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MickeyJoTheatre
Mickey-Jo ranks every show he saw on Broadway in 2024 | The best and worst of this year's plays and musicals
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Mickey Jo
Oh my God. Hey, welcome back. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. I am a professional theatre critic here on social media. Hello to you if you're watching this on my theatre themed YouTube channel. Hello to you if you are listening to this on podcast platforms. Now, I made a video like this last year where I ranked the 22 Broadway shows that I had seen as part of my first ever trips to New York to see plays and musicals on Broadway. This year I'm gonna do the same thing, but I have 37 shows to rank nearly twice as many. I saw a lot of Broadway shows this year. We are talking plays and musicals. We are talking about the many off Broadway shows that I saw and we are excluding repeat visits. So shows like the Notebook, Lempicka, Water for Elephants, Suffs and maybe Happy Ending are all a bunch of shows that I saw more than once. Which doesn't necessarily indicate to you where they fall in the list because actually those are over a whole spectrum. Many of these shows I have already given full thorough reviews which you can go and watch and or listen to afterwards. But the way I'm going to be doing this is I am going to be trying to rank them objectively in terms of which I think are the better shows and not subject subjectively in terms of where I had the best time. Because there are a lot of shows lower on this list that I enjoyed more than some of the shows I'm gonna put higher up because I had fun at them. But that isn't to say that I thought they were necessarily great. At the same time, theatre is to a certain extent always subjective. So these are of course my personal opinions and you may disagree with them. If you do, feel free to drop all of your thoughts in the comments section down below. If you want to do your own ranking of all the shows you saw on Broadway this year or anywhere else, feel free to drop that in the comments section as well. I should say this is only specific to the Broadway shows I saw this year. I am going do more rankings for the end of 2024. I'm going to do a video talking about the best theatre that I saw over this year across the many countries where I saw shows. I'm also going to do a video talking about the worst, the most disappointing, some of which may be obvious from today's ranking. Last year when I did this, I started at the top and then went down to the bottom, which seems like a minimally dramatic way to do it. This time I'm going to start at the bottom and we're going to find out right at the end my number one Broadway show of the year. But to do that we have to begin with number 37. So we're about to get into it. If enjoy this, make sure to subscribe or follow me wherever you are seeing or hearing this. Stay tuned for much theatrical content coming in 2025. So many reviews, so many exciting plans and feel free to go and find me out across the musical theatre Internet. I am currently on TikTok, Bluesky, Threads, Instagram, Facebook, sharing many other reviews, Hot takes, theatrical Opinions this introduction has gone on too long. Let's rank some Broadway shows now. I have a history of being long winded, so I am setting a stopwatch on my phone to make sure I only talk about each of these shows for one minute. So if it seems like I am rushing, that is what is happening. And for a visual guide, have this stack of playbills here. I'm trying not to show you which shows these are, but These are the 37 unique plays and musicals I saw this year on Broadway. Starting with my least favorite, starting with the who's Tommy. This is an iconic rock opera. I saw this revived on Broadway at the Nederlander Theatre. I really did not get on with this one. I think I gave it a two star review. You can check that out already. I I found very little to enjoy about this and not because there isn't a lot to enjoy about the music. That really is the only positive takeaway that I had as well as some of the performances, particularly ally Louis Borski and his vocal performance. I thought he was brilliant, but he didn't get to play much because there was so little depth to his character. I found its depictions troubling and offensive. I found the plot a little mind boggling. I truly I'm just not from the generation to understand this show. That much was clear to me. I found it all a bit intensely overstimul. I didn't find it like not emotionally affecting whatsoever beyond bafflement and irritation. I really have very little positive to say about this show. I am sorry to say. I know a lot of people love it. I am not one of those people. And that is a minute. Next up for my first ever visit to Lincoln Center Theatre, Uncle Vanya Chekhov done by Americans on Broadway. I am still a little bit unconvinced because this really had no resemblance to the culture I would associate with Chekhov. And in the writing it's I've seen Uncle Vanya before. It is similarly vodka drenched and solemn and full of despair. But so much about the aesthetics of this production in its direction seemed at odds with that. It seemed too bright, it seemed there was too much levity. It seemed too affluent and full of air to be about this heavy, impoverished sorrow. I wasn't feeling that. I felt such a boredom between so many of these performances, particularly from Steve Carell as Vanya. I feel only William Jackson Harper was able to bring much to it in terms of a compelling characterization. It was just sleepy. I'm sorry to say this really did not connect to what I love about this play. That once again is a minute. Then we have Tammy Faye. What else to say about Tammy Faye? This is one of the shows that I enjoyed more than I think it probably deserves. It has a lot of problems and it also has a lot of strength. KT Brabant's performance as Tammy Faye Baker. Tammy Faye Messner, I thought was brilliant in London was still brilliant on Broadway. But so much of the show isn't centered around her. So much of it focuses on her husband and what he was getting up to. And it isn't really bold enough to firmly state whether or not she was complicit in that. There are implications and she takes control of the narrative, but she has so little focus in it in the first act. And some of the most fascinating years of her life aren't explored by this. There is also an uncomfortable indecision in the writing as to whether or not it is going to continue, condemn or celebrate her. I think that went through to the marketing. A lot of people didn't go see the show because they didn't know what its stance on her was and how that would correlate with their own feelings on a controversial historical figure, shall we say? Next up, probably still in two star territory here, maybe venturing into low three star territory. We have swept away, sadly recently announced early closure on Broadway at the Longacre Theatre. I so personally just didn't get on with this, but I also think it has a lot of shortcomings. For so much of this show, nothing happens and then one big thing happens. And then nothing happens again until one other big thing happens. This is a plot synopsis that you could write in four sentences. I keep thinking of the last line of the Life of PI or one of the last lines of the Life of PI, where PI says, which version of the story do you prefer? The one with animals or the one without? Which is the better story? And they say the one with animals. And I'm like, Yeah, I agree, too. And that's. That's the problem with Swept Away. This is the one without animals. The staging, beautiful, breathtaking. Not just the shipwreck spoiler alert. But you can kind of see from this. But the way that the boat that they're in just slowly turns for the remaining what feels like hours. It's probably only about 45 minutes of the show. John Gallagher Jr. Is fantastic in it, but it's just. It's just too heavy and too morose and they don't have the conversations I want them to about really. There's so much more they could talk about. Listen, one minute is not enough time. We are moving on because next up is Lempicka. I do still plan to do a full Lempicka video review and on podcasts as well. Well, because there is much I want to say about this show. This was a show, like Tammy Faye, like some others that we'll encounter here, at odds with itself. Within this show, there were two different ideas of what it could be. Is it this contemporary, queer, anarchic, artistic exploration of what this woman represented, what her spirit was? Or is it this historical, kind of by the numbers retelling of her life? That latter version is what I find less interesting. I think Rachel Chavkin seemed to be pulling it more towards the first idea of what I was saying. Fantastic performances in this. Really brilliant. So many of the cast members and a lot of parts of the score that really stayed with me afterwards. So much of this show I was really drawn in by, and I was like, yes, there is such value here, but there's a lot that they shied away from to do with the rise of fascism, to do with some of her more complex relationships. I think it's also an inherently problematic depiction of a bisexual woman. But we are out of time. That was Lempicka next up. Probably objectively higher than the ones I've just spoken about. And people are not going to be happy. I put this solo down on the list, even still. But I enjoyed this less than a handful of those last shows. I really struggled with Days of Wine and Roses. This is an adaptation of a film. It's a depiction of this couple here who are both. They become codependent, toxic alcoholics, and she kind of gets drawn into this behavior by him. It's a fascinating study of how addiction can happen in a relationship, in a marriage, in a family, and how it affects women, all of those things. I just thought there were so many interesting book scenes that weren't written and that was really my biggest issue. That was really the biggest shortcoming here I thought is there is so much more discussion around this and how it's affecting everyone. How all of this is playing out. His strained relationship with his father in law, who holds him responsible for what he's done to his daughter, even as he's trying to repair his life and trying to help her. There is more that could have been said that wasn't said. Of course, they were both fantastic. There are moments where it sounds glorious, but I didn't vibe with it, needless to say. Moving on. I was disappointed by the remounting of Spamalot. I'm calling this a remounting rather than a revival because so much of it was very similar to the original Broadway production in terms of its aesthetic and direction, etc. This was at the St James Theatre and I enjoyed the performances. There were a couple of standout performances. Alex Brightman, I thought was brilliant. Ethan Slater, I thought was really good and really seem stealing. That's the nature of Spamalot. If you get funny people in this show, they're gonna do great work. Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer. I enjoyed a lot as the lady of the Lake, but I thought she could have pushed it even further and given us even more over the top diva extravagance. I like the show. I've seen it before. It just didn't have me howling with laughter. I thought a lot of it lost a little bit of that Monty Python sensibility and it became like an SNL take on a Monty Python. Yeah, that's how I felt about Spamalot. Then we have Chicago, which, if memory serves, was similarly kind of low down on my list last year. I went back because of Ariana Maddox from Vanderpump Rules. Chicago keeps drawing me back in with this stunt casting. I keep saying I objectively don't need to go and see Chicago anymore on Broadway, but she got me back there. There were other members of this cast who I also thought were giving really great performances in smaller roles. There are some really hard working, brilliant stars in Chicago consistently in its run at the Ambassador Theatre. It's great to go and see it and admire its sleekness and admire the choreography. And there's a lot to celebrate about the way it's been staged and what that draws out of the story and what it elevates about the plot. And it's so stylish and it's still sexy and all of those good things, but it is also just a little bit tired and, you know, I'M sure it was very exciting to see in its earlier years and the right performers can still breathe a lot of excitement into these characters, but on a lot of other fronts it's just a little bit lackluster. You notice that in stuff like the Cell Block Tango. Then we have the Roommate and a Playbill legacy cover. Now this was a two hander play starring Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone. It's this slightly odd couple pairing of later in life roommates and Mia Farrow becomes increasingly curious about Patti LuPone's life that she is moving many states away from and what it is that she used to do. She finds out about her latent criminality and then gets intrigued by that and wants to participate in it as well. This play kept me on my toes. It's slower and it's longer than it needed to be and that's probably why it's a slowdown on this list as it is. But Mia Farrow's performance I thought was just electric and fascinating. Patti LuPone doing great work in this, doing work kind of more familiar of her television work. Played a little bit smaller, played a little bit subtler than some of her Broadway appearances, especially in her musical theatre roles, but very charming and yeah, I liked it. I was fond of this play. Then we have Elf and all I keep saying to people about this is Elf is Elf. We get this a lot over Christmases in the UK and it's headed back to Broadway this year at the Marquee Theatre. I think it will probably reappear. It's done quite well. Gray Henson was terrific in the Will Ferrell role from the film as Buddy the Elf. Sean Astin I also thought did a great job playing Santa and also the big, the big boss man. There's a lot about Elf that really charms me every year when Santa does defying gravity and flies in his sleigh and when they make it snow. Those are delightful things to happen in a Broadway theater. But this is for tourists. Like a lot of it is a little bit generic. There's some lovely numbers in there. The song there is a Santa Claus that Buddy's brother and his mom sing together when they see Santa flying past the window. And you can do great things with great performers in this show, but it's, it's Elf. At the end of the day, this is still Elf and they didn't really skate on stage. Which post Kimberly Akimbo, I guess is slightly disappointing. Next up, how to Dance in Ohio. A troubled show that has a really great show stuck in It. There is so much good in this material. I cried at this. This was so affecting. This was so brilliant. It had such brilliant performances. Probably my favorite was Liam Pierce, who I thought was fantastic, who I think is this exciting rising star. But all of the young performers playing the autistic teens depicted within this show, which is about this family therapy center which is helping them on a whole host of social fronts. And it's planning a dance for them as a sort of a rite of passage. The problem is we focus far too much on the doctor and him trying to date again after a divorce and his daughter who might go back to school to dance again, but she might not. And she wants to help him. And like, we don't care about any of that. It's the young people who are so compelling, who are so brilliant. We want to see more of their stories. There is. There are like a handful of really, really great songs, like fantastic songs, but they're kind of in the wrong place. I spoke about this more at length. It's coming to the uk, allegedly. I am very intrigued. But I enjoyed it. But it had problems. It had big, big problems. Then we have Once Upon a Mattress. I saw this back at the start of the year at New York City Centre Encores in a semi staged concert. They then transferred that to Broadway. Truth be told, I think I enjoyed it a little bit more at Encore. So I still liked it on Broadway, but it was no longer like making me bend over laughing. Sutton Foster still brilliantly cast as Princess Winifred. Michael Urie still fant opposite her as Prince Dauntless Anagastire. I enjoyed. I just thought she could have, she could have put more of her own creative comic inspiration to it. It was a little bit by the numbers as a, like a stern queen performance. And I needed much more from the repeated line. You swam the moat like, chew that scenery, eat it all up. Why are we not chewing on this scenery? I felt the age of the thing a little bit and many great performances. Other wonderful performances. Nica, Renee Daniels, fantastic. But I got fatigued of them bringing in that black cloth to do set changes. And I got a little fatigued by the show, I'm sorry to say. Then we have the Great Gatsby on Broadway. I have never reviewed the Great Gatsby here, really on my channel, and I've never really articulated my feelings about it. And I think it's good. It's a good show. It's perfect for tourists coming to see like a Broadway musical. They drive a car on stage, they have fireworks on stage. They have huge songs where people sing their feelings. And when people are happy in this show, they tell you they're happy. And when they're sad, they tell you they are sad. And that is about as much depth as we attain. There are a handful of things to do with the mystery and the romance of this plot and the way that it unfolds, where it is a little bit pedestrian. I often refer to this as a stage adaptation of. If Dreamworks had made a cartoon of the Great Gatsby in the 90s. It both looks and sounds like that, really. It's got a great set, it's got great design, it's got brilliant performances. It's just in the material. If this wasn't based on a book, I'd say it's great. But the fact that there is more richness in the text than this brings to the stage, I guess, is a little bit disappointing. It does have fantastic songs, though. Then we have Water for Elephants, a show that I saw twice on Broadway. The circus spectacle of it all is brilliant. It's about a young man who runs away with the circus. This ends up changing his life. We hear this story from his perspective as an older man, as he is recalling these events of his youth and how he fell in love with a woman who wasn't available. And there's an elephant involved. The way that they bring the animals to the stage is a little bit of a mixed bag because sometimes it's like full puppetry in the style of the Lion King, but not quite as well realized. Sometimes it's like you can see the performers and they suggest parts of the animals. The way we finally get the elephant entrance is really well written, but then the puppet that actually comes in is. It doesn't quite have the full impact that you would want it to. The songs, I also think, are incredibly functional. They get us from one place to the next, but they're not remarkable enough to be memorable. The direction, the staging, there's moments towards the end where we get these freeze frame moments. Brilliant. Fantastic. Then we have a play, Mother Play, a play in five evictions. Written by Paula Vogel. This is semi autobiographical. It stars Jessica Lange, who was captivating on stage, as you would expect. Celia Keenan Bolger, who I thought was brilliant. Jim Parsons, who was also fantastic. This, again, felt a little bit underwritten. It felt like a little bit of a first draft. It's snapshots of a young woman's life and her coming to terms with her sexuality as a queer woman in the Shadow of her brother having the same realization for himself. And them having different equally fraught relationships with their mother, who. You can see how it feels differently for each of them. And a lot of grief that we experience. And a brilliant portrayal of loneliness and family challenges. And there's a sort of an offbeat comedy in the beginning of it as well. I just didn't love the structure for telling the story. I thought it could have been a little more focused or a little less linear, honestly. Then we have the Outsiders. My controversial thoughts about the Outsiders. This year's Tony Award winning best musical. And there are parts of it that I agree are really great. The staging, I think, is fantastic. That rumble sequence in the second act, brilliant. It has a lot of exciting young talent in the cast. I will just never be moved by something about emotionally inarticulate young men who feel angsty at the beginning, they have a lot of angst in the middle, and then they feel angsty again at the end. I've also said this before, but it doesn't really realize in its writing that it isn't a book anymore and it doesn't have to behave like a book. When we finally meet a female character and I'm like, oh, my gosh, there's a woman on this stage and she's about to tell us about her life. And then Ponyboy, that's his real name, turns to the front and says, and then she told me about her parents. I got so frustrated. I was like, you don't have to do that. You're not a book. This woman can introduce herself. Like God forbid a woman speaks on this stage. In the Outsiders. Very little endeared me to this show. I have no relationship to the book beforehand. I know a lot of people really love it and really care about it. I don't know what the message is from this. The state, the whole stay gold thing didn't really move me or say that much to me. I'm like, their life has was hard and it's gonna be hard. But they have a slightly different perspective on it now. I don't know. Then we have Hell's Kitchen again. I don't think I've reviewed Hell's Kitchen on here. I enjoyed Hell's Kitchen. It wants to be in the Heights and it's not in the Heights. It doesn't have nearly as much depth or as much character. There are. The plot doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. You have a young girl again. It's semi autobiographical. It's loosely based on the life of Alicia Keys growing up in Manhattan Plaza, this actual building in New York filled with all of these different artists. And she lived there. And you have her single mother who is working, like, two jobs, five jobs, whatever, so that they can afford to live in New York. But she's saying to her, I don't want you to be outside this bit. I don't want you to be on these streets in Hell's Kitchen because it's not safe. But I will not. We will not move to a cheaper area so that I don't have to work two jobs. So to never be home for you, to be in a place where I don't feel safe. Like, none of this makes sense. She's constantly making salads or some such. She calls her father in to help and then gets mad at him and tells him to leave as soon as he arrives. Brilliant performances, great vocals. It has a wonderful spirit to it, but it's a little bit odd as Hell's Kitchen. I can't quite believe I'm placing this higher, but I am the heart of rock and roll. I thought this knew what it was. It is a silly, campy, 80s story using the music of Huey Lewis to tell an original story about these workers at a cardboard factory. I believe, from what I remember, very few of the details of this plot remain in my mind, but they're, like, trying to get the business of this guy who basically owns ikea. It's fun. It's campy. It was fun. It was campy. It did not last that long on Broadway, sadly. It had great performances. Mackenzie Kurtz, I think, is a really fantastic, exciting rising star. It had great vocals. It had brilliant dance. It was bright. It was colorful. It wasn't trying to be anything more serious than exactly what it was, and, you know, wildly more insincere than a handful of the shows that we just spoke about, but fun and silly and enjoyable and doing. Doing all of that well and doing it right. They tapped on bubble wrap, for crying out loud. Then we have Sweeney Todd, which also would have been on my ranking last year. I can't remember where I placed it. I have misgivings about this production. I had those already. I don't think it's a definitive production of Sweeney Todd. I think there's a lot that it just kind of loses in abstract gloominess, and I don't think it really had a strong vision for what it was going to say with this show. This is as high as it is because of its material, because of the brilliant material by Hugh Wheeler and Stephen Sondheim. But if anything, I thought the show got a little bit weaker with this recasting. Joe Locke, I thought was wonderful as Toby, a really exciting Broadway debut from him. Sutton Foster and Aaron Tveit, I do enduringly think were sadly a little bit miscast in these roles because certain Foster was playing it like it was Lucille Ball or Carol Burnett doing a Sweeney Todd parody sketch. And aunt of it, you could tell, had a demonstrable reverence for this role. But neither of them were really giving me these characterizations in the way that I wanted. Then we have Death Becomes her, which I am not officially reviewing yet. If you've wondered why you haven't seen a Death Becomes her review, here it is. Because I saw a preview just before they started press preview performances like the same week. But I don't think I saw really a finished enough product. I died laughing in the first act of this. I thought the second act kind of went off a cliff as they had to try and do a lot of physical effects and magic and they had a little bit of a showstop problem on the show that I went to. So I don't think I saw the best version of Death Becomes Her. The central performances from Jen Simard and even more so from Megan Hilty are fabulous and fantastic, wonderful diva performances. They are both hilarious. I like the score. I don't think it's the most exciting musical theater score that I've heard in years, but I really enjoyed it in the moment. Megan's brilliant. It is so campy. It is deliciously fun. That first act is really great and we still have fun in the second. I just think it began to encounter a handful of problems. Next up, A Wonderful World, the Louis Armstrong musical, or the Louis Armstrong musical, I should say, because his name is pronounced two different ways in this show. I actually will be reviewing this here on my channel, so I'm not going to say too much at this stage. I really enjoyed it. I thought they found a way to bring joy to the stage. There's a hello Dolly sing along in the second act. And we've seen enough of these bio jukebox musicals and they all encounter the same issues because they're always like, oh no, they're encountering problems. Will they ever become successful? It's like, well, I'm here seeing a musical based on their well known career. So I. I think he's gonna be fine. What was interesting about this one is it was split into segments of the four different wives that he had throughout his life. I've seen some Criticism of this. I actually thought that was a great framing device and I thought it afforded each of them a pretty brilliant agency. And they were also terrific. James Monroe Iglehart was terrific as Louis Armstrong. We could have learned a little more about him, but I enjoyed it. I had a good time. Then we have the Notebook, a show I really loved on Broadway. I really did like this. Went back to see it again. Some exceptions, extraordinary performances in this. Really just wonderful, wonderful performances again. I did a full review of this one that you can go and check out. I think there's parts of this that could be adjusted for a future production. I don't think the set needs to be as expansive as it is. I don't think you necessarily need three different sets of couples. I think a bunch of the songs are just in the wrong place. I also have issues with the scansion of some of the songs and the way that the lyrics fall onto the melody I find to be a little dubious. But it is so affecting, it is so moving, it is so romantic. Some brilliant performances. I liked a lot of what they did, specifically with the costume design and with things to do with hair and the book as well. Just beautiful. A lot of it. Really, really beautiful. Then we have Romeo and Juliet at the Circle in the Square Theatre, starring Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler. I've spoken at length about this because I've reviewed this and I've compared it with the West End production that we saw in London this year with Tom Holland, directed by Jamie Lloyd. This one was directed by Sam Gold. And contrastingly with that other production, they chose to really uplift the youth of it all and the vibrancy of this story. And they made some really interesting aesthetic choices that I thought were really striking. The whole energy of the production, yes, it feels a little bit like a high school theatre production, but done on a really professional level, like the talent they're bringing to the stage, particularly Kit Connor as Romeo, I thought was wonderful. It's really like, you can tell he's going to be a huge star with this performance. He is so charismatic. He is so believably in love. Also, Gabby Beans was brilliant. Some really great creative choices. I don't think it was a completely fantastic production of Romeo and Juliet because we ignored so much of the tension and the darkness and the rivalry between these households. But it felt like Romeo and Juliet from their perspective, which was a really satisfying choice, actually. Yellowface by David David Henry Wang is our next show. I saw this at the Todd Haymes Theatre. This is Roundabout Theatre Company show starring Daniel Dae Kim as this insert character for the playwright in another semi autobiographical story which is based on some true events with some fictionalized elements about him inadvertently casting a white man in an Asian role and the controversy that followed and how that spilt over into his real life and affected his family and sort of other events that were unfolding around the same time affected his family. And what I like about this is it begins with this sort of semi satirical silliness and we venture towards some really serious and hard hitting places. There's one long scene between himself and a reporter that becomes really fascinating. I thought it was very charming, had a fantastic cast and I really enjoyed it. Had a lot of very important conversations, I thought. Harmony at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. This is a show, sadly, that I think just made it to Broadway a decade, two decades late because it had such an older sensibility and it's been in development for a really long time. And you can kind of feel that it feels more familiar of like Titanic and ragtime and like late 90s musicals. I really enjoyed it. It's just a little bit slow. It's just a slow burn of a piece. Again, brilliant cast. There are a couple of moments where everything came together creatively and we started to really pick up some momentum. There were a couple of moments that really instilled just extraordinary terror and dread as it recounted the early events of the Second World War and the writing being on the wall. Not unlike Cabaret. The music was perhaps a little surprisingly unremarkable. I thought Chip was wonderful in the multiple roles that he played in this show. And I really enjoyed Harmony. I had a lovely time at this show and there isn't that much to criticize it for other than it probably now is best suited to a slightly older generation because I think it's just a little behind the times. Another legacy playbill here for the Hills of California, a play I first saw in London, but was so fascinating to go back and see at the Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway with many of the same cast members because they made substantial changes to the final act. And I mean substantial changes. I'm not going to spoil it for you here necessarily, but I think the play became better focused because of that. And it really defined what this is, which is a story about these sisters looking back to the events of their youth and some very dark things that happened. Relating to their mother, really trying to, like Rose from Gypsy Style, groom them as this family singing group and, like, determined for their success, made a lot of controversial parenting choices. And then they come back together and reunite as she is dying upstairs. Basically. Laura Donnelly gives an exceptional performance as both their mother and then one of the sisters in the later scenes. It's long and it's thorough and it's very fleshed out. And Jez Butterworth loves to write an extraordinary amount of, like, setting and has a million different characters who barely do anything, but it's also quite brilliant. Then we have Six. I did go back to see Six completely on a whim at the Lena Horne theatre. I've seen six, maybe 30 times in my. I saw it yesterday, actually, in the West End. I've seen six a lot of times at this point, and there's nothing that can really surprise me about Six anymore. I got. I was really into it when it first hit the West End, and I saw it a whole bunch of times in one year, and I still really enjoy Six. It just very much. It is what it is. The best thing about it now is when someone makes surprising choices, whether that is comedy, characterization, vocals, hearing performers with different accents, just different interpretations of these roles is really exciting. And to that end, Jasmine Forsberg was outstanding. Her vocal performance as Jane Seymour in this singing Heart of Stone was mind blowing. And a lot of the characterizations, I think, works slightly better with American performers. Catherine of Aragon, I think, is done best by Americans because it's inherently Beyonce and Americans know how to do it and do it well. I had a great time at six. I'm always going to have a great time at six. Then we have O Mary. People have been loving this on Broadway. I did as well. It wasn't my absolute favourite thing of Broadway the year. I think, just because I. I've seen a lot of media like this. I keep really struggling to articulate why I'm not as completely charmed by it as everyone else. I think it's brilliant. I think it's fantastic. I would love to see Cora Scola do five more things just like this. I don't think this is like Cordeskola's magnum opus and the greatest. I think Cordeskola could, like, write this in an afternoon and be like, yeah, like, that's. That's their capabilities. They were astonishing as a performer. I'm so intrigued to see how this play continues next year on Broadway with new performers coming into these roles. But it's so wicked and so gleefully maniacal, particularly where it goes towards the end. I find that really delicious about it. I find the whole queer sensibility of it really wonderful as well. And I love that it's being as embraced as it is on Broadway. That's very exciting. Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club at the August Wilson Theatre. Did I see this twice this year? Yeah, I guess both of my visits to this would have been this year. Both with the original Broadway cast with Gayle Rankin and Eddie Redmayne, and then more recently with Adam Lambert. I didn't get to see Ali E, sadly, because she was out at that performance. Adam and Eddie, completely different. I've made videos talking about each of their performances in much detail if you want to go and hear more about that. I've also reviewed this production, if you want to go and hear about that. I've talked about this revival of Cabaret directed by rapper Becca Frecknell in the West End and on Broadway several times. I really enjoy it. I enjoy it slightly more in London because I think the breadth of the Broadway production loses the quality of it a little bit, especially with this recast. But I think it is metamorphosizing into a cabaret that is slightly better suited to American audiences. I think it's quite British in a lot of its behavior. Honestly, I thought Eddie Redmayne was fantastic. I thought he was really great. I'm a staunch defender of his performance. I never really got on with Gail Rankin and Adam Lambert is also kind of a revelation in the role. Now we are truly in five star territory here and we have been for the past few shows. Appropriate at the Helen Hayes Theatre starring Sarah Paulson. Another family reunion after or around parental death. They're all coming back to this house and learning difficult realities and revelations about their late father and having this really explosive and shocking confrontation between each other that you know, filters down to their children as well. A staggering play. A real scathing indictment on the capabilities of human behavior and just a shocking watch. The kind I really enjoy. Where you are sat there horrified, but you can't look away from. It's like a car crash on stage. Sarah Paulson, I thought was fantastic, if a little kind of relentlessly intense and some brilliant support alongside her as well, but just shocking in the best possible way. Well into the top 10 now we have Hadestown, written by singer songwriter Aeneas Mitchell, recently celebrated its fifth anniversary on Broadway. I, every time I see this show, discover a little more about it. I just overturn a couple of lyrical meanings and I fall more in love with it every single time. I feel like I get the show now. It took a few watches to get there. I did not connect with Hadestown immediately. I compare it sometimes to like a whiskey that you have to, like, sip and savor and eventually acquire a taste for. That is what Hadestown is to me. I love the way that this show feels like Greek mythology for the present day, because Greek mythology answered questions about the world and things that they didn't understand at the time, like, why do the seasons happen? Why doesn't the sky fall down? And this show does the same thing for the challenges that we live in in today's world, with climate change, with political challenges. This show responds to that in a way that is really beautiful and really meaningful. And it's also incredibly therapeutic in terms of what it says about telling the story again and going on with your life. Even though you know that it's difficult, even though you know that grief is a reality, you keep on living anyway. Prayer for the French Republic. I did enjoy this just a little bit more than appropriate, but I put a lot of that down to the fact that this is a Mickey Jo kind of a play. I love plays like this where we have some sort of a contentious cultural issue and we look at it from so many different sides, even from within a community. It's the same thing that I enjoyed about we live in Cairo Off Broadway just a few weeks ago. This, I thought, was brilliant. I love Joshua Harmon's writing. I have loved that in a handful of his plays now. I think he's a really, really exciting voice. And it's so contemporary. It's so of the now. I mean, it felt almost painfully relevant as we're talking about. It's a Jewish family living in Paris talking about the increasing amount of anti Semitism. And considering initially they're very reluctant to entertain the idea. And then it becomes more and more persuasive that they might move to Israel. But then they also consider and others consider and others argue with them the implication of that and what that does to the Middle East. I thought, oh, my God. The conversations had in this and the writing and the characterization and then the flashback to the past. As you understand, you contextualize all of this behavior. Brilliant. Just brilliant. Which brings us to the top five. Now in fifth place, Illinois. This is a dance show using the music of Sufjan Stevens and the album of the same name. This was at the St James Theatre. I thought this was beautiful. I thought it was breathtaking. I thought it was very simple storytelling. Just take this concept of this group of people meeting in the woods and performing storytelling through contemporary dance. You hear this music sung on stage by onstage vocalists. There's an on stage Band beautiful design. And then we have this protagonist who eventually develops the courage to tell their own story, which has to do with a friend who committed suicide and a complicated romantic love triangle. And the depiction of that act and of the mental health that drove him to that point. The most beautifully and meaningfully and the least damaging way I have ever seen that portrayed on stage. It was breathtaking. It was really, really wonderful. And I thought this was a fantastic piece of theatre at its sort of at its most pure, honestly. In number four, we have Suffs, a show I saw twice on Broadway. I've spoken about how much I love Suffs. I think it's really wonderful, the writing from Shane Attend Taub, who won two Tony Awards for the score for the script. She also stars as Alice Paul alongside a formidable cast likes of Jenn Colella and Nikki M. James, one of the stand up performances in the show and Hannah Cruise and Emily Skinner and all of them. Every single member of this company, I think does fantastic work. There's been a lot of discussion about the fact that the material is probably stronger than the production and I think the production uplifts the material. At no point was I disturbed, distracted by like, oh, I wish this could have been more and I wish more could have been done here. I don't think it's quite a Hamilton where it fires on both cylinders, where it both sounds amazing and looks fantastic. Like it's not breathtaking on multiple fronts at the same time. But it's the performances that I thought were really phenomenal. I love Suffs a lot. I'm being very inarticulate about it now, but you can go and check out my full review of it. I'm sad it's closing. I'm glad it's getting filmed and I hope it has a long future life. Then my third favorite Broadway show of the year, the bronze medal goes to Sunset Boulevard. What else can I say about Sunset Boulevard? It is a adaptation of a classic film. It's told by a screenwriter. And for that cinematic lens we use Jamie Lloyd, the director, uses on stage cameras in a bold, stripped back but also elevated production in which Nicole Scherzinger stars, giving this tour de force performance as Norma Desmond, giving it her absolute, all sensational vocals and this extraordinary physicality, but just so meaningfully directed. So much thought has been put into every single frame that you see captured via camera. I'm not a big fan of cameras on stage. They really work for this production for the reasons that I've already shared and just everything about it. Its Sensibility, the ceaseless intensity of the thing. Wonderful supporting performances. Tom Francis. Fantastic. David Thaxton. Extraordinary. I love this production of Sunset Boulevard. I think it is genius work. Then in second place, my favourite play of the year, Stereophonic. I loved Stereophonic. I thought it was extraordinary. You are just a fly on the wall inside this recording studio where this British American fusion band, thinly based on Fleetwood Mac, are attempting to record an album. And there's a little bit of tension that becomes a lot of tension that becomes rifts in relationships and breakups and there's drug abuse issues and there's resentments and there's insecurities and anxieties and there's power struggles and there's creative insecurity and dominance and it's. It's just such a fascinating human insight with exciting, really brilliant music that I love the way that the flow of time changes and accelerates and we go from something incredibly naturalistic to something that's a little bit warped. There's this sense of time dilation playing out in real time. It looks great. I love the sets. I love every single creative element of Stereophonic. I love the cast. I think this is so great. I cannot wait to see this again because I'm hoping we get to see it in London. Which brings us to my number one, the gold medal, my favorite Broadway show of the year. Spoiler alert. It's been on my hat the entire time. I am talking about maybe happy ending. Currently playing at the Belasco Theatre and picking up steam due to fantastic word of mouth. So many people stopped me on the street to tell me what a beautiful show this is. And I couldn't agree more. Again, I have reviewed this in full. Please go and check that out to hear what I think of this show. But it is a road trip between robot characters. It's this futuristic story that manages to articulate something so timeless. The way it talks about grief, the way it talks about love, the way it talks about coming to terms with loss is beautiful. It's stunning. It's a small show that says something really big, but it's so perfect. It's so self contained. It has the sensibility of a beautiful studio Ghibli or Pixar animated film. It is funny, it is charming. It has this beautiful jazz score that I'm very excited to listen to when it's. When the cast recording happens. Brilliant performances, fantastic direction by Michael Arden. Great design. I love maybe happy ending. I love these robots so much. Go and see this on Broadway and in fact go and see any of those shows on Broadway, the ones that are still running, and go and see a bunch of new shows on Broadway. I, you know, I've had, as I've just detailed, mixed experiences with all of these, but I don't know if I regret going to see any of them. I have had such fantastic experiences this year, going to see shows in New York and you know, I've seen shows all over the world, but there is really nothing like going into a Broadway theater and getting that Playbill and going to see a Broadway show. I've had a wonderful 2024, seeing those 37 shows and so many more. Stay tuned for my best shows of the year from all around the world and my most disappointing shows of the year. And stay tuned for my recommendations going into 2025 and more reviews and more trips and eventually, though I don't yet know when back to New York. Thank you for listening to this ranking. I hope that you enjoyed. Feel free to disagree with me wildly in the comments section down below. I would love to hear what you all thought. In the meantime, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey 2025 for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.