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2006 at the (New York) Theater

I saw 71 shows in 2006—24 on Broadway, 36 other shows in New York, 10 shows in London, and one in Manchester, England. 59 were plays, 11 musicals, and one could probably best be described as a play with music (the wonderful Nights at the Circus, which I saw at the Lyric, Hammersmith). Looking back on the letter grade I assigned to the shows when I got home from seeing them (I’ve made only slight tweaks to the original grades on the list I posted), a lot of them seem off. Partly it’s a comparison thing—I said Bridge & Tunnel was better than Awake and Sing!?—and partly I notice that I’m stingier with ratings when I’m seeing a lot of shows in a short period; but theater being a fleeting medium, perhaps the shows and performances that linger are the “best.”

Rather than a Top 10 list, this is more of a list of the shows that I saw in the 2006 calendar year that stuck with me most. For the moment, I’ll stick to New York shows.

TWELFTH NIGHT (Chekhov International Theatre Festival at BAM, dir. Declan Donnellan). This Russian troupe gave a master class in acting technique.

THE BOGUS WOMAN (by Kay Adshead, seen at 59E59 in the Brits Off-Broadway series). Some critics found this play over-the-top and unbelievable; I found it all too credible. In a year of outstanding one-woman performances, Sarah Niles’ tour-de-force was shiver-inducing.

DRUID/SYNGE (Lincoln Center Festival). The marathon aspect didn’t bother me one bit; in fact, I’m sure I got a lot more out of the plays by seeing them in succession. The outstanding elements were Riders to the Sea and, especially, The Playboy of the Western World. (Yes, of course I'm seeing The Coast of Utopia in a marathon—I'm a Wagenerian!)

IN THE CONTINUUM (Danai Gurira & Nikkole Salter, seen at the Perry Street Theater, RIP). Beautifully subtle acting and writing from two young artists on a subject that tends to repel subtlety.

SATELLITES (by Diana Son at the Public Theater). Yes, this play took on a LOT of topics—gentrification, “mixed” marriages, the difficulty of finding a nanny (recently the subject of a smart story in the NYT), how children affect marriages and work dynamics, just to name a few—many more than it could satisfactorily resolve, but I regularly find myself thinking back to moments in the play. A ton of smart ideas and difficult dilemmas in a short work.

WELL (by Lisa Kron, seen at the Longacre). It depresses me no end that Broadway wasn’t the right spot for this play.

HISTORY BOYS (Alan Bennett, Broadhurst). I’d’ve trimmed a little at the top and the tail, but there were moments of such transcendence that I almost forgot my reservations.

THE DROWSY CHAPERONE (for simplicity's sake, let's say the folks behind Slings and Arrows, at the Marquis)—Obviously, I’m more drawn to plays than to musicals, but I loved this goofy story. Great music, clever script, talented cast … I found it wonderfully entertaining.

CHRISTINE JORGENSON REVEALS (performed by Bradford Louryk, seen at what was then Dodger Stages). Who knew lip-synching could be so entertaining and thought-provoking?

THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE—I don’t think I want to see that much blood on a stage ever again, but shock value can be very refreshing. And, of course, it wasn’t just shock value. Up there with the blood and gore were some serious discussions of the often skimpy motivations for acts of hideous violence.

Special Mentions:

I can’t quite bring myself to put them on the main list, but I loved both KIKI & HERB ON BROADWAY and JAY JOHNSON: MY TWO AND ONLY. Kiki & Herb’s Broadway show would’ve been on my list, but then I went to their Christmas show at the Bowery Ballroom—one-fifth the price and nearly twice as long (which was kind of annoying, quite honestly; don’t folks who go to downtown clubs have jobs to go to the next mornings?), and suddenly those “This show doesn’t belong on Broadway” complaints took on a new light—it’s not that Broadway’s too good for them, it’s that seeing them there costs way too much. I think My Two and Only was the only Broadway show I saw this year that made me cry!

Outstanding Performances Not Mentioned Above:

Logan Marshall-Green in Dog Sees God and Pig Farm
Christine Ebersole in Grey Gardens (No, really, how do you sing so beautifully with tears and snot streaming down your face?)
Lee Pace in Guardians
Cate Blanchett in Hedda Gabler (she overpowered the other players, but …)
Megan Dodds in My Name Is Rachel Corrie
Ian McDiarmid in Faith Healer (Cherry Jones got a bum rap, but it’s hard to win plaudits for underplaying a character; McDiarmid chewed the scenery, but entertainingly)
Zoe Wanamaker in Awake and Sing!
Sandra Oh in Satellites
Liev Schreiber in Macbeth
The cast of High Fidelity once the closing notice was up—irrepressible high-energy enthusiasm. I liked the show!

Least Liked:
STUFF HAPPENS (I like David Hare, but I’d already seen that show on the news and in the newspapers, thanks)

FESTEN—Great reviews from the London version, so I don’t know what happened over the Atlantic, but the New York production was dreadful.

CAINE MUTINY COURT-MARTIAL—Inert and utterly lifeless even though the actors were apparently told to EMOTE!! at all times. I’ve seen better high-school shows.

BURLEIGH GRIME$ (more like Burleigh Grimezzzz)—When people talk about cynical shows, this should be the prime example.

LOSING LOUIE—Just after seeing this, I wrote somewhere that this mess “wasn’t as bad as people are saying.” That thought has changed with time. It was awful, and MTC was crazy to put it on their schedule.

THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’—A lot of critics gave Twyla Tharp all kinds of credit for being a “serious artist.” She undoubtedly is, but this show was misconceived and misplayed from start to finish. I rate it worse that the bad-in-almost-exactly-the-same-way Ring of Fire, because it attempted to tart things up with MEANING. Tharp’s biggest mistake was taking Dylan at his word.

Final Whine:
I’ve ranted before about how the appalling British accents in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Abigail’s Party ruined the shows for me. Well, I must add a couple of other horrors to dialect coach Stephen Gabis’ record: I realized that he was also responsible for Stuff Happens (where working-class Jack Straw sounded totally plummy and, for some inexplicable reason Scot Robin Cook sounded like an Ulsterman—and yes it does matter in a show that is trumpeting its verisimilitude) and Butley, where Nathan Lane’s normal accent was fine, but his impersonations of Northern Britons were laughable. (OK, not to harp on this too much, but … I know the role probably called for an imperfect impression, but when a Northern accent is written as “goin’ to’t’ dogs” you don’t pronounce it “going to T dogs.” It’s “goin tuht dogs.” I don’t know why the English actor in the cast didn’t say something about this.)

Labels: bam, butley, david hare, diana son, drowsy chaperone, druid/synge, in the continuum, jay johnson, kiki and herb, new york, sandra oh, sarah niles, satellites, stephen gabis, stuff happens, theater

In the Continuum

Years ago, when I worked at a feminist magazine in D.C.—and later in the same circumstances in London—I was often entreated to attend feminist theater performances. I can’t remember seeing anything bad, but I also don’t remember being knocked out; in fact, I don’t really remember anything about any of the productions. The only concrete thing I remember about all those trips to the theater is embarrassing myself by asking for a kir royale at the bar of a London theater when the publicist offered me a drink and then having to admit that I didn’t really know what it was when the bar worker wasn’t sure how to make one.

(I should say that I was reluctant to review the pieces because the magazines I worked at were aimed at a national audience, so most of our readers wouldn’t care how good the local production of Franca Rama’s latest was. The publicists never really took that for an answer, though, and it was easier to say you’d go. This situation seems much more attractive in retrospect than it was at the time.)

It was always so tricky to write about the plays. You knew the producers weren’t inviting you to their shows for your artistic edification; they wanted reviews to generate ticket sales and to excerpt in their ads or, more likely, grant applications. If you appreciated their underpaid, underappreciated efforts, as I did, you didn’t want to pee on their parade—and I really would’ve preferred potential theater-goers to see a feminist play rather than a “mainstream” show, so I wanted to help encourage that. But now I feel like the manager who doesn’t confront an underperforming report and thus does nothing to get the worker to self-actualize. (As someone who had to be jolted into making an effort at the age of 35, let me tell you, it’s a good thing, but the boss has to take a chance on someone in whom they see potential and then has to be willing to be a bitch to get that person to really try.) Most of the time, I either didn’t write a review (I hope I wrote about that London play after I made them open a bottle of champagne for me), or I was kind.

Now I feel bad, because those “kind” critiques undermine the credibility of the many fine reviews of In the Continuum (and probably explain all those reviewers’ preambles about how appalling political theater usually is). Yes, it’s a play with a purpose—to make audiences think about the effect of HIV/AIDS on women around the world—but it’s good; really good, not “gosh, I really wish you’d go see this instead of the more mainstream, well-funded piece of entertainment a few blocks uptown” good.

The play, written and performed by Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter consists of two parallel stories—Gurira tells the story of Abigail, an upper-middle-class Zimbabwean who has a catch of a husband (handsome, well-bred, and employed), a son, and a job as a newsreader on ZBC; while Salter focuses on Nia, a creative Los Angeles teenager who lives in a shelter, works at Nordstrom, and has a high-school basketball star for a boyfriend. Within 90 minutes they both learn that they’ve been deceived, realize that they’ve deceived themselves, and try to stand up and change things. The parallel structure is very tight—the whole thing is incredibly mature for two such young artists.

What’s most impressive is the subtlety of both the writing and the performances—Gurira does a great job of establishing the class signifiers that are so important to Abigail, and Salter is amazing at conjuring Nia’s circle—a social worker, her cold mother, a cousin, her boyfriend’s mother—with the slightest changes of “look” (essentially the refolding of a bandana) and a change of attitude/accent. Now, I’m looking forward to seeing Bridge & Tunnel, but judging from the Web, Sarah Jones makes use of quite a few costume props—and it’s relatively easy to distinguish between a Pakistani cab driver and a Jewish grandmother—signaling to the audience that she’s no longer the teenager, but her mother (or her cousin, or whatever) is much more of a challenge. And I was never confused.

Labels: Danai Gurira, in the continuum, Nikkole Salter, off-broadway, theater