Characters find themselves on empty New York City streets without a single cab or passerby. A tender embrace is suddenly and awkwardly ripped apart. Jobs are terminated and restaurants shut without reason. There’s a looming inability to properly connect with the people around you. A social distancing. Like so many aspects of our lives in that spring of 2020, we won’t know what Staff Meal would’ve shaped into without the interruption of Covid-19, but Koogler’s extraordinary play persevered nonetheless.

The year is 2009 and artist/manager Naphtali (Taylor Trensch) has just secured a deal with the Museum of Modern Art to commission a piece by renowned performance artist Miriam (Cynthia Nixon), his largest client- I mean his mother. Miriam vanishes for the next seven years to create her magnum opus, yet she remains visible in the faces of Naphtali’s lovers, friends, and colleagues. Nixon portrays the seven other characters.

Burnt-out Millennial Jane has recently been doxxed from a tech job after her severe panic attack was filmed and posted across social media. As requested by the company’s HR department which allegedly has no legal grounds to terminate her employment, Jane is permitted to return to work if she receives evaluation and approval from a licensed therapist. She seeks out counsel from crisis therapist Lloyd and our play suddenly begins in a moment of attempted murder.

It’s that time of the year. While I saw a total of 76 shows in 2023, I’ve chosen my favorite new productions that premiered this year. In this post-Covid era where new works struggle to survive and find a sustainable audience, I want to celebrate the achievements of all shows that were able to run.

A widower, Joe, has succumb to this severe alcoholism, incapacitating him into a nonverbal state with little control over his body. His three children serve as the primary caretakers, but each provide unequal amounts of effort. There is a supernatural presence lurking among the family (at least in Joe’s eyes as he communicates with a yellow light in the sky while the universe glitches around him).

The 76th Annual Tony Awards are less than one week away. I’ve now seen nearly every nominated show of the 2022-2023 Broadway season, so I’ve compiled a list of my predictions for every award given.

She’s not like the other girls. In a revamped production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella, which premiered on London’s West End in 2021, Broadway has welcomed the renamed, rewritten, and redesigned Bad Cinderella opening Thursday night at the Imperial Theatre. Every critic will take their aim at crafting the perfect snappy headline referencing the show’s title, so I’ll keep things simple: Bad Cinderella is appropriately named.

Pictures From Home is an exploration of the familial bond and how we see our loved ones evolve throughout a lifetime. The play chronologizes Larry Sultan routinely visiting his parents’ home in the San Fernando Valley of California. He captures sometimes staged, sometimes candid images of his father Irving and mother Jean in the midst of their daily routine.

If my calculations are correct, I had the privilege of seeing 73 shows in 2022. I’m horrible at choosing favorites and ranking items, but I’ve done my best to curate categories that celebrate highlights across a variety of New York stages.

The 90-minute play is an anthology of sketch comedy vignettes, all strung together by the approaching African American Airlines Flight 1619: the final flight to Africa. In this seemingly dystopian depiction of the United States, the government has initiated a migration of Black Americans to Africa. Politicians have determined “the land of the free” is no longer home to its Black citizens and in return, they've provided millions a complimentary one-way ticket out.

Set to radio hits of pop music’s most iconic ladies, the musical is kickstarted when a self righteous William Shakespeare announces the ending of his newest tragedy, you guessed it, Romeo and Juliet. But the star-crossed suicides are met with immediate rejection from his troupe of actors and wife Anne Hathaway. Claiming his plays are notoriously too tragic, Anne snatches William’s quill and rewrites an alternative ending to his play: one where Juliet chooses not to end her life.

The musical takes place in 1960s Dublin amidst a climate of deep Catholicism and traditional morale. Alfie Byrne (Jim Parsons) is a bus conductor by day and director of St. Imelda’s Players by night. He uses plays and poems as an escape from his unforgiving reality and from the societal pressures to marry, many of which come from his older sister, Lily (Mare Winningham).

In this reframing of 1776, co-directed by visionaries Jeffrey L. Page and Diane Paulus, the Second Continental Congress is composed of female, transgender, and nonbinary performers. An ensemble of multi-talented actors step into the shoes of our country’s framers, quite literally, as they tread the path to independence from Britain. 

Which Way to the Stage meets at the intersection of queer/gender politics and the musical theatre fandom. The play examines the policing of slang spoken by marginalized groups, the politics of drag culture, the validity of bisexuality, privilege in the workplace, and the worshipping of musical theatre divas. 

After the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, a group of freshly vaccinated friends reunite for the weekend at a kitschy Airbnb in Palm Springs, California.

The play is a city council meeting for the small town of Big Cherry, with all but one of its members regrouping after last week’s complicated meeting. The talkative, bright-eyed Mr. Peel was absent from the previous assembly due to his mother’s funeral and the other members are reluctant to explain the whereabouts of Mr. Carp, who appears to have abruptly vacated his seat.