The cast of Assassins at Miners Alley Performing Arts Center.

Dim the lights. Unwrap that piece of candy. Cue the overture. Yes, fellow aisle-anders (okay, we’re working on that), the 2025/26 season is upon us with no shortage of musicals and plays that aim to please or perturb — sometimes both — and all the other feels. And as is the way with art that nudges thoughts about life, many of the titles will feel timely.

“The truth is, when we chose [Assassins], the only thing we knew was that there would be an election, and that there would be an election result,” Miners’ producing artistic director, Len Matheo, shared via email when asked about mounting Stephen Sondheim’s dark musical. “We didn’t know that there would be a presidential assassination attempt, and we didn’t know what the vibe of the country was going to be.”

Far from being opportunistic, the echoes between our lives and theatrical goings-on confirm that artists tend toward the reckoning and the prescient — even when they’re aiming to please. Here’s a compendium of musicals that will be doing all that and more on stages around the Denver metro.

SEPTEMBER 2025

The Legend of Anne Bonny
Two Cent Lion @ The People’s Building in Aurora, through Sept. 6
The Henry Award-winning LGBTQ+ theater company Two Cent Lion teams up with Shifted Lens Theatre Company for this tale of piracy, set at a time when seafaring thievery was waning. Anne Bonny escapes married life to sail the high seas, but dark clouds are on the horizon in this “Sapphic Pirate Musical” (by Emy McGuire).

Assassins
Miners Alley Performing Arts Center, through Sept. 14
Centering the historical figures who took aim at U.S. presidents, the Stephen Sondheim (John Weidman) musical did not exactly arrive off Broadway guns a blazing. It took nearly 15 years before the show slayed on Broadway, winning the Tony for Best Musical Revival in 2004. And while Assassins didn’t launch Miners Alley’s season (a January-to-January affair), it does come at theatergoers who are excited to be getting back to avidly attending shows. And the timing seems to be paying off for the show that holds up a dark mirror to the culture. “Ticket sales are brisk, and people are really enjoying the production,” said Miners Alley’s Matheo.

Disney’s The Little Mermaid
Lakewood Cultural Center, Sep 5-21
In the fine tradition of Disney begats: a Hans Christian Anderson watery tale begat an animated hit that begat a musical that previewed in land-locked Denver that begat a Broadway hit that, well, the genealogy goes on. The family-friendly show about a princess names Ariel swims into the Lakewood Cultural Center thanks to its longtime relationship with the Performance Now Theatre Company.

Annie Get Your Gun
Ovation West in Evergreen, Sep. 5-28
Two sharpshooters meet cute in the 1946 musical by Irving Berlin and siblings Dorothy and Herbert Fields, based on the life of Annie Oakley. The hits include “There’s No Business Like Show Business” and “Doin’ What Comes Naturally.” But it’s the chipper air of competition in “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)” that suggest the musical’s sibling makers’ affection and rivalry.

Merrily We Roll Along
Vintage Theatre, Sep. 12-Oct. 19
Stephen Sondheim’s spooling-backward look at three friends bent on showbiz also began its life onstage with less than glowing reviews. But a 2023 revival, with a tightened focus and the cast to pull it off, cured what ailed it (the show won the Tony for Best Revival of a Musical). Aurora’s Vintage Theatre is poised to convince local audiences that the tale of drive, creative differences, uneven successes, and friendships —  is a hit.

Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story
Town Hall Arts Center, Sep. 12 – Oct. 19
The musical about an American rock-n-roll icon began as so many do: with a conversation amongst friends in a British pub, followed by the buy-in of a knight by the name of Sir Paul McCartney. The good sir, owns the rights to Holly’s catalogue of hits, including “Peggy Sue,” “Maybe Baby,” and “That’ll Be the Day.”

Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill
The Arvada Center, Sep. 26-Nov. 2
Billie Holiday holds court at a Philadelphia bar in Lani Robertson’s cabaret-style play. The singer of “God Bless the Child,” “Strange Fruit” and “T’ain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness If I Do” among countless others, jokes-not-jokes about returning to the town where she was once arrested, “I used to say when I die, I don’t care if I go to heaven or hell as long as it ain’t in Philly.” The songs… the repartee… what a delicious role.

First Date, the Musical
Vintage Theatre’s cabaret stage, Sep. 29 – Oct. 23
Be it movie comedy or a staged musical, the rom-com genre can be as beset with the problem of overly familiar beats as it is beloved for its familiar pleasures. In First Date, Aaron and Casey meet on the outing of the title, set up by her sister. The show opens with the number “The One” and ends with “Something That Will Last.” In between those yearnings is plenty of room for intrigue, miscommunications, and romantic ah-hahs.

OCTOBER 2025

Diva Royale
Miners Alley Performing Arts Center, Oct. 3 – Nov. 9
Continuing its collaboration with actor-director-producer Jeff Daniels’s Michigan Theater, the Miners Alley Playhouse sends three Midwest superfans on a romp to see Celine Dion in New York City. Talk about a royale with cheese.

Nice Work If You Can Get It
Lone Tree Arts Center, Oct. 9-26
Consider this musical’s title and you might think it’s a revival of a long-ago musical. You’d be half right. The music comes by way of the Brothers Gershwin — George and Ira — but the book was written by Joe DiPietro who was inspired by Brit writers Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse. It debuted on Broadway in 2012. It starred Matthew Broderick and Kelli O’Hara, two song-and-dancers who know what to do with nice work when they get it.

The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Parker Arts, Oct. 24 – Nov. 16
Sure, “charming” is an easy word to spell but getting adult actors to capture the sweet ache and anxious hopes of middle-schoolers in a spelling competition the way this award-winner does is hardly a cinch.

NOVEMBER 2025

Annie
Town Hall Arts Center, Nov. 21-Dec. 28
How many times has the musical based on the 1920s comic strip Little Orphan Annie been produced? Enough for 40 actors who played the youngster who eventually evades a hard-luck life — (or one of her fellow orphans) to appear in “Life After Tomorrow,” a documentary about the experience of being a child actor.  See the show that has been promising for six decades that “the sun will come up.”

Disney’s Frozen
The Arvada Center, Nov. 21 – Jan. 4
Disney has never been a company to, well, “Let It Go,” Indeed, the entertainment behemoth knows how to bring the theatrical razzle dazzle to their many movies. The story of sisters Anna and Elsa is no exception. The Arvada Center, with its always impressive production values, is sure to bring the bells, whistles and ice crystals to both the splendor and snowman wit of its holiday production of Disney’s Frozen.

Stocking Stuffers
Stocking Stuffers, Miners Alley, Nov. 28- Dec. 28
It’s a Wonderful Life, Live Radio Play, Miners Alley, Nov. 28- Dec. 28
In 2023, the naughty The Great American Trailer Park Musical christened the Miners Alley Performing Arts Center in Golden. Now in a bit of cheeky regifting, Miners Alley commissioned an original musical from the makers of that wintry lark: local luminary David Nehls and Besty Kelso. But just in case you like your holiday fare satisfyingly sentimental and youngster friendly, Miners is also producing the divinely fleet and fun show, It’s a Wonderful Life, Live Radio Play.

DECEMBER 2025

Who’s Holiday!
Vintage Theatre, Dec (specific dates TBD)
That apostrophe isn’t a typo, copy editors. This mature-themed, cabaret comedy finds our childhood friend Cindy Lou Who of that Seussian classic about some green guy grump, all grown up and waiting for her guests to arrive at her holiday gathering. While she waits, she has a few things to share.

The Westside Oratorio
Su Teatro, Dec 1 – 21
It’s fitting that this musical about home, family, belonging broadly, and the history of Denver’s westside Auraria neighborhood, returns to its home theatre, Su Teatro. First performed in 2004, the musical was written by Anthony J. Garcia with music by Daniel Valdez.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Vintage Theatre, Dec. 5 – Jan. 11
Dickens famously did not finish this novel, but audiences have been since 1985, when Rupert Holmes created a musical that gives them an opportunity to name the murderer.

JANUARY 2026

Rogers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Performance Now Theatre Company at Lakewood Cultural Center, Jan. 9 – 25
Performance Now Theatre Company steers the lauded Lincoln Center revival of the show based on James A. Michner’s Tales of the South Pacific to its home port at the Lakewood Cultural Center. Oh, the songs have been great since the show debuted in 1949, but the subject of bigotry swirling around the nascent love affairs between Ensign Nellie Forbush and Emile de Becque, a plantation owner; and Lt. Cable and native daughter Liat have at times led productions into the shoals. But fear not. According to the New York Times, “[W]hat impresses about this South Pacific is how deeply, fallibly and poignantly human every character seems.” (South Pacific Revival 2008 – Broadway World) Book my flight, please.

Shrek the Musical
Parker Arts, Jan. 16 – Feb 8
The winking and winning fable about a misanthropic but likable ogre, a caravan full of fairytale outcasts, and a rebellious princess made the leap from book to screen to stage with much of its humor, wisecracks, and good-heartedness intact.

Monty Python’s Spamalot
Town Hall Arts Center, Jan. 23 -Feb. 22
The British comedy troupe’s spoof on Arthurian legend is decidedly “not dead yet.” Not only will the Denver Center be mounting the musical next summer (cue the sound of clopping horses!) so will Littleton’s Town Hall Arts Center.

FEBRUARY 2026

Songs for a New World
Ovation West, Feb. 20-March 8
It makes such poetic sense that a show that falls somewhere between musical and song cycle would itself be about the betwixt and between, about this now and next, about here and a new world. Three-time Tony winner Jason Robert Brown’s first big work is — to borrow a line from the opening number— “about one moment.”

9 to 5, the Musical
Vintage Theatre, Feb. 20-March 19
The office revenge comedy made its leap from near-iconic comedy movie (with the indisputably iconic Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton) to the stage in 2009, with a full score by Dolly Parton, not just the hits song of the title. Don’t miss the tale of Judy, Violet, and Doralee wreaking payback on their chauvinist boss.

MARCH 2026

 A Chorus Line
Performance Now Theatre Company at Lakewood Cultural Center, March 13-29
The late choreographer Michael Bennett’s brainchild — music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban, book by James Kirkwood, Jr., and Nicholas Dante — about dancers auditioning for a spot in a Broadway show won nine Tonys and the Pulitzer Prize. And 50 years later, it remains singular and sensational.

The Wiz
Town Hall Arts Center, March 20-April 19
“Ease on down the road” may be too cool to be a ChatGPT direction to Littleton’s performing arts venue, Town Hall Arts Center. Even so, you should ease on down to downtown Littletown where you’ll find the R&B version of Dorothy, Toto & Co’s adventures first captured in Frank L. Baum’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,”and then the film The Wizard of Oz.

Come From Away
Arvada Center, March 27-May 10
A deeply delightful celebration of connection, this musical tells the story of what happened when planes carrying loads of passengers were ordered to land on September 11, 2001, stranding them in Newfoundland. The Canadian town that embraced them is Gander, and you’d be wise to take a gander at this Tony winner.

APRIL 2026

Alanis Morisette’s Jagged Little Pill: The Musical
Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, April 30 – May 24
Since it features songs from the Canadian singer’s groundbreaking 1995 album, one could consider Jagged Little Pill a jukebox musical. But in execution and story (book by Diablo Cody) it’s so much more, offering not a biographical hook but a rich story about a Connecticut family proficient in denial facing brewing crises.

MAY 2026

Avenue Q
Town Hall Arts Center, May 8 – June 7
Looking for fun that references “Sesame Street” but could never be confused with the educational and endearing public media icon? Welcome to New York’s fictitious Avenue Q where characters played by live actors and puppets congregate to discuss the meaning of the world and more.

A Strange Loop
Vintage Theatre, May 15 – June 21
If you’re in the mood for meta (no, not Facebook’s parent), then Vintage Theatre has got the show for you, one that turns again and again in on itself to ponder creativity, identity, and perhaps a million more things. Micheal R. Jackson’s musical starts with its protagonist, Usher, who is precisely that — an usher — at The Lion King. But he’s but also a playwright, in his own words: “a black, queer man writing a musical about a black, queer man who’s writing a musical about a black queer man who’s writing a musical about a black queer man, etc.” Can hardly wait to see who snags this role. The show received Tonys for best musical and best book.

SUMMER 2026

My Fair Lady
Performance Now Theatre Company at Lakewood Cultural Center, June 12-28
By George, we think she’s back. Eliza Doolittle returns to Professor Henry Higgin’s parlor and the musical that made George Bernard Shaw’s character and her speech teacher renowned.

All Shook Up
Parker Arts, June 26 – July 19
A leather-clad roustabout rocks and roils a small Midwest town in a show that drops plenty of quarters into the Elvis Presley jukebox.