Best Shows of 2024

When New York theatre shut down in 2020, I had to come up with a list of the top shows I missed due to the pandemic.

Since then, theatre has come back... very slowly. Each year I've hoped that the next year would be better, but sadly theatre in New York--and in the United States in general--is in a sorry state, less diverse, less original, and less interesting than it has been in a long time.

That doesn't mean there haven't been any good shows this year, and I've been fortunate enough to see a few of them. (Though some of the best plays I saw, including Mrs. Warren's Profession and Fable, were far from New York.) Here's my list of the top productions that opened in New York City in 2024:

10. The Heart of Rock and Roll - Yes, jukebox musicals are way overdone, but this delightful romantic comedy featuring the songs of Huey Lewis and the News won me over, in part due to the comic acting of McKenzie Kurtz.

9. Stereophonic - Even when it was Off-Broadway, Stereophonic was getting incredible buzz, much of it deserved. It's true that if you're not a Fleetwood Mac fan you won't be able to appreciate it as much of some of your neighbors in the theatre, but it's still worth seeing.

8. The Hills of California - Similar to Stereophonic in theme and scope but more ambitious in terms of its use of theatricality, Jez Butterworth's The Hills of California was a must-see play for me. Though not as successful as some of his previous work, it still packs an emotional punch.

7. A Wonderful World - I went into this bio-musical about Louis Armstrong somewhat skeptical, but I was pleasantly surprised to see how deftly the show treated its subject, one of the transformational geniuses of popular music in the 20th century. Also, having Tony-Award-winner James Monroe Iglehart play Armstrong didn't hurt.

6. Blood of the Lamb - If this Off-Broadway drama wasn't on your radar, it should have been. Arlene Hutton's eerily prophetic play about the human costs of increased legislation over women's bodies took medical and legal discussions beyond abortion to the multitude of cases that arise when pregnancies, wanted or not, go differently than planned.

5. Cabaret - Speaking of politics, this year's revival of the John Kander and Fred Ebb classic Cabaret felt more relevant than ever, not so much due to tinkering with Joe Masteroff's book as from a fresh interpretation by director Rebecca Frecknall. The immersive nature of the performance brought in a lot of press, as did some star actors, but the highlight of the show is Bebe Neuwirth's portrayal of Fräulein Schneider.

4. The Devil's Disciple - Bernard Shaw's comedic melodrama about the American Revolution is one of my favorite plays, but its large, mostly male cast makes it tricky to get staged. Director David Staller came up with an intriguing solution in adapting the play for a cast of five women. Oddly enough, it worked, in part due to an amazing ensemble led by Folami Williams. With a run straddling a controversial presidential election, this production gave audiences plenty of food for thought.

3. Suffs - If anything, Shaina Taub's musical about the women's suffrage movement was a bit too politically relevant this election year. It can be infuriating to watch a group of well-meaning activists fight one another rather than join forces to achieve something, but that's exactly what happened at the beginning of the 20th century, just as it happens all-too-often today. Taub's catchy songwriting provided the perfect medium to tell the complex story of how the 19th amendment was finally passed. Sadly, the show is now closing.

2. La Forza del Destino - If you missed the Metropolitan Opera's production of Giuseppi Verdi's rarely performed La Forza del Destino, you might have a while to wait for another chance. The opera has been said to be cursed ever since the baritone Leonard Warren died on stage during the show while singing at the Met in 1960. This year's production was instead blessed by amazing performances by Lise Davidsen as Leonora and Judit Kutasi as Preziosilla. If the Met announces the opera's return in its next season, definitely try to go.

1. The Great Gatsby - Though it was snubbed by the Tony Awards this year, the best show I saw in New York in 2024 was Kait Kerrigan, Nathan Tysen, and Jason Howland's new musical adaptation of The Great Gatsby. The lyrics are delightful, and the elaborate sets and musical numbers are impressive. Jeremy Jordan, Eva Noblezada, Noah J. Ricketts, and Samantha Pauly all give strong performances, but the real star of the show is F. Scott Fitzgerald's story, which is presented in a manner that is both faithful to the original novel and still relevant to audiences today.

Sadly, there weren't a lot of runners-up this year, but these shows prove it's still possible to make great theatre in New York.

The Devil's Disciple

I've written about Bernard Shaw's play The Devil's Disciple, and seen the Hollywood movie based on it, so I was particularly keen to watch the latest New York revival of this comedy, now showing on Theatre Row.

Gingold Theatrical Group produced this new version, which was adapted and directed by David Staller to feature only five actors--all female--who perform this testosterone-driven tale of the American Revolution with grace and style.

A framing device introduced by Staller shows a young woman who has inherited a house as old as our country, and much like the current United States, badly in need of some serious work. The woman, played by Folami Williams, discovers the house is haunted by numerous ghosts. She then finds the diary of one of the house's first inhabitants, Judith Anderson, wife of a stalwart Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Anthony Anderson.

Williams then takes on the persona of Judith, while the ghosts perform all of the other roles. The cast does an amazing job, with Tina Chilip playing Rev. Anderson, and Nadia Brown playing the bad boy Dick Dudgeon, the titular Devil's Disciple who rebels not just against the British but against his puritan upbringing represented by his mother (played with ice-cold ferocity by Susan Cella). Assorted other roles are filled in by the ever-versatile Teresa Avia Lim, who previously appeared as the Queen of Egypt in GTG's production of Caesar and Cleopatra.

Toward the end of the play, Staller inserts a speech Shaw wrote for a revival of the play starring Maurice Evans, in which America is hailed as "a land that will never be home to kings or tyrants or demagogues." That line lands a little differently post-election than it did before, but perhaps that just means we need it there now more than ever.

The show is playing until November 23rd, so if you haven't seen it yet, go! This is a revival you won't want to miss.

Presenting on Saint Joan

Today was the second day of the International Shaw Society's "Shaw and Heroism" conference at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.

We opened with some video presentations delivered over Zoom. David Staller spoke about his experiences running Gingold Theatrical Group which will be performing Arms and the Man this fall.

After David spoke, Jean Reynolds gave a paper on Getting Married. She noted that Mrs. George's trance in the play prefigures the trance in Shaw's later drama Heartbreak House. She also likened the play to Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, since both stories feature a stopped clock and an uneaten wedding cake.

Next, Vishnu Patel spoke about heroism and desire in Pygmalion. He discussed an Indian adaptation of the play in which caste replaces class. The Eliza character in that version is named Manjula, and like in the musical adaptation My Fair Lady, it is hinted at the end that she might marry the professor who taught her how to speak and act in a new way.

My own presentation was also today. I discussed how the actor Sybil Thorndike came to embody heroism in the London premiere of Shaw's masterpiece Saint Joan. Shaw had originally gotten to know Thorndike when she understudied the leading role in a touring production of Candida. It was after he saw her in a different role, that of Beatrice in Percy Shelley's The Cenci, that he reportedly remarked, "I have found my Joan."

The first woman to play Joan in Shaw's play was not Thorndike, but the American actor Winifred Lenihan. John Corbin, critic for the New York Times, was unimpressed with Lenihan, though fortunately ticket sales for the play remained strong. Thorndike played the role when the play opened in London, and she seems to have put her own distinctive mark on the piece.

After my presentation, we had a discussion with the cast of the staged reading of Saint Joan we saw yesterday. The actor who played the lead commented that Joan is earnest and authentically herself, while everyone else is acting out roles assigned to them by society. (By the way, this is also a major theme in my own play about Joan of Arc, Dark Night of the Soul.)

The last speaker today was Miki Matsumoto, who discussed the film Mournful Indifference, which reimagines Shaw's play Heartbreak House. The Russian film directed by Aleksandr Sokurov in 1987 was interpreted at the time as relating to Perestroika in the Soviet Union, but Miki also related it to the present war in Ukraine.

Tomorrow, Mary Christian will be speaking on Shaw's true and false prophets. It promises to be quite interesting!

Mrs. Warren Redux

Tonight, I participated in a lively panel discussion about the play Mrs. Warren's Profession hosted by Gingold Theatrical Group, the company currently producing the show off-Broadway on Theatre Row.

Bernard Shaw wrote the play back in 1893, but it was immediately banned in Britain and did not receive any production until 1902, when the Stage Society presented a private performance for one day only. Audience members had to nominally join a special club in order to evade censorship rules.

A production three years later in New York City resulted in the entire cast getting arrested. Shaw kept trying to get the play produced in London, periodically resubmitting it to the censor's office. Critics attacked the piece for its frank discussion of prostitution, but Shaw knew that wasn't the real reason they hated it. He wrote in 1917:

I greatly doubt whether it will ever be licensed in this country, because it has against it the huge commercial interests in prostitution.... I think a really good performance of Mrs. Warren's Profession would keep its audience out of the hands of the women of the street for a fortnight at least. And that is precisely why it encounters an opposition unknown in the case of plays which stimulate the sex illusion.

Well, it wasn't literally the commercial interests in sex work that kept the play banned, but Mrs. Warren's Profession does expose how the entire capitalist system reduces human beings to the lowest states of degradation. Because of the play's history of censorship, tonight panel included Christopher Finan, Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Censorship. He warned that censorship is increasing in the United States, in spite of a recent Supreme Court decision.

Other panelists included Stephen Brown-Fried, who directed a wonderful production of Shaw's Misalliance at Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Ellen Dolgin of the International Shaw Society, esteemed Shaw critic Martin Meisel, lawyer Ethan E. Litwin, Liam Prendergast, who assistant directed GTG's production of Caesar and Cleopatra, and Sarah Rose Kearns, who penned the adaptation of Persuasion recently staged by Bedlam. David Staller, who directed the current production of Mrs. Warren's Profession, moderated.

It was great to be in such distinguished company discussing such a fascinating play. If you haven't seen it yet, the production is still running until November 20th. GTG will also be doing a one-night-only staging of Shaw's delightful comedy Village Wooing on December 13th, with Maryann Plunkett and Jay O. Sanders.

Arms and the Man

Today, actors from Gingold Theatrical Group live-streamed a reading of Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man to raise money for The Actors Fund. If you didn't catch it, you missed out.

With theatres closed due to COVID-19, a lot of companies have been trying to take shows online, but Actors Equity is understandably worried about performers being exploited. YouTube and other platforms make money off of advertisement on their sites, yet the theatre artists who get filmed never see a penny of the billions made by corporations off of their work.

That's why a number of companies have been working together with Equity to put on one-time-only live-streamed productions that request viewers donate money to The Actors Fund. The performances are not archived (or at least are not supposed to be), but theatre fans can still view them streaming, and as a fundraiser, they generate money to help actors in need get health care, housing, and emergency financial assistance.

Seth Rudetsky and James Wesley have been hosting readings for The Actors Fund on their live-streamed show Stars in the House. In the past, they've featured performances from the original Broadway casts of Mrs. Doubtfire and Urinetown, and the off-Broadway casts of The Little Dog Laughed and Six. Today, however, they had a special treat. GTG's artistic director, David Staller, brought together an all-star cast to do a live reading of Arms and the Man, one of Shaw's funniest plays.

Phillipa Soo played Raina, a young Bulgarian woman who hides a fleeing Swiss soldier who shows up in her bedroom after a battle. Santino Fontana played the soldier, who is disillusioned by war and carries chocolates with him rather than ammunition. Little does he know, Raina is engaged to the dashing Bulgarian officer Sergius Saranoff (Tom Hewitt), who believes in chivalric values with all his heart, even though he's been carrying on flirtations with Raina's maid Louka (Lauren Molina).

This is one of Shaw's "Pleasant Plays"--which means that after much romantic intrigue and shenanigans, all the conflicts are resolved with delightful hilarity. I particularly enjoyed Alison Fraser as Raina's mother, and Daniel Davis was delightful as her husband. How actors manage to have chemistry together while sitting in their own apartments and performing in front of the cameras on their computers is beyond me, but they managed to do it. Daniel Jenkins turned up for a delightful turn as Louka's affianced, and David Staller himself even acted briefly, taking on the role of a Russian soldier.

He also announced that GTG plans a full production of Shaw's The Devil's Disciple this fall on Theatre Row. The show will run all of October and into mid-November. Last year, the company mounted a wonderful production of Caesar and Cleopatra, and the previous year performed a delightful re-imaging of Heartbreak House. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do in the fall... assuming the theatres are open again!

Top Plays of 2019

I've come up with this year's list of the top plays I saw that opened in New York in 2019.

Of course some plays didn't qualify, like What the Constitution Means to Me, which opened last year Off-Broadway, or Timon of Athens, which I actually saw in England.

Last year, Travesties and Twelfth Night topped the list, and this year included pieces produced by Roundabout and The Public Theater as well. Here's this year's top ten, in reverse order:

10. Antony and Cleopatra - Hudson Warehouse provides a mixed bag of free classical theater in Riverside Park, but this year's modernized production of one of the great tragic love stories of all time was definitely worth seeing.

9. The Importance of Being Earnest - Another great free outdoor production this year was New York Classical Theatre's clever take on Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. This year they performed the play in both traditional and gender-swapped versions.

8. Midsummer: A Banquet - Food for Love Productions turned Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream into a tasty treat with this immersive production directed and choreographed by Zach Morris. The Art Nouveau aesthetic worked brilliantly, but it was the remarkable acting that sold the show.

7. Cyrano - Yes, this musical adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac by the New Group was all over the place, but it still managed to make me cry... a lot. If they end up releasing a cast album, definitely buy it. And yes, Peter Dinklage can sing. (We already knew Jasmine Cephas Jones and Grace McLean could.)

6. King Lear - Glenda Jackson gave a performance of a lifetime in this Broadway production of Shakespeare's bleakest tragedy. Sam Gold's direction was problematic at times, but a supporting cast including Jayne Houdyshell and Ruth Wilson made up for it, and the production was thoroughly enjoyable, if rather long.

5. Caesar and Cleopatra - Gingold Theatrical Group scored a hit again this year with their Off-Broadway revival of an epic historical comedy by George Bernard Shaw. Director David Staller's imaginative staging featured seven amazing actors and one hysterical puppet. I'm looking forward to seeing what GTG does next year!

4. Hillary and Clinton - Lucas Hnath's play about the 2008 presidential primary had already been making the rounds before landing on Broadway this year. His writing is always clever, but Broadway audiences had the added benefit of seeing Laurie Metcalf and John Lithgow in the title roles.  The play succeeded by eschewing historical accuracy in favor of a more metaphorical truth.

3. Much Ado About Nothing - The stand-out Shakespeare production of the year was undoubtedly The Public Theater's production of Much Ado About Nothing in Central Park. Director Kenny Leon assembled an incredible cast, and fortunately their performance was recorded and aired on PBS to be shared with the entire nation. If you missed it in the park, make sure you see the recorded version.

2. Scotland, PA - A lot of people have been crowing about Hadestown, which I saw both Off-Broadway and in London, though I have not yet seen in its new Broadway incarnation. The best new musical that I saw this year was Adam Gwon's Scotland, PA, a brilliant adaptation of the 2001 film, which was itself based on a certain Scottish Play. Alas, Roundabout has closed this production, but it deserves to have a longer life elsewhere.

1. Juno and the Paycock - Though I'm not a huge fan of Sean O'Casey, this spring Irish Repertory Theatre presented his three Dublin plays in rep, which is an opportunity not to be missed. Of the three, Juno and the Paycock is O'Casey's best play, and this production was masterfully directed by Neil Pepe to navigate the layers of comedy and tragedy for maximum effect. Irish Rep has a great line-up of shows for the coming year, including Dion Boucicault's classic farce London Assurance, which is running now.

I'm looking forward to that and lots of other great shows in 2020!

Caesar and Cleopatra

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of seeing Gingold Theatrical Group's delightful production of Caesar and Cleopatra, now playing at the Lion on Theatre Row.

Caesar and Cleopatra was George Bernard Shaw's ninth major play. He had burst upon the scene as a dramatist at the end of 1892 when the Independent Theatre Society produced his play Widowers' Houses, which he had actually begun as a collaboration with the critic William Archer.

Shaw later wrote The Philanderer and Mrs. Warren's Profession, which he published together with Widowers' Houses calling them all Unpleasant Plays. He also published a companion volume with Pleasant Plays which consisted of Arms and the Man, Candida, You Never Can Tell and a short one act about Napoleon called The Man of Destiny.

In 1897, Shaw wrote one of my favorites of his works, The Devil's Disciple, a tale of the American Revolution in which characters find that their own true greatness lies in a different direction than they ever imagined. Dick Dudgeon, who proclaims himself to be the Devil's disciple, finds himself on the path to saintly martyrdom, while a local minister raises hell as the commander of a militia.

With both The Man of Destiny and The Devil's Disciple, Shaw was dealing with major events of history, but through a personal lens as much as a geo-political one. History, the plays seem to say, is made by simple men making simple mistakes, scarcely knowing who they are themselves even as they reshape the world. Both deal with the late eighteenth century, which in the 1890s was still relatively recent in the grand scheme of things.

Caesar and Cleopatra takes the premise of human beings with their own foibles and flaws making history and sets it back in the time when the Roman Empire was still struggling to be born. When the play opens, Julius Caesar has defeated his rival Pompey and should be the undisputed master of the Mediterranean, but with only a handful of legions, he gets involved in a power struggle in Egypt that could be his doom. The fates not just of Caesar and Cleopatra but the whole world hang in the balance.

In order for Shaw could establish his copyright, the play had a staged reading in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1899. He published it in 1901 together with The Devil's Disciple and another play, Captain Brassbound's Conversion, under the title Three Plays for Puritans. Its premiere did not come until 1906, when it opened in New York with Johnston Forbes-Robertson and Gertrude Elliott in the title roles. It was an elaborate production which the New York Times hailed as "an artistic triumph." While the costumes and sets were given great attention, the text was treated as by no means sacred, and an entire act (or at least its equivalent) was eliminated.

For the production now showing on Theatre Row, GTG has taken a different approach. In 1906, the New York Times found the production "rich and apparently correct in archeological detail." Audiences today would probably not crave such historical realism even if theatre companies could afford it. Consequently, Brian Prather's set design suggests an archeological excavation site rather than an Egypt of 2,000 years ago. Costume designer Tracy Christensen dresses the cast in modern clothes, which can then have togas, jewels, crowns, and armor layered on top of them, hinting at period clothing rather than slavishly imitating it.

That means the focus is on the acting, and fortunately the cast is more than up to the challenge. Cleopatra's nurse Ftatateeta, played by the incomparable Brenda Braxton, draws the audience into the piece by describing the scene for us, much of that description being taken directly from Shaw's infamously poetic stage directions. Robert Cuccioli, who was wonderful earlier this year in The White Devil, plays Julius Caesar as an all-too-human conqueror who is painfully aware of how fragile even the mightiest accomplishments can be. He is joined by Teresa Avia Lim as the girlish Cleopatra, who must learn how to believe herself a queen until she finally becomes one.

The rest of the cast is quite wonderful as well. Rajesh Bose, who played Alfred Doolittle in Bedlam's recent revival of Pygmalion, is building quite a reputation as an interpreter of Shaw, this time playing Pothinus, the regent who treats Cleopatra's brother Ptolemy as a puppet (in this production, literally so). Jeff Applegate is a gruff and faithful Rufio, and Jonathan Hadley (who previously appeared in GTG's Widowers' Houses) is suitably stuffy as Britannus. Dan Domingues manages to temporarily steal the show as the outlandish Apollodorus the Sicilian, who makes the most famous carpet delivery in history.

Director David Staller brings all of the elements of the production together with considerable aplomb, and the night I saw it, audiences expressed their appreciation. Shaw's epic comedy makes small statements about big events. Rather than moving us with the grand and impressive, it impresses us with how little things taken together can build up to something grand, and that's something which this production definitely delivers.

Caesar and Cleopatra is playing until October 12th, so get your tickets now!