Good art provokes a conversation between the person who makes it and the person who sees or hears it. Each dialog is unique and so I can’t really tell you what were the best shows of this past year but I can say that the following 10, listed in alphabetical order, really spoke to me.
Adding Machine Because this adaptation of Elmer Rice’s 1923 play about an everyman accountant who snaps after being replaced by an adding machine not only taps into the zeitgeist of our own scary economic times but shows that chamber musicals can produce real show tunes and not just the ersatz arias that make so many of them a chore to sit through.
The Bacchae Because the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Euripides’s tragedy provided flamboyant proof that a production of classic Greek drama can be simultaneously true to the play’s ancient text and thoroughly entertaining for modern audiences.
Billy Elliot Because this adaptation of the movie about a British miner’s son who dreams of becoming a ballet dancer is one of the most out-and-out entertaining musicals to open on Broadway in years and because, in the tradition of the great Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals like the year's equally splendid revival of South Pacific, it also has something to say.
Black Watch Because the National Theatre of Scotland’s meditation on the war in Iraq was a truly innovative production, superbly acted, marvelously staged and fully reproducible in no medium other than the theater.
A Body of Water Because this mysterious little play about a couple who seem to suffer from joint amnesia ruminates on questions about life and death and love and redemption in such a compelling way that I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind.
Fela! Because newcomer Sahr Ngaujah is phenomenal as Fela Kuti, the Nigerian pop musician and political activist who challenged his country’s corrupt and repressive leaders, and because Afrobeat, the exuberant mix of jazz, funk and traditional African rhythms that Fela helped to create, is irresistible.
Gypsy Because Patti LuPone’s performance as Mama Rose in this classic backstage musical is one of those once-in-a- lifetime performances that people will talk about for years to come and because not only LuPone but her terrific co-stars Laura Benanti and Boyd Gaines stayed with the show right through to the end.
In the Heights Because although it’s not a great show, it’s a really great feel-good show that brings new energy and contemporary sounds to the musical and new audiences to Broadway.
The Seagull Because this production of the Chekhov classic got the mix between the comic and the tragic just right and because the 22-year-old British actress Carey Mulligan gave the most heartbreaking performance of the season.
Top Girls Because Caryl Churchill’s play about what it costs women to succeed was the most soul-nourishing night I had at the theater all year.
It seems that ever since Stephen Sondheim’s Company changed the way people think about musicals, the generation of musical makers who followed him has struggled to bring ever more serious subjects and complex music to the stage. Jason Robert Brown, Adam Guettel, Jeanine Tesori, and Michael John LaChiusa have all had varying degrees of success with this formula but I still often find myself groaning when someone suggests going to see one of these “new school” musicals. They can be so unrelentingly solemn that I almost expect to find hemlock cocktails waiting at the refreshment bar.
And so even though I was pleasantly surprised (actually totally thrilled) by the dark and complex Spring Awakening last year, I had my doubts about seeing Adding Machine, which is playing through Aug. 31, at the Minetta Lane Theatre. But friends kept talking and blogging about the show. And it recently won Lucille Lortel and Outer Critics Circle awards. So my always-up-for-a-theatrical adventure pal Bill and I agreed that we ought to see it. And now, if you haven’t, I urge you to do so too.
The show seems to be a fairly close adaptation of Elmer Rice’s 1923 play The Adding Machine, which tells the story of an everyman named Mr. Zero, who, after working as a bookkeeper for 25 years, is replaced by an adding machine. The dehumanizing effects of industrial progress was a popular topic of that period (Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal and Theodore Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy” also tap into that nightmarish side of the American Dream) but no one is more despairing than Rice, who even rules out salvation in the afterlife. I know what you’re thinking: bring on the hemlock.
But what makes Adding Machine work for me is the same thing that made Spring Awakening my favorite show of 2007: the understanding that even a show about the darkest or most complex subject also has to entertain its audience. Josh Schmidt and Jason Loewith’s score for Adding Machine is filled with songs that convey character and emotion (click here to listen to a few samples) and that succeed as artfully crafted show tunes, not the ersatz arias of the kind that weigh down so many of the new school musicals.
David Cromer’s direction, Takeshi Kata’s scene design, Keith Parham’s lighting design and Tony Smolenski IV’s sound design all not only beautifully reinforce the bleak state in which Zero exists but offer enough surprises to keep the audience engaged and, at times, even gratefully amused. The performances work too. Joel Hatch as the seemingly affectless Zero, Cyrilla Baer as his shrewish wife and Amy Warren as the office mate who secretly longs for him are all spot on.
I confess that some of the surrealistic elements seemed a little daffy (according to the New York Times review of the original play they seemed daffy back in 1923 too) but for me Adding Machine adds up to an evening that is bracingly intellectual and stirringly visceral. It’s an original but I hope it won’t be the only one of its kind.
Good art provokes a conversation between the person who makes it and the person who sees or hears it. Each dialog is unique and so I can’t really tell you what were the best shows of this past year but I can say that the following 10, listed in alphabetical order, really spoke to me.
