Dolly! The Musical coming to Broadway 2026?

Reports are that they've scrapped the immediate Broadway transfer for the Spring due to bad reviews.

Bart Sher doesn't scream jukebox musical to me, tbh

Dolly's concert postponements in Las Vegas due to health challenges may be another reason to back-burner this for a bit. If she's not well enough to perform that short residency at the current time, the rigors of producing a Broadway musical would probably not be in her long-term wellness best interests either.

Updated On: 10/2/25 at 10:11 AM

Indeed, DOLLY! includes a handful of her hits but Parton wrote a large amount of original music for this show. This was unexpected as many people were confused with the non-recognizable songs as they assumed the show would be using all of her greatest hits sprinkled throughout.

According to Dolly, she wrote over 25 new songs for the musical. I'm not sure how many remained in the show, but there is quite a bit of new material. Also, when I saw it late in the run, it clocked in at about 2:30 plus intermission.

Wick3 said: "Ensemble1711444445 said: "BrodyFosse123 said: "Indeed, DOLLY! includes a handful of her hits but Parton wrote a large amount of original music for this show. This was unexpected as many people were confused with the non-recognizable songs as they assumed the show would be using all of her greatest hits sprinkled throughout."

It was mostly her old songs (not new) but also not all well known to everyone. She has a LOT of old songs! All the hits are there. It never got under 2:45 timing. Still a very long show."

Hamilton is close to 3 hours but never felt long to me. If this show is 2:45 and feels long, then something has to change."

Whether a show feels “too long” or not is really just a matter of personal opinion, isn’t it? As an example, to me HAMILTON felt interminable—— but seeing both parts of THE INHERITANCE back to back flew by!

Fall 2026 in New York (with re-writes) according to Dolly from her re-appearance at Dollywood this week.

Being there, I had heard this too. I would love to know some big details on the changes.

Personally, with Kristin Chenoweth free, I would love her in the lead.

She mentioned about a lot of expanding stuff, and I really would like to know more. From people who had seen it, I thought it needed a bit more focus, a new book, a new director, and design elements.

I know in Nashville, the people came from the show just wanting more for Dolly, feeling she deserved better.

I love that she's doing more original song work, and using songs only if they fit to the story.

Do we really think that it was originally earmarked for the St James or Majestic? I would feel far more confident with the Nederlander. Was there any word on the producing partner bring it in? Nederlander? Shubert?

I don’t think Chenoweth would at this point. She’s too much of her own brand at this point and I can’t envision her doing anything but a bad knockoff.

Megan Hilty obviously has experience playing a Dolly-adjacent character in 9 TO 5 and it was received quite well as more than just a basic imitation. Plus, she now has a bigger fanbase from DBH and I’m sure they might throw a pile of money at her to do it. It might also very well be her Tony, much like how SJB picked it up for The Cher Show

Wow, people really don’t like Katie Rose Clarke?

I agree that they need to cut the three dolly thing. I understand why, but its so difficult to make it work. I would agree that Megyn Hilty would do well at the role and agree that Kristin is probably a nonstarter. But I would have loved to see what she did with it. I fear that where the Cher Show for me went a miss was the rewriting to make it a Vegas show with no heart on Broadway where the chicago version was attempting something interesting and needed to be refined. Where a show like Beautiful saw its success in my opinion was the limited timeline scope which allowed for the connection instead of the marathon. And as much as I truly love Dolly if a show runs nearly 3 hours, audiences for whatever reason seem to be removed from it.

Do we think this time, working on it, we will have something better? (And please bring on a new director)

It’s just unnecessary. Kristin Chenoweth and Helen Mirren in The Queen [of Versailles] proved that one actor is more than capable of playing the character at different stages. You just have to do them up differently with wigs and costumes, and you get the picture. There’s a disconnect with 3 actors playing the same character.