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Ten most wanted
We pick the year's best.
It was a year that started with The Sparrow in a warehouse and ended with Steppenwolf in Times Square—with appearances by Frankie Valli and Oprah Winfrey in between—but when it all shook down, these were the ten we loved the most. And with seven world premieres here (A.R. Gurney and Bertolt Brecht are our only revivals), it seems this was a year of originals.
1. The Adding Machine
(Next Theatre)
Upon getting pink-slipped, Mr. Zero kills his boss with a bill file, hangs for his crime and travels through the underworld, only to find out he has to try it all over again. Elmer Rice’s 1923 expressionist masterwork—probably the first great play by an American—is as dazzling as it is unapologetically ugly. When adapter Jason Loewith and composer Josh Schmidt set it to music this year, it was even more so. In a fierce, wholly original production helmed by David Cromer—with star turns by Joel Hatch and anti–ingenue Amy Warren—this pop opera was the one play in the year of machine-driven theater to examine life inside the machine.
2. August: Osage County
(Steppenwolf Theatre)
Before they conquered Broadway, the Steppenwolf ensemble spun us a terrific yarn about a cranky Oklahoma clan coping with the death of its patriarch. A high-water mark for every artist involved, playwright Tracy Letts and director Anna Shapiro’s endlessly entertaining dysfunctional-family play somehow managed to raise the bar on the genre usurped by M.F.A. programs without yielding its Douglas-Sirk-drunk-on-corn-liquor soapiness. A howling eulogy for our romanticized middle class (and sly acknowledgement that most of this country is hopped up on drugs), August also has been gently mistaken for Eugene O’Neill exhumed. But to say it’s not is no insult.
3. The Strangerer
(Theater Oobleck)
In these sitting-duck days of YouTube–driven primaries and men’s-room punch-line Republicans, it’s almost hard to recall what a brisk awakening absurdist Mickle Maher’s moody, comedic Bush fantasia was when it bowed 11 months ago. Riffing on W’s specious claim that he’d read Camus’s The Stranger, Maher and Oobleck framed the novel as a 2004 presidential debate for the year’s strangest message: Maybe the Prez is actually a tortured soul. And Guy Massey’s Bush was like Darrell Hammond by way of Cézanne.
4. Merchant on Venice
(Silk Road Theatre Project)
In transferring Shakespeare’s Merchant to present-day SoCal, playwright Shishir Kurup gave the Bard a dash of hip-hop flavor and Bollywood flair, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Shifting Shakespeare’s Christian-Jew conflict to Hindus and Muslims, Kurup managed to comment on everyday religious discord and the challenge of reconciling traditional values with modern America. Stuart Carden’s production assembled a bevy of too-rarely-seen nonwhite actors, led by fiery Anish Jethmalani as a Shylock tough enough to rival Mike Nussbaum’s.
5. Jerry Springer—The Opera
(Bailiwick Repertory Theatre)
Bailiwick scored a coup with the American premiere of the sacrilicious Springer saga. Director David Zak corralled an enormous ensemble of game actors, led by Jeremy Rill’s slickly wicked Satan, pushing them happily beyond the bounds of taste—or shame. Perhaps only outside eyes (the British writing team of Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee) could properly capture a phenomenon so uniquely American as the proudly attention-whoring deviants of Springer, and recognize that a simple “musical” couldn’t contain it. Thus, an “opera” with trannies, pole dancers and diapered daddies.
6. The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
(Steep Theatre)
Just when we thought both ribald satire and serious analysis of Adolf Hitler’s ascent had lost all currency, Steep’s revival of Bertolt Brecht’s 1941 Hitler allegory, set by the author in gangland Chicago, showed us otherwise. Jonathan Berry’s live-wire period staging—a major step forward for storefront Steep—put its finger smack-dab on how despots can rise in times of economic panic. And as the hunchbacked title character, writhing Yosh Hayashi turned out the non–Osage County performance of the year.
7. Weapon of Mass Impact
(A Red Orchid Theatre)
Brett Neveu had a typically prolific year, with wildly divergent plays produced by three different theaters. But his secret Weapon was the trio of razor-sharp performances at A Red Orchid this fall. Ensemble members Kirsten Fitzgerald, Jennifer Engstrom and Mierka Girten channeled three very different, very specific businesswomen training to deal with terrorists—all the while dealing with the petty “terrors” of American life. We were terrified to look away.
8. Mr. Spacky… The Man Who Was Continuously Followed by Wolves
(Strange Tree Group)
Many of the year’s best plays were multicourse meals; Mr. Spacky was an after–school snack. But as penned by macabre hipster Guignolist Emily Schwartz, it was the kind you want to share with the whole class. An 80-minute deadpan comedy about a dustbowl farmstead that lures comely lasses to their death, this ridiculous trifle was played by a dehydrated-looking cast of subtle comic aces and accompanied by a lively dirt band. So tasty we’re still licking the salt off our fingers.
9. Another Day in the Empire
(Black Sheep Productions)
Steve Spencer’s smart satire of corporatized, suburbanized, chain restaurant–ized modern life didn’t mine any new themes, but it struck a rich vein regardless. That’s largely thanks to the cast of everyday all-stars assembled by director Vance Smith in Black Sheep’s debut outing. Led by Kevin Stark, in a virtuoso-level meltdown as a Realtor doubting the system, the ensemble took Spencer’s fastball script and knocked it out of the park. It was anything but another day at the theater.
10. The Dining Room
(New Leaf Theatre)
If A.R. Gurney’s paean to the maided class can be hard to swallow, Jessica Hutchinson’s revival made it seem sweet as pie. Uniquely suited to New Leaf’s odd, antique residence, her in-the-round arrangement featured a graceful cast of young actors (many new to us) credibly playing generations above and below their true ages. Miming the presence of props keyed to Nick Keenan’s ingenious sound design—choreographed down to the tinkle of ice in a Scotch glass—this staging achieved real magic: It made us care about the plight of the WASP.
