The Theater Artists of 2025
Ten creatives whose work helped define Boston’s year onstage
When I look back on the past year in Boston theater, it isn’t only the productions themselves that stay with me — it’s the people behind them. Again and again, I found myself returning to the artists whose work rose, reliably and unmistakably, to a higher level: the designers, directors, and performers whose choices shaped the experience of a production from the inside out, and whose contributions strengthened the work around them. Their efforts didn’t just support the season — they helped define it, adding depth, texture, and imagination to stages both large and small across Greater Boston.
This isn’t a “best of” list in the conventional sense (though that one’s coming soon), nor is it meant to be exhaustive. Rather, it’s a recognition of ten artists whose artistry, rigor, and presence felt especially vital in 2025.
Mackenzie Adamick, sound designer
I’m a sucker for great sound design, and this year Mackenzie Adamick delivered fivefold. First came her playful, charming original music for Wheelock’s Flora & Ulysses, which sounded as though it had been lifted straight from a nostalgic PBS children’s show. Next, her club-kid–inspired soundscape for Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream infused the production with a seductive, bygone-NYC-nightclub aura, and her work helped complete the design superfecta on Greater Boston Stage’s Featherbaby.
Her most impressive feat of the year was the brilliantly atmospheric soundscape for ASP’s mind-control-themed Macbeth, in which she wove together sophisticated dinner music, a subtly supernatural undercurrent of foreboding, and even a hint of sci-fi laboratory chaos — a rich sonic foundation for an audacious production. Similarly, her work on Boston Playwrights’ Theatre’s terrific Mother Mary again proved her gifts, supplying essential atmosphere through gently falling rain, subtle musical underscoring, and the familiar sounds of church. And she ended her banner year with An Irish Carol at Greater Boston Stage, where the crackling fireplace she conjured sounded so real I wanted slippers and a blanket. Across five wildly different productions, Adamick’s work reminded us how unforgettable theater can be when the world we hear is as vivid as the one we see.
Aubrey Dube, sound designer
I told you I liked sound design, and this year Aubrey Dube was one of the busiest — and most consistently impressive — artists working on that front. In addition to serving as associate sound designer on The Huntington’s immaculate The Grove, Dube delivered expert work across an astonishing range of productions, including The Glass Menagerie at Gloucester Stage; Jaja’s African Hair Braiding and Ain’t No Mo’ at SpeakEasy Stage; Summer, 1976 at Central Square Theater; Haunted and The Meeting Tree at Company One; Crumbs from the Table of Joy at Lyric Stage Boston; As You Like It at Commonwealth Shakespeare Company; The Recursion of a Moth at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre; and Mfoniso Udofia’s The Ceremony with CHUANG Stage and BPT.
My favorite of Dube’s soundscapes this year were The Glass Menagerie and The Meeting Tree: the former woven from a subtly evocative blend of jazz, light folk textures, and carefully calibrated ambient sound; the latter animated by a sonic world so delicately realized that even the rustling leaves of the titular tree felt palpably real — no small feat, especially given the less-than-ideal sound system at The Strand. Across the year, his contributions were reliable, and nuanced, supporting the storytelling with care and intelligence.
De’Lon Grant, actor
I’d wager that not many actors can say they’ve played Tom Wingfield and Daddy Warbucks in the same year. It isn’t merely De’Lon Grant’s range that earns him a place on this list, but the effortless professionalism and quiet intensity he brings to all his work.
After his Elliot Norton Award-nominated turn in SpeakEasy’s The Scottsboro Boys in 2016, Grant left Boston to spend five years on Broadway in Come From Away before—thankfully—returning, at which time he delivered fine performances in SpeakEasy’s A Case for the Existence of God, A Strange Loop, and Pru Payne.
In 2025, Grant appeared as a weary, sharp-tongued priest in SpeakEasy’s Ain’ No Mo’, a beautifully fractured Tom in Gloucester Stage’s The Glass Menagerie, the practical Dr. Webb in Our Town at Lyric Stage Boston, and the dapperest Warbucks I’ve ever seen in Wheelock’s Annie. Taken together, those four sharply differentiated performances — spanning satire, memory play, Americana, and musical comedy — marked Grant as one of the season’s most consistently impressive artists.
Loretta Greco, director
The first woman to serve as Artistic Director in The Huntington’s forty-plus years, Loretta Greco has brought a sense of excitement and momentum back to the institution and — from an outsider’s perspective — appears to have revitalized its audiences as well. Two and a half seasons into her tenure, Boston has enjoyed first-rate productions of things like Prayer for the French Republic, Fat Ham, The Band’s Visit, The Heart Sellers, John Proctor Is the Villain, Leopoldstadt, Sojourners, The Grove, The Light in the Piazza, The Hills of California, and Fun Home. That she restored large-scale musicals to The Huntington would be reason enough to place her on this list — and that’s before even accounting for the ambition of Mfoniso Udofia’s Ufot Family Cycle.
Beyond her exceptional programming — and the surge of special events and Huntington Presents offerings that have animated the organization again — Greco’s own directorial work this year has only strengthened her case, particularly her shatteringly good productions of The Hills of California and The Light in the Piazza: two sublimely rendered productions that, against my better judgment, even moved this grinchy critic to tears.
Paul Melendy, actor
In 2025, Boston-area theatergoers were treated to a quartet of indelible performances from Paul Melendy, an actor of such uncommon delight that every appearance feels like a small event — at least to me (and to his very real fan club, whom I’ve seen in action, and they mean business). He makes good material better and bad material worth seeing, and though I generally prefer the somberest dramas imaginable, his uncanny knack for winding an audience around his finger and carrying them to dizzying comedic heights is its own kind of thrill.
In Greater Boston Stage’s The Play That Goes Wrong — an exhausting brand of comedy I usually abhor — Melendy seemed to be having the time of his life; as a result, so did his audience. It was a terrific performance, if not a surprising one, as it sits squarely within his wheelhouse. But his next outing, in Gloucester Stage’s The Garbologists, revealed altogether different shades, and the result was one of the finest performances (and productions) of the year. As a tough-skinned, prideful sanitation worker with a buried softness at his core, Melendy let the character’s hard shell fracture into reluctant vulnerability.
Then, in GBSC’s co–world premiere of Featherbaby, he played a foul-mouthed parrot with such finesse and comic precision that, for a few weeks in September, he quite rightly became the talk of the town. Finally, he capped the year as Sherlock in A Sherlock Carol at Lyric Stage — a play I’d be perfectly happy never to see again — and yet Melendy was so irresistible, so slyly charming, that he emerged as the production’s clearest delight. At this point, it may be time I joined the fan club.
Ilyse Robbins, director and choreographer
While we’re on the subject, although Paul Melendy may have been A Sherlock Carol’s clearest delight, the reason that production worked at all was the direction of Ilyse Robbins, who fashioned a stylish, visually charming Christmas confection out of a play I find generally objectionable. No offense intended, but I simply think it’s time to place a moratorium on these hollow literary mash-up dramas that seem to litter local stages year after year. But I digress. What matters is this: Ilyse Robbins has a gift for making everything she touches a little bit better.
Robbins also put her stamp on two musicals that are notoriously difficult to get right — The Spitfire Grill and tick, tick… BOOM!, both at The Umbrella Stage Company in Concord. The former is a seldom-produced, folk-tinged piece about a guarded young woman starting over in a small Wisconsin town and the unexpected community she finds there; the latter is Jonathan Larson’s semi-autobiographical rock musical about a young composer racing against time and doubt. Both works have their challenges, yet Robbins’ productions rose above them — perhaps because she has an unerring instinct for gathering the right collaborators, or because she possesses that rare gift for world-building and for drawing out the humanity in a script, both on the page and between the lines. In 2025, she also choreographed Lyric Stage Boston’s Hello, Dolly! with shimmering optimism and joy.
Of course, this is nothing new. In recent years, Robbins turned Wheelock’s Mr. Popper’s Penguins into an unexpected delight, gave The Umbrella’s Lizzie: The Musical the feel of a late-Victorian gothic rock drama, and guided Greater Boston Stage’s exquisite All Is Calm to an Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Musical Production. At this point, it feels less like luck than inevitability: give Ilyse Robbins a show, and she’ll find the beating heart inside it.
Rebekah Rae Robles, actor
It was her turn as Ado Annie in Reagle Music Theatre’s Oklahoma! in 2023 that first made me sit up and take notice of this ferociously talented performer. In 2024, she demonstrated her versatility in a very different register, delivering a luminous Anne Egerman in Sullivan Rep’s A Little Night Music and appearing in SpeakEasy’s Laughs in Spanish — the latter not a great play, but one that nonetheless proved Robles could carry a straight play with confidence.
But in 2025, Robles seemed to level up yet again, delivering three sharply drawn musical performances across wildly different styles and genres, confirming my growing suspicion that she can probably do just about anything. First came a bruised, open-hearted Adele in SpeakEasy’s A Man of No Importance — a performance made even more impressive by the fact that she also played the violin onstage for much of the show. That was followed by a brief but uncanny turn in Reagle’s Evita, where she delivered “Another Suitcase in Another Hall” with eye-opening command. Finally, she was sublime as the volatile, romantic powerhouse Franca Naccarelli in The Huntington’s The Light in the Piazza. Taken together, these performances didn’t just showcase her range — they announced the arrival of an artist whose gifts seem to deepen every time she steps onstage.
Kathy St. George, actor
Beloved for good reason, 2025 was another year in which local treasure Kathy St. George reminded audiences why she’s one of the greats. In addition to taking home the Elliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence this spring, she continued an impressive run as a character actress extraordinaire, inhabiting a wide array of roles across wildly different productions. To have seen all four of St. George’s performances this season was to witness a quiet master class in the power of character work.
From her dual turns in A Man of No Importance at SpeakEasy to her scene-stealing Miss Lynch in North Shore Music Theatre’s Grease, and her distinctive ensemble work in A Christmas Carol at Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, she spent the year reminding us why she remains one of Boston theater’s great gifts.
But the shimmering cornerstone of her year came in Courtney O’Connor’s stunning revival of Our Town at Lyric Stage Boston, where, somehow, she played both wide-eyed child Rebecca Gibbs and the warmly intrusive Mrs. Soames with total grace and absolute credibility — a feat few actors could manage, and fewer still could make look so effortless.
Dan Sullivan, actor, director, and choreographer
Since founding his eponymous theater company in 2024 and launching it with the oft-forgotten Steel Pier, Dan Sullivan has done nothing but shoot for the stars. In short order, he delivered a near-perfect, Elliot Norton Award-winning A Little Night Music, a site-specific and immersive Blithe Spirit, and large-scale productions of Hairspray and Annie — complete with expansive casts, nice-sized orchestras, and even a dog.
This year, Sullivan upped the ante with Stephen Sondheim’s Company, which he director, choreographed, costume-designed, and starred in. His resolutely retro production was terrific, navigating the musical’s rapid tonal shifts and structural oddities with an assurance that allowed its emotional core to land with genuine power. His performance as Bobbie was equally revelatory; I can still picture his tear-soaked cheeks during “Being Alive.” That he could both shape and shoulder a musical of such ambition speaks to his authority as a theatrical storyteller.
Sullivan then revived the largely forgotten Can-Can with a cast of 25, an orchestra of 10, and the full ballets and dance sequences — a level of ambition practically unheard of for a company of this size. Guided by a deep reverence for the art form and the craft of making theater, and alongside Sullivan Rep’s explicit commitment to artists balancing theater with day jobs, Dan Sullivan has quickly become one of Boston’s most indispensable theater makers.
Mfoniso Udofia, playwright
One of the great pleasures of 2025 was spending time with the Ufots, the Nigerian-American family at the center of Mfoniso Udofia’s ambitious nine-play saga. Like many, I’ve been invested since The Huntington’s unforgettable 2024 production of Sojourners, the first play in the cycle.
This year brought five Ufot plays to Boston — The Grove, runboyrun, Her Portmanteau, Kufre N’ Quay, and The Ceremony — with the remaining three scheduled for 2026. While the quality of the individual works varies widely, Udofia’s contribution to the lifeblood of Boston’s theater scene is unmistakable. Across these plays, she has built a living tapestry of identity, legacy, love, and cultural belonging — precisely the kind of sustained, human-scale storytelling our times demand.
A wonderful list - so much talent represented here in our vibrant theater city!