New tours of ‘Mystic Pizza’ and ‘Addams Family’ highlight Waterbury Palace’s 2024-25 Broadway series

The Waterbury Palace Theater has announced its 2024-25 Broadway series, and there are some welcome surprises on it, including new national tours of “The Addams Family” and “Mystic Pizza” that have not played Connecticut yet.

The season opens Oct. 3-6 with “Hadestown.” The modern musical based on the ancient spring/winter myths of Orpheus and Eurydice and Hades and Persephone played The Bushnell in Hartford just over a year ago and is currently at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven this week.

The show, written by Anaïs Mitchell and directed by Rachel Chavkin, is known for letting its cast members reinterpret the main roles rather than adhere to how they were first done in New York, so it’s the kind of show that’s worth checking out a second or third time.

“The Addams Family” will play at the Palace on Jan. 17 and 18, 2025. This is a new tour of the 2009 musical, with a book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice (who wrote “Jersey Boys”) and music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa. The show ran for over 700 performances on Broadway, had a successful few years of tours and even had a revival in Chicago just six years after first having its pre-Broadway tryout there.

As successful as the professional productions have been, the show became a sensation when the performance rights trickled down to high school theater. There have been dozens of amateur productions of “The Addams Family” in Connecticut alone. This new tour, which has not played Connecticut yet, is a response to that ongoing popularity, as well as the highly rated Netflix series “Wednesday” which is based on the same characters created by Charles Addams for cartoons in the New Yorker and the subject of several other TV series and movies.

“The Cher Show” runs from Feb. 28 through March 1, 2025. The much-delayed first tour of the musical bio that celebrates the multiple lives of the celebrated pop star played The Bushnell earlier this year. It features three actors in the role of Cher, while supporting characters include Sonny Bono, Gregg Allman and designer Bob Mackie.

The fourth show of the six-show Broadway series is “Come From Away,” which has played Connecticut multiple times. It was first seen in the state as a public reading at the Goodspeed Festival of New Musicals in 2013. It is the heartwarming story of airline passengers diverted to a small Canadian town during the turmoil of 9/11 and how they are welcomed by the community.

“Dear Evan Hansen” is at the Palace April 25-27, 2025. Set in a present-day high school, the musical explores themes of loneliness, depression, bullying, love, friendship, social media and other realities of teen life in the 21st century. Hartford-born Fairfield County resident Justin Paul co-wrote the show with his regular songwriting partner Benj Pasek and book-writer Steven Levenson. The Shubert Theatre in New Haven is also hosting the “Dear Evan Hansen” tour five months earlier in November.

The Waterbury Palace’s final show of the series runs June 20-22, 2025, with the new musical based on the movie “Mystic Pizza.” Like the movie, the musical is set in Mystic, Connecticut. Since it’s also set in the 1980s, the show is scored with pop hits of that time, including “Addicted to Love,” “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” “Take My Breath Away” and Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”

The musical has not had a Broadway production but has done well at regional theaters around the country. It is getting a local production this June at the Ivoryton Playhouse and one of the best-known venues for musical theater outside of New York, the Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey. This is the show’s first national tour, and the Waterbury Palace is the first theater in the state to book it.

The Waterbury Palace is the last of the three Connecticut theaters with Broadway series to announce its 2024-25 lineup. The others are The Bushnell in Hartford and The Shubert in New Haven. Other large venues, including the Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford, Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket and the Garde Arts Center in New London, occasionally book national tours of Broadway shows. They have had their own Broadway subscription series in the past but don’t reliably have a five- to seven-show series.

Information on season subscription deals for the Waterbury Palace’s Broadway series is available through the theater’s box office at 203-246-2000 or at palacetheaterct.org.