Broadway director Alex Timbers achieves a rare feat with 4 shows running simultaneously

NEW YORK (AP) — 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 — he has four.

Timbers’ latest, “All Out: Comedy About Ambition,” joins his currently running 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.

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 “Beetlejuice” ends its run).

Breaking walls

Timbers’ 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.

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, “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 shows made it to Broadway: “The Pee-wee Herman Show” and “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,” 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.

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 tale of Philippine ex-first lady Imelda Marcos, he literally broke the fourth wall by letting the audience dance with the stars.

“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 genre

Timbers — currently at work on a “The Princess Bride” musical — 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.

“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 student of Broadway history, looks backward to the future, inspired by the long-running “Ziegfeld Follies” from the first half of the 20th century or “Hellzapoppin,” 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.

“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.”