My favorite new musicals of the 2019-2020 (non-Broadway) theatre season:
SUMMA CUM LAUDE
- Waterboy and the Mighty World (Bushwick Starr / Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival)
- A Strange Loop (Page 73 @ Playwrights Horizons)
- We’re Gonna Die (2ST)
- In the Green (LCT3)
- Unknown Soldier (Playwrights Horizons)
- A PINK CHAIR (In Place of a Fake Antique) (Wooster Group @ NYU Skirball)
- Acquanetta (Fisher Center @ Bard)
MAGNA CUM LAUDE
- Tom Morello at the Minetta Lane (Audible @ Minetta Lane)
- IVANKA 2020 (Joe’s Pub @ Public)
- The Anna Wintour Musical (Feinstein’s/54 Below)
- The Wrong Man (MCC)
- Twohander (Feinstein’s/54 Below)
- Susan (Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival)
- The Invention of Tragedy (Flea)
- Treasure (Guggenheim)
- 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)