Top 10 best of Broadway in 2023: From Daniel Radcliffe in ‘Merrily’ to Jessica Chastain in ‘Doll’s House’

As God, Stephen Sondheim and Maria Friedman all understood in 2023, Broadway rolls along. Whether it does so merrily or not is another question, but then that’s one we all have to choose for ourselves.

I reviewed every Broadway show in 2023. Here, in order of preference (alphabetical order being a refuge for wimps) are my 10 best of the year, the first really full calendar year since COVID, with a great deal to remind us of the pleasure of getting out to some of the best theater in the world.

1. “Merrily We Roll Along”: The best of the best this year was director Maria Friedman’s exquisite revival of the justly beloved Stephen Sondheim / George Furth musical about how life destroys youthful optimism and loving relationships with equal alacrity. To some degree, this revival was redemptive for a show that was not originally given a production so centered, brilliantly cast and determined to cut to the existential jugular. But “Merrily” also was a joyous triumph for the tickled-pink triumvirate of Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez and Daniel Radcliffe. What a delight they were to watch as life kicked their ever-hopeful characters in the teeth.

2. “Appropriate”: A surprise attack of take-no-prisoners acting coming right at the end of the year, “Appropriate” was a reminder of playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ literary excellence and the power of a drama with a powerful point of view about America’s racist past, but also determined to empathize with characters experiencing a level of chaos impossible for them to understand. First penned a decade ago but only now arriving on Broadway, this is a story of a fractured family failing to find firm boards upon which to stand among the intergenerational rot. It’s exquisitely directed by Lila Neugebauer. Sarah Paulson lights the flame but an entire cast holds everyone’s feet to the fire. The audience stared, riveted at a sight both strange and all too familiar.

3. “Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch”: Yet another reminder of how much the veteran director Kenny Leon has done for Broadway since the COVID pandemic, “Purlie Victorious” lived up to its central character’s name. Here was a satire of all-American racism set on a wheezing Georgia plantation in the 1950s, replete with pragmatically sycophantic Black characters and a white overlord with a bullwhip. No easy task. And yet Leon and his stars, Kara Young and Leslie Odom, Jr., made audiences laugh, think and cry. Leon throws focus on Black playwrights more generously than any other living director, and here he reminded us that Ossie Davis deserves a place in the pantheon of 20th century greats.

4. “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window”: Lorraine Hansberry wrote “A Raisin in the Sun,” as good a play as any 20th century drama, and then this incredible piece about downtown New York bohemians and radicals. Critics generally have failed to give this masterwork its due, it being so suffused with morality and melancholy and yet so full of emotional intelligence and poetic beauty that it kept you bolt-upright in your seat for nearly three hours. At the heart of director Anne Kauffman’s brilliant production was Rachel Brosnahan, turning in a openhearted performance that did not get anything close to the credit it deserved.

5. “Prima Facie”: An empathetic actor capable of revealing multiple colors and emotions, Jodie Comer offered such a powerful performance at the heart of this legal thriller by Suzie Miller that it was easy to forget this was a solo show. That sense of a major event was also cultivated by the director, Justin Martin, who used Miriam Buether’s sophisticated design and Ben and Max Ringham’s daring sonic underscoring as Comer’s co-stars. They all deserved equal billing, but Comer still offered a master class on how to drive a politicized narrative in the theater while also serving up a deeply vulnerable central character, a lawyer whose value system is upended. “Prima Facie” might have been a procedural on the surface, but the art here was so sophisticated that no single genre did the show justice.

6. “Fat Ham”: A very shrewdly conceived and entertaining riff on William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” set in a contemporary Black family’s backyard, “Fat Ham” took aim at the most fundamental tragic assumptions and made as powerful case as any play in years for what Arthur Miller called representative magnitude. In other words, “Fat Ham” said that a self-doubting, nonconformist young man has the same tragic worth as any Danish prince. It wasn’t perfect and the writer James Ijames seemed to have run out of time, but this juiciest of contemporary plays sparkled with necessary truths and audacious wit, and was given the kind of off-kilter but deeply committed production its sensibility needed.

7. “Here Lies Love”: It was hardly a commercial success, alas, but “Here Lies Love” still looked like no other show in history. The Broadway Theatre was shorn of its orchestra seats in favor of an immersive piece of storytelling that mused on both the trajectory and moral underpinnings (or the lack thereof) of the famed Filipino leaders Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos. David Byrne’s music owed as much to Edinburgh as Manila, but the 2010 album by Byrne and Fatboy Slim still gave the show a gorgeous underpinning. And the high concept from director Alex Timbers made thematic sense, given Imelda’s love of Studio 54. To its credit, “Here Lies Love” explored this couple without turning the show into a moralistic piece of agitprop; the show was both an event and an artistic achievement that did not get the respect it deserved.

8. “Good Night, Oscar”: Broadway audiences always have loved a tour de force performance, something unexpected, dependent on skill and craft and sufficiently surprising to make an always-costly night feel worthwhile. That’s precisely what Sean Hayes delivered in his Tony Award-winning performance as Oscar Levant, an emotionally and psychologically rigorous performance with enough courage not to look away from the immoral practices of an entertainment industry that has been exploiting the unwell for decades. Playwright Doug Wright’s play was a fine vehicle for this work; old fashioned, sure, but deeply committed to a style that once was Broadway’s stock in trade and thus a fine match for the events unfolding here on Jack Paar’s fast-moving, late-nite extravaganza.

9. “Shucked”: Broadway needed laughs in 2023 and this silly show certainly provided them, all thanks to the mind and wit of the writer Robert Horn who seemed to have emptied his entire head of all the one-liners that live and dance therein and stuck the contents on the stage of New York’s Nederlander Theatre. Opinions varied as to the staying power of the show and the “Hee Haw” shtick only went so far, but no one with a pulse was immune to the main purpose of the evening: chortles, hoots and then a few more giggles besides. A highly skilled cast was very much up for all the fun.

10. “A Doll’s House”: Detractors argued the show featured head-miked, too-cool-for-school actors sitting around the stage at Broadway prices, a show made for the era of Audible and AirPods — and the huge popularity of intimate story playing in people’s ears. But such cynicism ignores the richness and vivacity of Jessica Chastain’s central performance as Henrik Ibsen’s Nora, a deep dive into dramatic history’s most significant slammer of doors, as well as the way the director, Jamie Lloyd, found a way to remove unnecessary clutter, both geographic and chronological, and find a fresh way focus a contemporary audience on Ibsen’s ever-timely observations on human behavior.

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

cjones5@chicagotribune.com