Ferguson made his Off-Broadway debut and his Broadway debut in the same show. When On the Town — a classic musical romp about sailors finding whirlwind love in New York — got revived in New York for the second time, the show went up at Central Park's Delacorte Theater in 1997. Ferguson starred as the sailor Chip, and the production made enough waves that it got a Broadway transfer. When On the Town docked at the Gershwin Theatre in 1998, Ferguson was on deck to reprise his role.

How do you spell B-R-O-A-D-W-A-Y S-T-A-R? The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is the show that truly put Ferguson on the theatre map, as he got a 2005 Drama League Award nomination for playing Leaf Coneybear. Like On the Town, Ferguson first joined that show for its Off-Broadway premiere with Second Stage, and he transferred to Broadway with it. He and the rest of the Broadway cast won a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance.

Ferguson was on a Shakespeare kick in the 2000s, returning to the Delacorte to appear in a string of the Bard's plays for The Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park series. His first gig was as Flute in A Midsummer Night's Dream in 2010, and he followed it up with The Merchant of Venice, The Winter's Tale, The Comedy of Errors, and The Tempest. Merchant and Winter's Tale played in repertory, so Ferguson had to juggle his roles in both of those at once on alternating days!

In 2025, he returned to Shakespeare in the Park as Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, a star-studded production that reopened the Delacorte after a year-plus of renovations.

Ferguson has enjoyed plenty of theatrical success on the opposite coast. The Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles is known for its star-studded productions of mega-musicals, and Ferguson has appeared in not one, but two of them. The first was Mel Brooks's The Producers in 2012, in which Ferguson starred as Leo Bloom. In 2015, he returned to the Hollywood Bowl to play Sir Robin in Spamalot.

Ferguson's other award-winning theatre role was in Fully Committed, his most recent Broadway outing before Take Me Out. The 2016 solo show featured him as Sam, the overworked manager of a trendy restaurant's reservation line. He also played all the irate celebrities, socialites, business execs, and socialites who would do and say anything to land a prime table. He won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance for his chef's kiss acting.

Ferguson next appeared in New York theatre in 2018's Log Cabin at Playwrights Horizons. Set in 2015, the play is about a group of gay and lesbian couples, newly granted the legal right to marry, whose eyes are opened to the still-long road to equality by a transgender friend. Ferguson played Ezra, the husband of Obie Award winner Phillip James Brannon's Chris. The New York Times critic said the character reminded him of Ferguson's most famous role: Modern Family's Mitchell Pritchett.

In 2022, Ferguson stepped back up to the Broadway plate in the baseball-centric, Tony Award-winning drama Take Me Out. His character, Mason Marzac, is the only one who's not an MLB player or coach — but upon meeting the newly-out center fielder Darren Lemming (played by Jesse Williams), he quickly becomes a baseball fanatic now that he sees his gay identity represented in the sport. Mason is the comic relief of the tense show, and Ferguson knocked every moment out of the park. We'd expect nothing less from the theatrical all-star.

Read our full interview with Ferguson on Take Me Out.

Performing in the House of the Redeemer's opulent Vanderbilt-era library for only 99 people per night, Ferguson plays Truman Capote in the wake of a scandal that costs him his elite social circle. Almost entirely a solo piece, Tru is a rare opportunity to see Ferguson's bonafide talents up close and personal in a unique setting.

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