The 10 Best Broadway Debuts of 2025

Over the past year, Broadway welcomed a range of exciting debuts, showcasing artists who excelled onstage and off. TheaterMania’s editorial team has compiled an alphabetical list of the standout debuts from 2025, celebrating the talents that left a major impression on our theatergoing.

Knud Adams — director of English

Knud Adams was already a director of uncommon talent when I first encountered his work in 2020, in the off-Broadway debut of Eboni Booth’s Paris. But his powers have grown in those five years, as evidenced by his astonishing production of Sanaz Toossi’s English. Adams complemented hyper-realistic performances with elegant design, pulling the audience into this Iranian classroom where the things left unsaid are often more significant than what is spoken aloud. Adams sustained that delicious intrigue for 90 riveting minutes, the audience hanging on every word and silent beat. It’s the kind of treatment every playwright dreams about, especially for their Broadway debut.

— Zachary Stewart, Chief Critic

Alana Arenas — Morgan Jasper in Purpose

She wasn’t onstage the longest in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s play Purpose, but Alana Arenas being the only actor left out of the 2025 awards race still feels insane. As Morgan Jasper, a disgraced political spouse headed to prison for tax fraud, Arenas delivered a performance that felt downright explosive. The moment she entered wearing a muumuu and dark shades, you could feel the air in the room shift, and we truly didn’t know what might happen next. The resulting dinner scene was a brilliant nightmare of hilarity and tenseness. Arenas ate — and her performance took the cake.

— David Gordon, Editor-in-Chief

Will Harrison — Jacob Dunne in Punch

In the Broadway production of James Graham’s Punch, Will Harrison delivered an astonishingly multifaceted performance as Jacob Dunne, a troubled young man who kills an EMT with a single punch, lands in prison, and somehow manages to turn his life around. In the first act, Harrison bursts onto the stage with raw, male energy, introducing us to Jacob’s chaotic world of self-destruction. In Act Two, the mischief fades, replaced by shame and regret, with glimmers of redemption on the horizon. In charting Jacob’s transformation from reckless youth to remorseful adult, Harrison made the character’s journey—and the play’s larger themes of violence and accountability—land with remarkable emotion at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. I’ve never heard so much collective sniffling — from myself included.

— David Gordon, Editor-in-Chief

Jak Malone — Hester Leggatt in Operation Mincemeat

It takes a special actor to turn an officious administrative assistant into both an Olivier and Tony Award-winning role. Operation Mincemeat is an ensemble piece through and through, but since the musical’s days across the pond, Jak Malone has stood out from the quintet in his primary role of MI5 secretary Hester Leggatt. Hester does get to sing the musical’s best song—“Dear Bill,” the fabricated love letter at the center of the title World War II deception mission—but it doesn’t sing itself. Malone is subtle, touching, and wholly sincere in his gender-bending performance. He’s also a hit on red carpets, often sporting a fabulous cape, a smoky eye, and his Italian greyhound Dracula. From every angle, it’s been a flawless maiden voyage.

— Hayley Levitt, Critic 

Lesley Manville — Jocasta in Oedipus

Lesley Manville has performed on New York stages before, but surprisingly she hadn’t made her Broadway debut until this year in Oedipus, Robert Icke’s reworking of Sophocles’ tragedy. I remember being knocked out by her haunting performance as Mary Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey Into Night at BAM a few years back, but this year she took things to another level as the ill-fated Jocasta. Her performance is so dazzling and deep that she comes off as the real tragic hero of Icke’s electrifying play. Leading an incredible cast along with Mark Strong in the title role, Manville is looking like a top contender for a Tony.

— Pete Hempstead, Managing Editor

Louis McCartney — Henry Creel in Stranger Things: The First Shadow

It would be easy enough to leave Stranger Things: The First Shadow, the onstage prequel to the Netflix megahit series, talking only about the extraordinary technology, projections and special effects that help bring the show to life. Instead, audiences leaving the Marquis Theatre can’t help but discuss the extraordinary accomplishment of 23-year-old British actor Louis McCartney, who brings out every aspect of Henry Creel, the confused teenage newcomer to suburban Hawkins, Indiana. Watching Henry’s desire to fit in – while knowing full well he’s no ordinary adolescent – is heart-wrenching thanks to McCartney’s vulnerable performance. It’s also one of the most physically demanding roles currently on stage, which McCartney handles with almost supernatural ease. Let’s hope he doesn’t stay a stranger to the American stage.

— Brian Scott Lipton, Features Contributor

Anne Reid — Merope in Oedipus

Watching the 90-year-old British actress Anne Reid grab our hearts by the throat as Merope, the outwardly impatient and inwardly tortured mother of the title character in Robert Icke’s modern-day update of Oedipus, is to have our brain synapses rewired. Weeks later, I can’t forget the scene in which a terrified, tearful Merope finally explains how she and her husband found Oedipus (a magnificent Mark Strong) in the woods and later adopted him – a revelation that upends her son’s life in ways that were previously unimaginable. Nor can I forget Reid’s skill in neither underplaying nor overplaying this pivotal moment. O Gods of Theater, why did America have to wait so many decades to witness this kind of brilliance?

— Brian Scott Lipton, Features Contributor

Jasmine Amy Rogers — Betty Boop in Boop!

Boop! The Musical was one of the most charming shows of 2025, and it featured Jasmine Amy Rogers in her breakout Tony-nominated performance. She was my top pick for the award, despite some big competition from Audra McDonald and Nicole Scherzinger. She didn’t win, but at the end of the day, it was her exuberant performance as the iconic Betty Boop come to life in New York City that made audiences realize she was one of the year’s standout triple threats. Boop! didn’t last long enough for enough folks to see her in action, but make sure you catch her now in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

— Pete Hempstead, Managing Editor

Sarah Snook — All of the Roles in The Picture of Dorian Gray

Sarah Snook’s solo performance in The Picture of Dorian Gray was such an athletic feat, by an hour in, you wanted to pass her a Gatorade and a banana just to make sure she was OK. But she was more than OK, juggling all 26 of Oscar Wilde’s twisted characters and the many wigs and costume pieces that swirled around her like a tornado of gothic couture. Kip Williams’s vision of a multimedia wonderland also had Snook daring the technology Gods with all the camera blocking and iPhone operating she had to do live each night. But with more extreme close-ups in Dorian Gray’s two-hour run time than all four seasons of Succession, there was nowhere on the Music Box stage to hide. It was the Broadway debut of an acting daredevil, and Snook earned the Tony she won for it with buckets of sweat—and a camera roll of gnarly selfies.

— Hayley Levitt, Critic 

Sam Tutty — Dougal in Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)

Friends in the UK have been singing the praises of Sam Tutty for years (he was the West End’s original Evan Hansen), but he exceeded expectations in his Broadway debut as Dougal, a movie-obsessed Brit appropriately on his first trip to New York. An old-fashioned showman at the age of 27, Tutty brings irresistible charm to a role that could easily drift into off-putting territory. It’s a trick that very few actors (Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire comes to mind) can pull off, but Tutty does, buoying this two-and-a-half-hour two hander on a sea of laughter with his vigorous physical performance and perfect comic timing. He and his co-star, Christiani Pitts, are a big part of why I loved this musical so much.

— Zachary Stewart, Chief Critic