The Best Broadway and Off-Broadway Performances of 2023

This is always the hardest best-of list to create, because we collectively saw so many wonderful performances this year. But as we look back on the year that was 2023, here are acting turns on and off-Broadway that we really won’t be able to forget, as determined by TheaterMania’s editorial staff.

Alex Joseph Grayson as Jim Conley in Parade
by Linda Buchwald

The revival of Parade earned a lot of praise for the lead performances from Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond, who both deservedly earned Tony nominations, but Alex Joseph Grayson should have also been in the mix for theater awards. Grayson first caught my attention when I saw him go on as the understudy for Jack in Into the Woods on Broadway, which is why understudy performances can be so exciting—you never know when you’ll see a star in the making. In Parade as Jim Conley, a janitor in Leo Frank’s factory, he stole the show twice with his two songs, “That’s What He Said,” in which he testifies at the trial, and “Blues: Feel The Rain Fall,” in which the governor confronts Jim Conley with inconsistencies in his testimony. Luckily, both these numbers are preserved on the cast recording.

William Jackson Harper as Kenneth in Primary Trust
by Zachary Stewart

Have you ever emerged from the theater feeling like you’ve really gotten to know a character, as if they’re a real person? That’s how I felt last May after leaving a matinee of Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust, a small knot of emotion lodged in the back of my throat. William Jackson Harper played Kenneth, a bookstore clerk in a small upstate New York town, who spends most nights at a tiki bar drinking…with his imaginary friend. He’s the local introvert, but through a series of achingly candid monologues directed at the audience, Harper revealed Kenneth to be thoughtful, funny, and charming, forcing us to consider what lies beneath the still waters all around us. It was a masterful performance that will stick with me for a long time, one of those happy convergences of a great script, a strong director (Knud Adams), and the perfect actor.

Sean Hayes as Oscar Levant in Good Night, Oscar
by Pete Hempstead

Sean Hayes gave a literally virtuosic performance as the pianist, actor, and comedian Oscar Levant in Doug Wright’s play Good Night, Oscar, and he deservedly earned a Tony Award for it. For those who saw him, that came as no surprise. Hayes portrayed the pill-addicted, chain-smoking, obsessive-compulsive Levant with gusto, and proved his own phenomenal musical talents by topping it all off with a solo performance of Rhapsody in Blue. Few actors can lay claim to a stage performance that was not only technically flawless (Hayes nailed every one of Levant’s tics and quirks with natural precision) but also landed laughs left and right before taking to the piano and dazzling us with a brilliant take on Gershwin’s masterpiece. It was a memorable performance not just for 2023, but it should go down in the books as one of the best that Broadway has ever seen.

Maleah Joi Moon as Ali in Hell’s Kitchen
by David Gordon

You can always tell when you’re watching a star get born, and this year, that performance for me was Maleah Joi Moon in the Alicia Keys musical Hell’s Kitchen. Moon plays Ali, a teenage stand-in for the singer-songwriter, who navigates first love, art, and personhood in New York City, while singing some of the R&B artist’s biggest hits. Moon carries the show with the poise and skill of someone decades her senior, a fact made even more remarkable when you realize that this is the 21-year-old’s professional debut. When this current run off-Broadway at the Public Theater closes, Moon will undoubtedly carry the show to the Shubert Theatre (where her face is already the logo), and if I were a betting man, I’d say the stage at the 2024 Tony Awards is sure to follow.

Sarah Pidgeon as Diana in Stereophonic
by David Gordon

In David Adjmi’s Stereophonic at Playwrights Horizons, a Fleetwood Mac-style band navigates sudden stardom while recording their latest album. The play is an ensemble piece — the characters are the musicians and their studio engineers — and Daniel Aukin’s production makes sure that every actor has their own moment in the spotlight. But the standout was Sarah Pidgeon’s unforgettable turn as Diana, the lead singer who watches her marriage erode before her very eyes and eventually summons the courage to stand up for herself by refusing to cut down the length of her new song. Pidgeon wears her frustration in her eyes, delivering a quietly heartbreaking, and entirely haunting, performance.

Conrad Ricamora as Ninoy Aquino in Here Lies Love
by Linda Buchwald

It’s been ten years since Conrad Ricamora played Ninoy Aquino in Here Lies Love at the Public Theater. It took a long time for David Byrne’s musical about the rise and fall of Imelda Marcos to get to Broadway, but his performance did not suffer for it. Sadly, the show closed too soon, but long enough to be a memorable part of the year in theater. In his performance, Ricamora was able to entertain the way the club atmosphere demands, but also able to go deeper and get audiences to look beyond the surface level fun of the musical, and deliver one of the most poignant moments of the show with “Gate 37,” in which Aquino left his family to return to the Philippines, where he was killed.

Zenzi Williams as Bea in Jaja’s African Hair Braiding
by Pete Hempstead

You couldn’t find a bad performance in the recent Broadway production of Jocelyn Bioh’s terrific comedy Jaja’s African Hair Braiding if you tried. But along with the debut performance of Dominique Thorne, Zanzi Williams stood out for her role and owned the stage whenever she was on it. She played Bea, the domineering shop employee who calls out her co-workers for eating fish stew on the job and stealing her clients. Williams brash and hilarious portrayal of the self-entitled Bea brought the house down with some of the show’s biggest laughs, but she also got us to feel for Bea in the end as well. During the few scenes when she was not on the stage, I found myself eagerly anticipating her return in the next scene, and when she did, she held my attention without fail. That’s a great performance.

Kara Young as Lutiebelle in Purlie Victorious
by Kenji Fujishima

It’s always a joy to see up-and-coming performers show new facets of their talent, and that is exactly what Kara Young did in Purlie Victorious. Sure, she has shown a facility for comedy before, as those who saw her as Viola in Classical Theatre of Harlem’s 2022 production of Twelfth Night know well. Nothing in even that performance, however, prepared us for the knack for physical comedy she brilliantly displayed while trying to pull a fast one over Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee in the terrific Broadway revival of Ossie Davis’s comedy. Combine that with the kind of fast-talking sass and warm-hearted passion she showed on Broadway in Clyde’s and Cost of Living, and her triumph in Purlie Victorious fuels further hopes that we’ll be seeing much more of her on New York stages for the foreseeable future.