What Stayed With Me: 25 of ’25
by Montserrat Mendez
These are my favorite works of 2025, arranged in order and also stubbornly out of it, because this was not a year that moved in straight lines. It was a year that took me apart carefully, then put me back together with different instructions.
If coming of age can arrive late, then this was mine, arriving not with fireworks but with recognition: of where I stand, where I am headed, and who I am willing to carry with me. In the middle of that reckoning, art kept doing what it has always done at its best. It told the truth without asking permission.
These are the stories that stayed with me, the ones that bruised, steadied, clarified, and occasionally rescued me, reminders that even when the world feels unhinged, I'm looking at you Slam Frank, meaning is still being made by people brave enough to tell stories.
25. John Andrew Morrison and the cast of La Mama's Medea of the Laundramat
Currently gracing Oh Mary as Mary’s Husband, John Andrew Morrison was already astonishing, but it was his performance in Medea of the Laundramat that showcased the depth of his talent. This surreal, feminist retelling of the Greek tragedy blends high-flown myth with 1960s coffeehouse absurdity, and Morrison inhabited it fully in an outrageous, potent, and strangely seductive way. Watching him, I felt the weight of ancient rage and the absurdity of marginalization layered on top of one another. The play didn’t just retell a story I knew; it made me see how every act of marginalization feeds the next, looping, relentless, and sometimes darkly comic. Medea of the Laundramat reminded me that anger, humor, and resilience are inseparable, that rage can be hilarious and healing at the same time, and that the line between absurdity and truth is often where the theater is most alive. Morrison and the ensemble made me feel it. It was one of the most audacious feats of theatre of 2025.
24. Black Mirror – Common People
Set in near-future Vancouver, Common People is a vision of life under subscription culture taken to its terrifying extreme. Rashida Jones is haunting, human, heartbreaking as a woman who is a death's door when her husband is sold a very unique solution; Chris O’Dowd carries the spiral of a man doing everything he can; selling himself in Dum Dummies, a hybrid of OnlyFans and GoFundMe, to keep his wife alive. Amanda (Jones) survives thanks to Rivermind, a tech implant that keeps her alive, but only if she keeps upgrading. Rivermind Plus, then Rivermind Lux, each more expensive than the last, forces the characters into a treadmill of survival, a literalization of our world of constant subscription upgrades, in which access to lifeor joy, or health depends on ever-escalating payments.
23. The Business of Marriage – The Gilded Age
Chekhovian, telenovela, razor-sharp, The Gilded Age season 3 dives headfirst into the messy mechanics of marriage and gasp, divorce! in a capitalist, patriarchal nation. This season, all about the “business” of marriage, exposes how these structures feed themselves, who gets crushed along the way, and who just learns to smile while walking the tightrope. I was riveted. not just by the clever deconstruction of the American social contract, but by how alive, hilarious, and gleefully cutting it all feels. The season also struck a powerful balance by diving deeply into the lives of African American families in the Gilded Age, revealing histories and dynamics in ways that felt genuinely surprising and overdue. It was, without question, the show’s strongest season yet.
22.Rachel Brosnahan – Lois Lane, Superman
Lois Lane has always been a lens into truth, a mirror reflecting human curiosity and resilience. Brosnahan inhabits her with clarity, intelligence, and emotional authenticity. Truth becomes her weapon, her anchor, her way of insisting on humanity in a world that often obscures it. How moving to see a journalist stand for truth and how heartbreaking to realize, how rare that quality. that integrity has become.
21. Lily Santiago – Naya Vasquez: Untamed
Netflix’s Untamed needed a steady anchor, and Lily Santiago delivered it. Her journey through the immense and beautifully cinematic landscape of Yellowstone Park, navigating trauma, danger, and her own past, imbued the series with depth and resonance. She carried the weight of circumstance with grace, shaping the story into something far larger than its premise.
20. Julian Manjerico – Oh Mary!
I’m not even sure who Mr. Manjerico was covering the night I went to see Oh Mary! ... erm... Again. How many times have I seen this play now? But that night, he gave my favorite performance of all the many excellent performances I’ve seen. As Mary’s teacher, he was in the moment, ridiculous, sexy, impossibly good-looking, and possessed a comic timing that was almost surgical. Every gesture, every beat, every line landed with precision, making the room feel alive in a way that only the best theater can. He was absurd, magnetic, entirely present, the kind of performance that doesn’t just entertain, it reminds you why you go to the theater at all. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
19. Slam Frank
Unhinged, riotous, polarizing. Slam Frank challenged every assumption I held about theatre. It is political and hilarious, immediate and timeless. Watching it, I felt the thrill of offense that enlightens, that pushes, that demands reflection. Art can be both mirror and hammer, and this absolutely unhinged retelling of the Anne Frank story as a Latine young girl, wielded both mirror and hammer with a sharp and absolutely hilarious audacity. Humanity, in its flaws and brilliance, is a comedy in evolution and this musical reminded me of it viscerally.
18. Indonesia's Papermoon Puppet Theatre
Papermoon’s tour was brief, but their magic lingers. Love, grief, letting go; these are not abstract notions here, they are vivid, tactile, and intimate. Watching, I was transported through the experiences of a young girl learning to release those she loves, her journey a delicate, luminous path toward understanding, compassion, and transformation. It was astounding puppetry work, the kind of art that makes you resee the world.
17. Wake Up Dead Man – Josh O’Connor as Fr. Jud Duplenticy and that One Phone Call.
It all begins with a phone call. A call that stops an investigation cold, that reshapes the narrative, that delivers a thesis on what true Christianity might be: in the kindness we show to those in pain, in the hands we reach toward those who need it most. Jud Duplenticy, played with piercing clarity by Josh O’Connor, flips the scene on its head. Just as the joke begins to wear thin, Louise’s voice cracks when she asks him to pray for her. In an instant, the moment transforms; from comic relief into perhaps the most significant and moving point in Jud’s journey. Through Louise, director Ryan Johnson, offers a counterpoint to the cynicism we so often associate with religion: the church can and should be a place of comfort, acceptance, and care. Yes, Christianity has inflicted harm; yes, it is at this very moment being wielded as a political weapon. But in these hands, it becomes something human, tender, transformative.
s16. Stranger Things - Will's arc completes.
Will’s moment, bending demogorgons into pretzels, was thrilling. But it is his coming out that elevates this show into something operatic, historically resonant, and heartbreakingly brave. In context, this takes place in 1987. And the Band Played On, is just hitting the bookshelves and he's coming out in the middle of the Aids Crisis. In a world terrified, blaming, and misinformed, Will chooses to be seen. I felt the weight of history, Television rarely reminds us that it is the courage of the young that shifts culture, reshapes understanding, demands compassion, and can save the world.
15. Win or Lose
Pixar’s Win or Lose is a revelation, a masterclass in storytelling. Eight episodes, one championship game, but every perspective matters. Each episode reframes what came before, letting us live inside each character’s heart. The animation is warm, expressive, precise, but it is the humanity beneath that resonates. Friendship, growing up, winning, losing, navigating identity, each conflict felt tangible. This series proves that even in the ostensibly simple story of middle school sports, there is room for the expansive, for joy, grief, and self-discovery to coexist.
14. Rose Byrne – If I had Legs I’d Kick You
Mary Bronstein’s brilliant film resists excuses, diagnoses, or tidy explanations, and that is its brilliance. Linda, portrayed by Byrne, is raw, volatile, fragmented. A mother who runs on fumes, self-medicates, navigates relentless pressures and expectations, all while attending to her sick child. The writing does not soften her. The performance, however, does, it humanizes, it devastates, it makes the audience feel every impossible choice, every collapse, every flicker of resilience. This is modern motherhood distilled: exhaustion, guilt, and courage woven into a single, unforgettable presence. My personal pick for best actress of the year.
13. As if We Never Said Goodbye - Sunset Boulevard
I have commitment issues, so I never really committed to a life in the theatre, but Nicole Scherzinger’s performance, particularly in “As If We Never Said Goodbye,” sealed me. Theatre: live, intimate, transformative is where I am meant to be. It was "a you had to be there moment." I looked around, at the audience, at the curtains, at the light and then that spotlight, suspending a human in that moment in time, it was a much-needed reminder of why I pursue this art form, why the small and grand houses alike exist to witness human stories unfold before our eyes. The beauty of a single song, a single moment, can define everything.
12. Monet Hurst-Mendoza’s - Torera
Torera moves like the pulse of Mexico itself: quietly, subtly, and then everywhere, until your own assumptions about inheritance, tradition, and identity have been irrevocably reshaped. Monet Hurst-Mendoza’s play insists that identity is not given, not inherited, but fought for and argued over. The bullring expands to every arena of desire and duty, every unspoken negotiation between self and society. The play is fierce, intimate, and expansive, insisting that persistence, imagination, and courage are acts of revolution in themselves.
and because I love actors who shake the foundations of the work playwrights do, here is what I wrote about Elena Hurst: "And then there is Elena’s mother, Pastora, portrayed by Elena Hurst with the kind of quiet ferocity that shakes the foundations of the play. Her performance hums at a lower frequency than the others, but it reverberates longest; she is the still center around which the storms of ambition and defiance revolve." Ms. Hurst goes on my list of performances of the year.
11. Welcome to Derry
I gave up streaming for weeks, anticipating Sunday night like a ritual. Welcome to Derry is addictive, immersive, terrifying, and astonishingly human. It balances horror and empathy with exquisite precision, centering children in stories that unfold with unpredictability, horror and unexpected tenderness. The young cast is extraordinary, carrying trauma, resilience, and imagination in equal measure. The show exists in a Stephen King multiverse, reminding me of the narrative threads that have shaped my own journey through America; its darkness, its hope, its capacity to terrify and uplift in equal measure. The series lingers in the mind, a haunting echo of fear, memory, and overcoming the horrors that life throws at you, just to be in the light, for a little while.
10. K Pop Demon Hunters
"What is this?" I asked my niece, incredulously, as we watched. And yet I could not look away. K Pop Demon Hunters is pure kinetic joy; a spectacle of luscious animation, a soundscape designed to reverberate in your chest, a narrative that finds profound resonance. Beneath the surface, it is a story of self-acceptance, collective effort, of standing together in the face of darkness, of embracing difference while pursuing a common goal. The aesthetic is vibrant, the rhythm intoxicating, the energy relentless. It is a revolution you can dance to, a playful yet urgent testament to solidarity, to courage, to the way communities survive when they refuse to be divided.
9. Netflix's - Adolescence
Adolescence arrives as a blood-chilling mirror, reflecting the world we are leaving to our children. Netflix has crafted something devastatingly precise. It is a tale of chaos, vulnerability, and the subtle violence of inattention. The cast carries this story with unflinching commitment, their performances alive with tension, heartbreak, and moral urgency. The series is a warning, a meditation on the consequences of technological neglect, a portrait of how easily innocence can be corrupted or lost when a society abdicates responsibility. Watching it is like feeling your own complicity in slow motion, understanding how fragile the structures we imagine as safe truly are. It is television as moral reckoning, as art that forces reflection, as cautionary tale brought to burning life.
8. Sinners
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is cinematic electricity in human form. Beneath the sulfurous Southern sky, the film pulses with Gothic vitality, its atmosphere heavy with history, grief, and possibility. Vampires are not mere monsters here; they are allegorical instruments, draining bloodlines and erasing legacies as an act of historical commentary. Every frame is imbued with American sin and resilience, with memory and erasure entwined. The Mississippi Delta is more than a setting, it is a character, a vessel for bluesy ache, loss, and unbreakable spirit. Sinners is simultaneously terrifying, beautiful, and necessary, forcing reflection on the weight of lineage, the persistence of oppression, and the defiance required to endure. Its mythos, electric and alive, refuses to be inert; it reminds us that horror can illuminate truths that prose alone cannot convey.
7. Red Bull’s Production of Richard II
Shakespeare's Richard II has long been a challenging companion to me. I have wrestled with the text, at times falling in love with its poetry, at other times lost in its labyrinth of words. But Red Bull’s production illuminated it anew. Michael Urie, with a combination of vulnerability and bravado, delivers a performance that is at once sensual, foolish, tragic, and piercingly alive. He inhabits the text in a way that is physical and spiritual, making every syllable a pulse you feel in your chest and, quite literally, in your bones. Director Craig Baldwin’s bold cuts and reinterpretations elevate stakes, reimagine characters as more active, more human, more immediate. The production is a dazzling fusion of eroticism, intellect, and playfulness; its humor sharp, its intensity relentless. For years, I have waited to be so moved by Shakespeare again, and this production rewarded that patience with revelation after revelation, laughter entwined with heartbreak, beauty with the edge of danger.
6. Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein
I did not expect to love this film as much as I did. From the first frame, it is a world meticulously conceived: every shadow, every hue, every movement is deliberate. Del Toro does not merely direct; he sculpts cinema itself, shaping it as one might shape clay, turning it into a living, breathing organism that both dazzles and terrifies. The performances inhabit this world fully, refusing to simply act within it; they live within it, the way stories from our nightmares and dreams live inside our memories long after we leave the theater. Del Toro’s visual language is poetry: color delineates emotion, architecture mirrors the soul, and movement becomes a grammar of feeling. The film is also a meditation on humanity, on monstrosity, on what it means to be stitched together from fragments and still demand recognition. I will revisit it again and again, each viewing revealing another layer, another choice, another heartbeat beneath the skin of the story. Cinematic, visceral, intelligent, and moving. Clearly my favorite movie of the year.
5. Sarah Snook - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Sarah Snook joins an elite list of performances I will never forget. This production was both a technological marvel and a living delivery of my favorite English-language writer; everyone knows how I feel about Oscar Wilde. There are moments that will linger with me: the dinner scene, where Snook inhabited every character with precision and nuance; the garden scene, where she embodied Dorian, a naïve beauty being groomed toward corruption, and transformed the familiar tale into something startlingly new. She made me see Wilde’s story afresh, sharper, darker, and infinitely more alive.
4. Lincoln Center’s and Director's Lear DeBossonet Triumphant Production of RAGTIME
From the moment Shaina Taub said, “But Goldman Knew it was only 1906…” and the cast answered with “and there were 94 years to go!” I was undone, cracked open by a story that understands America not as destiny but as a test, especially in Tateh, the immigrant artist searching for a place for him and his daughter to call home. In a moment when the horizon feels dim, Brandon Uranowitz took our hand and sang, “Imagine you’re fearless,” and I felt something rare, the courage to fight for the American dream without surrendering being fully Puerto Rican. His is an epically miraculous performance.
The production refuses to stop there, unleashing Joshua Henry’s seismic Coalhouse Walker, Caissie Levy’s aching Mother, and Ben Levi Ross’s devastatingly lost and recognizable, Mother's Younger Brother, until the evening feels less like a revival than a reckoning. This cast doesn’t perform history; it engraves itself into it, staking a serious claim as the most impressive Broadway ensemble of the century so far. When the company sings, “It was the music / Of something beginning / An era exploding / A century spinning / In riches and rags / And in rhythm and rhyme / The people called it ragtime,” it lands as both memory and mandate. America is our story, still unfinished, and listening, you know there are songs left to write.
3. Intar's - O.K.! – Christin Eve Cato
O.K.! lands with the force of laughter that knows exactly why it’s dangerous. In a cramped dressing room, as Roe v. Wade collapses and an old abortion law comes roaring back to life, Christin Eve Cato reclaims Oklahoma! not as nostalgia but as urgency, braiding reproductive justice, working-class survival, and Latino spiritual life into something riotously funny and quietly ferocious. Her writing treats joy as resistance and magic realism as daily fact, where ancestors and tarot cards have as much authority as history books. Under Melissa Crespo’s assured direction, an extraordinary cast reveals a world in which nothing is merely comic and everything is at stake. This is not a revision, it’s a reclamation, a reminder that the most radical thing American theatre can do right now is tell the truth with humor, nerve, and complete faith in the audience’s ability to recognize itself.
2. The People's Theatre - Domino Effect – Marco Antonio Rodríguez
Domino Effect understands America the way lived-in truth does, not as a promise framed on a wall but as a fragile ritual we keep performing, hoping it still holds. On a warm afternoon in a Washington Heights park, a simple game of dominoes becomes the table where generations, cultures, grief, transition, and longing finally sit together. Rodríguez writes with a poet’s ear and a citizen’s urgency, folding magic realism into intimacy to ask what we owe one another when the national story starts to crack. Guided with quiet precision by Mino Lora and carried by a luminous ensemble, the play lets secrets surface and silences speak. It doesn’t reassure; it wakes you up, reminding us that the future is shaped not by slogans, but by who is brave enough to stay at the table when the first tile falls.
