While this year’s theater season is still ongoing at most South Florida playhouses, a few of our far-sighted companies have already released their full theatrical slates for the 2026-2027 season. We pored through the lists for this curated run-down of five of our most anticipated plays and musicals in Palm Beach and northern Broward counties next season.
Orphans, Oct. 27-Nov. 8 at Maltz Jupiter Theatre, 1001 E. Indiantown Road, Jupiter
Premiering in 1983, Orphans remains the best-known work from playwright Lyle Kessler. It’s set in a run-down row house in north Philadelphia, where two orphaned adults—still confronting the emotional shrapnel of their father’s abandonment and their mother’s death—survive through petty criminality. Treat, the older sibling, provides for the cloistered Phillip by stealing what they need, while preventing his younger brother from leaving their home, lest his sensitive constitution confront the supposed dangers of the outside world. Treat’s decision to abduct a Chicago gangster named Harold sends the story in unexpectedly poignant directions that address issues of absent fatherhood, stunted childhood, and the line between protection and prohibition. It may have taken 30 years, but Orphans finally debuted in Broadway in 2013, earning two Tony nominations.
Gutenberg! the Musical!, Nov. 6-15 at Pompano Beach Cultural Center, 50 W. Atlantic Blvd., Pompano Beach
Poking fun at the very process of contriving new musicals from previously mothballed historical figures (our first treasury secretary comes to mind!), Gutenberg! The Musical! follows a pair of wannabe musical-theater composers seeking funding for their unorthodox project: a musical based on the life of Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press. But with only a hasty Google search for research, the two writers, Bud Davenport and Doug Simon, simply make up the dramatic details of Gutenberg’s life and work, from his love affair with a dim-witted assistant named Helvetica to his chief antagonist, a Satan-worshipping monk. The joy of Gutenberg! The Musical! is watching two comic actors play all of the parts in their proposed musical. As with such meta forbears The Producers and Something Rotten!, the more you know about musicals, the more of the rapid-fire jokes you’re likely to appreciate.
The Great Gatsby, Jan. 6-10, 2027 at Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach
Within a year of its 1925 publication, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tragic parable on class permanence and the limits of wealth had already welcomed a film adaptation, the first of many such transfers to varying mediums, with varying levels of success: three more movies, two play adaptations, a ballet production, and even a video game. Its glitzy Jazz Age trappings have also been irresistible, if difficult to perfect, as a stage musical, with versions mounted in 1956 and 1998. Here’s hoping the third time’s a charm with this touring production, featuring all-new music and lyrics—19 songs in total—from the writers of Little Women and Paradise Square, and fresh choreography by So You Think You Can Dance!’s Dominique Kelley. The production, which made its Broadway debut in 2024, won a Tony for Best Costume Design, and mirrors the story’s romantic entanglements and lavish settings, while forgoing certain aspects of Fitzgerald’s multilayered novel.
Bullets Over Broadway, Jan. 14-Feb. 14 at The Wick Theatre, 7901 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton
In the only instance of Woody Allen adapting one of his features into a theatrical work, this undeniable crowd-pleaser is perhaps the most stage-friendly concept in the director’s sixty-year corpus. As in the 1920s-set film, it follows the travails of serious-minded playwright David Shayne, who, after accepting mob money to finance his play Gods of Our Fathers on Broadway, is forced to cast the high-powered gangster’s untalented girlfriend, Olive, as one of the show’s leads. Meanwhile, David is being romanced by his show’s much older diva, Helen Sinclair, while his leading man, Warner, pursues Olive—all under the watchful eye of Cheech, the mob boss’s paid heavy. First proposed with original music, Bullets Over Broadway quickly pivoted to deploying existing Jazz Age tunes, thriving as a jukebox musical with familiar favorites such as “Tiger Rag,” “Let’s Misbehave,” and “Tain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness If I Do.”
The Birthday Party, April 2-18, 2027 at Palm Beach Dramaworks, 201 Clematis St., West Palm Beach
Audiences were not exactly ready for Harold Pinter’s first full-length play, The Birthday Party, upon its 1958 premiere in London, in which its absurdist plot and general sense of discontinuity left spectators in what one critic described as “bewildered hysteria.” Such is the case with truly original voices: “Pinteresque,” a shorthand for his surrealist tenor and arch pacing, wouldn’t enter common usage until the playwright developed his signature style over several works. But today, The Birthday Party is remembered as a landmark in what is sometimes termed a “comedy of menace.” It’s set in a dilapidated boarding house, where Stanley, a former pianist of questionable renown, cohabitates with the sixtysomething couple that owns the property. Meg, one of said owners, insists on celebrating Stanley’s birthday, though Stanley insists the occasion isn’t for another month. The strangeness really kicks into gear when two unexpected visitors, Goldberg and McCann, arrive to the “party” uninvited and proceed to harass the guest of honor, leading to comically dark directions that gradually untether us from the story’s perceived realism.
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