The 5 Best Off-Broadway Shows of 2025

Off-Broadway shows often give us a lot to think about, and this year was no exception, with a host of great plays and musicals that entertained audiences while challenging them with some big ideas. The following are my five top off-Broadway shows of the year.

5. The Honey Trap

Irish Repertory Theatre turned out several superb productions in 2025. The most memorable show in its roster was Leo McGann’s The Honey Trap. Taking place during the Troubles, the play tells the story of two British soldiers who go out for drinks and meet a couple of women who turn out to be members of the IRA. When one of the soldiers ends up dead, the other sets out on a quest to discover the killer, only to find he may have had more to do with his friend’s murder than he thought. Playwright McGann wove a tightly plotted drama that by the second act turns into an edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller that questions the deceptive ways we remember the bad things we’ve done. The play became one of the surprise off-Broadway hits of the year, even more surprising coming from a first-time playwright. If you missed it, you’re in luck: It’s returning to Irish Rep in January for a monthlong run.

4. Playing Shylock

“One of the things I always loved about theater is that at its best this is an unsafe space,” says Saul Rubinek in Mark Leiren-Young’s compelling Playing Shylock—a gauntlet-throwing solo show aimed at timid theater producers and compulsory political correctness on modern stages. Rubinek plays an actor playing Shylock in a production of The Merchant of Venice that has just been canceled mid-performance due to protests outside the theater. Why the uproar? Because the director had the effrontery to cast a Jew in the role, which is nowadays performed by someone from any marginalized group other than the one Shakespeare intended. In nearly two hours of blistering commentary on the craven desire of stage companies—and timid sponsors—to offend absolutely nobody, Rubinek decries a theater more eager to coddle sensibilities than question them. He also gives a riveting performance in several excerpts of Shylock’s speeches—delivering the lines with a precision and pathos that made me long to see him as Shylock, for real.

3. Mexodus

One of this year’s most original shows came in the form of a two-hander musical called Mexodus, written and performed by Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson. That portmanteau title alludes to a part of American history that I was not aware of, in which some enslaved people fled not to the north via the Underground Railroad but south to Mexico. Robinson played a man escaping slavery in 1850s Texas when he meets a Mexican tenant farmer, played by Quijada, who helps him elude capture. Robinson and Quijada created a thrilling hip-hop and ranchera score around this narrative, employing a complex matrix of looping audio that filled the theater with layers of sounds that resonated with the cyclical nature of time and history. Both gave unflagging performances, making music with a dozen or so instruments between them and sending the audience out of the theater buzzing. Not since Hamilton has a musical attempted to look at American history in such a compelling and radically creative way.

2. Meet the Cartozians

Plays that explore the complexities of identity and racial politics are fairly common, but Talene Monahon took the conversation in a different direction in her funny and provocative play Meet the Cartozians, featuring a marvelous ensemble cast that included Will Brill and Andrea Martin. It begins in 1924 with a recently immigrated Armenian man learning that his citizenship may be revoked because the government is assessing whether Armenians are white (if Armenians were deemed Asian, they would be ineligible for citizenship by the laws of the time). One hundred years later, a group of Armenian-Americans have a similar discussion about what whiteness means in a racially charged climate where the box you check on a census form determines federal funding, political representation, and civil rights enforcement. In the end, Monahon’s play goes beyond the specifics of its characters and exposes the absurd knots that we tie ourselves into when discussing the contentious social construct we call race. Monahon created a vibrant springboard for uncomfortable but necessary conversations.

1. The Antiquities

I don’t know about you, but I’m coming to rely on AI technology more than ever now, from asking it everyday questions about the best way to brew coffee to generating workout routines. It makes Jordan Harrison’s chilling vision of the future seem even more alarmingly prescient now than it was when it ran at Playwrights Horizons back in February. The Antiquities takes place in a futuristic museum that looks back at the history of a nearly-extinct humanity—from the moment we envisioned creating sentient life (Frankenstein’s monster) to our eventual relegation to a wasteland reservation by AI overlords circa 2240. Harrison chronicles what happens to people in the ensuing years, including a scene in 2032 in which humans choose to be implanted with AI chips in order to stay competitive in the workplace. It’s not as farfetched as it sounds. How much of Harrison’s vision will come true remains to be seen, but AI companions seemed like science fiction when his drama Marjorie Prime ran off-Broadway a decade ago, but they look a lot more like mere science today. You can catch that play right now on Broadway at the Hayes.

Bonus show: I have to mention one unique production that completely blew me away this year, and that’s Masquerade, an immersive reimagining of The Phantom of the Opera. Located in a “secret” venue, you enter with a password and step into a thrilling, maze-like wonderland of rooms in a haunted Parisian opera house. The show puts you right in the midst of a brilliant cast who tell the story of the Phantom, Christine, and Raoul like you’ve never seen it before. It’s a complete thrill that sweeps you up in Phantom‘s music and the creative team’s extraordinary stage magic. For “phans” and curious theatergoers alike, Masquerade should be at the top of your list.

Watch Pete discuss his selections below: