Most 10 Bests list came out around mid-December so I'm obviously
arriving really late to the party with this one. Which is probably OK because I can't even
pretend to say which were the best shows of last year—or any year.
The major critics (and my theatergoing buddy Bill) loved The
Band's Visit (Bill even bought tickets for a return visit) but I found it to be
only so-so and had far more fun watching its star Tony Shaloub as he graciously
worked the table and charmed the guests at a cast member's birthday party at a
restaurant around the corner where Bill and I had dinner after the show.
Similarly, the critics roundly dissed A Bronx Tale, while I
had a good time (click here to read my review).
What I've learned over the years is that there's no one empirical
standard and that the best use of the year-end bests lists is as a guide to
which critics' taste line up with mine and can serve as reliable guides when
I'm trying to determine whether to see something or not.
So I invite you to do the same with mine. I enjoyed a bunch of stuff this past year and
my initial list had 20 shows. My final choices (listed alphabetically) may not
have drawn the most critical acclaim or earned the most money but they're the
ones that I'm happiest to have seen because they didn't just entertain me but
helped me see the world around me differently and did it with distinctive flair:
The Effect: British playwright Lucy Prebble and director David
Cromer probed the meaning of love and the greed of Big Pharma in this rom-com
about a medical study on an experimental anti-depressant and its effect on both
the test subjects and the scientists overseeing it. The result was both thought-provoking
and heart-gladdening.
Familiar: Her other play Eclipsed about women caught up in
the Liberian civil wars drew most of the attention and a run on Broadway but I
also enjoyed Danai Gurira's domestic comedy about a Zimbabwean family at
Playwrights Horizons, which, under Rebecca Taichman's skillful direction, dug deeper than we usually see into the experiences
of affluent blacks and immigrants living in contemporary America.
Hadestown: Anaïs Mitchell's roots-music spin on the Greek
myth of the ill-fated lovers Orpheus and Eurydice was
my favorite new score this year. And Rachel Chavkin not only beautifully staged the show at New York Theatre Workshop but highlighted its allusions to the growing schisms between the haves and
have-nots in today's world.
Men on Boats: Just as Hamilton reimagined the Founding
Fathers as people of color, Jaclyn Backhaus' witty adventure tale about the
1869 expedition that charted the Grand Canyon cast women as the explorers and she
and director Will Davis allowed them to display the kind of swagger and bravado
that men—onstage and off—have always enjoyed.
Oslo: The name refers to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords and playwright
J.T. Rogers and director Bartlett Sher have turned the back story about the
Norwegian diplomats who brought about that first official agreement between
Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization into a surprisingly
entertaining thriller that Lincoln Center will transfer for a Broadway run at its Vivian Beaumont
Theater in April.
Sense & Sensibility: Even if, like me, you're not a big Jane
Austen fan, you'll probably still be delighted by the Bedlam theater company's
delightful adaptation of her first novel, which uses story-theater techniques and sensational
acting to recreate Austen's tale about love among the 18th century British
gentry.
Skeleton Crew: Dominique Morisseau's drama about factory
workers facing a plant closing shares a concern about the decline of the
American working class with Lynn Nottage's Sweat but Ruben Santiago-Hudson's dynamic
staging at the Atlantic Theater and a terrific ensemble made this one hit me harder.
Small Mouth Sounds: It seemed that Rachel Chavkin could do no
wrong last year and her staging of Beth Wohl's wonderfully original play about
a disparate group of people at a silent retreat didn't make as much noise as
Hadestown or Chavkin's much-lauded Broadway production of Natasha, Pierre &
the Great Comet of 1812 but it was one of the season's true treats.
Vietgone: Using rap music, hipster speech
and graphic-novel-style video projections, playwright Qui Nguyen and director
May Adrales spun a refreshingly different—but ultimately touching—story about the Vietnam War,
based on Nguyen's parent's experiences of moving to this country after the fall
of Saigon.
The Wolves: The Playwrights Realm focuses on works by "early
career playwrights" and it backed a winner with Sarah DeLappe's
first-produced play about the members of a girls' soccer team who, under Lila
Neugebauer's sharp direction, talk about everything from having their periods
to geo-politics.
I also had a good time reading other people's lists and here
are five of my favorites that I think you might enjoy too; you can check them out by justing click on the
title:
The New York Theater blog put together a
month-by-month rundown of all the year's major theater news, from the
we-don't-care-if-there's-a-blizzard success of the first BroadwayCon in January
to the debate that broke out last month over whether the Rockettes should
perform at Donald Trump's inauguration.
Plays and musicals about people all along the gender
spectrum have begun to move beyond the traditional coming-out story and The
Advocate magazine celebrated the best of them.
In the spirit of it takes one to know one, Playbill asked
some of the top people in the theater to name their top theater experiences of
2016.
It's traditional for year-end lists to celebrate theater's
best but a bit of schadenfreude can also be fun and amNewYork let's it rip with its list of the biggest flops.
Playbill helpfully aggregated the choices of several major critics.
PLUS....
I mean, how can we look back at 2016 without talking about the greatest theater sensation of the year.
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