Benj Pasek, Shaina Taub and Joshua Harmon are collaborating on a new musical, “Unorthodox.” Based on the memoir by Deborah Feldman, “Unorthodox” is set to premiere at Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company during the 2026-2027 season.
The musical centers on its protagonist Devoiri’s upbringing in and eventual departure from a devout Hasidic community in Brooklyn, telling her story in parallel with that of her grandmother’s arrival in America and decision to join the Hasidic community sixty years earlier. The book is a New York Times bestseller and was previously adapted into a Netflix miniseries of the same name.
“We are close friends who had been searching for something to write together,” said Pasek, Taub and Harmon in a joint statement. “When we discovered this story, we knew it was the one we wanted to tell, as it’s full of complex characters in extraordinary circumstances making impossible choices. Collaborating on this show has been a genuine joy, we are grateful to the Huntington for the chance to see it realized and eager to share it with audiences!”
Huntington’s artistic director Loretta Greco added, “The joining of musical theater visionaries Benj Pasek and Shaina Taub with one of our great living playwrights, Joshua Harmon, collaborating for the first time together to create a musical adaptation of ‘Unorthodox’ is one such moment. What they’ve crafted is an urgent, intimate and soul-stirring story of two women discovering who they are and what world they want to forge for their children. I have no doubt this extraordinary new musical will resonate far beyond our walls, and you’ll be able to say you experienced it here first.”
Pasek is an EGOT winner and composer of “Dear Evan Hansen,” “La La Land” and “Only Murders in the Building” alongside collaborator Justin Paul. He is also credited as a producer on Tony winners “A Strange Loop,” “Merrily We Roll Along” and “Purpose.” Pasek will collaborate with Taub on the music and lyrics for “Unorthodox.”
Taub is a two-time Tony Award winner for her work writing the book, music and lyrics for 2024’s “Suffs,” in which she also starred. She is currently playing Emma Goldman in Lincoln Center Theater’s Broadway revival of “Ragtime.”
Harmon, who will write the book for “Unorthodox,” was nominated for the Tony for his 2024 play “Prayer for the French Republic.” He is a two-time Drama Desk Award winner: once for “French Republic” and once in 2018 for “Admissions.”
Also in the Huntington’s 2026-2027 lineup are productions of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Purpose” and Aaron Sorkin’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The Huntington will also premiere a new comedy by Talene Manahon, and the conclusion to Mfoniso Udofia’s nine-play Ufot Family Cycle.
