Top Shows of 2025

Anyone who remembers the New York theatre scene from before the dreaded covid shutdown knows that this city has yet to fully recover. Theatre today is simply less ambitious, less imaginative, and less interesting than it was before 2020.

Still, there are some exceptions. Last year, there were a few remarkable shows that made my annual top-ten list, including Broadway's re-imagining of The Great Gatsby and a new production of the Giuseppi Verdi classic La Forza del Destino at the Metropolitan Opera.

This year, I have a new list of the best shows I saw in New York City that opened since January 1st. That doesn't include some of the excellent productions I saw outside of New York, including Sunday in the Park with George in Pittsburgh or Dear Liar in Niagara-on-the-Lake, not to mention my own workshop of After an Earlier Incident at Theatre of Western Springs.

10. Nongod - This trio of one-act plays by Leon Lone was a pleasant surprise. Seeing ancient deities from Egypt, Russia, and Mexico come to life on stage turned out to be both funny and emotionally engaging.

9. The Wild Duck - Ibsen classics other than A Doll House or Hedda Gabler are few and far between in the U.S., so I was delighted that Theatre for a New Audience announced they would reviving The Wild Duck. Maaike Laanstra-Corn gave a striking portrayal of Hedwig.

8. The Lady From the Sea - What was I saying about Ibsen classics? Even better was Susane Lee's adaptation of The Lady From the Sea, performed appropriately right on the Hudson River. Lee reset the play in Canada, but kept its spirit, and the outdoor venue was delightful.

7. Pygmalion - Gingold Theatrical Group always does a good job with their shows, and this year's production of Bernard Shaw's most famous comedy was no exception. Synnøve Karlsen, now famous as young Cassie from television's Miss Austen, made her New York debut as the irrepressible Eliza Doolittle.

6. Kowalski - Gregg Ostrin's play about an imagined meeting between Tennessee Williams and Marlon Brando was a hit Off-Broadway at The Duke on 42nd Street. There have been plans to move it to Broadway. If that happens, you'll want to see it. In addition to probing into the creation of the American classic A Streetcar Named Desire, it's a great vehicle for two fine actors.

5. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - While it's true that the second act wasn't as good as the first, this new opera based on the Michael Chabon novel of the same name still wowed audiences, in part due to sets and projections by 59 Studio. Fortunately, it's coming back this spring, so if you missed it in the fall, you can still catch it at the Met beginning February 17.

4. Wine in the Wilderness - Classic Stage Company had been planning this revival of the classic Alice Childress drama for quite some time. With direction by LaChanze, it hit all the right notes. The set designed by Arnulfo Maldonado wrapped the audience around the action, making the riot outside feel shockingly close, and Grantham Coleman once again gave an amazing performance.

3. The Last Bimbo of the Apocalypse - Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley's new musical perfectly channels pop music from earlier in the century while telling a story of the Internet stardom (and helldom) of today. The New Group deserves kudos for bringing it to Off-Broadway audiences, and for featuring some incredibly gifted young performers, including Patrick Nathan Falk, Keri René Fuller, Luke Islam, and Milly Shapiro.

2. Dead Outlaw - An even better new musical that premiered this year on Broadway (transferring from an Off-Broadway run last year) was Dead Outlaw, which tells the fascinating real-life story of Elmer McCurdy, who literally couldn't pull off a crime to save his life. Itamar Moses, David Yazbek, and Erik Della Penna were able to hilariously tell the tale while at the same time evoking scenes of sheer pathos. Like Yazbek's Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, this show deserves a long afterlife with regional and community theatres.

1. Moby-Dick - The best show I saw this year, though, has to be Jake Heggie's opera Moby-Dick, which made its Met premiere earlier this year. Though the piece first premiered at the Dallas Opera 15 years ago, this was the first time New York audiences were able to see and hear it live. Having written my own stage adaptation of the Herman Melville novel, I have lots of opinions on how to best stage the story, but the union of sets and projections seemed flawless in this staging, and the music is some of Heggie's best. The tenor Brandon Jovanovich also made a profound Captain Ahab.

That's the list. I know! Two operas and only a single work from the Broadway stage, and that one which premiered Off-Broadway first. The dynamics of New York theatre are certainly changing.

Catching the Bus

For a while now, I've been meaning to see Bus Stop, the William Inge play currently showing at Classic Stage Company, which is a co-production with the National Asian American Theatre Company and the Transport Group.

Well, today I finally caught it. Director Jack Cummings III has cast some of my favorite New York actors, including David Lee Huynh, who plays the town sheriff, Will Masters. The play takes place in a small town about 30 miles west of Kansas City, and the appropriately named Masters aims to make sure no trouble happens when the passengers on a bus to Topeka have to stay over at the town diner due to bad weather.

One of those passengers is Dr. Gerald Lyman, a drunken former professor played by the wonderful Rajesh Bose. Lyman avoids the sheriff but flirts dangerously with a young waitress, Elma Duckworth. Delphi Borich, a powerhouse talent I saw on Broadway in Into the Woods, plays Elma's naive optimism with believability and charm. When she refuses to believe anything bad about Lyman, it's hard to want her to change her mind, even as ever-greater warning signs emerge.

Elma's boss is the middle-aged waitress Grace Hoylard, played by Cindy Cheung. Married, but with a husband who disappeared and is hardly missed, she deftly manages a tryst with the bus's driver, Carl, played by David Shih. The two think they're being subtle, but they fool no one. Their careful navigation of mutual consent for their rendezvous upstairs contrasts sharply with the bickering couple Cherie and Bo, played by Midori Francis and Michael Hsu Rosen respectively.

Francis has the unenviable task of playing the role made famous by Marilyn Monroe in a 1956 film adaptation of the play. Admirably, she holds her own, particularly in tender scenes with Virgil Blessing, the best friend of the man who wants to marry her. Today, Inge is widely believed to have been a closeted homosexual, and it's difficult to imagine how Virgil could be interpreted any way other than gay, particularly as he is compassionately played by Moses Villarama.

Bus Stop is only running until Sunday, so catch it while you still can.

Wine in the Wilderness

I first encountered Alice Childress's play Wine in the Wilderness in a student production at City College. Since then. I've taught the play in a variety of theatre history courses.

When Classic Stage Company announced they would be doing an Off-Broadway production of the piece directed by LaChanze, who had recently starred in Childress's Trouble in Mind on Broadway, I knew I'd have to see it.

For one reason or another, that production kept getting delayed, but it is now playing at CSC on 13th Street, and you should definitely check it out. Beautifully directed and compellingly acted, the play continues to speak to audiences today just as when it first aired in 1969.

Yes, aired: the drama was first staged for television as part of a series of plays presented by the Public television station WGBH in Boston. Since then, however, it's become a bit of a classic on regular stages. The Lynn F. Angelson Theater where it's playing now is far from a traditional TV studio, instead wrapping the audience around three sides of its elongated playing area. The set, designed by Arnulfo Maldonado, works like a charm, though.

The action of the play takes place in the apartment of Bill Jameson, a divorced artist living in Harlem  where the year is 1964 and a riot is going on outside in the streets. Jameson is more concerned with his paintings, though, and gets excited when his friends call him to say they've found the perfect model for a piece he's been trying to finish. He's played by Grantham Coleman, who came to audiences' attention in 2019 in Much Ado About Nothing and made his Broadway debut later that year in The Great Society.

I enjoyed Coleman's performance, but the real star of the show is Tommy Marie, played by Olivia Washington in this production. Appearing in a mismatched outfit and a bad wig, Tommy is a source of amusement for the other characters at the beginning, but by the end of the play they (and the audience) begin to see her differently.

Other strong performances are delivered by Brooks Brantley, Lakisha May, and Milton Craig Nealy. The show is only playing through April 13th, so see it while you still can.

Cyrano

Eclecticism can be a great thing in the theatre. When the Public last staged William Shakespeare's Cymbeline in Central Park, the set was covered with reproductions of Western art from nearly every period, and when each scene felt like it took place in a new milieu, that felt about right, given that Shakespeare seems to mix vastly different settings and periods in a single play.

When Edmond Rostand wrote Cyrano de Bergerac, however, he set the play squarely in France of the 17th century. The play creates a singular vision of the world, not as it actually was in the 1600s, but as Rostand dreamed it could have been. Not every production of Cyrano de Bergerac needs to be set in 17th-century France, and a production placed in the time of Rostand's own fin de siècle Third Republic might work out charmingly, but the play does imply a single, unified setting.

That's what makes the eclecticism of Erica Schmidt's new musical adaptation, dubbed simply Cyrano, so oddly intriguing. Where are we? Or more precisely, when are we? The costumes designed by Tom Broecker range from the era of Louis XIV to the U.S. Civil War to contemporary. The music composed by Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National has an indy-rock feel, yet the vocal stylings of Jasmine Cephas Jones as Roxanne have a deep R&B resonance. Throw into the mix The Great Comet's Grace McLean as a quirky and comedic Marie, and what do you get?

The answer seems to be a puzzle where each piece is brilliant, but the audience has trouble putting it all together. Fortunately, unifying this whole sprawling epic is the character of Cyrano himself, played here by Peter Dinklage. I greatly admired his work in Schmidt's production of A Month in the Country at Classic Stage Company, though apparently he also did some T.V. show about dragons.

Oddly, though, Schmidt's adaptation cuts out some of Cyrano's most famous scenes. We don't get his duel while composing a poem, nor his long list of self-deprecating jokes about his nose. For that matter, his nose is not enlarged at all for the part, and the cast hints that by "nose" they might be referring to another element of his appearance.

Rostand's creation of Cyrano de Bergerac is legendary, and the saga of its first production provided the plot for this year's cinematic gem Cyrano, My Love. This production of Cyrano by the New Group, playing now at the Daryl Roth Theatre, might not prove quite as memorable, but it's still worth seeing, and definitely worth hearing. The songs in the battle scene are particularly evocative, and I would like to see the Dessner brothers write more work for the theatre, especially if they can bring along their lyricists, Matt Berninger and Carin Besser.

If you do see it, bring tissues. The story's finale is appropriately moving, though not necessarily in the same way as the original. The final word of Rostand's play--"panache"--is notoriously difficult to translate, because it refers to both the literal white plume in a soldier's helmet and the intangible qualities of bravery, gallantry, and style Cyrano so prizes. By changing the word simply to "pride" Schmidt has transformed the play from the heroic comedy Rostand intended into a tragedy. Whether that is a good thing or not is a matter of taste.

Currently, Cyrano is only playing until December 22nd, so see it now before it disappears!

The Dance of Death

When I bought a ticket to see The Dance of Death at Classic Stage Company, I didn't realize the date I had picked was Ash Wednesday. Had I thought about it, though, could there have been a better play to see for the beginning of a period of reflection on sin and mortality?

August Strindberg wrote Dance of Death in September of 1900, penning a sequel two months later. It is Dance of Death Part I that is most interesting dramatically, though, and it is that play that Conor McPherson adapted for Trafalgar Studios in London in 2012, and that is being revived now by CSC.

McPherson's adaptation cuts the cast down to three, eliminating the maid Jenny, the sentry who paces back and forth outside, and my favorite part, the mysterious old woman who appears out of nowhere. None of these characters are strictly necessary for the plot, but that's precisely why I love them. The old woman who appears when the doors are blown open is mysterious, but the mystery is never resolved, and it doesn't need to be.

In the end, Dance of Death is a mystery story without a solution. The Captain, played in this production by Richard Topol, is unhappily married to a former actress named Alice, played by Cassie Beck. They are preparing to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary but hate each other bitterly. Into this house of scorn and contempt comes Kurt, a cousin of Alice played by Christopher Innvar. Much like another role Innvar has played, Albany in King Lear, Kurt is a well-intentioned man who is way out of his league when he pairs himself up with a ruthless woman.

And Alice is certainly ruthless! The scene where she makes Kurt bow before her and kiss her shoe is priceless. What is more, you're guaranteed to get a seat with a good view of that moment. CSC is putting the play on in the round, and director Victoria Clark has staged it so everyone in the intimate space can see, unlike some other directors I could name.

Dance of Death is currently being performed in rep with an adaptation of another Strindberg play, Miss Julie. If you're interested, check out the theatre's website.

The Liar

Last night, I saw Classic Stage Company's production of The Liar, David Ives's adaptation of Corneille's 17th-century French comedy.

Carson Elrod, a veteran of Ives's work having appeared in Lives of the Saints and other comedies, begins the show with a curtain speech in rhymed iambic pentameter, warning the audience that the whole play will be... in rhymed iambic pentameter. That's not quite true, as at one point, Ives switches to prose, and with quite a lovely effect.

The plot follows the titular character of Dorante, played by Christian Conn. Though he has just arrived in Paris, the compulsive liar tells amazing stories of his extensive adventures there. Encountering a pair of women, Dorante convinces himself he's in love with one of them, though the audience wonders if this, too, is a lie. Ultimately, self-delusion can be one of the greatest dangers of games of deception.

Frequently, the play drops in references to lying politicians. This makes Dorante's pathological lying seem far from harmless. Recent events make Ives's light touch feel incongruous with the times, though few can dispute that the playwright has a wonderful way with wordplay. In spite of brightly colored period costumes, the play makes frequent anachronistic allusions, for instance referencing the Eiffel Tower though it won't be built for hundreds of years. In Ives's hands, these small twists can be rendered hysterically funny.

The stand-out performance in this production comes from Kelly Hutchinson, who was also in last year's The Crucible on Broadway. Playing the double role of the twin sisters Isabelle and Sabine, Hutchinson transforms herself from a bubbly sexpot to a humorless grouch and back again. Watching her switch between the two roles is itself worth the trip to the theater.

This delightful comedy is playing until February 26th. For more information and tickets, visit:

Classic Stage Company

Faustus Revised

Christopher Marlowe's masterpiece Doctor Faustus comes to us in two texts. The "A" Text, published in 1604, is probably closer to what Marlowe actually wrote, while the "B" Text, published in 1616, seems to incorporate additions made by Samuel Rowley and William Birde.

Add to this the "C" Text, a new adaptation by David Bridel and Andrei Belgrader that started previews last night at Classic Stage Company. Bridel and Belgrader use elements from both the A and B Texts, but they also add in some of their own material, along with ad libbed clowning by some of the comical character. The result is... well... magical.

The role of Faustus is not an easy one, but Chris Noth is one of the best actors in the role I've ever seen. He tries to walk a tightrope between humanizing Faustus and portraying him as a creature in a parable. The fact is, he's both. (That's how Marlowe writes him.) We might take issue with Noth erring too much to one side or the other from time to time, but that can't be helped in such a rich, multi-layered play.

Zach Grenier is probably the most interesting Mephistopheles I've ever seen. His deadpan delivery from the moment he's summoned from Hell helps bring the audience into the story. Grenier makes it clear this is not your father's Faustus. However, his modern-sounding delivery of Marlowe's words helps the play seem relevant and alive. Grenier's Mephistopheles, like a microcosm of the adaptation as a whole, gets closer to the spirit of the play by taking liberties with it.

One of the challenges Doctor Faustus presents in production is that in addition to the serious streak in the play, there are so many comic scenes. Richard Burton's 1967 film of the play simply extracted the comedy, making the story one long, grueling slog towards damnation. The comic scenes differ greatly in the A and B Texts, but are certainly there in both, which seems to indicate Marlowe and his contemporaries thought they were necessary to the action.

CSC, instead of falling into the trap of ignoring the comic scenes, or trying to perform all of them, whether from the A or B Text, comes up with a different solution. The adaptation re-imagines these scenes for a modern audience, giving the comic performers license to play with the scenarios from the printed texts, but encouraging them to improvise and use members of the audience. When Robin dreams of charms that might make a village maiden dance naked before him, he attempts to use his magic on an unfortunate woman picked from the crowd.

Oh yes, prepare for audience participation! Just as the players in Marlowe's day interacted with the audience, the cast of CSC's production engage directly with those who come to see the show. At certain key moments, the house lights even come up, reminding us that spectators are a part of this story as much as the actors. We become part of a tale of damnation, making us wonder on which side of the divine comedy we might fall.

At the end of the play, Walker Jones (who also wonderfully plays the character of Wagner) recites lines from the epilogue that appears in the A Text:

     Faustus is gone: regard his hellish fall,
     Whose fiendish fortune may exhort the wise
     Only to wonder at unlawful things,
     Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits
     To practice more than heavenly power permits.

Enticed by the action of the play, have we only wondered at the dark powers on stage, or are we implicated in the blasphemies of Faustus? Bridel and Belgrader's adaptation makes Faustus's role as performer explicit, as well as our own roles as spectators. It leaves ambiguous, however, whether those spectators are there to learn a lesson, or--like Faustus before the pageant of the Seven Deadly Sins--be welcomed into Hell.

Herr Bertolt Brecht

Last night I saw Classic Stage Company's production of Brecht's A Man's a Man. Duncan Sheik provided the music for the songs, which included meta-theatrical references to "Herr Bertolt Brecht." The stand-out cast member was Justin Vivian Bond, better known as the Kiki half of the duo Kiki and Herb. He played Widow Begbick and also came out at intermission to sing a song that had been "cut from the second act."

Sheik used prerecorded music to accompany the actors, as the small three-quarter-round theatre used by CSC would never have been able to fit all of the musicians needed for the highly produced sound he wanted. (Not that the non-profit theatre could have afforded to hire them all, anyway.) The set, designed by Paul Steinberg, creatively used a number of what appeared to be orange oil drums. Justin Townsend's lighting design somehow managed to make the entire stage appear black-and-white at times, and other times in bright color. I'm still trying to figure out how that worked.

Brecht wrote A Man's a Man between 1924 and 1926, so the program said the play was set in "1925 or thereabouts, in an India that is suspiciously Rudyard Kipling-like." Brecht loved Kipling and was clearly influenced by his work, particularly in this play, which involves the construction of a fake elephant that then gets auctioned off as part of the plot. The play's climax actually takes place in Tibet. The anti-war sentiments at the end show that the disillusionment of WWI was another major factor in the piece.

By 1924, Brecht had written Baal, Drums in the Night, and In the Jungle of Cities, a trio of Expressionist works for which he had received the Kleist Prize for drama. (He had also written an early version of Die Kleinburgerhochzeit, which I saw in Germany last summer at the Ruhrfestspiele.) It was just after A Man's a Man, in the period from 1927 to 1930, that Brecht teamed up with composer Kurt Weill and fellow writer Elizabeth Hauptman on his most famous musical plays, The Three-Penny Opera, Happy End, and The Rise and Fall of the City Mahagonny.

CSC Artistic Director Brian Kulick helmed this production, following up another Brecht play he did last season, The Caucasian Chalk Circle. If you're interested in CSC's latest Brecht outing, it will be playing until February 16th. For more information go here:

Classic Stage Company

http://www.classicstage.org/season/productions/amansaman/