“Merrily We Roll Along” is the most acclaimed show among theater critics whose lists of top 10 New York theater for 2023 are featured below, and in a poll I took of some 250 theatergoers.

All but one of the ten lists include the first Broadway revival of “Merrily,” the musical about three old friends by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, which was a flop when it debuted in 1981. And even the one exception, the joint list by the two theater critics at the New Yorker magazine, call the show “delicious” in their preface, but imply it belongs to last year, since that’s when it premiered Off-Broadway.

The other Sondheim revival, “Sweeney Todd,” is several notches below in popularity, on a par with “Purlie Victorious” and “Infinite Life,” each of which appears on six of the ten lists, with “Stereophonic” close behind, appearing on five. The third Sondheim musical of 2023, the world premiere production of “Here We Are,” made only two lists, and even these two were part of a general Sondheim entry.

“Turns out the famously ‘broken’ Merrily wasn’t anything a clear-eyed director and a bang-up trio of actors — dedicated to sincerity, vulnerability, and each other — couldn’t fix,” New York Magazine’s Sara Holdren writes. (My slightly different take: “Director Maria Friedman doesn’t eliminate what’s off-putting about “Merrily We Roll Along”; instead she directs our attention to what’s best about it.”)

“Merrily” comes the closest to an all-out consensus favorite since “The Band’s Visit” in  2017, but unlike that show, and “Hamilton” in 2015, none of the critics ranked “Merrily” as first on their list. (To be clear: Half the critics no longer rank their lists at all, instead ordering them in alphabetical or chronological order.)

There’s little consensus after the top five, with the majority of critics going far afield from Broadway. “Most of the best shows I saw this year were in smaller off-Broadway spaces, at which the audience feels a greater comfort, or discomfort, with the actors,” the Wall Street Journal’s Charles Isherwood writes.

The lists below link to the critics’ articles explaining and describing their choices, and usually link to their original reviews.

Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater
(alphabetical)
Amid Falling Walls
The Beautiful Lady
Between Riverside and Crazy and Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, digital editions
Dark Disabled Stories
Days of Wine and Roses
Life of Pi
Love
Plays for the Plague Year
Season of Sondheim (Here We Are, Merrily We Roll Along, Sweeney Todd)
Watch Night

Jesse Green, New York Times
“mostly chronological”
Love
A Doll’s House
How to Defend Yourself
Primary Trust
The Comeuppance
Just for Us
Infinite Life
Purlie Victorious
Jaja’s Hair Braiding
Stereophonic
“Sondheim Forever” (Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, Here We Are.)

Sara Holdren, New York Magazine/Vulture

1. School Pictures
2. Infinite Life
3. Stereophonic
4. Merrily We Roll Along
5. Snatch Adams & Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month
6. Waiting for Godot
7. Translations
8. Purlie Victorious
9. Prometheus Firebringer
10. Druid O’Casey

Jackson McHenry, New York Magazine/Vulture

1. Stereophonic
2. Merrily We Roll Along
3. The Comeuppance
4. Infinite Life
5. The Light in the Piazza
6. Wet Brain
7. Primary Trust
8. Fagtasia Wicked
9. How To Defend Yourself
10. The Trees

Charles Isherwood, The Wall Street Journal

Isherwood resists a conventional top 10 list, in favor of an essay, but one can easily extrapolate a list, in order of his mention:
Infinite Life
Uncle Vanya
The Seagull/Woodstock, NY
Endgame
Swing State
Prima Facie
Purlie Victorious
Days of Wine and Roses
Here Lies Love
Merrily We Roll Along
Spamalot

 Vinson Cunningham and Helen Shaw,New Yorker Magazine

In chronological order
Des Moines
The Appointment
Endgame
Public Obscenities
The Good John Proctor
Sweeney Todd
The Comeuppance
Infinite Life
Purlie Victorious
Stereophonic

Matt Windman, AMNY

1. Parade 
2. Merrily We Roll Along
3. Sweeney Todd
4. Peter Pan Goes Wrong
 5. Spamalot
6. A Doll’s House
7. Prima Facie 
8. Days of Wine and Roses
 9. Wolf Play
10. The Light in the Piazza

Maureen Lee Lenker,Christian Holub, and Emlyn Travis, Entertainment Weekly
Only Broadway

1. Sweeney Todd
2. The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window
3. Parade
4. Jaja’s Hair Braiding
5. Here Lies Love
6. A Doll’s House
7. Merrily We Roll Along
8. Purlie Victorious
9. Shucked
10. The Cottage

Peter Marks, Washington Post

Only four of his picks are New York shows

1. King Lear
2. Stereophonic (NY)
3. Merrily We Roll Along (NY)
4. Guys and Dolls and Sunset Boulevard
5. Monty Python’s Spamalot (NY)
6. English
7. Operation Mincemeat
8. Ragtime
9. Angels in America: Millenium Approaches
10. Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (NY)

Charles McNulty, L.A. Times

His list is of shows in Los Angeles, But he prefaces his list with an introductory essay that includes praise for the following New York shows, in the order of his mention:

Sweeney Todd
Merrily We Roll Along
Fat Ham
Infinite Life
Parade
Purlie Victorious

Broadway Poll Best and Worst Show of 2023
Top 5 vote getters for Best:
Merrily We Roll Along
Parade
Sweeney Todd
Here Lies Love
Purlie Victorious