The 5th Avenue Announces 22/23 Season: Includes “The Wiz”, 2 Sondheim Shows And…A Vacation

The 5th Avenue Theatre announced its next full season of live, onstage shows for the 2022/2023 season and we’re THRILLED to see they’re doing THE WIZ, a show that’s been on their wish list for years, as well as mine. For those of you in the dark, it’s the reimagined version of children’s classic novel, The Wizard of Oz with with a “soul, R&B, and gospel score featuring the hit songs “Brand New Day,” “Ease on Down the Road,” and “Home.”

For fans of Stephen Sondheim, there’s two productions of his biggest hit shows coming next year: INTO THE WOODS and SWEENEY TODD. While we’re happy they’re doing them, it would have been nice if they’d done Sondheim shows that haven’t been done so frequently in the area…maybe, Follies or A Little Night Music or Sunday in the Park…or A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum or Gypsy or…

There’s also their co-production with ACT to look forward to…its CHOIR BOY the acclaimed play with music by Tarell Alvin McCraney that was originally scheduled to be produced by ACT in 2020 (in a co-production with Denver Center Theatre Company). This will be an entirely new production that will be staged at ACT.

If you look forward to new musicals, there’s the world premiere of The Griswolds’ Broadway Vacation, the 26th new musical to be produced by The 5th Avenue Theatre and based on the beloved characters from the “Vacation” series of movies.

Oh, and a road show tour of some little show called Les Misérables  to round out the season.

Here’s all the deets and how to buy season tickets.

The 5th Avenue Theatre announced its 2022/23 Season today, kicking things off with the exciting music video launch of “This Is Our City.” The 2022/23 Season features a dynamic lineup of musical theater magic that includes a world premiere, a co-production with ACT – A Contemporary Theatre, and fresh takes on musical theater favorites that investigate the complicated, often messy, but always sublimely beautiful truths of living. Beginning the season is the world premiere of the new musical The Griswolds’ Broadway Vacation, which debuts at The 5th prior to an engagement at Theatre Under the Stars in Houston. Next is a co-production of Choir Boy with ACT – A Contemporary Theatre, performed in the Allen Theatre at ACT. The 5th will create an original staging of The Wiz during the holidays, and celebrate the life and work of Stephen Sondheim with an unusual back-to-back staging of two of his greatest works: Into the Woods and Sweeney Todd. The season will end with the acclaimed national touring production of Les Misérables. Performance dates will be announced at a later date.

2022/23 Season subscription packages are on sale now and can be purchased online at www.5thavenue.org, over the phone at 206-625-1900, or in person at the Box Office at 1308 5th Avenue in Downtown Seattle. Current subscribers can also renew their subscriptions at this time. 

The release of The 5th’s new music video “This is Our City,” is an original song by 5th Avenue Theatre favorite and frequent collaborator Richard Gray (Murder for Two, West Side Story, among many others) and is performed by theater artists Cayman Ilika, Nicholas Japaul Bernard, Naomi Morgan, and Jasmine Joshua. “This Is Our City” is The 5th’s love letter to Seattle, celebrating the many locations, businesses, organizations, theater makers, and artists who make the city more than just a spot on the map. Click here to watch the music video.

The 2022/23 Season begins in September with the strictly limited-run production of the world premiere of The Griswolds’ Broadway Vacation, the 26^th new musical to be produced by The 5th Avenue Theatre. They’ve been to Wally World, they’ve been to Vegas, and now the Griswolds are going to… Broadway! Yes, the characters you know and love from the hit Warner Bros. Vacation movies are back—and they’re taking their biggest vacation yet. So, get in your family truckster and join Clark, Ellen, Audrey, and Rusty on their big New York City adventure—where of course, everything goes exactly according to plan. Hysterically funny with miles of heart, this laugh-out-loud new musical comedy is a brand new Griswold romp that your whole family will love. The Griswolds’ Broadway Vacation debuts at The 5th prior to an engagement at Theatre Under the Stars in Houston, features a book, music, and lyrics by David Rossmer and Steve Rosen, and will be directed and choreographed by Donna Feore.

Next, The 5th and ACT – A Contemporary Theatre will join forces to create an exhilarating co-production of Choir Boy (September 10 – October 23, 2022), a play with music. A riveting coming-of-age tale from Tarell Alvin McCraney, the Academy Award®-winning writer of Moonlight, Choir Boy is a masterful story about honor, legacy, and dignity filled with electrifying gospel, spiritual, and R&B performances. Choir Boy follows a group of students at a prestigious prep school for young Black men as they struggle with issues of identity, sexuality, and manhood. When the leader of the school’s legendary gospel choir Pharus Young’s pride is sullied by one of his fellow students, we are sent on an electrifying voyage through the growing pains of humanity. Playing in the Allen Theatre at ACT – A Contemporary Theatre, this production is the tenth collaboration between the two producing theater companies. Choir Boy premiered in September, 2012 at the Royal Court Theatre in London and toured regional houses across America. Choir Boy opened on Broadway in 2019 and was nominated for four Tony Awards® including Best Play, winning one for Best Sound Design and receiving a special award for incidental music by Jason Michael Webb. 

Audiences will have a chance to spend the holidays at The 5th with an original 5th Avenue Theatre staging of The Wiz. This dazzling reimagining of The Wizard of Oz (by L. Frank Baum) features a soaring soul, R&B, and gospel score featuring hit songs “Brand New Day,” “Ease on Down the Road,” and “Home.” When Dorothy finds herself in the fantastical world of Oz, she sets out to seek the aid of the mysterious Wiz, forging powerful new friendships with a Scarecrow, a Tinman, and a Lion along her way down the yellow brick road. But when she battles the devious Evillene to save her new friends, she learns that no matter where you’re from, home isn’t really where you live; it’s who you love. Winner of seven Tony Awards® including Best Musical, The Wiz is an effervescent explosion of music, dance, magic, and delight. Kelli Foster Warder (Annie, Ragtime) returns to The 5th to direct and choreograph. The Wiz features a book by William F. Brown with music and lyrics by Charles Smalls. The cultural phenom debuted on Broadway in 1975, won seven Tony Awards® including Best Musical, and played for a little more than four years. It delighted audiences of all ages when performed live on NBC in 2015 with a star-studded cast including Queen Latifah, Amber Riley, Ne-Yo, and more. 

Next is a rare and remarkable two-show celebration of the theatrical genius of Stephen Sondheim. Playing in spring of 2023 is a new 5th Avenue Theatre staging of Into The Woods, directed by The 5th’s Producing Artistic Director Bill Berry (Mamma Mia!, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, The Music Man). ​​Happily ever after has never been so complicated—that’s what Little Red, a Witch, Cinderella, the Baker, and his Wife discover as they invade one another’s stories and find themselves tangled in a web of unexpected consequences. They quickly find this web is too big to untangle on their own and that they must work together to set everything right in the kingdom. Into the Woods reminds us that only together can we defeat the wolves and giants of the world​. With Sondheim’s stunning, unforgettable score featuring “No One is Alone,” “Children Will Listen,” and “Giants in the Sky,” and a witty, insightful book by James Lapine, this iconic show will enchant, entrance, and delight. A Tony Award®-winning Broadway hit and feature film sensation, Into the Woods continues to enthrall theater lovers more than three decades after its creation.  

Continuing The 5th’s springtime celebration of Stephen Sondheim is Sweeney Todd, a deliciously thrilling story of revenge and retribution, directed by Jay Woods, The 5th’s Associate Artistic Director – Artist Engagement (Disney’s Beauty and the Beast). After 15 years in exile, Sweeney Todd, an unsettling man with a mysterious past, arrives in a dark and gritty London, hungry for vengeance against the judge who destroyed his life. Todd joins forces with Mrs. Lovett, the unhinged proprietress of a failing pie shop, and together they develop a spine tingling plot to exact revenge. When the lights go down and the curtain goes up, you won’t dare look away. Where Into the Woods is a tangled musical web about what can be accomplished when we come together, Sweeney Todd is a piercing investigation of a society tearing itself apart. With haunting and horrifying music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a brilliant and sickening book by Hugh Wheeler, Sweeney Todd opened on Broadway in 1979 starring Angela Lansbury and the West End in 1980, winning the Tony Award® and Olivier Award for Best Musical. It has since been revived many times, most recently starring Michael Cerveris as Sweeney and Patti LuPone as Mrs. Lovett. 

By popular demand, Cameron Mackintosh’s acclaimed production of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s Tony Award®-winning musical phenomenon, Les Misérables returns to Seattle and wraps up the 2022/23 Season in late Spring. Set against the backdrop of 19th-century France, Les Misérables tells an enthralling story of broken dreams and unrequited love, passion, sacrifice and redemption–a timeless statement to the survival of the human spirit. The magnificent score includes the beloved songs “I Dreamed a Dream,” “On My Own,” “Stars,” “Bring Him Home,” “One Day More,” and many more, this epic and uplifting story has become one of the most celebrated musicals in theatrical history. Along with the Oscar-winning movie version, it has now been seen by more than 130 million people in 53 countries and in 22 languages around the globe.

About The 5th Avenue Theatre

The 5th Avenue Theatre is one of America’s leading musical theater companies. We enrich the community we love with the art form we love—giving the Pacific Northwest a front-row seat to original powerhouse productions that go on to light up marquees and audiences all the way to Broadway. From the page to the stage, we bring passion and epic scale to every musical we create. With big talent. Bigger-than-life productions. And did we mention dazzle? As a nonprofit theater company and our region’s largest performing arts employer, we spread the joy of great musicals with people of all ages across our region and state. Each year, we reach 75,000 young people through our nationally acclaimed education programs. Programs designed to develop new musicals ensure that the next generation of great musicals will be there to tell the stories that captivate tomorrow’s audiences. On the national stage, we are a leading voice for the power of this art form to lift the human spirit.

For more information about The 5th Avenue Theatre, its season and its programs, please visit www.5thavenue.org.