“Maybe Happy Ending”  is the most acclaimed show among theater critics whose lists of top 10 New York theater for 2024 are featured below; it is also the number one choice by far in a poll I took of some 750 theatergoers. The musical about two robots who fall in love is followed closely in popularity among critics by two campy hits, “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” and “Oh, Mary.”

Seven of the critics include Will Aronson and Hue Park’s “adorable and refreshingly original musical,” as The Washington Post’s Naveen Kumar calls Maybe Happy Ending.  “Every season deserves a ‘nerdical’: a supersmart, serious and usually small-scale show you can’t believe made it to Broadway. This one, about robots, may be the nerdiest of all,” the New York Times’s Jesse Green writes. The “glowing reviews” for Maybe Happy Ending, observes the Wall Street Journal’s Charles Isherwood, “transformed it from an unknown commodity to a dark-horse contender for the best musical Tony.”

Six of the ten include “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical reinterpreted as Ballroom culture, which New York Magazine’s Jackson McHenry praises for finding “the overlap between the bathos of 1980s British megamusicals and that moment’s queer history.” Six also chose “Oh, Mary,”  Cole Escola’s  “gleefully demented farce” about First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, as described by Timeout New York’s Adam Feldman, who deemed it the best new play of the year. 
 “Mary Jane” is on five of the critics’ lists, and “Illinoise” on four

An oddity this year is the contrast with the Tony Awards. The critics of Entertainment Weekly ranked the two big Tony winners of the 2023-2024 season, “Stereophonic” and “The Outsiders,” as first and third respectively, and the results of the poll also reflect these shows’ popularity (getting the third and sixth highest number of votes). But no other critics included ether show, both of which opened on Broadway in the Spring of 2024.  (To be fair, some critics gave their love to “Stereophonic” when it ran Off-Broadway in 2023, but “The Outsiders” had no Off-Broadway run.)

New York Magazine’s Sara Holdren, who last year agreed on the consensus pick (“Merrily We Roll Along”), and three of the four others in the top five, this year chose only one show that anybody else picked – “Illinoise” – which was the only Broadway show on her list; most of her others were Off-Off Broadway. “For me,” she writes, “the miraculous has often been scrappy this year, and vice versa.”

Not all the lists this year get to 10 (See Adam Feldman’s). This is probably not a comment on the quality of the offerings in 2024 so much as boredom with the top 10 format.

The lists below link to the critics’ articles (which are permanent/gift articles when available) explaining and describing their choices, which in turn usually link to their original reviews. The choices are numbered only in the lists where the critic is deliberately ranking the shows (rather than ordering them alphabetically, chronologically, or randomly)

Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater

(Listed alphabetically more or less, with criteria a bit different than past years)

The Ally, and other plays about politics
Bark of Millions
Encores! concert series: Jelly’s Last Jam, Ragtime, Titanic
Illinoise
Maybe Happy Ending
Mary Jane and other plays about healing
True Love Forever
Water for Elephants
A Woman Among Women
Yellow Face

Jesse Green, NY Times

(Listed chronologically, and includes December 2023, which most lists didn’t, which is why “Appropriate” is not listed by other critics)

Appropriate
Terce a Practical Brewery
Dead Outlaw
Mary Jane
Illinoise
Cats
Oh, Mary
The Hills of California
Our Town
Maybe Happy Ending

Sara Holdren, New York Magazine/Vulture

1.Catarina and the Beauty of Catching Fascists
2.Terce a Practical Brevery
3.Give Me Carmelita Tropicana
4.We Are Your Robots
5.The Wind and the Rain
6. Grief Hotel
7. The Following Evening
8. The Marriage of Figaro
9. Illinoise
10. On Set With Theda Bara

Jackson McHenry, New York Magazine/Vulture

1. Oh, Mary
2. Dead Outlaw
3. Cats The Jellicle Ball
4. Jelly’s Last Jam
5. You don’t have to do anything
6. Usus
7. Maybe Happy Ending
8. Jonah
9. An Enemy of the People
10. Yellow Face

Helen Shaw, The New Yorker

organized chronologically.(Her list was published Dec. 21, after I put together this list. I’ve updated the calculations; her list hasn’t changed the consensus, just strengthened it a bit. “Gypsy” opened after all the other lists were put together; I suspect it would be on other lists as well, had they waited.)
Terse: A Practical Breviary
Oh, Mary
1-800-3592-113592
Mary Jane
Usus
Cats: The Jellicle Ball
Gatz
Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists
Death Becomes Her
Gypsy

Charles Isherwood, The Wall Street Journal.

( Following the tradition set by his predecessor Terry Teachout, eschews a top 10 format, preferring more of an essay. He put into categories several of his favorite – inventive adaptations of Andrew Lloyd Webber; Holocaust plays; plays at two of his favorite theater companies (three of them from MTC). To extrapolate a top-ten list just of his New York mentions, and in order of his mention, not ranked)

Cats: The Jellicle Ball
Sunset Blvd
Maybe Happy Ending
Here There Are Blueberries
Our Class
An Enemy of the People
Prayer for the French Republic
Mary Jane
Brooklyn Laundry
Philadelphia Here I Come

Adam Feldman, Time Out New York (Scroll to “Theater”)

(This year, he is forgoing his usual top 10 list for just four Bests)

Best New Play: Oh, Mary
Best New Musical: Maybe Happy Ending
Best Revival: Cats: The Jellicle Ball 
Best Theater Series: Encores! at City Center

Entertainment Weekly, “EW staff”

(This list is limited to Broadway, and chosen by the EW “theater bureau” – with links to reviews from six different critics: Emlyn Travis, Shania Russell, Dalton Ross, Kathryn Vandervalk, Christian Holub, Maureen Lee Lenker)

1. Stereophonic
2. Maybe Happy Ending
3. The Outsiders
4. Oh, Mary
5. Hell’s Kitchen
6. Sunset Blvd
7. An Enemy of the People
8. Swept Away
9. Our Town
10. The Notebook

Naveen Kumar, The Washington Post.

(Six of his picks are New York shows; the others are in the DC area.)

1. The Comeuppance (DC)
2. Oh, Mary
3. Hamlet…The Rest is Silence (DC)
4. Maybe Happy Ending
5. Cats, The Jellicle Ball
6. The Art of Care (DC)
7. Mary Jane
8. Suffs
9. Romeo + Juliet
10. The 22+ Weddings of Hugo (DC)

Charles McNulty, LA Times

(His top 10 list is entirely shows mounted in Southern California, but he prefaces his list with an introductory essay thatsingles out the following New York City plays and musicals, in order of his mention:)

Mother Play
The Hills of California
Sunset Blvd
The Roommate
Merrily We Roll Along (which opened in 2023, when most critics chose it)
Our Town

Broadway Poll Best and Worst Show of 2024

(The results below are for the Best Broadway Show of 2024 poll, chosen from the 44 shows that opened on Broadway in 2024. There is a separate poll for worst show. The two polls are ongoing — voters can still weigh in — so there is some fluctuation in the order. But “Maybe Happy Ending” has consistently gotten three times as many votes as the next show on the list of Best Broadway Show of 2024, and the top three are far ahead of those that follow. It’s worth noting that slightly more people have voted for “The Great Gatsby” in the separate poll of the Worst Broadway Show of 2024 than those who have selected it as the best.)

1.Maybe Happy Ending
2.Oh, Mary
3. Stereophonic
4.Sunset Blvd
5.Suffs
6.The Outsiders
7. Illinoise
8. The Great Gatsby
9. Death Becomes Her
10. Cabaret