DEAD OUTLAW: You might not think that a show—a musical no less—centered around a corpse could charm anyone but composer David Yazbek, book writer Itamar Moses and director David Cromer turned the macabre saga of a bumbling outlaw whose mummified remains ended up as a sideshow attraction into a nuanced commentary on today’s obsession with true crime stories and an even more valuable meditation on death itself. It also featured a terrific toe-tapping score and a you-gotta-see-it-to-believe-it performance by Andrew Durand as the titular cadaver that all left me grinning. A Broadway run was recently announced so there will be another chance for us all to enjoy this one in the spring.
GYPSY: I’ve seen three of the four previous revivals of this classic 1959 musical about a mother who pushes her kids into show business and I marveled each time at the music by Jule Styne, the lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and the book by Arthur Laurents but I’ve never been as moved as I was this time as I watched Audra McDonald play Madam Rose not as a monster or even a self-involved stage mom but as a woman simply desperate to make a way for her girls in an unforgiving world. There were moments when, although they don’t look at all alike, that I'd have sworn I was looking at the brave yet vulnerable single mother who raised me.
THE HILLS OF CALIFORNIA: Jez Butterworth also beautifully rendered the ineffable bonds that bind mothers, daughters and sisters to one another in this drama about a working-class British mother whose ambitious dreams for her four daughters cause her to make a decision that will haunt all five of them for the next two decades. Two separate quartets of actors played the sisters as teens and as grown women and under Sam Mendes deft direction, they were all terrific, particularly so when the younger versions sang swing-era songs in perfect close harmony. It’s a real shame that this one closed last weekend, far earlier than it should have.
MARY JANE: Back in 2017, I was so knocked out by the New York Theatre Workshop production of Amy Herzog’s play about a single mother caring for a severely ill child that I was instantly dismissive when I heard that Rachel McAdams, a movie actress who hadn’t appeared on stage since high school, was bringing the play to Broadway this year. Boy, was I wrong. McAdams turned in an exquisitely calibrated performance that drove home the sustaining power of love in even the most dire of circumstances. It won't be the same but an audio version has just been released on Audible.
MAYBE HAPPY ENDING: This surprisingly charming tale about two humanoid robots who fall in love features an unexpectedly jazzy score and a wholly original book by Will Aronson and Hue Park, witty performances by Darren Criss and Helen J Shen and clever direction by the always inventive Michael Arden, who has found really smart ways to use the trendy technology of cameras and screens without sacrificing good storytelling. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that more and more theatergoers give it a shot because this one is really a special treat and deserves a good run.
MEDEA: RE-VERSED: Greek dramas don’t get done as much as, say, Shakespeare's do but this very clever rap version of Medea is a reminder of why those stories have held on for thousands of years. The tale of the princess who betrays her own people to help the Greek warrior Jason find the Golden Fleece but later murders their young sons when he casts her aside for another woman remains the same as it is in the Euripides version but playwright Luis Quintero updated the storytelling and demonstrated his love for classic theatrical forms with smart rhyming couplets and hip-hop emcees stepping in as the chorus.
MOTHER PLAY: By this time, you’re probably thinking that I’m obsessed with mothers and will give a pass to just about any show sympathetic to them. Maybe. But Paula Vogel’s semi-autobiographical three-hander totally earns its place on this list—and in my heart. With unusually forgiving grace, it tracks four decades in the life of a not very good single mother who copes by guzzling gin, chain smoking and browbeating her children, both of whom eventually come out as gay. Under Tina Landau’s sensitive direction, Jessica Lange, Jim Parsons and Celia Keenan-Bolger gave performances that balanced the pathos of the family’s struggles with the humor they employed to survive them.
OH, MARY: Campy humor isn’t usually my thing but Cole Escola’s bizarro-world version of Mary Todd Lincoln’s activities in the weeks leading up to the assassination of her husband is so delightfully daffy that I found it impossible to resist. And I clearly wasn't alone in that. For the show has been packing them in for months after making the surprising move from the Lucille Lortel uptown to the Hudson on Broadway. Escola, who has been deservedly drawing the lion’s share of the praise, has been given invaluable support by Sam Pinkleton’s pitch-perfect direction and by a totally game cast, especially Conrad Ricamora as a horny Abe Lincoln.
OUR CLASS: Inspired by true events, this story of how the Holocaust affected a group of Jews and Christians in one small Polish village over seven decades—from their grade school years to their days in nursing homes for the few who survived that long—is innately powerful but director Igor Golyak’s inventive stagecraft turned it into a potent cautionary tale about how people can act when faced with truly horrendous choices. It kept me thinking for weeks about what I might or might not do in similar circumstances.
SUFFS: What does a woman have to do to make her voice heard in this country? Or on Broadway? Shaina Taub won this year's Tonys for both the book and the score for her musical about the struggle to get American women the right to vote. A diverse all-female identifying cast played the hell out of it. Audiences cried and cheered during its climactic anthem “Keep Marching.” And yet, the show is closing just eight months after it opened. Luckily PBS is filming the current production for its “Great Performances” series so it will able to inspire future generations to continue the fight.
