Broadway director Alex Timbers achieves a rare feat with 4 shows running
simultaneously
[January 02, 2026]
By MARK KENNEDY
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.
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Alex Timbers attends the Broadway opening night for "Therese Raquin"
in New York, Oct. 29, 2015. (Photo by Greg Allen/Invision/AP, File)
 “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.”
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