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.

At the Kit Kat Club

Cabaret is a musical deservedly lauded for utilizing a Brechtian Alienation Effect so that book scenes and song-and-dance numbers can comment on one another rather than integrating the entire show into one cohesive whole.

This would seem to make Cabaret an odd choice for an immersive theatre experience. However, a production in London successfully marketed the Kander and Ebb classic as an opportunity to wander around a Kit Kat Club recreating Weimar-era Germany.

When producers tried to recreate the experience on Broadway, they had trouble capturing the same magic, and while the show has been kept afloat by stars like Eddie Redmayne and Adam Lambert, critics were less receptive and ticket sales less robust than in London. Though the Broadway show has its flaws, it's still very much worth seeing, as I discovered when I finally caught up to it last night.

A young man I sat near had seen the play multiple times on two continents, and he assured me that while individual performers had different takes on their characters, the set-up in New York was essentially the same as in London. If that's true, perhaps Brits deal better with crowds, as the downstairs space that featured much of the pre-show entertainment was so packed it was difficult to see and appreciate the performers.

Fortunately, upstairs there were smaller groups of performers, providing music while audiences mingled and enjoyed the atmosphere. There were also plenty of bars available to get drinks, though they had a surprising lack of variety in cocktails. As I took my seat, a floor show had already begun on the main stage, so wherever you wandered there was bound to be something to see and hear. The stage, by the way, is in the round, and features some wonderful turn-table action.

I saw Adam Lambert as the Emcee and Ayla Ciccone-Burton as Sally Bowles. Those roles are frequently considered the leads, while the protagonist Cliff, who is the audience's point-of-view character, is a mostly thankless role of a bland American simply observing life in Berlin as the Nazis are on the rise. Calvin Leon Smith made the role come alive, though, and was perfectly marvelous as Cliff.

The biggest treat in terms of the cast was Bebe Neuwirth, who played Fräulein Schneider, a role originated by Lotte Lenya. Seeing Neuwirth in the late-night cabaret show Here Lies Jenny was an unforgettable experience, and while she is no longer performing the athletic dance moves she had in that show, her voice is still amazing, and her rendition of "What Would You Do" exquisite.

When the show premiered in 1966, it shocked audiences by lulling them into a sense of tranquility with songs like "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" or amusing them with numbers like "If You Could See Her" and then turning on them with those same songs, refashioning entertainment into terror. This production tips its hand, disturbing the audience from the beginning.

Still, the brilliance of the original show shines through, and the immersive aspects are quite enjoyable. If you haven't seen it yet, go.

And the Oscar goes to...

Tonight is the Academy Awards. I previously blogged about one of the nominees for Best Picture, The Favourite, which is not based on a play, but tells the story of the same historical events dramatized in Eugène Scribe's play The Glass of Water.

This got me wondering about other Best Picture winners that started out as plays. Two years ago Moonlight won, and that film was based on Tarell Alvin McCraney's relatively unknown drama In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue. I knew of McCraney through his play Wig Out! which I saw at the Vineyard Theatre, but he was basically unheard of when Moonlight won its Oscar. Now, his play Choir Boy is showing on Broadway and he heads the playwriting program at Yale.

The 2010 winner for Best Picture, The King's Speech, was a stage play by David Seidler before being adapted for the screen. It was at a reading of the script at a theatre in London that director Tom Hooper's mother discovered the piece and told him about it. The Academy's 2002 winner, Chicago, was of course adapted from the stage musical by John Kander and Fred Ebb, which was itself adapted from a 1926 play by Maurine Dallas Watkins.

Driving Miss Daisy, which won Best Picture in 1989, is based on a play by Alfred Uhry which still gets performed quite a bit. The film, in fact, still feels like a play, which is not true of 1984's winner Amadeus. Peter Shaffer, after having a hit with his stage play, went about completely rewriting the piece for the screenplay. The result was a film that is profoundly different from the play it's based upon, but both are quite good in their own manners.

No films based on plays won Best Picture Oscars in the 1970s, but in the 1960s the musicals West Side Story, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music and Oliver! all took away top honors, as did A Man for All Seasons, based on the play by Robert Bolt. Back in 1948, Laurence Olivier's film version of Hamlet won Best Picture. Yeah, you probably knew that was based on a play, but did you know Casablanca, which won in 1943, was based on the play Everybody Comes to Rick's by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison?

The 1938 winner, You Can't Take It with You, was of course adapted from the play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The 1933 film Cavalcade was based on a play by  Noël Coward and went on to win a Best Picture Oscar. That same honor also went to 1932's Grand Hotel, which was based on a play by William Drake, which he had in turn adapted from a German novel by Vicki Baum.

None of the nominees for Best Picture this year are based on plays. Too bad!

Two Visits to the Theatre

This weekend, I saw two plays I had been looking forward to seeing for a while: Red Bull Theater Company's production of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore and the Broadway musical adaptation of Friedrich Durrenmatt's The Visit.

With both plays, I was quite familiar with and quite fond of the source material, and both productions took considerable liberties. 'Tis Pity dates back to the 17th century, while The Visit was written in the 1950s, so one might think that the later play would be easier to update without losing a bit of its spirit. However, I found Red Bull's latest offering to be on the whole far more satisfying than what I saw on Broadway.

It's hard not to like a play with a title like 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. John Ford's dark tragedy, which dates to the reign of Charles I, luxuriates in its own excess. Taking the forbidden love of Romeo and Juliet even further, its star-crossed lovers are brother and sister. (Eww!) The brother, Giovanni, confesses his love to a Friar, who unlike Friar Lawrence does not approve of this love.

Giovanni's sister Annabella has a nurse figure with whom she can confide, her tutoress Putana. She whole-heartedly endorses the incestuous relationship. When Annabella remarks upon what a paradise she has passed over, her tutoress shockingly remarks:

Nay, what a paradise you have passed under! Why now I commend thee, charge; fear nothing, sweetheart; what though he be your brother? Your brother's a man, I hope, and I say still, if a young wench feel the fit upon her, let her take anybody, father or brother, all is one.

In directing such a deliberately outrageous play, Jesse Berger kept the feel of the 17th century while adding a number of modern touches. This came out most clearly in Sara Jean Tosetti's costume design, which used modern fabrics in periodesque ways. Giovanni's leather jacket, for instance, had been re-tailored in the shoulders to invoke the idea of a doublet. Unfortunately the music, composed by Adam Wernick, was less successful, sounding neither Renaissance nor modern.

The play famously ends with Giovanni running onstage with his sister's heart on a dagger. The only other time I have seen this play, the heart prop was done non-realistically, resembling instead some strange, cubist sculpture. Not so here. A shockingly realistic heart dripped blood from Giovanni's dagger. Terrible as the brother's actions were, he did not shrink from them, and the life-like (or rather death-like) heart would not allow the audience to forget that.

Unfortunately, I did not find the same level of bravery in The Visit, the new musical by John Kander and Fred Ebb with a book by Terrence McNally. Part of the reason for that might be the economic realities of Broadway. Durrenmatt's script lists 32 distinct characters (and that doesn't even include the actor who plays a succession of three different husbands). The cast of the Broadway musical version was half that size.

More disappointing, however, was how the adaptation seemed to turn away from the boldness of the original. In Durrenmatt's play, when a rich old woman returns to her home town, offering to lavish money on the inhabitants if they kill the man who wronged her years ago, they proudly reject the proposal, then immediately after an intermission they begin buying goods on credit, guiltily expecting the death to occur nonetheless.

Instead, McNally has the mayor momentarily tongue-tied after hearing the offer, and it is only after the schoolmaster makes a brief speech that the mayor and the rest of the town reject the proposal. It's as if all of the guts of the original had been workshopped out of the piece, and intentionally sharp edges were smoothed over so that nothing would seem too unexpected, too insufficiently justified.

There certainly are some good moments in The Visit, including a brilliant musical number where everyone in the town buys a new pair of yellow shoes on credit. Unfortunately few moments of musicalization match the haunting power of Durrenmatt's writing.

Consider this passage from the play, where the old woman describes her warped relationship with the man she now wants dead:

Your love died many years ago. But my love could not die. Neither could it live. It grew into an evil thing, like me, like the pallid mushrooms in this wood, and the blind, twisted features of the roots, all overgrown by my golden millions. Their tentacles sought you out, to take your life, because your life belonged to me, for ever. You are in their toils now, and you are lost. You will soon be no more than a dead love in my memory, a gentle ghost haunting the wreckage of a house.

I wish the musical had captured a bit more of the savage bravery of the play, the way Red Bull had managed to do with 'Tis Pity She's a Whore.