At Playbill, we have two staff meetings a week. And at these meetings, while we do discuss business, we also regularly go off-track as we talk about shows, stars, the latest gossip—basically if you're buzzing about it, so are we at Playbill. As part of our end-of-year coverage, we've decided to let all of you into one of our editorial meetings. We recorded a recent meeting where we discussed our favorite theatrical moments of 2024. These aren't just shows (though we did reveal our favorite show list here). Instead, these best moments were moments of inventive stagecraft, standout performances, and emotional highs that won't be replicated anytime soon. 

We hope in reading our thoughts, it inspires you to think back on your most memorable theatre moments of the year. Below were Playbill's favorite theatre moments of 2024, in no particular order.

Elphabas Singing "As Long as You're Mine"

Jeffrey Vizcaíno (director of social media): The first moment I'll talk about was at Playbill's Pride festival celebration in Times Square this past summer. This year, we had Talia Suskauer and Lissa deGuzman, who are both Elphabas on Broadway, sing “As Long As You’re Mine” to each other, just a little Pride version of that song. And at the end, they made out. I just thought it was really cool, because I think everyone—who now loves the movie, and at the time just loved the show—had always joked about the queer undertones of the show and the book. I think the two of them are pretty phenomenal performers, and it was fun to see them celebrating queer love in Wicked right before the movie took over.

Jason Robert Brown Taking on Journalism in The Connector

Logan Culwell-Block (managing news editor): One of my favorite moments of this year was Jessica Molaskey in The Connector at MCC Theater. I was really excited when that casting was announced, because she's one of my favorite performers, but she hasn't really done stage work in a long time. And specifically, the stuff that I love her for is all Jason Robert Brown: She was the original “Stars and the Moon” in Songs for a New World, and she was the original Mary's mother in Parade. And she was great in The Connector, she played the Fact Checker, the kind of moral center of this story, representing honesty and journalism—and she had a song about why she cared so much about facts being right that was devastating, and by far the real highlight of The Connector to me. She's going to be back on Broadway in the spring in Floyd Collins, and I can’t wait.

Margaret Hall (staff writer): One of my favorite moments is also from The Connector! One of my favorite things about Jason Robert Brown, as a composer, is his ability to write contained character arcs within a song. It's why I love his song cycles, it's why “Stars and the Moon” is so killer in Songs for a New World. And I really loved the song “Success” from The Connector. It’s the story of this Scrabble savant, and I loved the way it really let Max Crumm shine: I think Max is an incredibly under-appreciated, deeply funny performer, and this song really let them shine. It also has one of my favorite lyrical punch lines from this year: When the ensemble shouts “success!” and then Max as Waldo goes “could be my middle name. If my middle name wasn't Dan.” It is so simple, but it makes me laugh every time I listen to the cast recording.

Gavin Creel Kissing Jason Robert Brown at Miscast

Heather Gershonowitz (photo editor/photographer): My favorite moment of the year, and I didn’t know it was happening at the time, was seeing Gavin Creel perform for the last time. I didn’t get to see Walk On Through. But at Miscast, when he performed with his band, he did “Mamma Mia," which was hilarious—he ran into the house and decided to kiss Jason Robert Brown (who was being honored that night) on the lips. It was amazing, and entirely his spirit. Every year, I'm grateful to be able to photograph Miscast, because I grew up loving those videos and wanting so badly to be in that room. And then having that room be like this past year, having that space be one of the last times all of us really experienced Gavin’s spirit in full...that's my number one.

Culwell-Block: Can we talk about Gavin Creel’s memorial? It took me three days to write that recap because I couldn’t stop crying.

Hall: My big takeaway from the memorial is just that Gavin so clearly understood what is actually important in life. He made great art, but more importantly, he made great connections in human relationships. That speech that Celia Keenan-Bolger gave was— that's the kind of obituary you hope someone remembers you by. And as someone who spends a lot of time writing our obituaries, I can tell you that not everyone has beautiful stories like that; the outpouring for Gavin and the fact that people are still posting their stories publicly on social months later, by the time we got to the memorial, it was just a flood of love. When that cast of Hair came forward and sang “Let The Sunshine In,” the way they were just holding onto each other, and the shaft of light as they used Gavin’s voice to mix in with their live vocals…. He was so loved.

The Fireflies in Maybe Happy Ending

Ethan Treiman (video editor): One moment, which made me cry because of its theatrical inventiveness, was in Maybe Happy Ending. There's a moment when the two main characters’ obsessions, jazz music and fireflies, meet on stage, and it is just… you’re anticipating seeing the fireflies for much of the show, and it was hard to imagine really being impressed when they finally arrived. But by uniting these interests of music and fireflies, so simply, brought me to tears.

Diep Tran (editor in chief): What was so wonderful about that moment in the show is that, from the outside, it looks super simple: You put musicians on a rotating turntable, the set opens up to reveal them, and there's going to be some lights. What made it so effective was the fact that the show had gotten us so invested in both of those characters and both of their very idiosyncratic interests. And the contrast! We had gotten used to seeing this tiny little world inside of their room, with no one else aside from the four cast members on the stage. When the musical finally opened up, it kind of felt like a shock to the system, that there was a bigger world. It's a beautiful moment, but it's also a tragic moment at the same time because these characters then go back to their small little worlds—which is why the back half of that show destroyed all of us.

Meredith Ammons (social media coordinator): I'm not a crier at all, and at the end, I literally let out a verbal sob in front of everybody, and I was in a curtain of tears. I can usually predict plots pretty well, but this ending? I just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

"Easy" During Water for Elephants

Hall: We are starting to enter an age where spectacle must be justified to impress me. I adored the circus sequence in Water for Elephants that accompanies “Easy,” which is the sequence with the horse. We’ve seen a lot of shows in the last decade that have been playing with the ways in which circus can be used in a musical, and not just in a Cirque du Soleil-style context. Sure, we have the Cirque musical Paramour, but there was also the Pippin revival, parts of King Kong. But that “Easy” sequence is my favorite use of circus that I've ever seen on a Broadway stage. It was so specific, but also so simple: just Isabelle McCalla's crystal clear vocals while Antoine Boissereau worked above her on the aerial silks. It was so incredibly effective, and that moment when Antoine soared out over the audience took my breath away. It was the most character-driven acrobatic work I had ever seen.

The Screen in Sunset Blvd

Andrew Gans (senior news editor): I think the star of the Sunset Boulevard revival is really the production. In London I saw it twice: I saw it first with Rachel Tucker, and then I saw it second with Nicole Scherzinger, and it worked just as well with both of them. What was so fascinating for me was just how exciting Jamie Lloyd's direction was—especially the first moment when the screen comes down and you see the title sequence. At that point, I was trying to figure out what was going on: Are we watching Sunset Boulevard the Musical? Or are we watching a musical being filmed? And I'm still not quite sure what all of it means, but I just thought all of that, everything he added to it, was exciting—and it just showed that you don't really need the huge scenery and costumes to effectively stage that show.

Culwell-Block: But by the same token, I have to say to people who think that production is minimalist: To be very clear, it is not cheap. That screen is the most massive, 4k beautiful screen I've ever seen in my life. And I think we would probably all have a heart attack if we saw the price.

Ammons: Also, on top of that, just seeing all the creative team having their names go across the screen during the end credits—I was overhearing the PR team say, like, "Our names were up on there!" And that's just so cool to see. That's a very creative way to have those people, who usually don't get as much recognition, have their names on stage and have a part in the show every night.

The Avett Brothers Performing on Broadway

Ammons: I had a lot of feelings about Swept Away. But as a North Carolinian, the Avett Brothers are very, very popular. The fact that they got a musical on Broadway was really amazing to see. It felt like a piece of North Carolina on the stage, and one of my favorite moments was on opening night, when the audience was surprised with the Avett Brothers coming out to perform on stage with the cast. It was just so cool to get to see them perform on a Broadway stage. They're just a bunch of boys from Concord, North Carolina, and now they have a Broadway show!

Seeing Ragtime the Day After the Election

Tran: One of my favorite moments involves Ethan the day after the election—when all of us were devastated and it was funeral vibes everywhere. I was going to see Ragtime that night, because I had forgotten November 6 was the day after the election when I scheduled the tickets. And my friends are people with working emotional boundaries who didn't want to go with me. So then you all bullied Ethan into going with me, because he had never seen Ragtime. As we were sitting at the show, during the song “Journey On,” when four characters were harmonizing together, Ethan leaned over to me and said, “This is amazing!”

Gershonowitz: And just to be clear, I would do it again, I would bully Ethan again.

Treiman: I meant what I said: it was amazing! I stand by it. I hadn’t seen a large live musical ensemble in so long, and that was such a treat in addition to how good the show was. Everyone should go see things at City Center, it was my first show there, and I just loved it. There were four standing ovations that night, and they were all deserved.

Tran: There is power in realizing you're not alone. I think we were all feeling alone that Wednesday, looking at the vote totals. And feeling like sanity had gone out the window. Being in that room that night for Ragtime and feeling everyone collectively mourn together, and everyone just needing to stand up with Joshua Henry and Nichelle Lewis as they sang “Wheels of a Dream”.... It was like, yes, we will grab onto this hope together, and we will ride this ride the next four years. It was not comforting, but it felt necessary to be in that room with everyone feeling the same thing and realizing we're not alone.

Jinkx Monsoon in Little Shop of Horrors

Culwell-Block: We're such big fans of Jinkx Monsoon. We'd already seen her be great in Chicago, but I think there was something that hit different putting her as Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors, a serious role that has some non-comedic moments—which is makes casting a drag queen a little bit of an unconventional choice. And yet, it was the perfect choice, and she was so great. Jinkx is a great interview, we already knew that. But we had a lovely press day in the lobby of the Westside Theater, and I had prepped a very silly question about which RuPaul's Drag Race girl she would want to feed to Audrey II. And instead of taking the bait, she initially said that she was going to rise above and not put negativity into the world. And as she was doing this bit—and being very, you know, pseudo self righteous—from the stage at the Westside (which is just on the other side of the wall), they started playing the opening to Little Shop, which is those very austere grand chords that go underneath the voiceover. Suddenly, it became the Jinkx Monsoon “Don’t Be Mean to Fellow Drag Queens” PSA. I genuinely don't know how the four of us (me, Ethan, Jeffrey, and Heather)....

Gershonowitz: I fully walked away into the corner.

Culwell-Block: ....kept it together long enough to have a usable video.

Playbill's 140th Celebration

Vizcaíno: My other favorite thing of the year—and sure, I'm biased and whatever—but I really loved our Playbill reveal for the 140th anniversary, when every single Broadway production posted their special Playbill reveals on October 1. If you are a Broadway fan, there's no way you did not know that Playbill celebrated our 140th in October, because every Broadway show (and Little Shop) designed four new Playbill covers. It was the rare time that the entire Broadway community, every Broadway production, did something in unison. I thought it was a really cool, public way to show unity while celebrating us and celebrating our legacy. I just thought that was hella cool.

Culwell-Block: That whole initiative was just so fabulous. And I don't even say that as a Playbill employee. I say that as a theatre nerd. If you're wondering what kind of people are on staff here, they had to lock those Playbills in a room to keep people here from taking them.