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 are the best shows that theater critics Sara Holdren and Jackson McHenry saw in 2024.
10. YELLOW FACE
Over the decades, layers of sediment have built up upon the incidents depicted in David Henry Hwang’s self-immolating farce, first performed Off Broadway in 2007, providing this Broadway production even more kindling than it had before. This version’s DHH, played by TV’s Daniel Dae Kim, is reflecting upon several discourse shifts in representational politics on his involvement in the protests against the casting of Jonathan Pryce in the 1991 Broadway run of Miss Saigon and his own subsequent flop Face Value. Packed with real history (Off Broadway MVP Shannon Tyo makes a hilarious Cameron Mackintosh) and invention (this DHH unknowingly launches the career of a white guy who pretends to be Asian), Leigh Silverman’s production was sprightly, with a gimlet take on its hero’s activist self-regard, and it found its heart in an incredible Francis Jue, returning to the role of DHH’s father, a man in love with the promise of America (and a big Miss Saigon fan) who becomes, with another twist of the screw, its victim.