) has announced that Broadway is coming back to San Diego, beginning in November 2021, including all previously announced Season Ticket Package events.
The 44th Season that had been set to begin in the fall of 2020 will now take place a year later! The season kicks off a hometown favorite, directed by former Artistic Director of The Old Globe, Jack O’Brien – Hairspray. Next spring, the Grammy & Tony Award®-winner for Best Musical, The Band’s Visit comes to town, followed by the fan-favorite musical comedy that’s “even funnier than the movie” (New York Post), Tootsie. The winner of eight 2019 Tony Awards including best Musical, Hadestown is the haunting and hopeful journey to the underworld and back. Just in time for summer, one of Hollywood’s most beloved stories, Pretty Woman: The Musical makes its San Diego debut. Aaron Sorkin’s To Kill A Mockingbird, directed by Bartlett Sher and based on Harper Lee’s Pulitzer prizewinning masterwork will take the stage and is the first play presented by Broadway San Diego in over a decade. Next up is the Diane Paulus-directed and previously announced post-Broadway run of the American classic, 1776 –now coming to San Diego fresh from Broadway.
The remaining productions from the end of the 2019-2020 season are now scheduled, beginning with the “loverly” Lincoln Center Production of My Fair Lady, followed by La Jolla Playhouse-bred Come From Away returning to its home to captivate audiences. And finally, the highly anticipated run of Mean Girls, the hilarious hit musical from an award-winning creative team, including book writer Tina Fey, composer Jeff Richmond, lyricist Nell Benjamin and directed by San Diego native Casey Nicholaw.
“We are thrilled that both our 2019-2020, and our 44th paused seasons were able to stay intact with new dates secured,” said Vanessa Davis, General Manager of Broadway San Diego. “The support of our audiences has been extraordinary over the last year and we can’t wait to welcome them back see them and share these incredible shows with San Diego. Plus, our 2019-2020 Season Ticket Holders will finally have the chance to see their remaining three season shows.”
| Show | Dates |
|---|---|
| Hairspray | November 16-21, 2021 |
| My Fair Lady | November 30 – December 5, 2021 |
| The Simon & Garfunkel Story | January 6, 2021 |
| The Band’s Visit | March 1-6, 2022 |
| Tootsie | April 12-17, 2022 |
| Rent | April 22-24, 2022 |
| Come From Away | May 17-22, 2022 |
| Hadestown | May 31 – June 5, 2022 |
| Pretty Woman: The Musical | July 26-31, 2022 |
| To Kill A Mockingbird | November 29 – December 4, 2022 |
| Mean Girls | February 28 – March 5, 2023 |
| 1776 | May 9-14, 2023 |
For more information, visit broadwaysd.com
Broadway San Diego’s 44th Season Lineup:
HAIRSPRAY
November 16-21, 2021
You Can’t Stop the Beat! Hairspray, Broadway’s Tony Award-winning musical comedy phenomenon that inspired the blockbuster film and live television event, is back on tour! Join 16-year-old Tracy Turnblad in 1960’s Baltimore as she sets out to dance her way onto TV’s most popular show. Can a girl with big dreams (and even bigger hair) change the world?
Featuring the beloved score of hit songs including “Welcome to the 60’s,” “Good Morning Baltimore,” “It Takes Two,” and incorporating “Ladies Choice” from the musical film adaption, Hairspray is “fresh, winning, and deliriously tuneful!” (The New York Times).
This all-new touring production will reunite Broadway’s award-winning creative team led by Director Jack O’Brien and Choreographer Jerry Mitchell to bring Hairspray to a new generation of theater audiences. Don’t miss this “exhilaratingly funny and warm-hearted musical comedy” (The New Yorker).
THE BAND’S VISIT
March 1-6, 2022
The critically acclaimed smash-hit Broadway musical The Band’s Visit is the winner of 10 Tony® Awards, including Best Musical, making it one of the most Tony-winning musicals in history. It is also a Grammy Award® winner for Best Musical Theater Album.
In this joyously offbeat story, set in a town that’s way off the beaten path, a band of musicians arrive lost, out of the blue. Under the spell of the desert sky, and with beautiful music perfuming the air, the band brings the town to life in unexpected and tantalizing ways. Even the briefest visit can stay with you forever.
With a Tony- and Grammy-winning score that seduces your soul and sweeps you off your feet, and featuring thrillingly talented onstage musicians, The Band’s Visit rejoices in the way music makes us laugh, makes us cry, and ultimately, brings us together.
TOOTSIE
April 12-17, 2022
It’s “far and away the funniest musical of the season” (Daily News). It’s “the most uproarious new show in years” (The Hollywood Reporter). It’s “the best comedy on Broadway” (Forbes). No matter how you say it, Tootsie is unanimously funny! It’s a laugh-out-loud love letter to the theatre, based on the Oscar®-nominated film. Featuring a Tony®-winning book by Robert Horn and an outrageously clever score by 2018 Tony® winner David Yazbek (The Band’s Visit, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), this New York Times Critic’s Pick is a “hilarious, thoroughly modern Tootsie” (People Magazine) that’s “even funnier than the movie!” (New York Post). “In these turbulent times, with the world out of balance, we need a place to let the good times roll,” says Rolling Stone, “Tootsie is it.”
HADESTOWN
May 31-June 5, 2022
COME SEE HOW THE WORLD COULD BE.
Welcome to Hadestown, where a song can change your fate. Winner of eight 2019 Tony Awards® including Best Musical, this acclaimed new musical by celebrated singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell and innovative director Rachel Chavkin (Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812) is a love story for today… and always.
Hadestown intertwines two mythic tales — that of young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice, and that of King Hades and his wife Persephone — as it invites you on a hell-raising journey to the underworld and back. Mitchell’s beguiling melodies and Chavkin’s poetic imagination pit industry against nature, doubt against faith, and fear against love. Performed by a vibrant ensemble of actors, dancers and singers, Hadestown is a haunting and hopeful theatrical experience that grabs you and never lets go.
PRETTY WOMAN: THE MUSICAL
July 26-31, 2022
After an incredible record-breaking run on Broadway, Audience Choice Award-winner Pretty Woman: The Musical is coming to San Diego! One of Hollywood’s most beloved stories of all time, Pretty Woman: The Musical is brought to life by a powerhouse creative team representing the best of music, Hollywood, and Broadway. Featuring direction and choreography by two-time Tony Award® winner Jerry Mitchell (Kinky Boots, Legally Blonde), an original score by Grammy® winner Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance (“Summer of ’69”, “Heaven”), and a book by the movie’s legendary director Garry Marshall and screenwriter J.F. Lawton, Pretty Woman: The Musical will lift your spirits and light up your heart. “If you love the movie, you’ll love the musical!” (BuzzFeed News).
Featured in the musical is Roy Orbison and Bill Dee’s international smash hit song “Oh, Pretty Woman,” which inspired one of the most beloved romantic comedy films of all time. Pretty Woman the film (produced by Arnon Milchan, New Regency Productions) was an international smash hit when it was released in 1990. Now, 30 years later, Pretty Woman: The Musical still “Dazzles!” (Deadline) and is “Big romance and big fun!” (Broadway.com). “Irresistible! A romantic fantasy. A contemporary fairy tale,” says the Hollywood Reporter. Pretty Woman: The Musical delivers on all the iconic moments you remember. Get ready to experience this dazzling theatrical take on a love story for the ages.
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
June 22-27, 2021
All rise for Academy Award® winner Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prizewinning masterwork. The New York Times Critic’s Pick To Kill A Mockingbird is “the most successful American play in Broadway history. It has not played to a single empty seat” (60 Minutes). Rolling Stone gives it 5 stars, calling it “an emotionally shattering landmark production of an American classic,” and New York Magazine calls it “a real phenomenon. Majestic and incandescent, it’s filled with breath and nuance and soul.” With direction by Tony Award® winner Bartlett Sher, To Kill A Mockingbird — “the greatest novel of all time” (Chicago Tribune) — has quickly become “one of the greatest plays in history” (NPR).
1776
May 9-14, 2023
They knew they would make history, but not what history would make of them. Fed up with living under the tyranny of British rule, John Adams attempts to persuade his fellow members of the Continental Congress to vote in favor of American Independence and sign the Declaration. But how much is he willing to compromise in the pursuit of freedom? And to whom does that freedom belong?
Direct from the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University, visionary director Diane Paulus reexamines a pivotal moment in American history in a re-imagining of the Tony Award®-winning musical 1776 prior to its Broadway engagement at Roundabout Theatre Company.
Added events for the 44th Season
THE SIMON & GARFUNKEL STORY
January 6, 2022
*Balboa Theatre
Now seen in over 50 countries around the world, THE SIMON & GARFUNKEL STORY is a critically acclaimed concert-style theatre show about two young boys from Queens, New York, who went on to become the world’s most successful music duo of all time. Using state of the art video projection, incredible lighting and a full live band THE SIMON & GARFUNKEL STORY is a moving and powerful concert featuring all the hits such as “Mrs Robinson”, “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, “Homeward Bound”, “Scarborough Fair”, “The Boxer”, “The Sound Of Silence” and many more, this is a show not to be missed!
Rating: All Ages
ALTON BROWN LIVE: BEYOND THE EATS
November 14, 2021
*Balboa Theatre
Alton Brown is hitting the road with a new culinary variety show. Audiences can expect more comedy, more music, more highly unusual cooking demos, and more potentially dangerous sciencey stuff. Prepare for an evening unlike any other and if Brown calls for volunteers… think twice.
Rating: All Ages
Remaining 2019-2020 Season Lineup:
MY FAIR LADY
November 30-December 5, 2021
From Lincoln Center Theater that brought you The King & I and South Pacific, comes “a sumptuous new production of the most perfect musical of all time” (Entertainment Weekly), Lerner & Loewe’s My Fair Lady. Director Bartlett Sher’s glowing production is “thrilling, glorious and better than it ever was” (New York Times). “Every so often, a revival comes along that reminds you how indispensable great theater can be” (NY1).
Boasting such classic songs as “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “The Rain in Spain,” “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” and “On the Street Where You Live,” My Fair Lady tells the story of Eliza Doolittle, a young Cockney flower seller, and Henry Higgins, a linguistics professor who is determined to transform her into his idea of a “proper lady.” But who is really being transformed?
COME FROM AWAY
May 17-22, 2021
Broadway’s Come From Away is a Best Musical winner across North America! This New York Times Critics’ Pick takes you into the heart of the remarkable true story of 7,000 stranded passengers and the small town in Newfoundland that welcomed them. Cultures clashed and nerves ran high, but uneasiness turned into trust, music soared into the night, and gratitude grew into enduring friendships.
Don’t miss this breathtaking new musical written by Tony® nominees Irene Sankoff and David Hein and helmed by this year’s Tony-winning Best Director, and La Jolla Playhouse Artistic Director, Christopher Ashley. Newsweek cheers, “It takes you to a place you never want to leave!” On 9/11, the world stopped. On 9/12, their stories moved us all.
MEAN GIRLS
February 28-March 5, 2023
Direct from Broadway, Mean Girls is the hilarious hit musical from an award-winning creative team, including book writer Tina Fey (“30 Rock), composer Jeff Richmond (“Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”), lyricist Nell Benjamin (Legally Blonde) and directed by San Diego native Caey Nicholaw (The Book of Mormon).
Cady Heron may have grown up on an African savanna, but nothing prepared her for the vicious ways of her strange new home: suburban Illinois. Soon, this naïve newbie falls prey to a trio of lionized frenemies led by the charming but ruthless Regina George. But when Cady devises a plan to end Regina’s reign, she learns the hard way that you can’t cross a Queen Bee without getting stung.
New York Magazine cheers, “Mean Girls delivers with immense energy, a wicked sense of humor and joyful inside-jokery.” USA Today says, “We’ll let you in on a little secret, because we’re such good friends: GET YOUR TICKETS NOW!”
Added events for the rescheduled 2019-2020 Season
RENT 25th Anniversary Tour
April 22-24, 2022
In 1996, an original rock musical by a little-known composer opened on Broadway… and forever changed the landscape of American theatre. Two decades later, Jonathan Larson’s RENT continues to speak loudly and defiantly to audiences across generations and all over the world. And now, this Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award®-winning masterpiece returns to the stage in a vibrant 20th anniversary touring production. A reimagining of Puccini’s La Bohème, RENT follows an unforgettable year in the lives of seven artists struggling to follow their dreams without selling out. With its inspiring message of joy and hope in the face of fear, this timeless celebration of friendship and creativity reminds us to measure our lives with the only thing that truly matters—love. Rating: Recommended for 13+ *All shows play at the Civic Theatre, 3rd and B Street unless otherwise noted above.