Damn Yankees returns to the Marquis Theatre next spring with Neil Patrick Harris as Applegate, Julianne Hough as Lola and Austin Scott as Young Joe, in the first Broadway revival of the 1955 musical in more than 30 years. Previews begin Wednesday, March 24, 2027, and opening night is set for Tuesday, April 20.
Producers Lia Vollack, Haley Swindal and Julie Boardman made the announcement at Yankee Stadium on September 27, and single tickets went on sale to the general public the same day. The production lands at the Marquis Theatre, 210 W 46th St, the house that carried the last Broadway revival of the title, which opened there in 1994 and ran for 533 performances.
Neil Patrick Harris, a Tony winner and a five-time Emmy winner, takes Applegate. Julianne Hough, an Emmy winner who made her Broadway debut in 2022 in POTUS, makes her Broadway musical debut as Lola, and Austin Scott - Hamilton on Broadway and on tour, and most recently Shakespeare in & Juliet - plays Young Joe. Further casting is to be announced.
This is the staging Sergio Trujillo directed and choreographed at Arena Stage in Washington last fall, where it sold out and drew 13 Helen Hayes Award nominations, more than any other musical of that season, winning eight of them including Best Musical. Will Power and Doug Wright wrote the new adaptation and Lynn Ahrens supplied additional lyrics. The score is still Richard Adler and Jerry Ross's, and the original book George Abbott and Douglass Wallop's, drawn from Wallop's 1954 novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.
What the adaptation moves is the clock. Abbott and Wallop set their Faust story in 1950s Washington, D.C., where a middle-aged fan trades his soul for a chance to break the Yankees' grip on the pennant. This version opens in the early 2000s, with Joe Boyd hoping to see the Baltimore Orioles restored to glory.
"Damn Yankees has always been one of our great American musicals, but I wasn't interested in simply reviving it," Trujillo said. "This 'revisal' preserves the heart, wit and soaring score that audiences love and is a real opportunity to bring joy back into the theater."
Major League Baseball and its production label MLB Studios join the production as a partner, which the producers describe as a first for a Broadway musical. "It's incredibly important that our game continues to resonate outside the diamond and into different areas of culture," said Noah Garden, MLB's deputy commissioner of business and media. "Baseball and Broadway fans both love high drama, high stakes and high hopes that they're about to watch something unforgettable happen."
Swindal, who called the pairing "a collision of American icons", brings a family connection to it. She is the eldest granddaughter of the former Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who put money into six Broadway productions, among them the 1970 Best Musical winner Applause and the 1974 Best Musical nominee Seesaw.
General management is by Foresight Theatrical, with Mark Shacket of Foresight as executive producer. Damn Yankees opened on Broadway in 1955 and won seven Tony Awards, Best Musical among them. Tickets for the Marquis run are on sale now at DamnYankeesBroadway.com.
