Musical Today Galileo opens on Broadway in December, with Mae Jemison, Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson producing
A musical about the astronomer who was tried for saying the earth moves has found three producers who make a living saying so. Galileo opens at the Shubert Theatre on 6 December 2026, after previews from 10 November, and Mae Jemison, Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson have joined the producing team.
The company
Raúl Esparza plays Galileo, with Michael Park as his alternate at certain performances; Jeremy Kushnier and Joy Woods lead the cast with him.
The makers
Book by Danny Strong, the screenwriter of Dopesick and Empire; music and lyrics by Zoe Sarnak and Michael Weiner; direction by Michael Mayer, who made Spring Awakening and American Idiot. The lead producers are Lipitz, Tisch and Roth; the three scientists are co-producers.
Where it came from
The show premiered at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, which has sent Broadway several of its recent musicals, American Idiot among them.
The season
It joins the autumn's other new musicals; the Shubert has been dark since the previous tenant closed, and a December opening puts Galileo in the holiday weeks when Broadway's grosses are highest.
Celebrity producers are usually a marketing line, and these three are a marketing line aimed at exactly the audience a musical about a scientist needs: the people who bought Tyson's books and watched Nye's programme and have never been to a Broadway musical. Esparza is the real guarantee, a performer who has carried Company and Leap of Faith and will carry this. The question for the run is whether a rock score about heliocentrism finds a second audience after the first one has come; December grosses flatter every show, and the number to read is the week of 10 January.
Source: Playbill checked against the source
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