Best Plays of 2017

It's that time again when I look back on the best new productions that opened in New York City over the past year.

This list is only for plays in the five boroughs, so great productions farther afield like The Secret Theatre and Romeo and Juliet as well as the productions at the Shaw Festival are ineligible. My own play Capital which opened in Detroit this year doesn't qualify either, even though it was named one of the Best of the Season for southeastern Michigan.

Also not included are shows that opened in 2016 but that I didn't get to see until this year, like Dear Evan Hansen and the Broadway production of Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812. Last year, A Doll's House, Butler, and Hadestown topped the list. But what were the best productions of 2017? Read on to find out!

10. The Liar - Truth is, this adaptation by David Ives of the classic comedy by Pierre Corneille was one of the best (and first) plays I saw in 2017.

9. Fucking A - Of the three Suzan-Lori Parks plays the Signature Theatre Company produced this year, this was by far the best. A riff off of The Scarlet Letter, the play had its first off-broadway run back in 2003, but its dystopian view of a society where abortion is legal but practitioners are literally branded seems all-too prescient.

8. Once on This Island - This beloved Ahrens-Flaherty musical is currently getting an amazing production, so get your tickets now. Lea Salonga is excellent as Erzulie, the goddess of love and beauty, but the rest of the cast is strong as well, and Dane Laffrey's set makes the most of Circle in the Square's intimate space. If you're concerned about seeing a play in the round, don't worry. Director Michael Arden makes sure there isn't a bad seat in the house.

7. The Government Inspector - The Red Bull Theater Company is dedicated to the aesthetic of Jacobean drama, but this year they put on Nikolai Gogol's nineteenth-century farce about a minor bureaucrat mistaken for the Inspector General from the capital. The split-level set was best viewed from further back in the audience, but even if you sat up front like I did, you got to see some amazing performances from the likes of Michael Urie, Mary Testa, Michael McGrath, and Talene Monahon.

6. A Midsummer Night's Dream - It wasn't too long ago (ten years) that The Public Theater previously did Shakespeare's supernatural romantic comedy in Central Park, but the 2017 production was indeed a dream. Annaleigh Ashford gave a stand-out performance as Helena, which is saying a lot, considering that the show's headliner was Phylicia Rashad as a queenly Titania. The most memorable aspect of this production was having the attendant fairies played by older actors wandering around the forest in what looked like their pajamas. It was creepy in all the right ways.

5. Ernest Shackleton Loves Me - Two-person musicals are hard to pull off, and it's difficult to imagine this one with anyone else in the lead but Val Vigoda, the show's lyricist who also acts, sings, and plays the drums, keyboard, banjo, and electric violin! The book by Joe DiPietro tells the story of a sleep-deprived single mom composing music for video games who tries Internet dating and ends up being matched with the early-twentieth-century explorer Ernest Shackleton. Who cares that they're 100 years apart and he's currently in Antarctica? This witty and wonderful piece was a ray of sunshine in a dark year.

4. Desperate Measures - Speaking of witty and wonderful new musicals, the surprise hit of 2017 was Peter Kellogg and David Friedman's Desperate Measures, which sadly closes today at the the York Theatre Company. Based very loosely on Shakespeare's problem comedy Measure for Measure, the play is reset in the Old American West, where an un-elected governor is able to abuse his power and try to force a virtuous young woman about to enter a convent to sleep with him. If she refuses, her brother will hang. That might not seem like the stuff of musical comedy, but joyous music and dialogue in perfect rhyming couplets keep the laughs coming even through bleak material.

3. Julius Caesar - No doubt the most controversial production in New York this year was also one of the best. Conservative snowflakes cried foul over a play showing a Trump-like figure being assassinated. (Never mind the numerous past productions of Julius Caesar with Clinton and Obama stand-ins as Caesar.) Few--if any of them--actually saw the production. Had they gotten off of their hypocritical high horses long enough to actually see the show, they would have witnessed a biting critique of the left, and a warning that political violence, as tempting as it may seem, only leads to more violence, and ultimately despotism. The brutal assassination scene left some audience members physically sick to their stomachs. Julius Caesar was truly visceral theatre.

2. HOME/SICK - This collaborative project by The Assembly has been around for a while. (The group first workshopped it in 2010.) However, the production that opened this year at JACK in Brooklyn benefited from a long incubation process and past exploratory runs across the country. The story it tells of the Weather Underground in no way romanticizes the movement. Instead, much like the Public's Julius Caesar, HOME/SICK presents a cautionary tale of what happens when well meaning people turn to violence. During intermission, the audience watched a recreation of an event members of the Weather Underground had planned to bomb. It was chilling. Director Jess Chayes deftly led her cast to explore the complexities of taking on the injustices of the world when you yourself might through your own strident militancy become part of the problem.

1. Sweeney Todd - While Ernest Shackleton Loves Me and Desperate Measures were massively entertaining, and Julius Caesar and HOME/SICK were deeply disturbing, the Tooting Arts Club production of Sweeney Todd at the Barrow Street Theatre managed to be both. The show is still playing through the end of May, though sadly not with Norm Lewis, who opened this New York production as Sweeney. Fortunately, you can still catch Carolee Carmello as a hilarious and horrifying Mrs. Lovett. The Stephen Sondheim musical has a brilliant score, and you might think a stripped-down version in a reproduction of an actual London pie shop would lose something. Instead, this intimate production allows you to appreciate the music in a deeply personal way. Having the actors literally leap up onto tables right in front of you is shocking, but no more so than some of the acting choices, which remind you of the true trauma some of the characters suffer in this story.

So those are my picks for this year. Honorable mentions go to The Tempest at St. Ann's Warehouse, Everybody at the Signature, and the Metropolitan Opera's production of Fidelio. Hopefully 2018 will be an even better year for theatre in New York City!

Once on this Island

This afternoon, I saw the Broadway revival of Once on this Island. As you'll likely never see a production of this classic Ahrens-Flaherty musical quite so good, take my word for it and go.

My only other experience seeing Once on this Island was a college production described by one of my friends as "a noble effort." The piece certainly has its challenges. Lynn Ahrens' lyrics build in resonance, as does the music of Stephen Flaherty, so an opening number like "We Dance" might seem to be trying just a little too hard, but when the motifs laid out in the beginning come to fruition in the piece's final number, it's hard not to be moved.

There are strong performances all around, but the most memorable come from the four gods. Merle Dandridge plays Papa Ge, lord of death, a role generally given to a man. Dandridge makes the part her own, though, and is legitimately frightening at times. Quentin Earl Darrington plays Agwe, spirit of the sea, and his strong, fluid movements make him irresistible on stage. Alex Newell is a very grounded Asaka, an earth-mother figure who both comforts and can be capricious. Best of all, though, is Lea Salonga as Erzulie, queen of beauty and love, who especially shines in the song "The Human Heart."

Perhaps the most memorable aspect of the production, however, is the simple but brilliant set designed by Dane Laffrey, who also created the splendid set for the Deaf West production of Spring Awakening. Since the show is playing at Circle in the Square, the stage is quite literally a sand island surrounded on four sides by the audience. At one end of the stage is a pool of water, used humorously for an opening sequence reminding patrons to turn off their cell phones, but later used for quite moving entrances and exits.

Director Michael Arden uses the set in unexpected ways, as beds emerge and dance floors get revealed. Live flames in the form of candles, chandeliers, and torches light up the stage, and when a sheet descends for projections and shadows, it appears that everyone on both sides of it is able to get a good (though different) view of the action. This is perhaps the best use of the space at Circle in the Square I've ever seen.

But don't just take my word for it. Go to the show's website and get tickets to see it yourself!

Allegiance

Last night, I saw Allegiance, the new Broadway musical that tells the story of the Japanese internment camps during World War II. As the play shows, these camps sometimes split apart families, as some people resisted the government on principle, and others went off to fight in the Japanese-American 442nd Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army.

It's difficult for me to imagine someone having the U.S. government take away everything they have and force their entire family behind barbed wire, and then that person turning around and saying, "I love America so much I'm willing to fight for it." The men who did so both honor the American democratic system and perpetually shame it for its abominable failures. Much like the African-American regiments during World War II, the 442nd was composed of men fighting for a country that treated them as second-class citizens.

Allegiance honors such men, but it also recognizes the heroism of those who chose not to go. In the play, Sammy Kimura (played by Telly Leung) tries to enlist after Pearl Harbor, is rejected because he is Japanese, and then gets sent off to an internment camp in Wyoming. In spite of the barbaric (and blatantly unconstitutional) treatment of his family, he still longs to serve, and when the 442nd is created, he jumps at the chance to serve. Meanwhile, however, his father (played by Christopheren Nomura) refuses to swear allegiance to the U.S. government on principal, and is shipped off for even harsher treatment. Both men are stubborn in their own ways, but both earn our respect.

Perhaps even more interesting is the character of Frankie Suzuki (played by Michael K. Lee) who organizes resistance to the draft after the government decides to start forcing internees to join the military. Frankie and company have the best song in the show, "Paradise," which comments bitterly on government's assertions that the camps are safe, clean, and humane. The polar opposite of Frankie is Mike Masaoka (played by Greg Watanabe), the spokesman for the Japanese American Citizens League. Historically, Masaoka and the JACL cooperated with the government in hopes that the internment process would be as humane as possible. Understandably, Masaoka became the focus of a great deal of criticism, but Allegiance portrays him, too, trying to do the right thing as best he can.

One of the show's two biggest stars is George Takei, who plays an older Sam Kimura, as well as that character's grandfather, Ojii-chan. The Star Trek actor, who was himself interned in the camps as a young boy, has been a major force in bringing the show to Broadway. The other big star is Lea Salonga, who plays Kei, Sammy's big sister who falls in love with the anti-authoritarian Frankie. Best known as the original Kim in Miss Saigon, Salonga has an amazing voice that composer Jay Kuo's music tries to highlight.

Sometimes the patriotic thing to do is fight, and sometimes it is to refuse. Allegiance makes us consider whether both sides might indeed be right. The play tells an important American story, and in a Broadway season already populated by other great shows like Hamilton and Spring Awakening, it deserves to be seen.