Best Of Broadway 2023: The Year’s Top 10, And What To See In 2024

deadline.com:

Perhaps no single theatrical image sums up Broadway‘s 2023 more effectively than Jessica Chastain’s Nora leaving her dreary, unfulfilled doll house life to exit directly into the unlimited possibilities of an honest-to-god New York City street.

Unless maybe it’s that huge tree that sprouts up smack dab in the middle of an abandoned Southern plantation home after the Appropriate cast has left the stage, a gut-punch reminder that the sins of a nation’s past don’t just wither away because we don’t want to see them.

Or maybe it was Leslie Odom Jr. delivering that eulogy-coda in Purlie Victorious, blessing his “Africanic brothers” — and the audience — with the words “Now may the Constitution of the United States go with you; the Declaration of Independence stand by you; the Bill of Rights protect you; and the State Commission Against Discrimination keep the eyes of the law upon you, henceforth, now and forever.

Amen.” Those moments illustrated what theater does best, and what so much of Broadway did this year: Provide an unflinching eye — and offer at least a modicum of hope — during very dark times.