While box office grosses and nonprofit theaters haven’t fully bounced back from that long pandemic shutdown, the state of what’s being produced on New York City stages in 2024 has been remarkable in its quality and diversity. What’s striking is the originality we’ve seen, both in new productions as well as in revivals that approach time-worn material in entirely fresh ways. Here are my picks for the year’s best.

1. Maybe Happy Ending (Broadway) Once in a blue moon, a new show comes along that takes Broadway utterly by surprise and shakes up how we view the whole musical theater genre. Resolutely old-fashioned but impressively modern, Maybe Happy Ending is a sui generis original that is as understated in its storytelling as it is cutting-edge in its design. Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen don’t need a soldering iron to produce onstage sparks, and their wide-eyed chemistry together goes a long way to sell this future-set fable. Maybe Happy Ending is a beguiling show whose power sneaks up on you unawares, suggesting a technological future where human virtues may survive even the possible supremacy of machines. (Tickets on sale)

2. Oh, Mary! (Broadway) The funniest show to hit Broadway in years arrives from left field by way of the downtown theater scene. That’s where Cole Escola, the author and star of this Drunk History-style treatment of Mary Todd Lincoln, honed their particular brand of queer comedy — which owes a debt to predecessors like Charles Busch and Charles Ludlum but has a millennial sensibility that very much of this moment. (Tickets on sale)

3. The Outsiders (Broadway) The Outsiders sparkles not just as a smart adaptation of the beloved S.E. Hinton novel (and middling Francis Ford Coppola movie) but a genuinely great American musical. The songs, by the indie folk duo Jamestown Revival (with Justin Levine), don’t feel like pro forma music breaks but organic engines driving a tragic story of class conflict and brotherly love to onstage moments with real heft. Plus, the score boasts a country-inflected energy and lyrics that match the plainspoken poetry of Robert Frost. Who says that nothing gold can stay? (Tickets on sale)

4. Counting and Cracking (Off Broadway) Great theater has the power to bridge time and place — and that’s certainly the case with S. Shakthidharan’s three-and-a-half-hour drama about a Sri Lankan family from the country’s Hindu-practicing Tamil minority during the onset of anti-Tamil pogroms in the 1950s. The sweeping story works on both an intimate and broader level, to underscore the real cost of sectarian and class differences and the challenges of global migration.

5. Jonah (Off Broadway) Rachel Bonds crafted an eye-opening portrait of a woman who turns to storytelling to survive, spinning yarns that allow her to cope with the trauma of her messed-up girlhood. Her play got a pitch-perfect production from director Danya Taymor anchored by an astonishing central performance by Gabby Beans (currently in Broadway’s Romeo + Juliet) that effortlessly spans decades.

6. Cats: The Jellicle Ball (Off Broadway) This year saw plenty of revivals that amounted to gut renovations. None was as successful as Zhailon Levinston and Bill Rauch’s revelatory overhaul of Cats, the bloated Andrew Lloyd Webber megahit that no critic has ever really loved. By transposing the show into a semi-immersive experience set in the world of Paris Is Burning-style ballroom competitions, the creators found surprising new layers to the lightweight material — and created a whole new and fun dynamic. Purrers were burning.

7. The Apiary (Off Broadway) Actress-turned-writer Kate Douglas’s pitch-black comedy begins as a kind of fable about the environmental crisis, set in a lab whose workers are struggling to revive ailing hives of bees. But it soon morphs into far weirder territory while still retaining its grounding in the real world. This is a honey of a play.

8. The Fires (Off Broadway) Raja Feather Kelly is best known as a choreographer, but he crafted a remarkably fluid debut show as the playwright and director of The Fires. Set in a railroad downtown apartment that mimicked the narrow space of the soon-to-be-vacated Soho Rep, the action unfolds in three different time periods — as three young Black gay men move simultaneously about the space as they grapple with existential questions about their creative ambitions and place in an often unwelcoming society.

9. Someone Spectacular (Off Broadway) This is another play by an actress, Doménica Feraud, who sketches her six characters as fully rounded individuals who each get moments to stand out as members of a grief counseling group whose leader is mysteriously MIA. They needle each other, they bicker, but they also lend their support — suggesting all the ways in which communal actions (like the theater) can nudge us toward a better version of our selves.

10. Encores! 2024: Once Upon a Mattress, Jelly’s Last Jam, Titanic, Ragtime (Off Broadway) New York City Center’s beloved revival specialists had a banner year, bringing souped-up concert-style productions of classic musicals that both delighted us with their musicianship (and the lush onstage orchestra) while also inviting us to think freshly about material that in many cases has gathered some dust. Sutton Foster plopped herself back onto Mattress for a Broadway run that both nodded to and moved beyond Carol Burnett’s original rendition. The rest of the season held such wonderful surprises, from the reconception of the problematic look at Jelly Roll Morton to a staging of Titanic that proved you don’t need to spend eight-figure sums on stage effects to produce a moving epic.

Honorable mention (in alphabetical order):

All of Me (Signature Pershing Square) offered a rom-com for two characters in wheelchairs who sparked for reasons other than their shared mobility issues.
The Ally (The Public Theater) presented a thoughtful take on the Middle East crisis that grappled with all of its nettlesome complexities.
The Beacon (Irish Rep) explores a mother and son who belatedly come to terms with their estrangement
Dead Outlaw (Audible/Minetta Lane Theater) took a tiny footnote in history and turned it into a bizarro-world musical elegy to how the American Dream can curdle into violence, cruelty, and casual indifference.
Death Becomes Her (Broadway) re-creates the big-screen comedy, with wonderfully wicked turns from onstage frenemies Megan Hilty and Jennifer Simard. (Tickets on sale)
Eureka Day (Broadway) boasts the most laugh-out-loud scene on stage this year — without a joke uttered by any member of the first-rate cast. (Tickets on sale through Feb. 2)
Gypsy (Broadway) gives Audra McDonald her turn as Rose. (Tickets on sale)
The Hills of California (Broadway) presents another version of a horrific stage mother, this time as family drama.
Illinoise (Park Avenue Armory and Broadway) reimagined Sufjan Stevens’s concept album as one part live concert, and one part modern ballet, with memorable choreography by Justin Peck.
Suffs (Broadway) is a showcase for composer-writer-star Shaina Taub, whose biggest achievement may be connecting the century-old story of the women’s suffrage movement to contemporary issues in our political life. (Tickets on sale through Jan. 5)