Liberation” is by far the most critically acclaimed theater of 2025, featured in nine of the ten Top 10 lists below. Bess Wohl’s play about a woman’s liberation group in the 1970s is followed by “John Proctor Is the Villain,” “Purpose,” “Ragtime,” and “Vanya,” each of which were listed by five of the critics.
“An unqualified triumph, Wohl’s play weaves its spell from strands of memory, history, and autobiography,” New York Magazine’s Sara Holdren writes, while ranking “Liberation” number 1 on her list, one of the three critics to do so. “…I was floored — moved, and even a bit giddy over its vitality and moral clarity..” writes the Washington Post’s Naveen Kumar, another one of the three. (Only five of the ten critics ranked their lists. The others ordered their lists alphabetically, or chronologically or randomly)
“Liberation” was the only clear-cut consensus choice among the professional critics, as you’ll see below.. It might be worth noting that it wasn’t a top choice (not even a top ten choice) of Broadway theatergoers who responded to my annual poll. “Ragtime” and “John Proctor is the Villain” were their top two choices. (By contrast,last year, both critics and theatergoing polltakers united on “Maybe Happy Ending”)
Helen Shaw in the New Yorker views 2025 as “a banner year for theatre,” but “it wasn’t the old-style stars who made the stages glow”
Dalton Ross of Entertainment Weekly is among the critics who agree: “It was a year of huge stars making their way to the Broadway stage. George Clooney! Keanu Reeves! Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal! Bob Odenkirk and Kieran Culkin! Yet you tellingly will find none of those names on our best of Broadway list for 2025.”
Although he wasn’t partial to the biggest stars, Charles Isherwood at the Wall Street Journal makes a point of praising the acting in the productions he chose, with the clear implication that these performances guided his choices (“It was often the new seams of meaning and feeling actors found in canonical texts, or the emotional truth they brought to new writing, that most impressed me.”)
A notable absence this year (at least so far) is a critic’s list of the best theater of 2025 from the New York Times. This may be due to the changeover in personnel: Jesse Green is now a cultural correspondent; Helen Shaw, currently critic at the New Yorker, will becomes the Times chief theater critic starting in January. (and Emily Nussbaum, an award-winning TV critic, will become the New Yorker’s new theater critic.)
The lists below link to the critics’ articles, 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.
Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater
(Listed alphabetically more or less)
Edinburgh Festival NYC Transfers
Good Night, and Good Luck
Just In Time
Liberation
Little Bear Ridge Road
Masquerade
Prince Faggot
Purpose
Ragtime
Well, I’ll Let You Go
Helen Shaw, The New Yorker
(in chronological order)
Liberation
Vanya
The Picture of Dorian Gray
John Proctor is the Villain
Lobster
The Brothers Size
Ragtime
The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderella
The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire
Practice
Charles Isherwood, Wall Street Journal
(in random order, which is a tradition for WSJ)
Oedipus
Little Bear Ridge Road
Grangeville
A Streetcar Named Desire
Vanya
Luna Eclipse
The Brothers Size
Just in Time
Floyd Collins
Ragtime
Sara Holdren and Jackson McHenry, New York Magazine
(separate lists, both ranked)
Sara Holdren
1.Liberation
2.Lobster
3.Vanya
4.When the Hurly Burly’s Done
5.Initiative
6.The Brothers Size
7. Practice
8.John Proctor is the Villain
9. A Streetcar Named Desire
10.The Picture of Dorian Grey
Jackson McHenry
1.Liberation
2.Can I Be Frank
3.Vanya
4.The Brothers Size
5.Initiative
6.Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp.
7.I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan
8.Jewish Plot
9.Meet the Cartozians
10.Slanted Floors
Dalton Ross, Entertainment Weekly
(ranked, focused exclusively on Broadway)
1.Operation Mincemeat
2.Purpose
3.John Proctor is the Villain
4. Ragtime
5.Two Strangers Carry a Cake (Across New York)
6. Real Women Have Curves
7. Stranger Things: The First Shadow
8. Just in Time
9. Liberation
10.Chess
Patrick Ryan, USA Today
(ranked, only Broadway)
1. Dead Outlaw
2. Oedipus
3. Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)
4. Ragtime
5. John Proctor is the Villain
6. Liberation
7. English
8. Purpose
9 (“tie”). Boop and Smash
10. Little Bear Ridge Road
Juan A. Ramirez, Theatrely
(This best of 2025 list does not easily translate into an individual critic’s top 10 list of New York theater for a variety of reasons, but I’ll try, going in the order in which Ramirez presents his choices, which are not ranked.)
Liberation
Marjorie Prime
Meet the Cartozians
Practice
I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan
Mary Said What She Said
Weather Girl
All the World’s A Stage
Burnt Toast
Naveen Kumar, Washington Post
(ranked. Only four of his top 10 were in New York, the others in the DC area.)
- Liberation (NY)
- The American Five (DC)
- In The Heights (DC)
- Dead Outlaw (NY)
- Purpose (NY)
- Damn Yankees (DC)
- Downstate (DC)
- Vanya (NY)
- Paradise Blue (DC)
- Twelfth Night (DC)
Charles McNulty, LA Times
(His top 10 list is entirely about shows mounted in Southern California, but, as usual, he prefaces his list with an introductory essay that singles out the following New York City plays and musicals, in order of his mention:)
Purpose (“the best new dramatic work I saw anywhere this year”)
Liberation
John Proctor is the Villain
Little Bear Ridge Road
Prince Faggot
Update: 6 More Top 10 Lists
These were posted later in December. Four of the six also list “Liberation.”
(Few of these keep to a traditional top 10 format, a couple listing more than 10, one only seven shows..)
Chris Jones, New York Daily News: 1. Purpose. 2. Oedipus. 3. Little Bear Ridge Road. 4. The Picture of Dorian Gray. 5. Dead Outlaw. 6. Just in Time. 7. Good Night, and Good Luck. 8. BOOP!: the Musical … 9. Ragtime 10. Marjorie Prime
Theatermania: Zachary Stewart on Broadway: 1. Ragtime, 2. Purpose, 3. Dead Outlaw, 4. Oedipus, 5. Two Strangers. Pete Hempstead Off Broadway: 1. The Antiquities, 2.Meet the Cartesians, 3. Exodus, 4. Playing Shylock, 5. The Honey Trap
Dan Rubins, Slant Magazine: Dead as a Dodo, Mexodus, John Proctor is the Villain, Liberation, Deep Blue Sound, Not Not Jane’s, We Had A World, Becoming Eve, Vanya, Creditors
Moises Mendez II, Out Magazine: Liberation. Buena Vista Social Club. Masquerade. Ragtime. Prince Faggot. Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York). Marjorie Prime.
David Buchanan and Sam Eckmann, Gold Derby: 1. Ragtime, 2. Purpose, 3. John Proctor is the Villain. 4. Liberation, 5. Just in Time. 6. Marjorie Prime. 7. Two Strangers. 8. Dead Outlaw. 9. English. 10. Buena Vista Social club
Frank J Avella, The Contender: 1. John Proctor is the Villain, 2. Dead Outlaw, 3. Oedipus, 4. Purpose, 5. Liberation 6. Ghosts, 7. Punch, 8. Marjorie Prime, 9. Boop the Musical, 10. Operation Mincemeat…
