Kaye has been in long runs on Broadway in the musicals The Phantom of the Opera, Ragtime, Mamma Mia!, and (in a second Tony award-winning role) Nice Work If You Can Get It.
Her next show was the Broadway musical On the Twentieth Century (1978), playing only the small role of the maid Agnes, and also the understudy for leading lady Madeline Kahn.
Frank Rich, in his New York Times review, wrote "Two members of the company suggest what might have been - Judy Kaye, a skilled musical-comedy comedienne who sings a pretty ballad at a white piano.
"[8] In November 1981 Oh, Brother!, which transplanted William Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors to the Middle East, closed after thirteen previews and three official performances.
[13] She was the only principal to remain with that show for its entire run, where she showcased her remarkable range as she sang the Goldman alto part while hitting the B5 high note in the opening prologue.
[18] Kaye has performed extensively in regional theatre, in roles as widely varied as both Julie Jordan and Nettie Fowler in Carousel, Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun, Nellie Forbush in South Pacific, Meg in Brigadoon, Hildy in On the Town, Lalume in Kismet, Lili Vanessi in Kiss Me, Kate, Pistache in Can-Can, Babe Williams in The Pajama Game, the Old Lady in Candide, Maria in The Sound of Music, Rose in Gypsy, Anna in The Anastasia Game, Aldonza in Man of La Mancha, Lucy in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Sally in Follies (1995, Theatre Under the Stars),[19] Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar.
[22] Kaye appeared in Stephen Temperley's Souvenir and "drew raves for her humorous, yet touching work" with her portrayal of the legendarily bad singer Florence Foster Jenkins.
[24] After a production at the Berkshire Theatre Festival in August to September 2005, it premiered on Broadway, from October 2005 to January 2006,[25] and she has since performed it in several venues in the United States.
[26] Ben Brantley, in his New York Times review, wrote: "Ms. Kaye strikes that single note of personality with a happy mixture of ardor, unblinking obliviousness and ... pitch-perfect period detail.
"[33] The musical Paradise Found featured Kaye in a production co-directed by Harold Prince and Susan Stroman at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London from May – June 2010.
She appeared in the musical adaption of Tales of the City at the American Conservatory Theater, San Francisco, California, from May through July 2011, as Anna Madrigal.
[47] She debuted the role of Abbie in the premiere of composer Edward Thomas' musical version of Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms, presented by the New York Opera Repertory Theater in 1989.
[51] Kaye is featured on six tracks of John McGlinn's EMI disc Broadway Showstoppers, four of them numbers from Jerome Kern's Sweet Adeline (including the ballad "Why Was I Born?")