NYC: The Best Shows of 2025
As the curtain falls on 2025, The Recs’ Randall David Cook picks his 10 shows to take a bow.
Let’s hear it for New York’s nonprofit theater companies, because not a single commercial Broadway show made this list of the top ten shows of 2025. The reasons for that are both numerous and mostly depressing, but let’s not dwell on the negative now that we’ve said adios to the year that just was. Instead, before any new shows open in 2026, let’s celebrate those shows that aimed high and exceeded their targets.
10. Weather Girl, St. Ann’s Warehouse
The shortest and only solo show on this list made a splash at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival before making its way to Brooklyn, where Julia McDermott wowed with her electric performance as Stacey, the television presenter just as messed up as the Californian climate-change catastrophes she’s covering. Now that the show is being developed as a Netflix series with writer Brian Watkins, expect to see and hear much more about McDermott and her out-of-control character in the fiery future.
9. Gotta Dance!, The York Theatre
Pure, unadulterated joy was in short supply on New York stages this past calendar year until this fab dance-a-thon opened in December. Dancers in musicals almost always support other, leading characters, but here, where they were put front and center, the result was theatrical bliss. It was, to paraphrase from the production’s finale, one singular sensation of a show.
8. Punch, Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
Will Harrison made a sensational Broadway debut as teenage murderer Jacob Dunne in James Graham’s sad-but-optimistic play about the senseless death of 28-year-old paramedic James Hodgkinson and, eventually, the resulting act of forgiveness from his parents. Heartbreaking and cathartic, Punch hit in the gut.
7. English, Todd Haimes Theatre
Sanaz Toossi’s quietly stunning play won the Pulitzer in 2023 and finally made it to a deserved Broadway stage two years later. Centered around four Iranian adults preparing for an English examination that will enable each to study or live abroad, the show examined the importance of language and the price of assimilation from the perspective of emigrants who often feel forced to make the painful decision to leave their native country.
6. Theatre of Dreams, Powerhouse Arts
In 2025, Powerhouse Arts, a converted building in Brooklyn that once powered Brooklyn’s streetcars, launched Powerhouse: International, a new arts festival that offered an impressive assortment of shows from around the globe. The programming featured several of the most wild and exciting shows to hit NYC last year, the highlight of which was Hofesh Shechter’s brilliant, endlessly inventive dance piece that left audiences breathless by show’s end.
5. The Baker’s Wife, Classic Stage Company
The Baker’s Wife has long held a reputation as a failed musical with one single redeeming song, “Meadowlark.” Turns out that rep was undeserved. The enchanting, intimate Classic Stage Company revival of the show beautifully repudiated that false notion, highlighting Stephen Schwartz’s excellent score—which actually boasts plenty of wonderful songs, including “Chanson,” “Bread,” and “Any-Day-Now Day”—and Joseph Stein’s charming book, which, while dated in many ways, still managed to pack an emotional punch by show’s end.
4. The Brothers Size, The Shed
Tarell Alvin McCraney’s searing fraternal drama returned to New York and made a strong argument for its place in the canon of great American plays. The second of a trio of works from The Brother/Sister Plays, this excellent revival called for a serious request: Bring us all three.
3. Liberation, Laura Pels Theatre/James Earl Jones Theatre
Liberation opened Off-Broadway to ecstatic notices in February that earned it a transfer to Broadway in the fall, and for those lucky enough to see the show twice in 2025, the second viewing was richer than the first thanks to the deepened performances of the brilliant ensemble cast. Bess Wohl’s daring meta script jumps back and forth in time, illuminating the sad reality that modern-day women must continue to fight battles that should, by now, be antiquated.
2. Purpose, Hayes Theater
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins won the 2025 Tony and Pulitzer for his riveting family drama about the members of a politically prominent family on the edge of implosion, and the honors were merited. As bad went to worse for the Jasper family, audience members enraptured by the emotional chaos visibly leaned forward to hear every word.
1. Marjorie Prime, Hayes Theater
None other than Audra McDonald recently said she was “gutted” after seeing this sublime revival of Jordan Harrison’s timely, haunting drama about the costs of using AI to replace human memories as they fade into time. Fortunately, theatergoers still have a few more months to see this masterful production before it closes, but even once it does, it will not soon be forgotten. This is theatre at its best.
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