Hennepin Arts has gone both supersized and supernatural with its upcoming roster of touring Broadway shows. The 2025-26 lineup boasts five weeks of “Wicked,” four weeks of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” and three weeks of “The Phantom of the Opera.”
While those blockbusters dominate, the schedule includes the Amber Ruffin-infused revival of “The Wiz,” which riffs on “The Wizard of Oz” — the same source material as “Wicked.”
The lineup also features regional premieres of Shaina Taub’s suffragist musical “Suffs,” the corn-punny “Shucked,” “A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical,” and the circus-themed “Water for Elephants.”
Throw in a musical version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” and encore performances of Kander and Ebb’s “Chicago” and Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil’s “Les Misérables,” and Minnesota is getting some 20 weeks of touring Broadway shows.
“Our average season is 12 to 13 weeks with an economic impact of $60 million,” said Hennepin Arts’ president and CEO Todd Duesing. “It’s a positive step for us [to offer more shows] and we hope that it will lead to a trend where we will be a two-week [minimum] market.”
Duesing’s tally doesn’t include a carryover from the current season, and that is the world premiere of “Purple Rain,” the Prince musical that is slated to run for at least four weeks at Minneapolis' State Theatre starting mid-October.
The Hennepin Arts season kicks off with “Beautiful Noise,” the bio musical of “Sweet Caroline” singer Diamond. The show finds the sequined star on the stage and on his therapist’s sofa (Sept. 30-Oct. 5).
“Phantom,” a beloved title backed by Cameron Mackintosh, has been reimagined with new glitz and glamor in Maria Björnson’s 2021 design for the London stage. The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical tells the story of a disfigured figure who kidnaps his favorite opera singer (Nov. 21-Dec. 7).
