5 Musicals You Should Avoid if You Support I.C.E.

Ragtime off Broadway at New York City Center. (Photos by Joan Marcus)

by Chris Peterson

This column contains musical theatre, gentle satire, and the radical idea that art sometimes has opinions. Reader discretion advised if you prefer your show tunes entirely free of subtext, history, or uncomfortable questions.

This is meant as a courtesy. A kindness. A little laminated sign taped to the metaphorical stage door.

Broadway, regional theatre, and community stages across the country are dangerous places if you support I.C.E., mass deportations, or the belief that cruelty is simply “policy with better branding.”

Because if you support I.C.E., there are a handful of musicals that may cause unexpected side effects—prolonged discomfort, sudden self-reflection, and the unsettling realization that the show you love does not love your politics back.

Consider this a friendly heads-up before you buy the ticket.

1. Allegiance

(Photo: Matthew Murphy)

Content warning: empathy, history, and consequences.

This musical depicts the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese American citizens during World War II and makes the radical choice of calling it what it was: wrong. Characters argue, resist, question loyalty tests, and remind the audience that legality does not equal morality.

If you believe detention is acceptable when wrapped in patriotic language, this show will spend hours calmly dismantling that belief while smiling at you. You may leave wondering how many times America has said “this is different” before doing the same thing again.

2. Hadestown

(Photo: Matthew Murphy)

Content Warning: Includes walls, borders, surveillance, and a deeply judgmental trombone.

Hadestown presents a society obsessed with control—who gets in, who stays out, who works, and who disappears. The wall is sold as protection. Order is sold as necessity. Fear is sold as common sense.

The musical then patiently shows how those ideas rot a society from the inside. If you support walls but don’t enjoy watching them become metaphors for moral failure, this show may feel oddly targeted. That’s because it is. Politely. With a haunting chorus.

3. The Band’s Visit

(Photo: Ahron R. Foster)

Content Warning: Extreme kindness detected. Viewer discretion advised.

This show dares to imagine a world where people from another country accidentally arrive somewhere unfamiliar and are treated like guests instead of threats. They are fed. They are listened to. They are welcomed without suspicion.

If your worldview requires constant vigilance against “the other,” this musical will feel dangerously naïve. It insists that connection is possible without vetting, fear, or paperwork. And worse—it suggests that people are better for it. Side effects include quiet reflection and an urge to be decent.

4. Urinetown

The cast of “Urinetown” at Our Lady of Good Counsel  (Photo by Madeleine Tiongson)

Satire level: aggressively on the nose.

In this dystopia, survival is regulated, punishment is public, and authority insists all suffering is necessary for order. The system is corrupt, the messaging is slick, and the people enforcing it truly believe they’re doing the right thing.

If you support harsh enforcement because “rules are rules,” this show will start as a comedy and end as a mirror. Laughing does not exempt you from the critique. In fact, the laughter is part of the trap. Congratulations, you’re in the show now.

5. Ragtime

Ragtime off Broadway at New York City Center. (Photos by Joan Marcus)

Content Warning: America, stripped of the comforting myths.

This musical places immigrants, Black Americans, and White wealthy elites side by side and refuses to pretend they experience the same country. Laws are enforced. Violence is normalized. Power protects itself. Hope survives anyway.

If you prefer a version of American history that skips the parts where the system fails entire communities on purpose, Ragtime will not accommodate you. It is not interested in your discomfort, only your attention. And it will earn both.

Look, no one is saying you can’t attend these shows. Theatre is for everyone. Even people it fundamentally disagrees with.

But if you support I.C.E., consider this a courtesy notice. A gentle warning label before you commit to three hours of music arguing that borders are imaginary, justice is selective, and compassion is non-negotiable.

Attend at your own risk.

~~~

In all seriousness…

Jokes aside, this matters. Because I.C.E., as it currently operates, is not some abstract policy debate or philosophical disagreement. It is a system built on intimidation, fear, and deliberate harm. Raids meant to traumatize communities. Family separations used as deterrence. Detention centers that function with little oversight and even less humanity. Government supported murder. These aren’t unfortunate side effects. They are the tactics.

Musical theatre keeps returning to these stories not because artists love nostalgia, but because history keeps handing us the same lesson and daring us to ignore it again.

Theatre doesn’t fix policy. But it does remind us who policy affects.

And if the art keeps siding with the vulnerable, the displaced, and the people caught in the machinery… that might be telling us something worth sitting with after the curtain comes down.