My favorite new musicals of the 2019-2020 (non-Broadway) theatre season:

SUMMA CUM LAUDE

1. Waterboy and the Mighty World (Bushwick Starr / Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival)
2. A Strange Loop (Page 73 @ Playwrights Horizons)
3. We’re Gonna Die (2ST)
4. In the Green (LCT3)
5. Unknown Soldier (Playwrights Horizons)
6. A PINK CHAIR (In Place of a Fake Antique) (Wooster Group @ NYU Skirball)
7. Acquanetta (Fisher Center @ Bard)

MAGNA CUM LAUDE

1. Tom Morello at the Minetta Lane (Audible @ Minetta Lane)
2. IVANKA 2020 (Joe’s Pub @ Public)
3. The Anna Wintour Musical (Feinstein’s/54 Below)
4. The Wrong Man (MCC)
5. Twohander (Feinstein’s/54 Below)
6. Susan (Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival)
7. The Invention of Tragedy (Flea)
8. Treasure (Guggenheim)
9. Delightmare of the Year: Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise (Shed)

CUM LAUDE (AKA: everything else I saw, listed alphabetically)

• Andares (Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival)
• Bat Out of Hell (City Center)
• Because of Winn Dixie (Goodspeed)
• Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (New Group @ Signature)
• Broadbend, Arkansas (Transport Group @ The Duke)
• Broadway Bounty Hunter (Greenwich House Theater)
• Cyrano (New Group @ The Daryl Roth Theatre)
• Darling Grenadine (Roundabout)
• Dog Man: The Musical (TheaterWorksUSA @ Lucile Lortel)
• Emojiland (Duke on 42nd)
• Evolution of a Sonero (Puerto Rican Traveling Theater)
• Felix Starro (Ma-Yi @ Theatre Row)
• Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation (Triad)
• Hans Christian Andersen: Tales Real and Imagined (Ensemble for the Romantic Century @ The Duke on 42nd Street)
• In the Penal Colony (Next Door NYTW)
• Leap and the Net Will Appear (New Georges @ Flea)
• Scotland, PA (Roundabout)
• Soft Power (Public)
• Swan Lake / Loch na hEala (Next Wave @ BAM)
• The Secret Life of Bees (Atlantic)
• Tumacho (Clubbed Thumb @ Connelly Theater)
• We’re Only Alive for a Short Amount of Time (Public)
• Where We Stand (WP Theater)