When I hear that friends or colleagues are visiting New York, I always recommend that they go check out a Broadway show. Musical theater has been a huge part of my life since I was a kid, and while I’ve only been to New York a handful of times, they have been core life experiences for me in large part because of the many great shows I managed to see each time I went, even when I was a broke student. Because I’m recommending hitting up the theater, I’m often asked what specifically people should go see. I’ve written out some of these thoughts a few times now, so I figured I’d expand a little more and make a post I could refer people to in the future.

The Hits Worth Your Money

If you’re in the category of, “I just want to see the absolute best shows, the bangers that everyone loves, and the price is not much of a concern to me,” then these are my recommendations from what’s on Broadway as of May 2023:

• Wicked is an alternate telling of The Wizard of Oz from the Wicked Witch of the West’s perspective. It is only loosely based on the book of the same name. It is an all-time classic with stellar music, a perennial Broadway show for the last 20 years. There have been moments in my life when my interest in theater was completely reinvigorated by something new, and the first time I saw Wicked is one of the highlights.
• The Lion King is just a fantastic spectacle on the stage. I’m sure you’re familiar with the music and story, and that might help you better appreciate the performances, set pieces, costumes, etc. There are a few songs that are specific to Broadway too, so there will be some bonuses for newcomers to the stage musical as well.
• Hamilton is incredible, but if you’re not fully committed, it’s probably more money than you want to spend. That said, it is filled to the brim with pop- and hip-hop- and Broadway-influenced jams that forever changed the landscape of musical theater and what people hope to get from it. The number of words packed into this show can make your head spin, so this might be best enjoyed by watching the pro shot with captions and/or reading a plot synopsis beforehand.
• The Book of Mormon was written by South Park’s Trey Parker and Matt Stone along with Bobby Lopez, the first-ever double EGOT winner, about two Mormon missionaries being sent to Uganda. This isn’t for you if you’re easily offended, but it’s ultimately a feel-good story that is both hilarious and filled with absolutely phenomenal tunes.

Less Costly, Maybe As Much Fun

So maybe you just want to see something and you don’t want to break the bank doing it. There are a number of discount options. I’ll highlight the two that I’ve had success with as a relatively unfamiliar tourist.

The TKTS booth in Times Square has tickets every day at a discount, you just have to go down and see what’s available on any given day. These aren’t massive discounts, but you might save some lower double-digit percentages off face value. They do have some solid seats, and you can generally talk to the booth agents to find out the good seats that are available and pick and choose. We saw Phantom of the Opera with some great center orchestra seats only about ten rows back with some TKTS tickets.

Another option for the budget theatergoer is “rush tickets”, where you go to the box office of the theater at either 10:00 a.m. or two hours before showtime (each theater is different, but they all seem to follow one of these two patterns), and they’ll have a limited number of deeply discounted tickets (like $30 to 50) that are “partial view” but still great seats. With rush tickets, you have to take what they offer: there’s no picking and choosing your seats, and some seats are better than others.

For example, we’ve had front-row or second-row seats a bunch of times, often on the very edge where there’s a corner of the stage we couldn’t see (Chicago and Waitress come to mind), but occasionally dead center (Avenue Q off-Broadway both times we saw it). We saw Daniel Radcliffe in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying from box seats that were fantastic, but again, at an angle where we couldn’t see a corner of the stage. Occasionally rush seats are at the back of the balcony, which is less good but not so bad, like when we saw SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical and Catch Me If You Can. At Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, we sat in the front corner of the mezzanine where there was a light railing partially obstructing our view, but we did have one of the stunt-SpiderMen land directly next to us, which was pretty cool.

Note that setting your heart on scoring rush tickets can be risky: you can get in line at one theater, and if they sell out while you’re waiting, you may have missed your chance at all the other theaters. You’re also going to have an extremely difficult time getting rush tickets to the more popular shows – forget about the ones I listed in the first section above, although there are often lotteries that you could get lucky and win, but don’t count on those. Rust tickets are typically limited to two per person, so if you’re traveling in a duo, you can double your chances by splitting up at rush-ticket hour.

When rushing, you basically must be willing to see whatever falls into your lap. Most of the shows I listed above were unexpectedly great, and we probably never would have seen them without rush tickets to make it happen for as little as possible.

Things to Avoid

Everything’s a matter of taste, so take this section with a grain of salt. Here are my hot takes on what not to see on Broadway right now:

• I’d say the Broadway experience is best with musicals. Unless you have a really strong desire to see a play, I’d avoid those and stick to ones with song-and-dance numbers.
• Chicago is a perennial show in New York alongside The Lion King and Wicked (R.I.P., Phantom). I’ve personally seen the Broadway production twice, almost exactly ten years apart from each other. It’s a fine show, but I don’t really get why it’s lasted so long in New York. Frankly, I prefer the movie, and I never prefer the movie to the live-action version.
• Dear Evan Hansen has a few very catchy tunes, but if you’re new to Broadway musicals, I just can’t in good faith recommend this over-dramatic show with a dubiously likeable lead that makes you cringe throughout.
• Maybe I’m padding my list at this point: I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard Aladdin simply does not translate to the stage very well. Don’t let my endorsement of The Lion King get you thinking that all Disney musicals are worth the time and money.

I hope this post helps you find something you’ll enjoy! Now I’m excited to get back to New York for the next set of shows.