Dolly Parton will celebrate her 81st birthday next year with the premiere of her highly-anticipated Broadway musical, The New York Times reports.
Dolly: A True Original Musical is set to open at the St. James Theater in New York City on Jan. 19. Previews
for the show will begin a month prior, starting Dec. 7.
Parton has been working on her eponymous musical for a couple years now, first announcing the show back in June 2024. The production features some of Parton’s biggest hits — “Jolene,” “I Will Always Love You,” “9 to 5” — as well as a handful of new originals written for the show.
Dolly got off the ground with a run at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts in Nashville last year. Though the show sold well and earned positive reviews from fans, Parton and her creative team decided to work on it more ahead of its arrival on Broadway. In a recent message to fans, Parton confirmed that she’d been “spending a lot of time writing and reworking” the musical.
Parton has been working on the musical book with Maria Schlatter. Bartlett Sher, a nine-time Tony nominee — and winner for Best Direction of a Musical in 2008 — is directing the show. A cast for the Broadway run has yet to be announced.
Dolly has been one of Parton’s primary creative endeavors over the past few years, especially since the release of her most recent solo album, 2023’s Rockstar. Her work on the show has remained consistent even as unspecified health issues have forced her to slow down some and call off a bunch of live dates.
But Parton has been steadily returning to the public eye, including an appearance at the opening of Dolly’s Tennessean Travel Stop, a new truck stop in Cornersville, Tennessee. In May, Parton offered an update on her health, saying she’s “responding really well to meds and treatments” and “improving every day.”
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