Best of 2016
It is with great delight that I reflect on some of the Best Theater of 2016. From exciting new works to star-studded revivals, my year-end wrap up looks to recognize those exceptional productions and performances on and off Broadway. Hopefully this list will inspire a few readers to revisit a classic, take a chance on a new play, or support a local regional theater.
1. The Band’s Visit at the Atlantic Theatre Company: On November 12, days after the Presidential election, I attended the first preview performance of The Atlantic Theatre Company’s premiere of The Band’s Visit. I knew very little about this new musical except that it had been adapted from a relatively unknown, but critically acclaimed Israeli film. Always interested in seeing new work, I was especially curious about this project being a fan of nearly everyone involved including composer David Yazbek, director David Cromer (Hal Prince had once been attached), and featured actor Tony Shalhoub (giving an understated performance of infinite depth). The months leading up to the election had been ones defined by mudslinging, hatred, cynicism, and tension. Following election night, you could detect in the air (regardless of which candidate you supported) a genuine sense of depression, uncertainty, and fear - particularly strong among New Yorkers. Though after the 90 blissful minutes of The Band’s Visit, a show about love, connection, and commonality, I emerged from the theater with a renewed faith in humanity, compassion and goodness. Not bad for a modest Off-Broadway musical? Now if Washington could take a note out of Yazbek, Cromer, and Itamar Moses’ figurative and literal book!
The Band’s Visit finds members of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, ready to perform at the inaugural ceremony of an Arab cultural center, stranded overnight in the wrong Israeli town. The Egyptian musicians are taken in by local Bet Hatikvans: Dina (a mesmerizing Katrina Lenk), a cafe owner; and Itzik (John Cariani giving a very touching performance), the unhappily married new dad living with his baby, wife, and father-in-law. While nationalistic tensions are certainly not ignored, they are not explicitly explored either. Instead, the creatives focus on the generosity of the human spirit, instinctual, mutual curiosity of the other, and the universal need to find connection and love in one’s life - the last theme emphasized in the beautiful and powerful full-company ballad “Answer Me”. Not suprisingly, Cromer directs one of best acted musicals I have ever seen. Every moment is full of truth. and when appropriate, he trusts silence to speak louder than words. Additionally, Yazbek writes an evocative score reminiscent of his best pieces in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. While the show is wrapping up its limited (though twice extended) run at the Atlantic next week - fingers are crossed a larger audience will have an opportunity to see this piece during a future commercial run.
Following a joyous encore featuring the band (doing double duty) of The Band’s Visit, I hopped in an Uber heading to Grand Central to catch the Metro North home. Wouldn’t you know, my driver was a first-generation Egyptian American. During the 15 minute ride, we discussed everything from the musical I had just seen to Egyptian popular culture and music, the current political state of Egypt, the immigrant experience in America, and the most recent election. Perhaps, if I had not seen this musical, I would have sat quietly in the back seat of the car Tweeting and responding to email on my iPhone until I arrived at my destination. But after the evening’s performance, I couldn’t help but want to get to know the man behind the wheel. It is unlikely that The Band's Visit will change the world - but it certainly left a lasting impression on mine - Uber and onward.
2. The Front Page: Hecht and MacArthur’s classic and still hilarious hard-boiled comedy, The Front Page, received a first-rate revival with a collective star-powered cast that surely won’t be topped this season or possibly any season soon. The Front Page, set in a press room as reporters wait to cover the hanging of a convicted murderer, is full of vulgar characters, off-color one-liners, and astute cynicism. While the way news was obtained, reported, and consumed in 1928 differs greatly in contemporary times, the competition, corruption, and dark-humor inherent in this material’s portrayal of the press and politics feels as fresh and as timely today. Producer Scott Rudin and Director Jack O’Brien were smart enough to stack the deck with more than a couple of aces including headliners Nathan Lane (as loudmouthed editor Walter Burns), John Slatterly (as prized press Hildy Johnson), and John Goodman (as the few eggs short of a dozen sheriff, Hartman), Additionally, Jefferson Mays, Holland Taylor, Sherie Rene Scott, Micah Stock, and Robert Morse all take on memorable supporting roles. This type of A-list casting may be necessary for commercial audiences sitting down to a three-act-er, but it is also ingeniously inspired because The Front Page is built in a way that allows audiences to await and rejoice at each star entrance leading up to the most anticipated by Nathan Lane. Lane might be Broadway’s funniest funny man and his turn in The Front Page does not disappoint. He has the rare ability to deliver a performance that feels both disciplined (pitch perfect line delivery - e.g. “The son of a bitch stole my watch") and spontaneous (physical schtick - e.g. nearly having a coronary has he attempts to move the desk hiding Earl Williams). Though Lane’s performance alone might be worth the price of admission - what makes The Front Page ‘can’t miss’ is the exceptional ensemble work from some of the best character actors on Broadway. As I walked out of the Broadhurst Theatre on cloud nine, I stopped by the Drama Book Shop with the greatest urge to read even more Hecht and MacArthur. Perhaps leaving New York with a newly purchased copy of Hecht and MacArthur’s Twentieth Century is the greatest honor I can bestow on these classic comic playwrights and the highest praise I can give to this sublime production. Lane, Slattery and company left me wanting more.
3. Oslo: Following the critical success of their first collaboration, Blood and Gifts, playwright J.T. Rogers and director Bartlett Sher have teamed up to bring Olso, a gripping three hour, secret-history, political drama chronicling the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993, to the stage. Rogers frames his work with Mona Juul (Jennifer Ehle), an official in the Norwegian foreign ministry, as our narrator along with husband Terje Rød Larsen (Jefferson Mays), the Director of the Fafo Institute for Applied Social Sciences, as her co-host and co-facilitator for these intimate diplomatic conversations that occurred between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Rogers has created a brisk, high stakes, entertaining and accessible drama out of very complex subject matter. And Sher has once again assembled a tight-knit ensemble of fourteen terrific actors playing twenty-one roles with accomplished designer Michael Yeargan transporting us across geography and time with an attractive, minimalist set. Most notably among Sher’s stellar ensemble are Oslo’s protagonists played by Michael Aronov as Uri Savir, the Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and Anthony Azzizi as Ahmed Querie (known as Abu Ala), Finance Minsiter for the PLO. Aronov and Azzizi’s scenes are simply electric. Oslo achieves something somewhat miraculous: Though we are aware of the history that follows (from our own knowledge and through a sobering coda succeeding an ebullient climax) both specifically (Rabin’s assassination) and in general (the seemingly endless upheaval between the Israelis and the Palestinians), we, like our optimistic hosts, Larsen and Juul, still want to hold on to the belief that the diplomatic humanistic framework established at Olso can create friends out of enemies - if not on an international scale then certainly on an interpersonal one. Any step toward peace is a good one. Good news for those who missed Olso off-Broadway, Lincoln Center Theater plans to move the production to the Vivian Beaumont Theater, hopefully making this excellent new play a now eligible front-runner at this year's Tony Awards.
4. Jessica Lange in Long Day’s Journey Into Night: Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night is easily the greatest American family drama, if not arguably (and I’d be the first to defend it) the greatest American play. This year, the Roundabout Theatre (also represented on this list with Jane Krakowski in She Loves Me) gave this heart-wrenching work a most worthy revival. While the whole cast is terrific, this remounting belongs to its Mary Tyrone, the exquisite Jessica Lange, a favorite and frequent collaborator of the show’s producer, TV mogul Ryan Murphy. Lange’s performance is lovingly shaped by English director Jonathan Kent. And I use the term ‘lovingly’ as much for the way he stages this production (the audience becomes fully engulfed by the vulnerability of Lange’s character by placing her on a downstage left bench during some of her character’s most intimate, unprotected, and personal moments) and the way he brackets and highlights her two-person scene with the maid Cathleen giving her an opportunity to make Mary’s isolation and loneliness even more pronounced. Kent is smart to try to preserve these deeply sympathetic moments for his Mary because Lange is a truly visceral and spontaneous (though extremely disciplined) actress who has now been given the freedom to deliver an unforgettable performance layered with hurt, malice, regret, anger, blame, and paranoia. The most welcome surprise Lange brings to the role is her undeniable sex appeal. Playing opposite an extremely charismatic and distinguished Gabriel Byrne as James Tyrone, one can imagine this couple in their youth at the height of their physical beauty embarking on a relationship defined by passion and the promise of a hopeful future. Lange and Gabriel make it easy for the audience to believe in the good years and know there is love and sorrow beneath their rancorous present. And in the last scene, Kent has Mary enter in a morphine-induced haze to the downstage bench, fading out on her paralyzed family and spotlighting Lange for her final observation: “Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone...and was so happy for a time.” As the remaining lights descend on its luminous star, the audience tries to savor every last moment of her breathtaking and heartbreaking performance.
5. Sutton Foster in Sweet Charity: Sutton Foster, possibly more so than any other Broadway star that has tackled the role before her, finds the delicate balance between the whimsy and the wistful in Charity Hope Valentine - a quality that made Guilietta Massina’s title role performance in Federico Fellini’s masterpiece Il Notti di Cabiria unforgettable. Like Massina, Foster has the rare ability to clown around in one scene (Foster’s shtick in Vittorio Vidal’s penthouse leaves us in stitches) and break our hearts in the next. Director Leigh Silverman calls some well-conceived creative shots to re-focus her star’s character arc from the show’s beginning (using the full male ensemble to show the cyclical nature of Charity’s misbegotten relationships in ‘You Should See Yourself’) to its finale (re-structuring the musical numbers to end with ‘Where Am I Going?’). This new ending packs an emotional punch not achieved through the Good Fairy’s ‘hopefully ever after’ finale in the original and rewards the audience with a closing, self-reflective number with its star. While the pared-down production doesn’t always have a pay off (‘I’m Brass Band’ without any brass performed by an ensemble grounded in their Fan Dango costumes ready for the next scene, for instance), Sutton Foster knock-out performance in one of the most intimate spaces in New York makes this production can't miss.
6. Walter Bobbie’s Direction of Bright Star: Having worked on the short-lived musical High Fidelity with Walter Bobbie in 2006, I know he is the type of upbeat, dedicated director who doesn’t merely develop musicals with his creative team, but he builds family amongst his cast and production staff. In his visually stunning production of Bright Star where principals, ensemble, and band are all fully integrated into the storytelling. Bobbie was the perfect person to be at the helm of this project. Set in two time periods (1920s and 1940s), Bright Star begins with the post-WWII return of soldier, Billy Cane (A.J. Shively), who is mentored by Asheville Literary Journal editor Alice Murphy (a sensational star-turn by Carmen Cusack), a once backwoods spitfire. And through classic melodramatic plotting devices we learn, without much surprise, how these characters and their stories are connected. The shortcomings of the story are certainly elevated by a lively and often lovely score by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, outstanding performances, and Bobbie’s dynamic staging, seamlessly conceived with Josh Rhodes choreography. Bobbie coaxes grounded, first-class performances out of Cusack and Shively as well as Hannah Elless (delivering the show’s most beautiful ballad “Asheville”) and Paul Alexander Nolan as Billy and Alice’s love interests, respectively. Supporting actors Emily Padgett and Jeff Blumenkrantz deliver pitch-perfect charming, comic performances as Journal co-workers. Perhaps what made Bright Star most enjoyable, though, are the theatrical devices Bobbie employs to keep the narrative flowing between multiple locations and periods. Highlights include: utilizing the entire ensemble in the title song to mark Billy’s journey to Asheville in what may be Broadway’s most successful “montage number”; Cusack’s simple, Brechtian, yet still somewhat magical onstage transformation from polished professional to plucky teen in “Way Back in the Day”, the convergence of two eras in the ebullient act two opener “Sun is Gonna Shine”; and the synthesis of song, story, character, and movement through an always present and frequently gliding, stellar bluegrass band.
7. Savion Glover’s Choreography in Shuffle Along: Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All that Followed, the longest titled musical on Broadway this season, is George C. Wolfe’s historic re-telling of the birth of this all-black book musical as obstacles are overcome and tensions arise between the creative team and company behind the scenes. With an all-star cast including Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Joshua Henry, Brandon Victor Dixon, and Billy Porter and a backstage story filled creative egos and racial tensions, there is certainly more than enough drama to sustain a compelling 21st century musical. Unfortunately, Wolfe with his edifying book full of dense narration never fully commits to dramatizing the story. But when this sensational cast breaks into song and dance - the results are electric. Savion Glover, one of the most talented dancers and choreographers working today, delivers some of the most expressive and memorable tap numbers Broadway audiences have seen in years. Full of innovation, syncopation, and athleticism, Glover derives multiple showstoppers from this Sissle-Blake score starting with the opening number “Broadway Blues”. And with first-rate designs by Santo Loquasto (sets), Ann Roth (costumes), and Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer (Lighting), Glover’s numbers range from dazzling (“I’m Just Wild About Harry”) to elegant (“Everybody’s Struttin’ Now”). While the original creators of Shuffle Along were threatened they would not be remembered, Glover’s re-inventions of these 1920s tunes, will surely not soon be forgotten.
8. I Was Most Alive With You at The Huntington Theatre Company: In 2013, I fell in love with Nina Raine’s Tribes, a play featuring a deaf actor (Russell Harvard in the American premiere) that put a unique spin on the coming-of-age and family genres through its dissection of language, communication, and identity. I was not alone in my admiration of this play. After seeing David Cromer’s production of Tribes at the Barrow Street Theater in New York, playwright Craig Lucas was inspired to write this new work for Harvard, a play that would receive its world premiere at the Huntington Theatre in Boston, MA. The plot of I Was Most Alive With You, inspired by The Book of Job, follows Knox, a Deaf, gay, recovering addict, whose life and luck spirals downward when tragedy strikes. Through the use of Deaf/deaf actors, surtitles, and shadow interpreters, this incredibly ambitious production was purposefully written and staged in a way that would be completely accessible to Deaf audiences at every performance. The sensory results (flat/linear staging, slowed down tempo, etc.) certainly took some getting used to for hearing audience members, but certainly paid off with a visually stimulating, multi-layered interpretation of the text. Just as ambitious are Lucas’ themes: faith (several represented on stage), the role of choice, and the concepts of disabilities and gifts. I Was Most Alive With You is the perfect example of a regional non-profit taking an artistic risk to develop new works that serve, engage, incorporate, and challenge diverse talent and audiences.
9. Dogfight at SpeakEasy Stage Company: Pasek and Paul are the toast of Broadway with their current hit Dear Evan Hansen (featuring a knockout performance from star Ben Platt) and with their lyrics represented on the big screen in the critically acclaimed musical La La Land. While Dear Evan Hansen will be the show that launches this young writing duo's careers to official stardom, their modest, but moving musical Dogfight may be (at least in my humble opinion) their best work to-date. Having become a favorite of mine through listening to its Off-Broadway cast recording, I regret not seeing Dogfight's New York premiere at Second Stage in the summer of 2012. In times like these, I am grateful for companies like Boston's SpeakEasy Stage Company, whose mission it is to give popular New York plays and musicals their regional premieres shortly after they bow in the Big Apple. Dogfight, a coming-of-age musical set against the early days of the Vietnam War, follows a young marine (Eddie played by Jordan J. Ford) as he begins an unlikely 24 hour romance with a plain waitress (Rose played by Alejandra M. Perrilla) after inviting her to cruel and humiliating party. Knowing exactly how to make a "movie to musical adaptation" sing, this young writing team has peppered their story with a male bonding song (“Some Kinda Time”; a song genre they really excel at, see “Sincerely, Me” from Dear Evan Hansen), an ‘I Want’ song (Nothing Short of Wonderful), an internal monologue number (“First Date/Last Night” rivaling South Pacific’s “Twin Soliloquies”), an unconventional love ballad (“Give Way”), among others. Director Paul Daigneault has fine control over the superb material and his generally talented cast (also including yet another stand-out performance from local favorite McCaela Donovan as Peggy, the hilarious, hard-boiled hooker who sings the biting title song) to balance the story’s dark exploration of pre- and post-war masculinity with its quite touching love story (the tender beat where Rose shares her dinner with Eddie when she realizes he is not eating because he can only afford one meal always gets me). I am thrilled this fairly new musical is finally getting seen by the wider audience it deserves through regional theaters like Speakeasy.
10. Jane Krakowski in She Loves Me: She Loves Me’s Illona is a product of an era when musical theater writers were giving birth to soubrettes who were both sexy and funny. When reviving such a gem, there is no better actress to fulfill a role like this one than Jane Krakowski whose comic sensibility is so sharp audiences know there can only be substantial brain behind the endearing ‘dumb blondes’ she embodies on stage and screen. What makes her Ilona special is also her ability to balance innocence with licentiousness resulting in harmonious comic perfection. Each one of Krakowski’s numbers (“I Don’t Know His Name”, “Ilona”, “I Resolve” and “A Trip to the Library”) is a highlight. The Roundabout must have taken special note of Krakowski's crowd-pleasing performance during early previews (when I saw the production) because before long she was literally being dragged in front of television audiences in full-split position by Gavin Creel (Kodaly) during every talk show promotional appearance the show made. While Jane Krakowski has had a celebrated career in memorable supporting roles on network television (and now Netflix), she is one of those magnetic actresses who would have had writing teams lining up around the corner with the hope she would headline their latest musical comedy in the 50s and 60s. Though we can’t turn back time, hopefully this triumphant homecoming to Broadway will afford Ms. Krakowski the opportunity to return to the boards on many more occasions moving forward.