Neil Patrick Harris Returning to Broadway to Lead ‘Damn Yankees’ Revival

Neil Patrick Harris is coming home to Broadway. And honestly? Broadway is the lucky one here.

The 53-year-old Tony winner is set to headline a brand-new revival of Damn Yankees in spring 2027, and he won’t be taking the Marquis Theatre stage alone. Joining him are Dancing with the Stars alum turned Broadway star Julianne Hough and stage standout Austin Scott, both of whom are also making their own returns to the Great White Way. The news broke Sunday at — where else? — Yankee Stadium, where the three leads showed up to make the announcement official in front of the press and a whole lot of very excited baseball fans.

If your idea of a perfect Sunday involves Broadway stars posing in the dugout at Yankee Stadium, then this was your day. The trio took photos on the field, in the locker room, and behind the press-conference podium, and the whole thing had the energy of a season opener. It’s a genuinely fun way to announce a baseball musical, and you have to respect the commitment to the bit.

Here’s the casting breakdown: Harris will play Applegate, the devilish, smooth-talking stranger at the center of the story (casting a former Hedwig as the devil is, frankly, inspired). Hough takes on Lola, the role immortalized by the phrase “Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets” — a part that basically demands a triple-threat performer, and Hough fits the bill beautifully. And Scott will play Young Joe, the athlete-turned-young-baseball-phenom at the heart of the tale.

A Musical Worthy of a Yankee Stadium Announcement

Damn Yankees is one of those Golden Age musicals that has somehow managed to stay beloved without ever overstaying its welcome. The show debuted on Broadway in 1955 with a book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop and music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, and it walked away with Tony Awards and a permanent spot in the American theater canon.

The premise is Faust, but make it baseball. A middle-aged, baseball-obsessed fan named Joe Boyd sells his soul to the devil — or, in this case, makes a deal with a devilish stranger named Applegate — in exchange for becoming the star slugger who can finally bring his beloved team back to glory. There’s love, there’s temptation (hello, Lola), and there’s a question about what loyalty really costs. It’s funny, it’s romantic, and the score is full of songs people still hum decades later.

This upcoming production is getting a fresh coat of paint. The revival will feature a newly adapted book by Will Power and Doug Wright, with additional lyrics by the legendary Lynn Ahrens — whose work on Ragtime, Anastasia, and Once on This Island basically guarantees the new material will sing. It’s also being billed as the first Broadway revival of Damn Yankees in more than 30 years, which, when you think about it, is genuinely surprising. Shows with scores this good don’t usually sit on the shelf that long.

One of the more intriguing wrinkles: the new adaptation moves the story to the early 2000s. The synopsis describes Joe Boyd as a diehard fan of the Baltimore Orioles, desperate to see his team climb back to glory, when a charming stranger and his captivating accomplice show up with an offer that’s almost too good to refuse. A deal gets made. A second chance gets promised. And then — there’s always a catch, isn’t there?

MLB Steps Up to the Plate

Here’s a first for a Broadway production: Major League Baseball itself is getting involved. MLB and its Emmy-winning MLB Studios are joining the production as a partner, which makes this revival feel less like a standard Broadway bow and more like an event.

Honestly, it’s a smart match. Broadway and baseball are both quintessentially American institutions with obsessively devoted fan bases, and cross-promotion here feels natural rather than forced. You can already picture the tie-ins: cast appearances at games, anthem performances, “Damn Yankees” nights at ballparks across the country. Whether any of that actually happens remains to be seen, but the partnership alone signals that the producers are thinking big about how to make this revival land in the culture, not just on the marquee.

Sergio Trujillo, the Tony-winning choreographer behind Ain’t Too Proud and On Your Feet!, is set to direct and choreograph the production. Trujillo is one of the best dance-storytellers working in theater right now, and a show like Damn Yankees — where athleticism is literally baked into the plot — is a natural playground for him. Expect the baseball choreography to be a highlight.

Neil Patrick Harris: A Broadway Love Story

Nobody was going to hand Neil Patrick Harris an honorary “belongs on Broadway” trophy because he’s been too busy collecting the real hardware. The man is a bona fide stage star. His Broadway résumé includes Proof, Cabaret, Assassins, Peter Pan Goes Wrong, and Art — a run that shows off a range most actors would kill for, from Sondheim darkness to outright farce.

Then there’s Hedwig. His volcanic, can’t-look-away performance in Hedwig and the Angry Itch won him the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, and it remains one of those performances people talk about in hushed tones — the kind where audiences left the theater feeling like they’d witnessed something genuinely electric.

Playing Applegate is a different kind of showcase. The devil in Damn Yankees isn’t a brooding figure; he’s a charmer, a showman, a dealmaker with a wink. It’s a role that rewards the exact qualities Harris has in spades: quicksilver comic timing, a voice that can sell a number, and that particular sparkle that makes an audience lean in. He hosted the Tonys multiple times, for goodness’ sake — commanding a stage is his whole brand.

And there’s something fitting about Harris returning to Broadway right now. His television and film career — from How I Met Your Mother‘s Barney Stinson to A Series of Unfortunate Events — made him a household name, but the theater has always been where his bona fides are most bulletproof. This revival puts him back where critics and fans alike consider him most dangerous: live, on a stage, with nowhere to hide.

Julianne Hough’s Musical Debut (Yes, Really)

It is genuinely wild that Julianne Hough — a professional dancer who has won Dancing with the Stars twice as a pro, starred in the film adaptation of Rock of Ages, and played Sandy in Fox’s live Grease — has never done a Broadway musical. She’s done a Broadway play, starring in POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive in 2022. But a full-blown song-and-dance Broadway musical? This is the first.

As Lola, she couldn’t have asked for a better debut vehicle. The role is a dancer’s role through and through — seductive, athletic, funny — and “Whatever Lola Wants” is one of those numbers that lives or dies on the performer’s magnetism. Hough has been building toward a moment like this her entire career. The woman has been dancing on national television since she was a teenager; strutting across the Marquis stage as the devil’s most effective weapon feels less like a stretch and more like destiny catching up with her.

There’s also a nice symmetry in Hough sharing the stage with Harris. Both are entertainers in the old-school, does-it-all sense: sing, dance, act, host, charm a crowd of thousands without breaking a sweat. Watching the two of them play off each other — as adversaries in this story, each with their own agenda — should be one of the production’s great pleasures.

Austin Scott: The Rising Star Holding Down Young Joe

Austin Scott might be the least famous name on the poster, but Broadway insiders know exactly who he is. His credits include Hamilton, Girl from the North Country, and & Juliet — a track record that shows he can handle everything from revolutionary hip-hop to Bob Dylan to Max Martin pop.

Young Joe is the emotional anchor of Damn Yankees: the transformed hero caught between the life he sold his soul for and the wife and home he left behind. It requires genuine acting chops alongside the singing and dancing, and Scott’s résumé suggests he’s more than ready for a leading-man spotlight of this size. If the revival mints a new star the way the best revivals do, don’t be surprised if it’s him.

When Can You See It?

Mark the calendars. Damn Yankees will play the Marquis Theatre, with previews beginning Wednesday, March 24, 2027, and an official opening night set for Tuesday, April 20, 2027. That’s a prime spring slot, timed perfectly for Tony season — which tells you exactly how confident the producers are feeling about this one.

And that confidence isn’t hard to understand. You’ve got a beloved Golden Age score getting a thoughtful modern adaptation, a Tony-winning director-choreographer, the full marketing muscle of Major League Baseball, and a cast led by one of the most decorated stage-and-screen stars of his generation. First Broadway revival in over three decades. A Yankee Stadium announcement. This thing is being positioned as an event, not just a show.

Spring 2027 is still a ways off, but theater fans know how this works: the buzz starts now, the tickets move fast, and by the time opening night rolls around, everyone will be claiming they saw it coming. Consider this your early warning. Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets — and right now, it looks like Broadway wants this revival badly.

Source: Just Jared