These are the top plays, musicals and shows to see in South Florida this season

The South Florida theater scene is coming out of its summer slumber with big plans for live performance lovers. The area’s companies aren’t ones to shy away from daring, challenging and original works, and for the 2024-25 season, there’s plenty of that in store. Here are a few highlights.

LIVE ON LINCOLN ROAD

Nine months into the country’s battle against COVID-19, Miami New Drama (MIND) found a way to satisfy audiences who were missing live theater while minimizing the risk. What came out of necessity, an open-air production that featured actors behind glass in vacant storefronts on Lincoln Road became a viable way of presenting a play – or in this case a collection of short plays – running simultaneously. MIND’s artistic director Michel Hausmann is putting open-air theater back on Lincoln Road this time in restaurants, stores, cafes and public spaces for the world premiere of “Lincoln Road Hustle” (Dec. 14-Feb. 16) by playwrights Billy Corben and Harley Elias with a plot that involves a real estate deal, an art heist and love gone wrong all converging on Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road.

BRAVO FOR FAT HAM

Maybe the first of its kind for South Florida theater, three companies, two from Broward and one from Miami-Dade are teaming up as the Fat Ham Production Collective to present the South Florida premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Fat Ham” by James Ijames. GableStage, based in Coral Gables, Brévo Theater in Pompano Beach, and IslandCity Stage in Wilton Manors make up the collective. Brévo’s producing artistic director T.M. Pride will direct the production and the two companies will produce the premiere as part of its seasons (at Island City Stage, April 3-May 4 and at GableStage, May 16-June 15). Nominated for five Tony Awards in 2023, Ijames reimagines Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” as a comic tragedy where a Danish castle becomes a Southern barbecue pit, and the main protagonist is a Black, gay kid named Juicy. The collective received a $250,000 grant from the Warten Foundation, a Boca Raton-based nonprofit that supports organizations and projects that expand social justice for all Americans. The grant is providing the extra money it takes to create the production in two theaters and to allow for funding to introduce new audiences to the three theater groups.

SETTLING IN

Pompano Beach is popping with a new resident theater company. The Pompano Players will present six productions with a mix of plays, musicals and musical revues, at the Pompano Beach Cultural Center opening with Delia and Nora Ephron’s play “Love, Loss, and What I Wore” (Oct. 11-20) then the musical “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” (Nov. 8-17). The inaugural season continues with the musical revues “Jerry’s Girls” (Jan. 10-19), “Respect: A Musical Journey of Women,” “And The World Goes ‘Round” (April 25-May 4), then closes out its first year with the musical “I Do! I Do!” (May 23-June 1).

Loxen Entertainment is presenting a three-show season at the Colony Theatre on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, bringing more live theater to SoBe. The company opens with “The Play That Goes Wrong” (Sept. 5-22), “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (Dec. 13-22) and “The Drowsy Chaperone” (Feb. 28-March 9).

And, after two sold-out runs at Washington, D.C.’s Signature Theatre, Frost School of Music alumni-jazz vocalist Danielle Wertz along with rock-folk musician Robbie Schaefer come to GableStage in Coral Gables as part of the company’s season with their original musical “Both Sides Now: The Music and Lives of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen” (Dec. 13-Jan. 5).

FROM BROADWAY TO HERE

Missed seeing some shows on the Great White Way recently? No worries. Some of the latest are heading to South Florida, many of which are still playing on Broadway.

At Miami’s Arsht Center, there’s the mega hit musical story of Michael Jackson, “MJ” (March 18-23) and the musical version of the movie “Beetlejuice” (April 29-May 4), hot on the heels of the sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” just out in movie theaters in September.

“Moulin Rouge: The Musical” (March 25-30) is still packing them in on Broadway at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre but see it in West Palm Beach at the Kravis Center, along with “Funny Girl” (Jan. 28-Feb. 2) starring Miami native Katerina McCrimmon as Fanny Brice.

At Fort Lauderdale’s the Broward Center, there’s “Shucked” (June 10-22), which only just closed on Broadway in January. And if you miss “MJ” in March in Miami, it makes a stop at the Broward Center less than a month later. (April 8-20). Now that’s a thriller.

HEADING NORTH ON 95

The Maltz Jupiter Theater premieres its new The Island Theatre black box this season in addition to its Mainstage productions in Jupiter. The black box will have various types performances but the theater is bookending programming with the play “Becoming Doctor Ruth” (Oct. 6-20) and closing with “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” (April 22-May 4).

The Wick in Boca Raton gives theater tributes to the legendary Groucho Marx (Oct. 10-Nov. 3), singer Carole King (the Broadway-hit musical “Beautiful” runs Jan. 16-Feb. 16) and an Ol’ Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra (April 24-May 18) revue as part of its season.

Theatre Lab on the campus of FAU in Boca Raton presents evocative new plays and their lineup this season is no different. Playwright Deborah Zoe Laufer is coming back for her fourth Theatre Lab production and her second world premiere there with “The Last Yiddish Speaker” (Oct. 26-Nov. 10) about the Jan. 6 insurrection and a father and daughter who try to pass as Christians in a small New York town.

In Fort Lauderdale, New City Players (performing at Wilton Manors Island City Stage) are giving Genius Grant-winner Dominique Morisseau’s “Confederates” its Florida premiere. The play is about two Black women, one an enslaved rebel and another a professor at a contemporary university, who are sharing the same experience eras apart. (July 11-27).

Thinking Cap Theatre takes up residence at the Hollywood Central Performing Arts Center with two mainstage shows, one with an intriguing title “All The Natalie Portmans” (March 15-March 30) about a gay 16-year-old who escapes into iconic characters played by her movie muse.