David Byrne's 'American Utopia' Is Returning To Broadway

In the fall of 2019, David Byrne’s live extravaganza American Utopia began its Broadway run. The show featured Byrne performing songs from his solo career and from the Talking Heads, but it wasn’t a mere Broadway residency. It was a full-on reimagining of the live show, an elaborate choreographed spectacle along the lines of what Byrne had done 25 years earlier with the Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense. The show drew rave reviews and led to Byrne performing on a pre-pandemic Saturday Night Live. American Utopia was originally supposed to be a limited engagement, but its run get getting extended, right up until the pandemic began. Now, it’s coming back.

As Playbill reports, Byrne’s American Utopia will come to Broadway’s St. James Theater this fall. (That’s the same venue where Bruce Springsteen’s Broadway show will return this month. The theater is only letting in vaccinated people, and it’s not admitting Canadians who got the AstraZenca vaccine.) American Utopia will begin its new engagement 9/17.

This is great news, especially for those of us who saw Spike Lee’s filmed version of American Utopia last fall. The film, which arrived on HBO at the peak of the pandemic, played as a rhapsodic ode to the power of live music, and it made some of us seriously wistful about the idea that we’d never get to see this show. But now, we get another chance.

In a statement, Byrne says:

It is with great pleasure that finally, after a year+ like no other, I can announce that our show is coming back to Broadway. You who kept the faith, who held on to your tickets, well, you knew this would happen eventually! September 17 — remount previews begin. We’re moving to the St. James Theatre — just down 44th Street from the Hudson, where we were before. The stage is a little wider and the capacity is a little bigger — I guess we did alright! Seriously, New York is back, and given all we’ve witnessed, felt and experienced, it is obvious to me that no one wants to go back to a world with everything the way it was — we have an opportunity for a new world here. See you there.

You can get tickets here.