Here are a dozen of my favorite Broadway performances of 2025, listed (more or less) alphabetically, with a dozen more below, who performed on or beyond Broadway and are just as worthy. Some already have Tony Awards for their roles this year; others will have them come next June. But not all are so high profile. After all, for every queen, like Kristin Chenoweth, there are two clowns, like Xhloe and Natasha.
In some cases the actors completely carry a show, even redeeming (almost) an otherwise flawed production. In other cases, the performances this year were so uniformly outstanding in a particular show, and intricately interconnected, that it seems almost unfair for me to single out any one performer.
This is why I begin with an appreciation of the entire casts of two shows I saw in New York this year.
Liberation
Much of the strength of this production of Bess Wohl’s play about a group of women in the 1970s who meet weekly in a women’s consciousness raising group, resides in the ensemble acting. The eight cast members — Betsy Aidem, Audrey Corsa, Kayla Davion, Susannah Flood , Kristolyn Lloyd, Irene Sofia Lucio, Charlie Thurston, and Adina Verson — portray everyday women (and one man) with grace and good humor.
Purpose
In this play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins clearly inspired by the Rev. Jesse Jackson – not just his family’s accomplishments, but their scandals — Kara Young portrays a visitor dazzled by the Rev. Solomon Jasper and his family. We roo are dazzled by the characters’ extraordinary gifts of spontaneous oratory, especially by the family matriarch Claudine, portrayed by LaTanya Richardson-Jackson. Their eloquence feels authentic, never caricatured, even when they are discussing matters that are far from exalted, such as their effort to keep from the public eye those young people who claim to be the Rev’s illegitimate children. Each of the cast members shines individually; they also work wonderfully together, most bracingly in the bickering family scenes at the dinner table: LaTanya Richardson-Jackson, Harry Lennix, John Michael Hill, Glenn Davis as Solomon, Alena Arenas, and Kara Young
Nicholas Barasch in Pirates The Penzance Musical
As Frederic, the juvenile/romantic lead, Barasch’s character sets off the deliberately silly plot. Barasch was dashing and comic in equal and appropriate measure, with a swoon-worthy voice. While I found all the principal cast members in “Pirates” outstanding, Barasch’s performance was a particular favorite of mine, because with it he thoroughly fulfilled his early promise from the 2016 Broadway production of “She Loves Me.” At age 17, he had portrayed the shop’s bike messenger who dreams of being a clerk. He counts as a discovery, but one we could have seen as inevitable.
Jonathan Groff in Just in Time
Jonathan Groff IS “Just in Time.” He in effect stars in a nightclub act, combining his talents and charm with those of Bobby Darin, the ostensible subject of what would otherwise be a routine biographical jukebox musical.
Will Harrison in Punch
In his extraordinary Broadway debut, Will Harrison stars in this true story of a reckless teenager who inadvertently kills a man, and matures into taking responsibility for his actions, with the help of the parents of the boy he killed. His struggle to speak, even to breathe, in the face of his remorse was among the most moving moments on stage all year.
Joshua Henry in Ragtime
Like his two co-stars, Henry portrays a fictitious archetypal character, with such golden-voiced passion and credibility that he carries us through the swirl and the sprawl of this musical trying to say something epic about America. His Coalhouse Walker Jr. may be the least plausible of these characters, but that doesn’t seem to matter once you’ve witnessed Henry, the Baritenor of Broadway, deliver a shattering “Make them hear you.”
Lesley Manville and Mark Strong in Oedipus
The British actress makes a much-welcomed Broadway debut as Jocasta, the wife (and mother) of the title character in “Oedipus.” She and Mark Strong give performances of remarkable intensity, Strong’s Oedipus so forceful in his rectitude and so shattered by the revelations of his unpardonable transgression; Manville even more devastating in her harrowing account of her life as a victim of her first husband Laius. Director Robert Icke’s effort to remake Sophocles ancient tragedy into a modern-day political fable largely didn’t work for me, which makes it even more impressive how these powerful performances could draw me in..
Laurie Metcalf in Little Bear Ridge Road
Laurie Metcalf is probably still most widely known as the sister in the TV series “Roseanne,” but this play by Samuel D. Hunter marks her eleventh Broadway production; she’s won the Tony twice. We see why in this sometimes humorous, mostly no-nonsense portrayal of Sarah, a longtime nurse forced out of her job, living as a virtual hermit, harboring a devastating secret, who slowly, subtly opens up to her estranged nephew. The character doesn’t let us in; but somehow the actress performing her does.
June Squibb in Marjorie Prime
This may be the first time in the history of Broadway when an octogenarian character is portrayed by an actress who is even older. June Squibb, 96, portrays Marjorie, 85, as alternately confused, indignant, embarrassed, clever, whimsical, flirtatious, wise, steely — in other words, a full-fledged human being, rare for a character who is elderly.
Jasmine Amy Rogers in Boop
Rogers made a spectacular Broadway debut as the 1930s cartoon flapper with the oversized head, glistening spit curls and breathy, baby-like voice, but one that can belt with the best of them. She was the main reason to see this musical. I found her performance all the more impressive after I saw her sing in a cabaret show as herself and realized the effort it took to become Betty Boop.
Sam Tutty and Christiani Pitts in Two Strangers (Carry A Cake Across New York)
The appeal of this low-key musical completely relies on the talents of its two-member cast. Tutty portrays an adorably naïve, blindly optimistic Brit visiting New York for the first time, to attend the wedding of the father he never knew. Pitts portrays the sister of the bride assigned to pick him up at the airport. The character is a disillusioned New Yorker, and Pitts largely functions as Tutty’s foil, worn down and won over by his relentless effervescence — as are we.
Kara Young
I’ve already mentioned Kara Young as a member of the cast of “Purpose.” She was also in “Gruesome Playground Injuries,” playing a character from ages eight to 38. She is marvel in it (so is her co-star, Nicholas Braun who I list below), in the first scene squirming in her parochial school uniform, twisting her hair, and sticking her chest out awkwardly like a pigeon, an eight-year-old’s mix of bold and shy – and then in the next scene a young woman of subtle grace and sophistication.
Kara Young is probably too young for people to designate her a Grand Dame of the Theater, but she’s on her way – all four of her Broadway performances earning her Tony nominations, two of them (including Purpose) back-to-back Tony Awards I first included Kara Young in this annual list back in 2020 because of three of her then-recent roles; she was adorable as a spirited, brainy and queer teenager with a movie star as an imaginary friend n C.A. Johnson’s “All the Natalie Portmans”; fierce as the street urchin Lil Melba in Stephen Adly Guirgis’ “Halfway Bitches,”; both fierce and adorable as the 18-year-old orphaned title character in “Bulrusher,” by Eisa Davis, who joins Young as one of my favorite performers this year.
ALSO
Quincy Taylor Bernstine in Well, I’ll Let You Go
Nicholas Braun in Gruesome Playground Injuries
Kristin Chenoweth in The Queen of Versailles
Eisa Davis in The Essentialisn’t
Peter Dinklage in Twelfth Night
Brandon Flynn in Kowalski
Stephen Kunkin in Kyoto
Matt Rodin in Beau
Sarah Snook in The Picture of Dorian Gray
Ari’el Stacher in Other
Xhloe and Natasha in What If They Ate The Baby (The link is to my review of their show in Edinburgh; I also saw it in New York.)
