It’s that time of year again, when Vulture’s critics embark on our messiest annual tradition: the finalization of our top-ten lists. Here is the best theater of 2025, according to critics Sara Holdren and Jackson McHenry .

Sara Holdren’s Top 10 Shows

Looking over the list of shows that really stuck with me in 2025, I’m moved by how many of them are fundamentally about the act of conjuring, of making believe within an empty or even a hostile space — imagination and embodiment as radical efforts, courageous and purgative, at times frightening or cautionary. I’m moved because it’s the oldest and the youngest form of theater — “ Sing in me, muse ” … “ Let’s pretend ” — and because it marks a shift away from the flatter, more self-certain issue dramas that have dominated so

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