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Something queer this way comes: Best LGBTQIA+ shows on Broadway

Queer art and entertainment has been as much about the beauty and resilience of the community as it has been about nuanced portrayals of the human condition.

Or was that my own modern projecting?

“SIGALA: Not having that vocabulary in 1946-47, I’m not sure he could’ve made those choices. As performed by the exceptional Cynthia Erivo, the show’s eleven-o’clock number, “I’m Here,” brought audiences to their feet every night.

Adapted from a 2005 English indie film, Harvey Fierstein and Cyndi Lauper’s fizzy pop crowd-pleaser Kinky Bootstells of a struggling footwear factory rescued by a self-possessed drag queen—originally played by Billy Porter, in the role that finally made him a star—with ideas for a niche product line of outré boots.

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is a jukebox musical that pairs pop music with a road trip, a string of comedic errors, and two drag queens and a trans woman heading to perform at a drag show on the other end of the Australian desert.

A Strange Loop

This Tony Award-nominated production, billed as the “Big, Black, & Queer-Ass American Musical,” is one you cannot skip in a list of LGBTQIA+ shows on Broadway, and there's one very poignant reason why: it isn't just a darn good queer musical, it's also just a darn good production overall.

A Strange Loop follows a man named Usher, who works as an usher and is a Black queer man writing a musical about a Black queer man writing a musical.

And despite judgement and threats of censorship, those works have endured and inspired subsequent generations of artists.

From Tony Kushner's Angels in America, to Michael R. Jackson's A Strange Loop, to the bubbly jukebox musical & Juliet—below Playbill spotlights 25 shows that showcase the many aspects of queer life.

Certainly, in 2023, Mateo could identify as non-binary or genderqueer. "Keep it gay!" sings the flamboyant director in The Producers, and musical theater has long drawn nonstraight folks to the ranks of its creators, performers and fans.

It is no secret that many LGBTQ+ people have a special affinity for Broadway musicals.

May and Francois (Philippe Arroyo) kiss, realize their attraction, and sing the NSYNC hit “It’s Going to Be Me” (pronounced May — get it?)

The Book of Mormon

One could argue that the musical number “Turn It Off” is an allusion to being in the closet, especially since the chorus boys performing the number are wearing red-sequined satin vests.)

“Fat Ham”

Three of the eight characters are LGBT in this 2022 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, including the central character, Juicy (Marcel Spears) and on the play’s main concerns is the struggle against hostile attitudes in the Black community towards same-sex love and identity.

“Kimberly Akimbo”

While the central relationship in the 2023 Tony winning musical is between Kimberly (Victoria Clark) and Seth (Justin Cooley), there is a subplot involving a quartet of teenagers, whom we first meet at the local skating rink, singing:

All the action’s at the mall,
but we’d rather be here skating.

And then individually, each sings

I’m with the one I love,
but my love goes unrequited.

Which is our introduction to their love relay: Aaron (Michael Iskander) has a crush on Delia (Olivia Elease Hardy),who has a crush on Teresa (Nina White), who has a crush on Martin (Fernell Hogan), who has a crush on Aaron.

“Once Upon a One More Time”

The new jukebox musical, which opened on Thursday, features a subplot involving Snow White’s eighth dwarf, Clumsy (Nathan Levy), who comes out as gay when he falls for Prince Erudite (Ryan Steele.)

“Shucked”

Alex Newell won a Tony this year for portraying Lulu in this corny musical; it’s not clear to me whether Lulu is supposed to be genderfluid and non-binary, but that’s Newell’s much-publicized identity

“The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”

This revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s 1964 Broadway play features an out gay character — four years before “Boys in the Band” shocked people Off-Broadway.

Even in its newest form, Cabaret is hardly a Gay Pride show (despite the title song’s paean to a hard-partying Chelsea queen); its queer elements largely function as decadence, irony or obstacle. Everything about this show screams queer, from the celebratory cacophony of corsets, stockings, and rock ballads, to the deeply homophobic reviews it got that it steamrolled past to become a cult classic across all media formats.

Honorable mentions

While this list has named a few select titles that have played on Broadway in the recent decade or so, there is a legacy of queer identity as a defining feature of theater itself.

As heartbroken as we all are, we can rest assured that when it does open, it'll be a hell of a show.

The Book of Mormon

Of all the shows on this list, this one is perhaps the least queer, at least on the surface. But back then, I think he would be able to identify within the queer community, truly living their own life, but I doubt he would be open and out about it.”

Like this:

Author: New York Theater

Jonathan Mandell is a 3rd generation NYC journalist, who sees shows, reads plays, writes reviews and sometimes talks with people.

Presented in the form of a concert by a defiantly vulnerable East German glam rocker named Hedwig—who landed in Middle America after a botched sex-change operation—the show has a wham-bam score by Stephen Trask (drawing on the sounds of ‘70s rockers like Lou Reed and David Bowie) and a witty, pained book by John Cameron Mitchell, who originated the title role (and took it over from Neil Patrick Harris in the musical’s 2014 Broadway revival).

Its inclusion adds so much nuance to an already emotionally-charged story.

Take Me Out

Take Me Out is a dramatic exploration of what coming out as a sportsman in an often unforgiving world might be like. But that central aspect of Alice Walker’s 1982 novel—as adapted by playwright Marsha Norman and a team of three pop songwriters—emerged more clearly in the musical’s smaller-scaled 2015 revival, which intensified The Color Purple to bring out its deeper hues.

A Chorus Line won a Pulitzer and ran for a record-breaking 15 years, and its message came through loud and clear: Not just that there were gay people on Broadway, but that there had been gay people on Broadway all along, kicking up their heels right under our noses.

“& Juliet”

May (portrayed by Justin David Sullivan), who lives outside gender binary labels, launches into Britney Spears’ hit “I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman,” which of course was about her age; May makes it about gender transition.

While it premiered in 2002, long after the first queer baseball players came out, the play was written before these monumental moments.

To add nuance to the tale, it is set in the locker room of a baseball team, a space that is as much fueled by the triumphant pursuit of glory as it is riddled with homophobia. Hence, the title.

If this same-sex central romance broke new ground, however, the show’s score—by show-tune master Jerry Herman (Hello, Dolly!)—wears its classic Broadway sound like a sash of honor, from the opening parade of cross-dressed beauties to drag queen Zaza’s first-act finale (and instant gay-pride anthem) “I Am What I Am” through the celebratory “The Best of Times.” Revived on Broadway in 2004 and 2010, the old girl has held up surprisingly well as a modern twist on nostalgia.

As the show’s fractured blended family comes together in the face of grief, Falsettos guides us through a scarred but healing depiction of collective loss and purpose.

The defining Broadway musical of the 1990s, Jonathan Larson’s Rent reshapes the Puccini opera La Bohème into a passionate rock-pop tableau of creative artists in the East Village, and its generous field of vision created space for a pointedly diverse dramatis personae: Of the eight main characters, half are LGBTQ+, at least half are living with HIV, and a majority are usually cast as nonwhite.

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Best LGBTQ+ Musicals

More than two decades after it blasted onstage at the Hotel Riverview in Greenwich Village, Hedwig and the Angry Inch retains its electric currency. Cabaret is one of the great accomplishments in musical-theater history, and half a century after its premiere it still has the power to shake us to the bones.

Been there, done that?

Notably, it is set at a time when the disease was claiming the lives of gay men before they even knew what it was called.