Five shows worth braving the great white way for this season.

THE RITZ (by Terrence NcNally; previews from September 14; runs October 11 through December 2 at Studio 54, New York)

Nearly naked guys in the corridors at Studio 54--shocking! The legendary nightclub-turned-Broadway theater hosts a revival of Terrence McNally's riotous door-slamming farce set in a Manhattan gay bathhouse. Evoking the carefree atmosphere of the Continental Baths--where Bette Midler earned her nickname "Bathhouse Betty"--The Ritz was McNally's first major hit, running for a year on Broadway after opening in 1975. In this production Rosie Perez plays a wannabe chanteuse and Kevin Chamberlin a man on the run from his gangster brother-in-law. The creative team includes a handful of Tony award-winners, including director Joe Mantello, costume designer William Ivey Long, and set designer Scott Pask. "The Ritz bathhouse is going to be a multitiered coliseum of lurid color, light, and pulsing 70s music," Pask reports. "We are having a blast."

A CATERED AFFAIR (music and lyrics by John Bucchino; book by Harvey Fierstein; previews from September 20; runs September 30 through October 28 at the OId Globe Theatre, San Diego; opens on Broadway in spring 2008)

In this new Broadway-bound musical set in the Bronx, N.Y., in 1953, Faith Prince and Tom Wopat plan a lavishly catered wedding for their reluctant daughter. Directed by John Doyle, who won a Tony for his recent Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd, the show is based on a 1956 MGM drama starring Bette Davis and Debbie Reynolds. Harvey Fierstein--a.k.a. Edna Turnblad in the Broadway musical incarnation of Hairspray--adapted Gore Vidal's screenplay, giving himself the part of the bride's uncle, played in the film by Barry Fitzgerald. "When I was considering making the uncle character gay, I thought, Well, [Paddy] Chayefsky is the man who gave us The Latent Heterosexual," explains Fierstein, referring to the veteran dramatist who penned the original version of A Catered Affair for TV and The Latent Hetero sexual for the stage. "Turning Barry Fitzgerald into Harvey Fierstein raises latency to stellar heights."

THE BEEBO BRINKER CHRONICLES (by Kate Moira Ryan and Linda S. Chapman; previews from September 27; runs October 1-20 at the 4th Street Theatre, New York)

Two writers known for their own queer-themed work Linda S. Chapman (Gertrude and Alice) and Kate Moira Ryan (25 Questions for a Jewish Mother), have turned to the golden age of lesbian pulp fiction to bring new life to novelist Ann Bannon's well-loved heroines, Laura and Beebo, and their daring sex-in-the-city exploits in New York's Greenwich Village of the 1950s and '60s. "I told [Linda], these books are bitch-slapping forays into boozy sex and regret," recalls Ryan. "lt took her half a second to say yes." Some of the best women in theater are working on the production, which is directed by Leigh Silverman (who shepherded Lisa Kron's Well to Broadway). This fall also marks the 50th anniversary of Bannon's source work.

DORIS TO DARLENE: A CAUTIONARY VALENTINE (by Jordan Harrison; November 16-December 23 at Playwrights Horizons, New York)

New Yorkers finally get to experience the witty and uniquely skewed world of Jordan Harrison, an up-and-coming playwright whose work has steadily been generating buzz in regional theaters across the country. His new play explores the tumultuous yet creative relationship between artists and patrons as it jumps between the time of Wagner and the mad king he wrote for, Bavaria's Ludwig II; a'60s biracial pop singer and her producer; and a present-day high school music student who has a crush on his teacher-all linked by a single melody. "When I was 16 there were two kinds of music that I was obsessed with but almost too embarrassed to pick up in a record store: early-'60s girl-group pop, and opera," says Harrison. "This play is about the unexpected connection between those two kinds of music. They each articulate love as both a sickness and a cure, and who better to understand that condition than a queer teenager?"

THE LITTLE MERMAID (11 new songs with music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Glenn Slater, plus songs by Menken and the late lyricist Howard Ashman; book by Doug Wright; previews from November 3; opens December 6 at the LuntFontanne Theatre, New York)

It may be a slight change for librettist Doug Wright--author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning I Am My Own Wife and last season's Broadway musical Grey Gardens-to find himself somewhere under the sea exploring the magical world of Hans Christian Andersen via Disney. But consider this: "Anyone, gay or straight, can relate to the story," says Wright. "Ariel is a mermaid Ionging to live on land among people. I was once a musical theater-obsessed teen dreaming of a life in New York City. Everyone faces that critical moment in their lives when they have to break away from home and family to establish their own identity."