Broadway director Alex Timbers achieves a rare…
NEW YORK (AP) — Fifteen years in the past, rising theater director Alex Timbers achieved a exceptional feat: Still only in his early 30s, he had two reveals operating concurrently on Broadway. As 2026 dawns, Timbers has now eclipsed that mark — he has 4.
Timbers’ latest, “All Out: Comedy About Ambition,” joins his at present operating hits “Beetlejuice,” “Just in Time” and “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” the 2020 best musical winner that also earned him a best directing Tony Award.
“If I step back and think about what unites the shows, it’s probably they’re all trying to be joy-forward experiences and shows where the audience is acknowledged,” says Timbers, now 47.
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Previous administrators to take pleasure in 4 simultaneous Broadway productions embody Joe Mantello in 2016, Casey Nicholaw also in 2016, and Susan Stroman in 2001. Trevor Nunn did it twice, in 1988 and 1995. (Timbers’ quadruple ends Saturday when “Beetlejuice” ends its run).
Breaking partitions
Timbers’ work often combines intellectual and lowbrow, sincerity and subversion. His 4 current Broadway works span a jukebox musical, a wacky film adaptation, a spare and starry staged studying, and a reminiscence play-meets-biomusical.
One of Timbers’ hallmarks is immediately breaking through the fake wall between the actors and the viewers, as when the ghoul Beetlejuice seems at the top of his show and feedback, “A ballad already! And such a bold departure from the original source material.”
“They’re all sort of shows that involve almost direct address from the jump,” Timbers says, “where there’s a sort of an embrace of being there live. There is no sort of fourth wall.”
Timbers had a breakout season in 2010 when two of his reveals made it to Broadway: “The Pee-wee Herman Show” and “visible injuryy visible injuryy Andrew Jackson,” which he wrote and directed. AP
His 4 current Broadway works span a jukebox musical, a wacky film adaptation, a spare and starry staged studying, and a reminiscence play-meets-biomusical. AP
Timbers had a breakout season in 2010 when two of his reveals made it to Broadway: “The Pee-wee Herman Show” and “visible injuryy visible injuryy Andrew Jackson,” which he wrote and directed. In the first, he juggled the late Paul Reubens, visible jokes, and 20 puppets.
The other was an emo-driven rock musical about the seventh U.S. president, who strutted about in tight pants and eyeliner.
Timbers went on to work on the adaptation of “Rocky” for the stage, the stripped-down Peter Pan story “Peter and the Starcatcher,” and with Talking Heads frontman David Byrne on his “America Utopia.” For “Here Lies Love,” the immersive disco story of Philippine ex-first woman Imelda Marcos, he actually broke the fourth wall by letting the viewers dance with the celebs.
Director Alex Timbers, Andrew Rannells, and Josh Gad during the opening night time curtain call for the musical “Gutenberg: The Musical” on Broadway in 2023. Bruce Glikas/Getty Images
“I think that there’s something sort of more raucous, more anarchic, that a certain audience wants. Something that’s visceral and joyful,” Timbers says. “Where pop and high art meet, I think that’s where a lot of the audiences want to live as well.”
Not one style
Timbers — at present at work on a “The Princess Bride” musical — suspects the audiences of Broadway’s future are wanting for the same type of reveals he seems to be for: out-of-the-box, barely harmful issues that maximize the abilities of the star and ship pleasure.
Alex Timbers poses with actors from Moulin Rouge! The Musical, Just in Time, Beetlejuice, and All Out: Comedy About Ambition. AP
“I think that younger audiences and audiences that don’t traditionally go to theater aren’t necessarily looking for shows that sit specifically in one genre. I think they’re looking for things that maximize entertainment and emotion and connection,” he says.
Timbers, a scholar of Broadway historical past, seems to be backward to the future, impressed by the long-running “Ziegfeld Follies” from the first half of the twentieth century or “Hellzapoppin,” a massively in style musical revue in the Thirties that had comedy, music, clowns, viewers participation, and adult-themed content and dancing, capturing the zeitgeist by continuously altering with the instances.
“It was all these different variety elements that felt in a way very populist, but also very sophisticated, like the coolest date night on Broadway,” he says. “I want to chase what ‘Hellzapoppin’ was trying to do 90 years ago and what it did for audiences.”
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