The Best Broadway Plays of the 70s
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- 1Neil SimonThe Sunshine Boys is a play by Neil Simon that was produced on Broadway in 1972 and later adapted for film and television.
- 2
Sleuth
Anthony ShafferSleuth is a 1970 play written by Anthony Shaffer. The Broadway production received the Tony Award for Best Play, and Anthony Quayle and Keith Baxter received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance. The play was adapted for feature films in 1972, 2007 and 2014. - 3
That Championship Season
Jason Miller - 4Neil SimonChapter Two is a semi-autobiographical play by Neil Simon. The play premiered on Broadway in 1977, where it ran for 857 performances.
- 5
The Elephant Man
Bernard Pomerance - 6Neil SimonCalifornia Suite is a 1976 play by Neil Simon. Similar in structure to his earlier Plaza Suite, the comedy is composed of four playlets set in Suite 203-04, which consists of a living room and an adjoining bedroom with an ensuite bath, in The Beverly Hills Hotel.
- 7Ira LevinDeathtrap is a play written by Ira Levin in 1978 with many plot twists and which references itself as a play within a play. It is in two acts with one set and five characters. It holds the record for the longest running comedy-thriller on Broadway and was also nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. Deathtrap was well received by many and has been frequently revived. It was adapted into a film starring Christopher Reeve, Michael Caine, and Dyan Cannon in 1982.
- 8
The Shadow Box
Michael CristoferThe Shadow Box is a book by Michael Cristofer. - 9Neil SimonNeurotic middle-aged New Yorker Mel Edison (Jack Lemmon) is fired from his advertising job, forcing his loving wife, Edna (Anne Bancroft), to become the couple's sole breadwinner. Feeling emasculated, he begins to fall into a depression. A summer heat wave, unthoughtful neighbors and a robbery only worsen matters. When Mel finally suffers a nervous breakdown, he relies on those closest to him, including Edna and his brother Harry (Gene Saks), to restore his sanity.
- 10Leonard GersheIn early 1970s San Francisco, blind aspiring singer-songwriter Don Baker (Edward Albert) is living away from his overprotective mother (Eileen Heckart) for the first time. Free-spirited actress Jill Tanner (Goldie Hawn) moves into the apartment next door, and they bond over music and literature, but when Don's mother makes an unexpected visit, she clashes with the headstrong Jill, assuming that she'll get bored and leave Don, just as his last girlfriend did.
- 11Neil SimonPlaza Suite is a comedy play by Neil Simon.
- 12
The Gin Game
Donald L. Coburn - 13
Child's Play
Robert Marasco - 14Bernard Slade
- 15Peter ShafferEquus is a play by Peter Shaffer written in 1973, telling the story of a psychiatrist who attempts to treat a young man who has a pathological religious fascination with horses. Shaffer was inspired to write Equus when he heard of a crime involving a 17-year-old who blinded six horses in a small town near Suffolk. He set out to construct a fictional account of what might have caused the incident, without knowing any of the details of the crime. The play's action is something of a detective story, involving the attempts of the child psychiatrist, Dr. Martin Dysart, to understand the cause of the boy's actions while wrestling with his own sense of purpose. The stage show ran in London between 1973 and 1975: later came the Broadway productions that starred Anthony Hopkins as Dysart, and from the London production, Peter Firth as Alan. Tom Hulce replaced Firth during the Broadway run. The Broadway production ran for 1,209 performances. Marian Seldes appeared in every single performance of the Broadway run, first in the role of Hesther and then as Dora. Numerous other issues inform the narrative.
- 16
Yentl
Leah Napolin, Isaac Bashevis SingerYentl is a play by Leah Napolin and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Based on Singer's short story "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy," it centers on a young girl who defies tradition by discussing and debating Jewish law and theology with her rabbi father. When he dies, she cuts her hair, dresses as a man, and sets out to find a yeshiva where she can continue to study Talmud and live secretly as a male named Anshel. When her study partner Avigdor discovers the truth, Yentl's assertions that she is "neither one sex nor the other" and has "the soul of a man in the body of a woman" suggest the character is questioning their gender identity, especially when she opts to remain living as Anshel for the rest of her life. After eleven previews, the Broadway production, directed by Robert Kalfin, opened on October 23, 1975 at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, where it ran for 223 performances. The cast included Tovah Feldshuh, John Shea, and Lynn Ann Leveridge. 
17Neil SimonGod's Favorite is a play by Neil Simon, loosely based on the Biblical Book of Job. It was produced on Broadway in 1974.- 18
The Runner Stumbles
Milan Stitt - 19Terrence McNallyThe Ritz is a comedic farce by Terrence McNally. Rita Moreno won a Tony Award for her performance as Googie Gomez in the 1975 Broadway production, which she and many others of the original cast reprised in a 1976 film version directed by Richard Lester.
- 20Neil Simon, Peter LinkThe Good Doctor is a comedy with music written by Neil Simon. It consists in a series of short plays, based on short stories and other works of Russian writer Anton Chekhov, framed by a writer making comments on them.
- 21
Travesties
Tom StoppardTravesties is a play by Tom Stoppard. The play centres on the figure of Henry Carr, an elderly man who reminisces about Zürich in 1917 during the First World War, and his interactions with James Joyce when he was writing Ulysses, Tristan Tzara during the rise of Dada, and Lenin leading up to the Russian Revolution, all of whom were living in Zürich at that time. - 22
Gemini
Albert Innaurato - 23
The River Niger
Joseph A. Walker - 24
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf
Ntozake Shange - 25David Rabe
- 26
Sticks and Bones
David Rabe - 27
Mummenschanz
- 28
Otherwise Engaged
Simon Gray - 29
6 Rms Riv Vu
Bob Randall - 30
Absurd Person Singular
Alan Ayckbourn
