Playhouse Stage Company has announced six productions that will make up its 39th Season of professional musical theatre at Cohoes Music Hall, under the season banner Spirits & Second Chances: Stories That Stay With Us.
The lineup spans Stephen King’s cult thriller Carrie: The Musical, the six-time Tony Award winner Dear Evan Hansen, and — for the first time in company history — Les Misérables, the most celebrated musical ever written, presented next summer in the intimate 151-year-old Music Hall.
Playhouse Stage Company has produced musicals year-round at Cohoes Music Hall since 2016 and has presented free outdoor summer theatre at Albany’s Park Playhouse since 1989. Plans for Park Playhouse’s 2027 free summer programming will be announced separately in early 2027.
“Our Music Hall has been collecting stories since 1874 — and if you believe the legends, a few of the storytellers never left,” said Owen Smith, Producing Artistic Director of Playhouse Stage Company. “This season, we lean in. These six shows are about outcasts who find their place, strangers who find forgiveness, and songs that refuse to be forgotten. And there is no better room in the Capital Region to tell them in than a 151-year-old theatre that knows a thing or two about what lingers.”
The season continues the Playhouse’s signature production model, pairing local and regional professional actors and musicians with advanced students and graduates of Playhouse Stage Academy in age-appropriate roles, guided by professional design and creative teams. Every artist on a Playhouse Stage Company stage — performer, musician, designer and technician — is a paid professional or a student artist training beside one.
There’s a lot in this world that tests us. The Playhouse’s 39th Season is about what carries us through it: mercy we didn’t see coming, second chances we didn’t think we’d get, and the people — past and present — who refuse to let go of us. A girl with a terrifying gift. A fugitive shown one act of impossible mercy. The worst kids in town, handed the greatest story ever told. These are stories about grace — how we give it, how we receive it, and how it changes everything. Some of them will make you laugh. One or two will break your heart a little. All of them will follow you home.
THE 39TH SEASON AT COHOES MUSIC HALL
The season opens in October 2026 with Stephen King’s Carrie: The Musical. Every haunted theatre needs a good thriller, and this fall the Music Hall leans into its legend with the cult horror musical based on Stephen King’s first novel — the story of a girl who needed one act of kindness, and what happened when it came too late. Shy teen Carrie White, an outcast with a devastating secret and a mother with a terrifying faith, is about to have a prom night nobody will ever forget. It’s electrifying, and it’s heartbreaking. Audiences can come see why this show has haunted them for forty years — and maybe not sit too close.
The holidays bring the return of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever: The Musical in December 2026. The Herdmans are the worst kids in the history of the world — they lie, they steal, they even smoke cigars — and this Christmas, they’re hijacking the church pageant. What could go wrong? Everything. What actually happens? Something like a miracle. Based on the beloved book that has charmed families for fifty years, this riotously funny holiday musical is about what happens when the people nobody wants get handed a story everybody needs.
In February and March 2027, the Playhouse will present two productions in repertory, the first rep run for the company since 2020, serving two very different audiences in the same window. Daytime and weekend family performances of Arthur & Friends Make a Musical! bring everyone’s favorite aardvark from the page to the stage in a brand-new musical featuring Arthur, D.W., Buster and the whole Elwood City gang, with daily school time performances available for field trips, daycare centers and homeschool groups. When Arthur and his friends put on a show of their own, they learn what every kid (and grown-up) eventually has to: that being yourself is the bravest thing you can be.
Evenings in the same window belong to Dear Evan Hansen, winner of six Tony Awards including Best Musical — the show that defined a generation. It is the story of an anxious, invisible kid and the lie that makes him finally, impossibly seen; a story about grief and the internet, parents and kids, and how far a person will go to belong. Funny, devastating and unforgettable, with one of the most celebrated scores of the century, Dear Evan Hansen reminds us that the hardest second chance is the one you have to give yourself. Schooltime matinees will be available for middle and high school groups.
Next summer, the most sweeping musical ever written comes to the most intimate and historic theatre in the Capital Region, as the Playhouse presents Les Misérables in July 2027. Victor Hugo’s towering story of mercy and revolution is, at its heart, astonishingly personal: one stolen loaf of bread, one act of impossible grace, and one man’s lifetime spent trying to be worthy of it. The Playhouse brings Les Misérables home in a rendition where audiences can see every face and feel every note — the full glory of that legendary score, sung by a company of professional artists and the region’s most talented young performers, close enough to touch. Do you hear the people sing? At Cohoes Music Hall, you won’t just hear it. You’ll feel it in your chest.
The season concludes in August 2027 with Cats: Young Actors Edition. The Jellicle cats gather once a year under the Jellicle moon to make the Jellicle choice: which cat will be reborn into a new life? The next generation of Capital Region performers takes on one of the most iconic musicals of all time — Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, reimagined for young artists and bursting with the songs the whole world knows. A celebration of memory, transformation and second chances (told entirely by cats, naturally), the production is the annual showcase for the students who train year-round at Playhouse Stage Academy. The future of the company is on that stage.
39th Season Memberships go on sale September 1. Tickets for individual productions will go on sale at a later date. More information can be found online at www.playhousestage.org or by phone throught the Box Office at 518-434-0776.
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