Las Vegas Theatre Spring 2026: What to See Before Summer

BSC's production of the Pasek and Paul musical has been turning heads since its March 26 Nevada premiere. Gus Pappas anchors the show with a performance that earns the emotional weight the material demands, and Mary Engelhardt as Heidi Hansen delivers the kind of supporting work that reminds you who the show is actually about. This is community theatre operating well above its weight class.

Director Jen Hemme keeps the pacing tight, and musical director Holly Stanfield's work with the cast on Pasek and Paul's deceptively difficult vocal writing is consistently impressive. The projection design, a faithful adaptation of the original Broadway package with original elements by Jeff Tidwell, adds a visual sophistication that few community productions attempt.

If you haven't gone yet, go. It closes April 19 and there's no tour scheduled for the area.

This one is worth paying attention to. NBT's Hansel & Gretel is a Las Vegas premiere, and it's not a straightforward retelling — the production reimagines the Brothers Grimm classic through the lens of 1930s black-and-white cinema, with the Ice Cream Witch as antagonist and physical comedy drawn from Buster Keaton's work. That's an unusual set of choices for a ballet production, and the fact that they made them is interesting in itself.

The costume design comes from Kate Hawley, who won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design for her work on Frankenstein and Crimson Peak. Her involvement at this level for a regional ballet company's premiere is notable. NBT describes "spectacular projections" as part of the production design — given the visual ambition implied by the 1930s cinema concept, that's not a detail to overlook.

Nevada Ballet doesn't often swing this conceptually. This is worth watching.

The Tony Award-winning corn-pun musical arrives at the Smith Center and brings with it a specific kind of promise: it will make you groan, and you will enjoy groaning. The show won the Tony for Best Book (Robert Horn) and has a score by Grammy winners Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally that knows exactly what it's doing. This is not a show trying to be anything other than extremely funny for two hours.

The honest caveat: whether the material sustains a full evening depends partly on your tolerance for sustained corn-based wordplay. Critics have been divided on this. What's not in dispute is that the show is committed to its premise in a way that's actually rare — it never winks at you and apologizes for itself, which is the right call.

Best audience for this show: anyone who goes to the theatre to be entertained without being challenged. There's no shame in that. Sometimes that's exactly the show you need.

The season closer is the biggest Broadway event to hit Las Vegas since the season opened. Hell's Kitchen — Alicia Keys' semi-autobiographical musical about a 17-year-old girl finding her voice in 1990s New York City — arrives with Michael Greif directing and Camille A. Brown choreographing, the same creative team that won over critics and audiences on Broadway. Serena Williams joined the tour as a co-producer, which tells you something about the cultural moment this show occupies.

The principal tour cast leads with Maya Drake as Ali, Kennedy Caughell as Jersey, and Roz White as Miss Liza Jane. The ensemble is 23 members deep. The production design team from Broadway makes the trip intact, which matters: Camille A. Brown's choreography is as much of a critical subject as the score, and Peter Nigrini's projection work — which built 1990s Hell's Kitchen without constructing a literal set — is one of the production's most discussed elements.

The relevant question for any Alicia Keys jukebox musical is whether the songs serve the story or whether the story serves the songs. In this case, the creative team has largely threaded that needle. The show earned its standing ovations on Broadway by being genuinely moving in a way that most jukebox musicals never manage. The tour brings that intact.

This is the show to end the season on. Six nights at Reynolds Hall.