19 hot Broadway tickets

Broadway has its eye on the prize this season.

Five Pulitzer Prize-winning plays will open this fall, from Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” which won in 1949, to the 2018 winner “Cost of Living” by Martyna Majok. (The five plays about to open are joined by two Pulitzer winners already running, “Hamilton” and “A Strange Loop”).

“Joining the small fraternity of men who have done this play is a great honor,” says Wendell Pierce, who plays the iconic Willy Loman in a primarily black “Salesman" cast. “It’s humbling.” Calling the play “an American 'Hamlet,' ” the “Wire” actor says doing the part will be a “high-water mark in my career, and my life.”

“Salesman” is “a masterful piece of writing, complex and layered,” said Pierce in a phone interview. The Black cast amplifies the themes that are already there, he says, expanding on the macro and micro aggressions of institutional and cultural racism. “It adds to Willy’s disillusionment.”

Pierce says he hopes audiences will realize why this play is a classic, “that it speaks to our humanity across time, across place, across age, across race. There’s a common humanity that we all share.”

Other highlights of the fall season include the return of six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald in “Ohio State Murders,” the Broadway debut of 91-year-old playwright Adrienne Kennedy. It will be hectic at McDonald’s house — five days earlier, her husband Will Swenson, opens as the legendary singer in “A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical.” And after several delays due to COVID, the musical adaptation of “Some Like It Hot” starts previews in November.

Audiences making their way back to the theater will find COVID restrictions all but gone, with proof of vaccination no longer required and most shows simply suggesting that masks are worn. Exceptions include “Cost of Living,” which still requires masks, and “The Kite Runner,” already running, which requires masks at Wednesday matinees and Friday evenings. Rules are fluid, so check individual show websites for updates.