NEW YORK \u2014 Fifteen years ago, rising theater director Alex Timbers achieved a remarkable feat: Still only in his early 30s, he had two shows running simultaneously on Broadway. As 2026 dawns, Timbers has now eclipsed that mark \u2014 he has four.<\/p>\n
Timbers’ latest, \u201cAll Out: Comedy About Ambition,\u201d joins his currently running hits \u201cBeetlejuice,\u201d \u201cJust in Time\u201d and \u201cMoulin Rouge! The Musical,\u201d the 2020 best musical winner that also earned him a best directing Tony Award.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I step back and think about what unites the shows, it\u2019s probably they\u2019re all trying to be joy-forward experiences and shows where the audience is acknowledged,\u201d says Timbers, now 47.<\/p>\n
Previous directors to enjoy four simultaneous Broadway productions include 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 \u201cBeetlejuice\u201d ends its run).<\/p>\n
Breaking walls<\/h2>\n
Timbers\u2019 work often combines highbrow and lowbrow, sincerity and subversion. His four current Broadway works span a jukebox musical, a wacky movie adaptation, a spare and starry staged reading and a memory play-meets-biomusical.<\/p>\n
One of Timbers’ hallmarks is immediately breaking through the pretend wall between the actors and the audience, as when the ghoul Beetlejuice appears at the top of his show and comments, \u201cA ballad already! And such a bold departure from the original source material.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re all sort of shows that involve almost direct address from the jump,\u201d Timbers says, \u201cwhere there\u2019s a sort of an embrace of being there live. There is no sort of fourth wall.\u201d<\/p>\n Alex Timbers attends the Broadway opening night for “Therese Raquin” in New York, Oct. 29, 2015. Credit: AP\/Greg Allen<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Timbers had a breakout season in 2010 when two of his shows made it to Broadway: \u201cThe Pee-wee Herman Show\u201d and \u201cBloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,\u201d which he wrote and directed. In the first, he juggled the late Paul Reubens, visual 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.<\/p>\n Timbers went on to work on the adaptation of \u201cRocky\u201d for the stage, the stripped-down Peter Pan story \u201cPeter and the Starcatcher\u201d and with Talking Heads frontman David Byrne on his \u201cAmerica Utopia.\u201d For \u201cHere Lies Love,\u201d the immersive disco tale of Philippine ex-first lady Imelda Marcos, he literally broke the fourth wall by letting the audience dance with the stars.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that there\u2019s something sort of more raucous, more anarchic, that a certain audience wants. Something that\u2019s visceral and joyful,\u201d Timbers says. \u201cWhere pop and high art meet, I think that’s where a lot of the audiences want to live as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Timbers \u2014 currently at work on a \u201cThe Princess Bride\u201d musical \u2014 suspects the audiences of Broadway’s future are looking for the same kind of shows he looks for: out-of-the-box, slightly dangerous things that maximize the skills of the star and deliver joy.<\/p>\n Alex Timbers poses for a picture under the marquee for “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson”, one of the two shows he is currently directing in New York, Oct. 19, 2010. Credit: AP\/Seth Wenig<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n \u201cI think that younger audiences and audiences that don\u2019t traditionally go to theater aren\u2019t necessarily looking for shows that sit specifically in one genre. I think they\u2019re looking for things that maximize entertainment and emotion and connection,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Timbers, a student of Broadway history, looks backward to the future, inspired by the long-running \u201cZiegfeld Follies\u201d from the first half of the 20th century or \u201cHellzapoppin,\u201d a hugely popular musical revue in the 1930s that had comedy, music, clowns, audience participation and adult-themed content and dancing, capturing the zeitgeist by constantly changing with the times.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was all these different variety elements that felt in a way very populist, but also very sophisticated, like the coolest date night on Broadway,\u201d he says. \u201cI want to chase what ‘Hellzapoppin’ was trying to do 90 years ago and what it did for audiences.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.newsday.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NEW YORK \u2014 Fifteen years ago, rising theater director Alex Timbers achieved a remarkable feat: Still only in his early 30s, he had two shows running simultaneously on Broadway. As 2026 dawns, Timbers has now eclipsed that mark \u2014 he has four. Timbers’ latest, \u201cAll Out: Comedy About Ambition,\u201d joins his currently running hits \u201cBeetlejuice,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2220060,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741,21800,24047,307696],"class_list":["post-2220059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-theater","tag-wires-bot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Broadway-director-Alex-Timbers-achieves-a-rare-feat-with-4.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2220059"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2220061,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220059\/revisions\/2220061"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2220060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2220059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2220059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2220059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Not one genre<\/h2>\n
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