Perhaps no single theatrical image sums up Broadway‘s 2023 more effectively than Jessica Chastain’s Nora leaving her dreary, unfulfilled doll house life to exit directly into the unlimited possibilities of an honest-to-god New York City street.
Unless maybe it’s that huge tree that sprouts up smack dab in the middle of an abandoned Southern plantation home after the Appropriate cast has left the stage, a gut-punch reminder that the sins of a nation’s past don’t just wither away because we don’t want to see them.
Or maybe it was Leslie Odom Jr. delivering that eulogy-coda in Purlie Victorious, blessing his “Africanic brothers” — and the audience — with the words “Now may the Constitution of the United States go with you; the Declaration of Independence stand by you; the Bill of Rights protect you; and the State Commission Against Discrimination keep the eyes of the law upon you, henceforth, now and forever. Amen.”
Those moments illustrated what theater does best, and what so much of Broadway did this year: Provide an unflinching eye — and offer at least a modicum of hope — during very dark times. They, and others like them, make up much of my year-end Best of Broadway Top 10 List. And in keeping with the theme, we’ll look ahead to 2024, with anticipation and no small amount of hope.
Best Of Broadway 2023
1. Appropriate
Opened December 18 at the Helen Hayes Theater. Closes March 3.
The cast of ‘Appropriate’
Joan Marcus
Original review: “A blistering family drama directed by Lila Neugebauer (easily matching her exemplary work in 2018’s The Waverly Gallery), Appropriate is a wicked cacophony of nerve-wrenching mystery, old resentments and laugh-out-loud comedy — the latter all the more remarkable coming, as it does, within a story about the darkest horrors of America’s legacies.”
Second thoughts: Broadway saved its best for last this year. My appreciation for the show, written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and featuring an amazing cast headed by Sarah Paulson and pitch-perfect direction by Neugebauer, has done nothing but increase in the week or so since I saw a press preview earlier this month, a performance that one audience member, seated just a few rows behind me, loudly and grumpily exited the moment the house lights came up. I can only surmise that this play, written by a Black playwright, performed by an all-white cast and determined to exhume the skeletons (and other body parts) buried in America’s racist history, touched a nerve. Consider it a job exceedingly well done.
2. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Opened March 26 at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.
The cast of ‘Sweeney Todd’
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
Original review: “A prodigious theatrical event that aims for greatness and achieves it, this revival of the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler masterpiece is not to be missed. With Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford leading a flawless, 25-member cast that also includes Stranger Things‘ Gaten Matarazzo (given one of the scores most beautiful songs in ‘Not While I’m Around,’ and nailing it), the revival, opening tonight at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, makes the case that Sweeney just might be Sondheim’s greatest work (at least until the next production of Sunday in the Park comes along).”
Second thoughts: Groban and Ashford delivered two of the finest musical performances of the year, but it’s Matarazzo who sticks in my mind. A Broadway baby since his 2011 performance in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, he’s best known, of course, for TV’s Stranger Things. His supporting role in Sweeney as the gullible (initially) orphan Tobias gave him more than enough room to shine, from his delicate take on “Not While I’m Around” to his bloody, anything-but-delicate rampage that caps this gorgeously dark musical, Matarazzo left me hoping he doesn’t wait another dozen years to hit the boards.
3. Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch
Opened Sept 27 at the Music Box Theatre. Closes February 4.
Leslie Odom Jr. and Kara Young in ‘Purlie Victorious’
Marc J. Franklin
Original review: “Long before Slave Play, decades before Ain’t No Mo, there was Purlie Victorious, the Ossie Davis comedy masterwork that, like those descendant plays, fused broad comedy, satirical minstrelsy, racial satire and still-relevant social commentary to create a play that is so encompassing in its views of history and legacy, so generous in its humanity and pinpoint sharp in its take on debts long owed and now demanded that Kenny Leon’s revival, opening tonight on Broadway, feels as current and bracing as a folding chair… Starring a magnificent Leslie Odom Jr., in the title role, and featuring equally fine performances by an enchanting Kara Young, Billy Eugene Jones, Vanessa Bell Calloway and more, Purlie Victorious — full title (and one of the few signifiers of its 1961-era creation): Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch — has been given an urgent — and, oh yes, very, very funny — revival by Leon and his top-notch creative team.”
Second thoughts: Odom’s riveting performance came as no surprise — his breakthrough in Hamilton (and in this year’s otherwise disappointing film The Exorcist: Believer) — prepared the way. And even though I’d seen and enjoyed Young’s recent Broadway performances in Clyde’s and Cost of Living, her kooky star turn alongside Odom in Purlie was a thunderbolt, an I-Saw-Her-When moment to be cherished.
4. Parade
Opened March 16 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. Closed August 6.
The cast of ‘Parade’
Joan Marcus
Original review: “With a serendipitous advertising slogan — ‘This Is Not Over Yet’ — borrowed from one of the most powerful songs from a lovely score, the revival of 1998’s Parade arrives just when it’s needed most, providing an eloquent smackdown response to the rise in antisemitism made all too clear by the hate group protesting outside the show’s first preview (they haven’t been back). With a cast as fine as it is large, led by Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond — two of the best singers currently on Broadway — Parade, set in 1913 Georgia, scores its topical points with all the artistry and theatrical know-how to meet and exceed its noble intensions. Parade is as commanding as any musical revival to hit Broadway in years.”
Second thoughts: This production, along with Merrily We Roll Along (more about that show in a moment), pretty much defines the concept of theater second thoughts. A commercial flop when it originally opened on Broadway in 1998, Parade got the production its always deserved in director Michael Arden’s revival. Although it was a fairly scaled-down take that began as an Encores! production, Parade, in memory, doesn’t seem minimalist at all: The hit-the-heights performances of Platt and Diamond were perfectly matched by Dane Laffrey’s deceptively simple platformed set.
5. Merrily We Roll Along
Opened October 10 at the Hudson Theatre. Closes July 7.
(L-R) Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Natalie Wachen in ‘Merrily We Roll Along’
Matthew Murphy
Original review: “Troubled musicals, like troubled friendships, can often seem like defeats lying in wait, sponging up every last second of loving care, effort and good intention. So Maria Friedman’s smartly tended production of that most troubled of stage properties, the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth backwards musical Merrily We Roll Along deserves all the applause — and ticket-buying business — it’s getting at Broadway’s Hudson Theatre. Opening tonight, the musical is drawing rapturous audience responses, no doubt in large part because of the splendid performances by three very appealing stars — Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez.”
Second thoughts: Even those of us who don’t quite go along with the notion that Merrily is the great, lost Sondheim masterpiece would be hard-pressed to name a more endearing 2023 Broadway performance than Radcliffe’s showstopping number “Franklin Shepard, Inc.” Merrily might never get another turn in the spotlight quite as memorable. I’m fine with that.
6. Fat Ham
Opened April 12 at the American Airlines Theatre. Closed July 2.
(L-R) Adrianna Mitchell, Chris Herbie Holland and Marcel Spears in ‘Fat Ham’
Joan Marcus
Original review: “Like that relative who picks through the chicken parts at a family picnic to find the leg or the breast or the thigh with just the right amount of crisp, playwright James Ijames has no reluctance to rummage through the bones of Shakespeare’s Hamlet to cook up the irresistible Fat Ham. Audacious at points, quietly amenable at others, the Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy carries the burden of our expectations more lightly than some other prize recipients who’ve made their way to Broadway recently, including Between Riverside and Crazy, Cost of Living and even A Strange Loop… Inspired by, and borrowing its groundwork from, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Fat Ham and its author swipe plot points, characters and, in a startling and lovely interlude, a soliloquy, to tell the tale of Juicy (Marcel Spears), a young, Black, queer man described as ‘thicc’ by his loving mom Tedra (Nikki Crawford), ‘soft’ by both his abusive, vengeance-seeking father’s ghost Pap and equally unlikeable uncle Rev (both played by Billy Eugene Jones), and ‘opulent’ by an admirer who shouldn’t be revealed for fear of a spoiler.”
Second thoughts: Nothing to add to my original review except disappointment that this sharp comedy and its excellent cast couldn’t have found a way to stay on Broadway for more than its too-short three-month limited engagement.
7. A Doll’s House
Opened March 9 at the Hudson Theatre. Closed June 10.
The cast of ‘A Doll’s House’
Courtesy of A Doll’s House
Original review: “At more than a few points during Jamie Lloyd’s hypnotic Broadway revival of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, you could swear that stars Jessica Chastain and Succession‘s Arian Moayed are confiding in you, whispering their secrets to no one else. This stark, sometimes chilly production is an eavesdropper’s paradise, so intimate and conversational that all but the most guarded among us will be susceptible to its frequent enticements.”
Second thoughts: I’d take back the word “chilly” in my description of this memorably minimalist staging, as the word suggests a certain bloodlessness. The performances of Chastain, Moayed, Michael Patrick Thornton and Okieriete Onaodowan were anything but bloodless. They were bracing.
8. Jodie Comer in Prima Facie
Opened April 23 at the Golden Theatre. Closed July 2.
Jodie Comer in ‘Prima Facie’
Bronwen Sharp
Original review: “Killing Eve star Jodie Comer claims Broadway as her own in her tour de force performance of Prima Facie, a scalding indictment of the law and its limits opening tonight at the Golden Theatre. Comer plays Tessa, a young, working class Liverpool woman who has become one of London’s most promising defense lawyers through sheer intelligence and needle-sharp courtroom instincts. Her specialty — perhaps, or perhaps not, foisted upon her by the cynical male superiors who run things in ways Tessa only slowly comprehends — is the defense of men charged with sexual assault… Tessa’s perceptions change, and her well-assembled world crumbles, in a blink.”
Second thoughts: In my original review, I too-gingerly likened the final half of Prima Facie to a standard Law & Order: SVU episode, and in retrospect I should have hit the comparison a bit harder. But the might of Comer’s performance as a powerful lawyer devastated by rape and the upending of her belief in a system to which she’d devoted her life remains undiminished.
9. Alex Newell, “Independently Owned” In Shucked
Opened April 4 at the Nederlander Theatre. Closes January 14.
Alex Newell in ‘Shucked’
Mathew Murphy & Evan Zimmerman
Original review: “Puns grow knee-high — and in bawdier moments a bit higher — in Shucked, the new musical comedy that combines the winking hayseed humor of Green Acres and Hee Haw with the decidedly urban, gently subversive camp that peppered the Off Broadway scene in the ’90s with kitschy fare like Ruthless!, The Real Live Brady Bunch and Theatre-A-Go!-Go!’s Valley of the Dolls parody.”
Second thoughts: The upcoming closure of the left-field crowd pleaser — maybe too left-field, certainly too few crowds — will no doubt spur lots of postmortems in the Broadway world, but the bottom line might be that the show’s bottom line could depend on an unexpected embrace by critics for only so long. What can’t be debated though is Alex Newell’s career-making, raise-the-roof performance as Lulu of “Independently Owned,” easily a rival to Radcliffe’s “Franklin Shepard, Inc.” for Showstopper of the Season. Newell, who along with Some Like It Hot‘s terrific J. Harrison Ghee became the first two nonbinary performers to win Tonys, was gifted by Shucked‘s songwriters Shane Mcanally and Brandy Clark with an insanely catchy, fiercely comic anthem of defiance and makes the absolute most of it. Just watch what Newell does with the line “This corn ain’t gonna shuck itself.” And by the time they got to the “operated, modulated, celebrated, liberated, calculated, educated, underrated, motivated, advocated” crescendo, a star was born.
10. Monty Python’s Spamalot
Opened November 16 at the St. James Theatre
Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer in ‘Spamalot’
Jeremy Daniel.
Original review: “Spamalot opens on Broadway tonight, and it’s safe to say the Middle Ages haven’t been this funny since, well, the last time Spamlot opened on Broadway nearly 20 years ago. Perfectly cast and splendidly performed, with Josh Rhodes’ deceptively no-frills direction (and choreography) placing the irresistible goings-on front and center, the revival has lost none of the smart-dumb charm of either the original musical or its great source of inspiration — the beloved 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”
Second thoughts: Why this musical isn’t storming the box office charts is anybody’s guess — I suspect Python may not have the cultural pull it once did, especially among younger generations — but whatever the reason, for shame. There isn’t a funnier show on Broadway, and the cast — particularly Christopher Fitzgerald, Michael Urie and Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer — are slaying it like so many killer rabbits every night.
Ten To Watch For In 2024
1. Prayer for the French Republic
In previews at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Opens January 9. Closes February 18.
Joshua Harmon’s wrenching play opened to universal critical acclaim Off Broadway last year, and the official synopsis — “In 1944, a Jewish couple in Paris desperately awaits news of their missing family. More than 70 years later, the couple’s great-grandchildren find themselves facing the same question as their ancestors: ‘Are we safe?’” — intriguing as it is, doesn’t begin to convey the production’s power. Much of the outstanding Off Broadway cast will make the transfer to Broadway, along with some new additions including Anthony Edwards. A limited engagement not to be missed.
2. Days of Wine and Roses
Begins previews January 6 at Studio 54. Opens January 28. Closes April 28.
Another Off Broadway transfer, this poignant, gorgeous and jazzy new musical by The Light in the Piazza team Adam Guettel (music and lyrics) and Craig Lucas (book) stars the terrific Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James, both at the peak of their powers, as that loving pair of ’50s-’60s-vintage alcoholics made famous in the 1962 film drama of the same name.
3. Doubt: A Parable
Begins previews February 2 at the American Airlines Theatre. Opens February 29. Closes April 14.
Those of us lucky enough to have seen the original 2005 Broadway staging of John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning tale of a hard-as-rosary-beads nun and the beloved priest she suspects of molesting a young Black boy haven’t forgotten the indelible performances of Cherry Jones and Brían F. O’Byrne, but if anyone can lead us into new temptations, it’s Tyne Daly and Liev Schreiber. I’ll be waiting and ready to go.
4. An Enemy of the People
Begins previews at February 27 at Circle in the Square. Opens March 18. Closes June 16.
Just imagine this Ibsen classic as adapted by A Doll’s House‘s Amy Herzog, directed by Fun Home‘s Sam Gold and performed by Succession‘s Jeremy Strong, The White Lotus‘ Michael Imperioli and You‘s Victoria Pedretti. New York in February has rarely seemed so inviting.
5. The Who’s Tommy
Previews begin March 8 at the Nederlander Theatre. Opens March 28.
Loved the music since ’69, was teenage dazzled by the absurd Ken Russell film in ’75, and had my affections rekindled by the original Pete Townshend-Des McAnuff Broadway staging in ’93. Who’d have guessed all these years later I could be so absolutely smitten once again by… a trailer. Granted, the Broadway trailer in question kicks off with Townshend’s magical acoustic strumming of “Pinball Wizard,” slides to the electric crunch of “I’m Free” and goes back to Wizard‘s two-chord windmill thrash. Yes, I think it’s alright.
A Bonus Five…
Lempicka, previewing March 19 at the Longacre, opening April 14; Hell’s Kitchen, the Alicia Keys musical previewing March 28 at the Shubert, opening April 20; The Wiz, previewing March 29 at the Marquis, opening April 17; Cabaret, previewing April 1 at the August WIlson, opening April 21; Mother Play, with Jessica Lange, Jim Parsons and Celia Keenan-Bolger, previewing April 2 at the Hayes, opening April 25; and Suffs, Shaina Taub’s musical about the suffragist movement, previewing March 26 at the Music Box, opening April 18.
