14 Best Theater Moments of 2025

Happy New Year’s Eve. Here’s one more year-end listicle to add to your collection.

I saw a lot of shows this year. 62, to be exact (a new record, and for $25 each).

Some were incredible. Some made me think I might never see a show again. (This was dramatic. I was back in the theater a mere two days later.)

Last year, I did a roundup of the best theater of 2024 in the style of The Tony Awards: best actor, best musical, etc. This year, I’m thinking in moments. Pieces of productions, or the experiences of them, that will stay with me long after I ring in this next year.

A Room of String

In Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice,” a retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Eurydice finds herself in the underworld, lost, without her memory. She meets her father, who she does not remember, but who remembers her. Feeling sad and alone, she desperately craves shelter. Her father wordlessly creates a room for her, with an outline of string.

In Signature Theatre’s beautiful production, Brian D’Arcy James, playing Eurydice’s father, was most tender in his wordless construction of the room. It’s a patient, careful act, one that shows how much he will do something, anything, to make his daughter feel safe, even if she doesn’t recgonize him. How lovely it is to see a father care for his daughter.

Kara Young as an 8-year-old...and 38-Year-Old

Kara Young is an actress of her generation. I’m mesmerized by how she can make anything endless funny, powerful, or unique. I was lucky to see her on stage twice this year: once in “Purpose,” which she garnered her fourth Tony nomination for, and once in “Gruesome Playground Injuries,” on Off-Broadway production with Nicholas Braun. In the latter, the pair plays life-long friends who both get physically hurt and hurt and heal each other over the course of 30 years. Young was especially as convincing as an eight-year-old who wanted to see her friend’s scab as a 38-year-old jaded by years of hurt and mistakes.

A Circle of Sand

The revival of “The Brothers Size” at The Shed was so minimal, so contained, that it had no choice but to be expansive. Telling the story of two brothers—one recently released from prison—and the latter’s prison mate, “The Brothers Size” doesn’t contain much in terms of action, but instead an intense amount of heart. In this production, a circle of sand sets up the playing scene. There’s nothing else to mark the set, and barely any props. Everything centers on the circle. What happens in it, and outside of it, was some of my favorite theater this year.

Photo credit: Marc J. Franklin

Joshua Henry’s ‘Make Them Hear You’

We are lucky to be in the same timeline as Joshua Henry’s baritone, which is on full display in Lincoln Center’s production of “Ragtime.” There are many moments where he shines—in a sparkling duet with Nichelle Lewis, for example—but “Make Them Hear You” is a legacy-making melody. Rich, powerful, and breathtaking. The applause lasted for many minutes after he’d held a glorious last note.

You can see this now! “Ragtime” plays at Lincoln Center through mid-June 2026. If you’re under 35, you can get $35 tickets through the theater’s Linc Tix program.

Little Robots

“Maybe Happy Ending” is a beautiful musical that follows robots, but really focuses on human love. In one of the most wonderful moments of an already wonderful show, the two robots see fireflies for the first time. It starts small: a glow of a single firefly in front of their eyes. Soon, the music swells, the orchestra comes on stage, and the entire production glows—lit by what the main characters refer to as tiny, little robots.

You can see this now! “Maybe Happy Ending” is currently running on Broadway. I wish I had better hacks to see this one, but it’s delightfully so popular. I’d recommend the lottery or digital rush.

So nice I saw it twice (this year)

2,000 PowerPoint Slides

Josh Sharp’s “ta-da!” was one of the most unique pieces of theater I saw this year. “Theater” doesn’t even quite capture it. It’s more part stand-up, part theatrical experience, part corporate business meeting—in the sense that it runs through 2,000 PowerPoint slides in 80 minutes.

I loved how the slides served not just as captions, but as inside jokes, set pieces, and even characters. It was zippy, fun, and full of heart.

(and it inspired a TikTok of me being an off-brand Josh Sharp.)

@kaplanzoeI saw a lot of theater in 2025 for under $25 AND YOU CAN TOO Thank you josh sharp’s ta-da for the powerpoint inspo (one of my faves this year)! #cheaptheatretickets #broadwaytickets #discountbroadway

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Nearly (and Fully) Naked Women

(I know, I know...it’s not what it seems.)

“Real Women Have Curves,” a too short-lived new musical, tells the story of a group of immigrant women in 1980s California. There’s hardship, fear, but also hope. In one particularly hopeful moment, all of the women in the cast appear in only their bras and underwear, singing the show’s title theme. It could seem easily cheesy, or too “girl power,” but in the context of this positive, yet honest musical, it was nothing short of beautiful—and it got the mid-show standing ovation it deserved.

There’s a reason the new Broadway production of “Liberation” collects and locks your phones: in the beginning of the second act, the cast comes out fully nude. In this show about the women’s feminist movement in the 1970s, the women are trying out a recommendation from Ms. Magazine. Nudity is posed a way to reclaim their bodies.

As the women stretch out, contort, and find ways to hide and reveal themselves, they debate whether the experiment is really an expression of feminine empowerment. It’s an awkward, silly, and confusing experience for the women—and a powerful one for the audience.

You can see “Liberation” now! This is currently running on Broadway until February 1st, 2026. Liberation is consistently on TDF for $60 and has a $30 under 30 discount at the box office Monday-Thursday.

Cave Echoes

How do cave explorers know if they’ve found a gold mine? The cavernous echo.

“Floyd Collins” follows the true story of the cave explorer of the same name, with a tender and exploratory folk, blue-grassy soundtrack. In our early moments with Floyd, he’s discovering a cave—and the yodel he sings out to echo becomes part of our soundtrack. It’s a gorgeous loop that was stuck in my head for weeks. Listen here.

As The Lottery Gods Will

Tickets for this year’s Shakespeare in the Park production were so competitive people lined up on the street at 2 a.m. After waiting in 90-degree heat for a few hours on a Friday morning, I got a notification I had won the lottery for that night’s performance. Perhaps Shakespearean fate?

The luck and joy of that win carried seamlessly into that production of “Twelfth Night”—a fun, lighthearted, modern wink of a show with a star-studded cast.

That Green Light, I Want It!

There’s no better use of a pop song than Lorde’s “Green Light” at the end of “John Proctor is the Villain.” The play—which rightfully garnered several Tony nominations—follows a group of high schoolers as they study “The Crucible” and see parallels between the play’s theme and their own lives. “Green Light” serves as the soundtrack for two of the students’ final project, an interpretive dance that is freeing, full of feminine rage and love, damage, and maybe, hope.

A Mammoth in the Living Room

When Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth” premiered in 1943, it broke all conventions of the American Theater. The show is incredibly peculiar: it follows one family over the course of 5,000 years, ridden with biblical references, yet set in a modern time.

“The Seat of Our Pants,” a musical adaptation of the play that premiered at The Public this fall, fit the peculiar bill. It struck such a perfect tone of everything feeling perfectly normal and within our society’s rules, despite being completely not.

Picture this: A nuclear family is worrying about the freezing winter cold in their delightfully wall-papered living room. They take in people to shelter from the storm. And also, a mammoth.

Like, a giant mammoth played by an actor in a giant fuzzy costume. A picture-perfect setting of normalcy gone awry, and a fitting image for what I loved about this odd, delightful show.

Photo credit: Joan Marcus

Fake Jewels, Anyone?

You could argue going to the theater should always be fun, but sometimes, there are productions that are truly pure, heart-filling joy. That’s the best way to describe “Titanique,” a long-running Off-Broadway production, that reimagines the movie “Titanic” from Celine Dion’s perspective.

It’s as campy and outrageous as it sounds, and it was a treat—especially for Naomi, who was sitting in the best seat of the house. Every time the show needed audience involvement (which it did quite a lot), she was the chosen one. It all ended with Naomi getting a giant fake heart necklace, and me with a giant smile on my face.

You can see this soon! “Titanique” is coming to Broadway in Spring 2026.

Andrew Durand Stays Still

“Dead Outlaw,” another Broadway gem gone too soon, follows the life—and post-life—of an outlaw whose corpse became a spectacle in fairs around the world. Andrew Durand, the actor who played both the life and the corpse, has to remain completely still, and open-eyed, for much of the show’s latter half. It takes a bit of stage magic, and a lot of preparation from the actor, to be so freaked out by a fake (and quite living) corpse.

I would recommend wearing shoes on the subway. Photo credit: Andy Henderson

The Gasp

There are a lot of reasons I love “Hadestown,” but perhaps the reason I love the most—and why I can go back again, and again, and again—is that it’s a retelling of a story many of us know. The moment when that story ends, there’s always an outsized audience reaction. Without fail, each of the now 11 times I’ve seen it.

We know what happens, and we know it’s a tragedy. And still we tell the story again, in hopes it might turn out this time.

You can see this now! And you really should. I see this often on TDF. There’s also a lottery.

See you at the theater in 2026!

Love,
Zoe