Top Shows (that I missed) in 2020

In past Decembers, I have come up with a list of the best shows I saw that opened in New York City that year. Well, for 2020, that list would have to be pretty short.

Sure, I could talk about Blessed Unrest's Battle of Angels, and Irish Rep's Lady G, and end with Roundabout's standout production of A Soldier's Play, but for the most part, 2020 was a total loss when it came to live theatre.

Instead, I'm going to write about ten shows I missed, plays I was looking forward to seeing live, but couldn't experience because massive government incompetence turned a completely predictable (and predicted) outbreak into the worst health crisis since the influenza of 1918-1920.

This year was supposed to be one of world travel for me, rather than confinement to mostly just four small rooms. That's why my list is not restricted to just New York City this year. Here are ten shows I should have seen, would have seen, and likely would have loved, had it not been for the dumpster fire of 2020:

10. A Touch of the Poet. Okay, this one is partially my fault, since Irish Rep went ahead and produced this Eugene O'Neill play digitally. I was looking forward to seeing it live, though, and Zoom fatigue combined with the added work of trying to teach classes online meant that I missed the virtual performance. I still blame 2020.

9. Hangmen. Was Martin McDonough's latest play going to be a masterpiece? Maybe. Maybe not. But New York never got to find out, because it was still in previews when COVID-19 shut down theatres. Some shows vowed to reopen once the crisis passed, but as it became clear that the shutdown would last for weeks and then months, producers had to pull the plug on this one.

8. Man of La Mancha. The Astoria Performing Arts Center had planned a revival of this classic musical, to be directed by Dev Bondarin, whose work I've always loved. Fortunately, APAC is still going, though other theatre companies have been forced to fold. Theatre in Queens took a big hit when the Secret Theatre announced its closure this year. The one bright spot is that APAC will be taking over the space they've vacated.

7. As You Like It. The Public Theater has experienced tremendous success with its Public Works productions in Central Park, bringing together professional artists and amateurs in a celebration of all that's great about New York City. Shaina Taub did an excellent job composing music for 2019's production of Twelfth Night, and I was looking forward to hearing her score for As You Like It. It looks like I'll have to wait a bit longer now.

6. Richard II. The Shakespeare in the Park production I was really looking forward to seeing this year, though, was Richard II. Though I've seen multiple filmed versions of the play this is the only one in the Shakespeare canon I've never experienced live. After the shutdown, director Saheem Ali organized a radio version of the piece that aired on WNYC. You can listen to each of the four episodes, which are available as podcasts, though it's certainly not the same thing.

5. The Prince of Egypt. After attending a Shaw conference in Spain this May, I was supposed to spend some time with my sister in London. She had already gotten us tickets to see the stage adaptation of Stephen Schwartz's The Prince of Egypt at the Dominion Theatre. The movie was delightful, and the score does seem to lend itself to a stage transfer, so I was looking forward to seeing how it works on stage, as well as spending some time with my sister. Instead, I've only been able to see her virtually this year.

4. Leopoldstadt. Even more exciting than The Prince of Egypt was the other show my sister had gotten us tickets to see. Tom Stoppard's new play Leopoldstadt opened this January in a production directed by Patrick Marber, who had done such a brilliant job directing Stoppard's Travesties. Of all the shows playing in London this year, this was the one I really, really wanted to see. It tells the stories of members of the Jewish community in Vienna during the first half of the 20th century. We had tickets, but now I don't know if I'll ever have a chance to see it.

3. The Devil's Disciple. Though the Shaw conference in Spain was cancelled due to COVID-19, I briefly entertained hopes of attending another Shaw conference in Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada. Instead, that conference went virtual, and the Shaw Festival decided to postpone its summer season for the summer of 2021. That means I might still get a chance to see the Shaw play they were supposed to do this year, The Devil's Disciple. Incidentally, Gingold Theatrical Group had planned to produce the same play this autumn. Will it be possible in 2021? We're still not sure.

2. Great Expectations. This play isn't an adaptation of the work by Charles Dickens, though I would have been excited about that, too. No, this Great Expectations is a reworking of my own short play The Rainbow, but for two older actors. A friend of mine, Ellen DiStasi, approached me earlier this year about doing The Rainbow with Theater of Light, which brings live drama to communities of older folks here in New York. Ellen asked if I could update the script to be performed by more mature actors, so a woman who had recently had a break-up became a widow, and there were a few other changes as well. The biggest thing, though, was that Ellen wasn't sure that a long monologue about a D.H. Lawrence novel would work for her target audience, so I changed it to a monologue about Great Expectations instead, which naturally changed the title of the play as well. I'd love to be able to do this show in 2021, but a play performed by members of a vulnerable community for other members of a vulnerable community....

1. The Love Songs of Brooklynites. I've been working on a full-length version of my one-act play that was workshopped in 2019 at the Theatre of Western Springs. Meanwhile, the one-act version was accepted for the theatre trail at the Arundel Festival of the Arts in the United Kingdom. The Drip Action Theatre Company in Arundel says they want to do the show this upcoming year. That would be wonderful. Though I've had my work performed in Canada, Australia, and even Japan, I've never had a production in the U.K., and Arundel looks like an amazing place to visit. Perhaps I'll be able to go this August and see it. Whether that happens or not, I'm still holding out hope for the full-length version of The Love Songs of Brooklynites to have a New York production once the theatres reopen. That means we're all going to have to wear masks, limit unnecessary travel, and get vaccinated. It also means that the government needs to get its act together and actually distribute and administer the vaccines being produced. Only then are we going to be able to have great theatre back.

Luna Park

I had the good fortune of seeing a reading of Hyeyoung Kim's new musical Luna Park earlier today. The reading was part of a fundraiser for the Astoria Performing Arts Center (APAC), but the piece deserves to get a full staging somewhere.

Michael Cooper wrote the lyrics for the musical, and Daniel F. Levin supplied the book. Some parts of the play are inspired by Maxim Gorky's reaction to seeing Luna Park opening at Coney Island for the first time in 1903, and the artists have included some of Gorky's original text.

The heart of the show, however, follows a trio who made the amusement park possible. Frederick Thompson was the creative force behind the park, while Elmer "Skip" Dundy provided the business sense, and the park itself was named for Dundy's sister, Luna. All three appear in the show, as does Thompson's wife Mabel, an actress he made famous by producing the Broadway show Polly of the Circus, starring her.

Luna Park sometimes plays loosely with history. Sadly, the Park's namesake passed away three years after it opened, but the musical has her live on and play a major role in its ups and downs, including the electrocution of the elephant Topsy, an event caught on camera by Thomas Edison's motion picture company.

I'm not sure what the next step for this musical will be, but I hope to see it again someday.

Discover a Great New Play

Tomorrow (Monday) my one-act play The Love Songs of Brooklynites will have a staged reading as a part of Emerging Artists Theatre's New Work Series.

Zach McCoy is playing the part of Chuck, a recent transplant to Brooklyn from Wisconsin. Zach's favorite stage credits include David in Love and Human Remains, Bernard in Boeing, Boeing, and Colin in The Birthday Boys. He also appeared in my play The State of Colorado v. Tennessee Williams. He currently does extensive voiceover work, reviews plays for The Drama League, and runs a sustainable seafood restaurant on the Upper West Side. Zach is a proud graduate of Butler University in Indianapolis, IN.

The role of Chuck's neighbor Abbie is being played by Jessica L. Vera. Her previous credits include Bullet Catchers, The True History of the Tragic Life and Triumphant Death of Julia Pastrana, the Ugliest Woman in the World, and A Snowfall in Berlin. She has also appeared on the Hulu series The Path and is in an independent film, Beyond the Night, which will be premiering at Woodstock Film Festival. I've also had the pleasure of working with Jessica as part of the 36th Street Writers Block, where she read the leading roles in Capital and Bones of the Sea as I was developing them.

The reading is directed by Dev Bondarin, who is the Artistic Director of Astoria Performing Arts Center where she has directed Follies, Raisin, ...Spelling Bee, Astoria Stories, Merrily We Roll Along, and In The Bones. As Associate Artistic Director of Prospect Theater Company, she directs a musical theater lab which has produced over 80 new, short musicals. Her other credits include Elevator Heart, King Lear, and A Home Across The Ocean.

Tickets for the reading (which benefits Emerging Artists Theatre) are $10. That includes admission to readings of two other short plays, The Cruelty of Children by Raymond McAnally and Hamlet Investigations, Inc. by Ellen Abrams.

The theatre is located at 15 West 28th Street on the second floor. Hope you can make it!

More Praise for FOLLIES

Congratulations to the Astoria Performing Arts Center, whose production of Follies cleaned up at the New York Innovative Theatre Awards this week.

In addition to winning for Best Ensemble, the revival of the classic Stephen Sondheim/James Goldman musical also picked up awards for choreographer Sara Brians, costume designer Jennifer Jacob, and actress LaDonna Burns.

I had the pleasure of seeing the production, directed by Dev Bondarin, this past May. It was also the last production APAC produced in their former space. For next season, they'll be moving to the Variety Boys & Girls Club of Queens, just down the street from their old place.

Incidentally, Dev will be directing a staged reading of my one-act play The Love Songs of Brooklynites next month, presented by Emerging Artists Theatre. Hope you can make it!

Last Follies

Yesterday, I attended Astoria Performing Arts Center's production of Follies, a musical that takes place in a theatre about to be torn down.

The set design by Ann Beyersdorfer was perfect, and conveyed the dilapidated nature of the play's setting. The production was made all the more poignant, however, by the fact that this was the last day of the last production APAC would ever perform in that theatre.

APAC's theatre space, by the way, is a church gymnasium, which worked perfectly for their production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, but has also been memorably transformed for Merrily We Roll Along and other shows. Both of those productions were directed by Dev Bondarin, who also helmed this wonderful Follies.

What was wonderful about it? Well, let's start with Stephen Sondheim's lyrics being perfectly articulated by a cast of veteran actors. Victoria Bundonis made sure you understood every last syllable of "I'm Still Here," and Greg Horton (who played Karl Lindner in last year's production of Raisin at APAC) gave one of the most insightful performances of "Buddy's Blues" I've ever heard (with help, of course, from younger performers Mandarin Wu and Kathleen LaMagna).

My favorite performance, though, came from Tina Stafford (who was a memorable Mrs. Corney in Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey's Oliver Twist) as Sally Durant Plummer. Her rendition of "Losing My Mind" was heartbreaking. Her younger doppelganger, Andrea Dotto, was a magnificent Young Sally, and clearly has a bright future ahead for herself.

Where is APAC off to next? They haven't announced where they'll be performing next season, but keep your eye out for them. If Follies is any indication, we should be expecting great things from them in the future.

Raisin

The 1974 Tony Award for Best Musical went to Raisin, an adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. Never seen it? Well now is your chance!

Astoria Performing Arts Center--which has revived other overlooked musicals like Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's Merrily We Roll Along--is currently performing the first fully staged New York revival of Raisin since... well... ever!

Dev Bondarin directed the piece, and it has a wonderful cast, including Warren Nolan Jr. as Walter Lee Younger, Ebony Marshall-Oliver as his mother Lena, Brandi Knox as his wife Ruth, and Sarita Amani Nash as his little sister Beneatha.

The musical streamlines the story, eliminating the whole plot line concerning Ruth's pregnancy, and getting rid of Beneath's boyfriend George Murchison. We don't miss him one bit, though, since that gives more time for Beneatha's other love interest, Joseph Asagai, played winningly by Cartreze Tucker. His song "Alaiyo" is one of the highlights of the show.

While the musical strips down the plot of the original, it also expands the cast, giving us a chorus of neighborhood regulars who provide transitional numbers like "Runnin' to Meet the Man" and "Booze." We also get to meet the offstage scoundrel Willie Harris, played in all is dodgey grandeur by Billy Lowrimore. Tony Perry plays a pastor who embodies Lena's deep faith in the number that begins Act II, "He Come Down This Morning."

Finding songs in pre-existing plays can be challenging. Hansberry's classic has one memorable moment with music where Walter Lee dances on a table to the sounds of a record playing traditional African music. As Hansberry describes in the stage directions: "He sees what we cannot, that he is a leader of his people, a great chief, a descendant of Chaka, and that the hour to march has come." In the number "African Dance," Raisin allows the audience to see this, too, with the chorus coming on dressed in traditional African clothes provided by costume designer Jeannipher Pacheco.

The best song in the show, though, is the satirical "Not Anymore" in which Walter, Ruth, and Beneatha recount the visit they received from the "welcoming committee" of the new neighborhood where they hope to move. Alas, the depiction of barely beneath the surface racism is all too topical now in 2017.

If you're interested in seeing the show, get your tickets soon. Raisin runs only through May 27. For more information check out:

Astoria Performing Arts Center

I Hate You Tomorrow!

Tomorrow, January 15th, is the staged reading of my new play I Hate You: A Love Story at 7:00 at IATI Theater, 64 E. 4th Street. Hope you can come!

The play follows the tumultuous relationship of two people who quickly discover they either are soul mates, or want to kill each other. Or quite possibly both. The opening scene of the piece was originally produced under the title The Rainbow and was first directed by Dev Bondarin.

Dev is directing this reading as well, and I am thrilled to be working with her once again. She is also the Artistic Director of Astoria Performing Arts Center where her credits include The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Astoria Stories, and Merrily We Roll Along.

The cast includes Doug Rossi and Sandra Maren Schneider. We're also lucky to have Vanna Richardson stage managing.

This reading is free and open to the public, so if you're available at 7:00 on Sunday, please join us!

Spelling Bee in A-S-T-O-R-I-A

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is one of those delightful shows that you just can't see too many times, which is why when I found out that the Astoria Performing Arts Center would be doing the show in Queens, directed by the incomparable Dev Bondarin, I knew I wanted to go.

What I wasn't prepared for, though, was that the play would be even more affecting than it was on Broadway. It isn't that the multiple-Tony-Award-winning production wasn't brilliantly directed by James Lapine when it played at Circle in the Square. It was. Somehow, however, what APAC has managed to do with the piece in a small venue in Queens is truly magical.

Part of the magic is the space. The play takes place in a gymnasium, and APAC's theater really is in a converted gymnasium, which had to be marginally less converted for this production. That didn't mean the company skimped on the set, though, as Tim McMath's set design definitely works some theatrical magic in the second act. Still, the small, intimate setting does a lot to bring home the message of the play.

As do the performers! While all of them are professionals (and most of them Equity members), none of the actors have struck gold on Broadway (yet). Lindsie VanWinkle, who memorably played Eliza Poe in Nevermore Off-Broadway, gives a stand-out performance as spelling bee host Rona Lisa Peretti. She is accompanied by Matt Welsh (seen last year in APAC's Merrily We Roll Along) as Vice Principal Douglas Panch, an assistant administrator in need of anger-management training. Billy Lowrimore also has some hysterical moments at Mitch Mahoney, the "Comfort Counselor" doing community service.

It is the spellers, though, that really break your heart. There's Chip (Stephen Mark), who painfully learns how unfair life can be, the home-schooled Leaf (Lee Slobotkin), who is thrilled just to participate, the overachiever Marcy (Emily Borromeo), who discovers the joy of not living up to expectations, the precocious Logainne (Heslens Estevez), who is president of the LGBT-Straight Alliance at her elementary school, the shy Olive (Becca Andrews), who waits patiently for her absent father to finally arrive, and the magic-footed William (Patrick Halley), who gradually learns to care for a world that never cared much for him.

All of the actors are people to watch in the future. But why wait until then? Head out to see them now in an intimate space in Astoria. APAC's production is running until May 28th. For more information, go to:

Astoria Performing Arts Center

Our Time

When Merrily We Roll Along opened on Broadway in 1981, audiences didn't know what to make of it. The play's structure, moving backward from a cynical and depressing present to a time in the past filled with hope and optimism, must have seemed horribly pessimistic, as if the show's creators only wanted to twist the knife in the gut of America, reminding it of all it could have been and had failed to be.

Seeing the show last night, in the wonderful production Dev Bondarin directed at the Astoria Performing Arts Center, I felt the opposite. This beautifully written play refuses to take away the charm and joy of youth, and the reverse chronological order makes the piece oddly optimistic. That might not have been apparent in 1981, but in a society surfeited on cynicism, wary from experience, but longing for something pure and true, perhaps this play can finally find a home.

Collaborators Stephen Sondheim and George Furth based the musical on a 1934 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. When that show opened, almost 50 years before the premiere of the musical, the Great Depression was still raging. I imagine audiences must have been inclined to think harshly of the play's sell-out protagonist, whose path is traced back to the time he graduated from college, spouting self-confidently, "To thine own self be true."

But the musical adds something vital... music! No matter how the audience might think about the play rationally, the music exerts an emotional force that resists the impulse toward cynicism. Traditionally, a musical will have a bright, happy version of a song in the first act, then a sad, melancholy reprise in the second. Merrily We Roll Along famously reverses this order. For instance, the character Beth (played wonderfully in this production by Rachel Rhodes-Devey) sings a horribly depressing version of "Not a Day Goes By" in Act I as she's going through a nasty divorce. Then in Act II, she sings the same song filled with love and joy on her wedding day.

What is the effect of this device? One might be tempted to laugh at poor Beth, to deride her as a fool for ever having dreams. However, Sondheim's music won't let you. Watching the show at APAC, it wasn't as though I didn't feel the joy of Beth's wedding day. Instead, I felt the joy of her wedding day AND the pain of her divorce at the same time. I couldn't dismiss the joy, but rather wanted to hold on to it all the tighter.

That goes double for the play's final scene, as the three friends who ultimately will tear each other apart share a magical moment on a rooftop watching the world's first satellite fly overhead. A moment in the past is not any less real, any less meaningful for having gone by. The emotions the characters feel, and that we feel, are still valid, even if they are doomed to dissipate and die.

Merrily We Roll Along is playing at APAC until May 23rd, so be sure you get a chance to see it. The central trio of composer Franklin Shepard, lyricist Charley Kringas, and novelist Mary Flynn are portrayed with pathos by Jack Mosbacher, Nicholas Park, and Ally Bonino respectively.

Just be warned: You won't be able to get the score out of your head. In spite of what a certain producer in the play says, this show has plenty you can hum.

For more information, go to:

Astoria Performing Arts Center