This season’s regional blockbuster, Hamilton, has not yet hit the stage at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall (it’s running from March 26 to April 7), but hall executive director Mary Bensel is already announcing the 2024-2025 season of Broadway shows to come.

While it may be hard to top Hamilton, Bensel has built a Broadway season around what she claims will be a major highlight: the debut of the 10-time Tony Award-winning production Moulin Rouge! The Musical, based on the 2001 film by Baz Luhrmann and set during the Belle Epoque era in Paris.

“It’s a huge show,” says Bensel, “with 11 trucks of sets and scenery. I saw it recently in New York and I think the audience here in Sarasota will love it—its costumes, gorgeous girls and great music. It’s something for the younger audience, while also enticing for the senior audience, and it’s new on the road, so we’re thrilled to have it early in its run.” As with recent big Broadway hits, Moulin Rouge! will have a longer run here than used to be the Van Wezel norm and will be onstage March 18-23, 2025.

Of course, that’s not the only Broadway show Bensel is excited about. As the hall works to turn its theatrical tours into a full-week market, the revival of Funny Girl also makes a more lasting impression and will be performed Jan. 14-19, 2025. This show about actress-singer Fanny Brice and her professional success and personal heartache “is one of my favorite shows,” Bensel says. “Lea Michele just did a gorgeous turn [as Fanny] on Broadway.” Playwright Harvey Fierstein has revamped the book of the original show, which made Barbra Streisand a star 60 years ago.

What Bensel calls “one of the surprise hits” coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic was Beetlejuice (onstage here April 22-27, 2025). “I had never seen the movie,” Bensel confesses, “so I wasn’t a fan. But I went to see it in New York, and I was wowed. It’s great fun. It broke records at the Straz Center [in Tampa] when it was presented there.”

One returning production which Bensel admits is “my favorite musical of all time” is Les Miserables (April 8-13, 2025), telling the epic story of prisoner-turned-hero Jean Valjean. “That was the last musical we did right before Covid hit,” Bensel says. "It’s still the most popular musical in the world.”

Two shows new to the hall include Dear Evan Hansen, which opens the Broadway season Nov. 1 and 2 and follows a high school student who becomes entangled in a lie that was never meant to be told, and Tina—The Tina Turner Musical (Dec. 13-15, 2024), a jukebox musical capturing the life story of the late great rock idol and featuring a soundtrack of her biggest hits. “The last number of that show is worth the price of a ticket all by itself,” says Bensel.

Two more shows, The Addams Family, based on the comic characters of Charles Addams (Jan. 28 and 29, 2025), and a reprise of the inspiring true story Come From Away (Feb. 18-20, 2025) round out the musicals of the Van Wezel season. But there’s also something slightly different on the theater menu: a non-musical play, Clue (Dec. 30 and 31, 2024), based on the 1985 movie and still-popular board game. “We’re bringing it in for three performances around New Year’s Eve,” Bensel says, “and we hope to do a party, get people to come in costume” as the whodunit unfolds.

In addition to these Broadway shows, Bensel has also unveiled eight “Subscriber Specials,” which include the perennial Salute to Vienna New Year’s Concert; a sequel to Menopause the Music, Menopause the Musical 2: Cruising Through ‘the Change’; the Gilbert and Sullivan classic H.M.S. Pinafore; the dancing of Forever Tango; the annual celebration of Broadway with Neil Berg’s 115 Years of Broadway; legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman; the Branford Marsalis Quartet; and Twyla Tharp Dance: Diamond Jubilee, celebrating the works of the ground-breaking choreographer, now 82.

For more information on these shows (the rest of the season will be announced later), visit vanwezel.org. As Bensel likes to say, “The best thing to do is buy subscriptions. The tickets are cheaper and you get the best seats. Plus, it really helps us, because Broadway producers look at the number of subscriptions when bringing big shows to town."