The original Broadway production opened at the Belasco Theatre in October 2010, but received mostly negative reviews and closed in January 2011 after 30 previews and 69 performances.

With new direction and production design, the musical transferred to London and opened at the Playhouse Theatre in January 2015, where it received mixed to positive reviews and 2 Laurence Olivier Award nominations.

In October 2009, a workshop reading for the Lincoln Center Theater production of the musical was held, featuring Salma Hayek, Jessica Biel, Matthew Morrison and Paulo Szot.

[1] Patti LuPone, Tom Hewitt, and Sherie Rene Scott were in workshop readings of the musical in March 2010, with direction by Bartlett Sher.

[2] Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown opened on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre on November 4, 2010, with previews starting October 8.

[3] The musical starred Sherie Rene Scott, Patti LuPone, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Laura Benanti, with direction by Bartlett Sher.

[8] A West End production, also directed by Bartlett Sher and starring Tamsin Greig, Jérôme Pradon, Haydn Gwynne, Anna Skellern, and Willemijn Verkaik opened at the Playhouse Theatre on January 12, 2015 for a 20-week run.

[12] A production was staged by the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in 2023 at the Sherman Theatre, with direction by Eva Sampson.

In 2024, Florida International University produced Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown at The Wertheim, under the direction of Olivia de Guzman, to be the premier offering of its new Musical Theater program.

Pepa, a working actress and singer, arrives at a film recording studio, where she is scheduled to dub a duet with Ivan.

The woman is Lucia Beltran, Ivan's ex-wife, who is suing him for his desertion of her twenty years before and her resulting time in a mental facility.

Lucia is brought back to the present by the appearance by her shy, stammering son Carlos, and his unhappy, frustrated fiancée Marisa.

Torn between his mother and his fiancée, the young man receives a lesson from his golden-voiced father about how to communicate with women ("The Microphone").

She is interrupted by the arrival of Candela, seeking refuge from both the terrorists and the police, and by Carlos and Marisa, who through a series of mix-ups have found Pepa's address on their list of apartments for rent.

Noticing Carlos' attraction to the beautiful and fragile Candela, Marisa retreats to the kitchen, where she unknowingly drinks the sedative-laced gazpacho and passes out, as Pepa heads off to get the attorney's help.

They discover a note outlining Malik's plans for an attack on the main courthouse and anonymously call the police to warn them, as the various characters all try to sort out the mess of their intertwining lives ("Tangled").

They pass out, and before Pepa can stop her, Lucia grabs the police officers' guns and heads off to the courthouse to kill Ivan.

[17] It was panned by Ben Brantley writing in The New York Times "Packed with talent and creativity, and a cast and crew bristling with Tony Awards, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is nonetheless a sad casualty of its own wandering mind...It keeps changing directions the way a teenage girl changes clothes before a first date.

No sooner does this Lincoln Center Theater production start to develop a character or land a joke or sell a song than it switches gears and races on to another person or plot point or number that is, in turn, left incomplete.