The Best Broadway Shows From This Year

With the world perpetually on fire and all, audiences can sometimes gravitate more toward escapist entertainment on Broadway than the type of fare that more honestly reflects our bleak reality. But this year, gearing up to what ended up being an anticlimactic presidential election result, The Great White Way offered a plethora of stories that mirrored our deepest fears and ills and confronted our most cherished ideals.

And they did so with compassion — and sometimes with pitch-perfect deadpan, a live orchestra and choreography to boot.

Big Hollywood names like Alicia Keys and Darren Criss lit up the stage with longtime theater faves and newer stars alike to entertain, engage or comfort viewers at a time when much is uncertain. Often gliding between frustration, hope and curiosity, some of the best in live theater this year made us want to dance in the aisles, hug a loved one a little more tightly or throw our hands up in despair. The point is, they made us feel something and that in and of itself is useful.

From stories of abuse and faith to cultural conflict and delightfully subversive fairy tales, Broadway served an audience that was often in a state of turmoil. And for two hours (or more — often more, actually), the theater got audiences to sit with these sometimes difficult feelings and hopefully come away better for it.

With “Wicked,” it’s been a fruitful year for stories inspired by “The Wizard of Oz.” While “The Wiz” didn’t fare anywhere near as well at the Broadway box office as the blockbuster movie, it returned to a warm welcome. From Charlie Smalls’ indelible music from the original film, to its dazzling set and hilariously entertaining performances (including Wayne Brady as the shady title character) and story that continues to stand the test of time, this Schele Williams-directed revival was, in a word, exciting. It had Black audiences and their families in particular once again feeling a brand new day.

You know you’re at a special show when you hear half the audience rummaging through their personal items looking for tissues. In one moment, Paula Vogel’s deeply moving play brings audiences to tears, then turns around and makes them belly laugh in another. Part of that is Jessica Lange’s brutal yet empathetic eponymous character, who’s both the love of her children’s (Celia Keenan-Boger and Jim Parsons) lives and the thorn in their sides. Flitting back and forth in time and between each sibling’s perspectives, this engrossing three-hander effectively examines a brother and sister whose agonies, sexuality journeys and emotional hangups can all be traced back to a matriarch who has little control in her own life.

“The Hills of California”

At a time when audiences’ attention spans are the equivalent to that of a gnat, a nearly three-hour Broadway show with zero marquee names in it is a tough sell. But a dual performance by Laura Donnelly as both a dying mother and her adult daughter suffering the ramifications of her mom’s desperate actions in 1976 is what makes director Sam Mendes’ play so worthwhile. Add to that, the bittersweet songs arranged by Candida Caldicot and the ensemble portrayals of musically gifted sisters whose professional and personal dreams flail in disparate ways complete playwright Jez Butterworth’s masterwork in longing and forgiveness.

“Once Upon a Mattress”

You might have had to be in a goofy mood or just really needed a reprieve from the horrifying 24-hour news cycle to appreciate director Lear deBessonet’s wily update to the 1959 fairy tale musical. This one stars “Younger” actor Sutton Foster as the slovenly fish out of water who more or less crash-lands in a genteel kingdom where an uptight mother (“SNL” star Ana Gasteyer) is determined to find a suitable woman for her daft son (“Ugly Betty” star Michael Urie). Enter a whole array of batty characters, unbridled performances and, yes, one big ole mattress. Hilarity, obviously, ensues.

A largely two-handed musical that centers robots might not exactly sound like a fun Friday night at the theater. But director Michael Arden’s surprisingly emotional romantic comedy interestingly ponders the afterlife of cyborgs once they’re no longer considered useful to humans. Helen J. Shen and “Glee” star Darren Criss play a pair of mechanical characters in Seoul that find each other at an impasse in their individual journeys. And since they’ve observed so much of human life, the show’s dialogue tends to dwell on questions of doomed love, death and whether anything they do actually matters. Based on Hue Park and Will Aronson’s book, “Maybe Happy Ending” is a fascinating look at life in today’s jaded and post-human connection era.

“Prayer for the French Republic”

Rage. That is the most consistent emotion in playwright Joshua Harmon’s riveting story about a Jewish family who settled in France generations ago and are shaken when their adult son (Aria Shahghasemi) is the victim of an antisemitic attack. Should the family go to Israel to at least be among their own — or should they stay and take up space where they might not be wanted? That is the question at the core of this tense, darkly humorous story of culture, faith and defiance. Interestingly taking the Broadway stage in the throes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict earlier this year, Harmon’s wonderfully performed three-hour (!!) play is as challenging as it is sympathetic. It also reflects today’s culture of passionate debate that can sometimes be misinformed or malformed or, at best, sadly futile with no answers to very difficult questions. Whether or not you agree with any of the points in the show, it makes you wrestle with your own feelings. That’s what any great art does.

Playwright John Patrick Shanley’s 20-year-old play has seen many adaptations, including an Oscar-nominated 2008 film — and it has never not been relevant. Particularly amid today’s cancel culture, Shanley’s play about a pair of nuns at a Catholic school who castigate the new priest on the mere rumor that he might be abusing their sole Black student has a certain pertinence. Liev Schreiber, Amy Ryan, Zoe Kazan and Quincy Tyler Bernstine as the student’s exasperated mother round out a deeply pensive look at reputation, race and the consequences of bad faith — on all ends.

Like many stars who’ve faced a popularity slump before her, the thought of Alicia Keys bringing her personal story to Broadway seemed like a shallow attempt to both remind her old fans of why they loved her in the first place and tell the new generation about her past relevance. But this time, it actually works really well. It’s not Keys’ well-documented story about her humble beginnings and meteoric rise in music that makes this show so exciting to watch on Broadway, though. It’s the ebullient performances, particularly from star Tony winner Maleah Joi Moon as a stand-in for Keys, that make it come alive. A tight set in an apartment complex in the titular New York City neighborhood in the early ’90s and all the colorful characters that stream out of it and onto the “concrete jungle” make it a must-see. Shoshana Bean and Kecia Lewis help give it the heart and staggering vocal performances that ground both the story and artist behind it.