Best Productions of 2021

New York City theatre isn't completely back yet, especially with omicron scares cancelling shows right and left, but at least things are better than last year, when I had to write a list of the top 10 shows I did NOT get to see.

So now I'm back to my annual tradition of coming up with a list of the top shows I saw that opened this year in New York City. Obviously, my own adaptation of A Christmas Carol doesn't count, since it was in Trenton, and neither do virtual performances, though some of them were quite fun.

Here are my picks, in reverse order:

10. The Alcestiad - Magis Theatre Company lived up to its name with this magical outdoor production on Roosevelt Island this summer. Thornton Wilder's take on a Greek myth involving death and plague came alive with the ruins of a smallpox hospital providing the backdrop. It was a joy to behold.

9. King Lear - New York Classical Theatre decided to do William Shakespeare's most depressing tragedy this year, but with the happy ending rewritten by Nahum Tate. Once again, the outdoor setting added to the experience, though it also meant that my first two attempts to see the show were cancelled due to rain. The third time was a charm, and this show was nothing if not charming.

8. The Book of Moron - Robert Dubac's one-man show was closer to a stand-up comedy routine than your typical Off-Broadway fare, but it rose beyond simple jokes to become an engaging and thought-provoking piece of theatre. This was in part due to flawless direction by comedy legend Garry Shandling and a surprisingly innovative set designed by Melissa Burkhardt Moore. I'm glad I saw it.

7. Trouble in Mind - Alice Childress at last made it (posthumously) to Broadway with Roundabout's production of her most famous play, a backstage drama about actors rehearsing a dreadful script by a conveniently absent playwright. During intermission, I overheard one audience member say, "Chuck Cooper makes everything he's in even better." How true! Cooper's performance in the play is not to be missed, so if you haven't seen it yet, get your tickets. It's still playing, but only through January 9th!

6. Merry Wives - Jocelyn Bioh's adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor was the Public Theater's sole offering at the Delacorte this summer, but it was worth seeing, if for no reason other than Jacob Ming-Trent, who played the larger-than-life character of Falstaff. Bioh appropriately adjusted the text to make Shakespeare's comedy of rural life in England work when reset among African immigrants in contemporary Harlem. The sight of Ming-Trent as an overgrown man-child playing video games was not only a witty sight gag--it was amazingly appropriate for the character of Sir John Falstaff.

5. Flying Over Sunset - When James Lapine has a new play, it's usually worth seeing, and when it's got music by Tom Kitt and lyrics by Michael Korie, you definitely want to be there. This imagined meeting of Aldous Huxley, Clare Boothe Luce, and Carey Grant at a rented Malibu beach house where they go on LSD trips together delivers both soaring melodies and beautiful stage pictures. It also features innovative choreography by tap master Michelle Dorrance. Harry Hadden-Paton, Carmen Cusack, and Tony Yazbeck all provide stellar performances that go beyond mere impressions of celebrities. This show is still playing at Lincoln Center, so get your tickets while you can!

4. Mrs. Warren's Profession - Gingold Theatrical Group scored again with their production of Bernard Shaw's devastating comedy about capitalism and prostitution, which turn out to be pretty much the same thing in this play. Karen Ziemba was able to shine in the title role, even when sharing the stage with other acting stalwarts like Raphael Nash Thompson and Robert Cuccioli. The more challenging roles in the play, however, go to the younger performers playing Vivie and Frank. Nicole King made her Off-Broadway debut as Vivie Warren, a "New Woman" whose enigmatic intelligence Shaw explored but thankfully never tried to solve. She was complimented by David Lee Huynh as Vivie's caddish love interest, Frank. Director David Staller made certain this production was just as charming as GTG's 2019 offering, Caesar and Cleopatra.

3. The Disciple - Thirdwing is a relative newcomer to NYC theatre. Their productions--which are sometimes live, sometimes virtual, and sometimes both--can be hit or miss. The Female Genius, a series of filmed shorts by Rachel Carey, provided the basis for this full-length play about author and philosopher Ayn Rand and her devoted much younger lover, Nathaniel Branden. Unlike some other plays about sexual exploitation by the famous and powerful, The Disciple finds nuance, in part by flipping traditional gender politics on their head, and showing a woman who is willing to be just as selfish and brutal as any man. Maja Wampuszyc is perfect as Rand, and Cameron Darwin Bossert plays Branden with both humanity and humor. Alas, the in-person show came and went without much fanfare, but fortunately, you can still see a filmed scene from it streamed through Thirdwing's website.

2. The Alchemist - The funniest new play of 2021 was Ben Jonson's old Jacobean comedy The Alchemist, made new again in a brilliant adaptation by contemporary dramatist Jeffrey Hatcher. Red Bull Theater Company, which has been remarkably active online during the pandemic, thankfully returned to the live stage with this side-splitting production directed by Jesse Berger. The cast featured Jacob Ming-Trent--who was so hilarious as Falstaff in this summer's Merry Wives--as well as Manoel Feliciano, Reg Rogers, Teresa Avia Lim, Nathan Christopher, Carson Elrod, Allen Tedder, Louis Mustillo, and Jennifer Sanchez (who literally shimmered in a costume designed by Tilly Grimes). Jonson's play is hysterical, but its cast of 12 (plus assorted extras) makes it difficult to produce for a professional company. Hatcher did a great job getting to the core of the humor while also reducing the cast size and making the play feel topical for those of us living through the plague of the 21st century.

1. The Streets of New York - Of all the New York companies that took their work to the virtual world to keep theatre alive during the pandemic, none were more prolific and innovative than Irish Repertory Theatre, which experimented boldly with the online format, and frequently with great success. I intensely looked forward to their return to the live stage, though, and was greatly pleased when they announced that they would be performing Dion Boucicault's The Streets of New York, especially after they had done such a magnificent revival of the same author's comedy London Assurance. What I was not expecting was for the show to be a musical! Director Charlotte Moore provided a number of delightful songs to transform Boucicault's classic melodrama into a holiday treat. She couldn't have done it, however, without a delightful cast that includes Ben Jacoby, David Hess, Justin Keyes, Jordan Tyson, Ryan Vona, Delaney Westfall, and (most winningly) Amanda Jane Cooper. It's still playing until January 30th, so be sure to grab tickets.

That's my list! Honorable mentions go to Blackbird, Radium Girls, and The Overcoat. Let's hope the virus recedes soon, and we can have a more robust season in 2022!

The Disciple

I just got back from seeing The Disciple, Rachel Carey's bold new play about novelist and philosophical provocateur Ayn Rand and her follower and much younger lover, Nathaniel Branden.

Maja Wampuszyc is chillingly perfect as the domineering Rand. I first got to know Wampuszyc's work when she appeared in my play Foggy Bottom at the Abingdon Theatre Company, but she went on to premiere on Broadway in Irena's Vow and more recently was in James Gray's film The Immigrant.

Cameron Darwin Bossert plays Branden, the devoted acolyte of Rand who went on to make a name for himself as a psychologist and self-help guru. We see him in 1979, leading a self-esteem retreat, and in flashback as a young man manipulated and used by Rand for her own purposes.

The show is playing at the Wild Project until July 25th, and if you join theatre company Thirdwing for a monthly fee, it's ridiculously cheap. Check it out!

Fringe Preview '15

The New York City Fringe Festival opens on Friday, and this year there were quite a few plays I wanted to see. Yesterday I went down to Fringe Central and picked up my tickets. Here are the shows I plan to see, in the order I'll be seeing them:

The Waste Land

This performance piece is a collaboration between two brothers from Austria, actor Christopher Domig and painter Daniel Domig. The Waste Land presents T.S. Eliot's classic poem... with the aid of a giant puppet head. What could be better than that? The Domig brothers have been developing this piece for years, and now New Yorkers are going to get a chance to see it. Though the poem was written by a man, the speaker is (by Eliot's account) the Countess Marie Larisch, so it will be interesting to see the text performed by a man. Fiona Shaw probably did the most famous dramatic performance of the poem.

Lady Macbeth and Her Lover

This play by Richard Vetere (The Engagement) tells the story of two writers who make a suicide pact. One of them lives, while the other posthumously wins the Pulitzer Prize. The dead woman's daughter then demands that the survivor become her literary mentor. Sasha Brat directs this new drama, starring Maja Wampuszyc (Foggy Bottom) and Jenny Ashman (Romance Language).

Fuente Ovejuna

The wicked commander is found murdered. And who committed the crime? "Fuente Ovejuna did it, sir!" Ducdame Ensemble (which was founded by graduates of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts) presents this classic play by Lope de Vega. Previously seen in London, the production plays up the parallels between the 15th-century historical incident in Castile that inspired Lope and the Occupy Movement of recent memory.

The Merchant of Venice

This FREE outdoor production by the Hip to Hip Theatre Company is currently touring the outer boroughs, but it will be settling down in Tompkins Square Park for a Fringe Al Fresca run at the park's bandshell. Hip to Hip artistic director Jason Marr and dramaturg Adriana Alter have adapted Shakespeare's classic comedy as a parable about how not to live in a multi-cultural world. David Mold directs a cast that includes William Oliver Watkins (of Moby-Dick fame) among others.

The Broccoli Murder, DiCaprio Dance and Other Stories From My 20 Years as a NYC Cop

The title says it all. Peter Michael Marino directs this one-man play by Mark DeMayo, a retired NYPD detective with an arresting past. Now a comedian, DeMayo previously worked at the 26th Precinct in Harlem. The New York Post recently cited him in a snarky article about fanny packs. Though this one-man show might not have the gravitas of Freight, it is precisely the type of show the Fringe loves to do.

Venus and Adonis

In this production by Los Angeles-based New Circle Artists, Misha Bouvion adapts and performs Shakespeare's erotically charged poem with the help of director Daniella Caggiano. The show got good reviews in California, and a similar project, a one-man performance of Shakespeare's other long poem, The Rape of Lucrece, recently took Philadelphia by storm. (But Shakespeare's twist on the sexy story from Ovid is probably easier to take than a tale of rape and suicide!)

So there you have it! The Fringe Festival is always hit or miss, but I'm hoping this year my selections won't leave me disappointed.

Book Release One Week From Today!

Next Wednesday, December 3rd, Applause Books will be celebrating the release of Best Monologues from Best American Short Plays. Come out at 6:00 to the Nuyorican Poets Cafe for readings of some of the monologues, including a selection from my own play The True Author... Revealed.

Ken Kaissar directed The True Author... Revealed back in 2009 starring Katherine Harte-DeCoux. Applause subsequently anthologized it in The Best American Short Plays: 2008-2009. It is inspired by the life of the nineteenth-century scholar, author, and complete basket case Delia Bacon.

Unfortunately, Kate won't be able to perform the monologue next week, but Alex Sunderhaus, who was recently seen in my play The State of Colorado v. Tennessee Williams, will be on hand to do the honors. Rumor has it that Maja Wampuszyc, fresh from her successful run in pool (no water) will be reading a monologue as well.

Some of the other authors whose work will be presented include Liliana Almendarez, Dano Madden, and Pamela Sneed. Admission is $5, but you'll get in for free if you order a copy of the anthology here:

Best Monologues from Best American Short Plays

It should be a good time, and hopefully we'll pack the house!

Last Chance to see Ravenhill's POOL

This afternoon, I saw One Year Lease Theater Company's production of pool (no water) by the British in-your-face playwright Mark Ravenhill. This excellent production at the Barrow Street Theatre closes on Monday, so in spite of the warning in the play's title, you'd better jump right in and see it.

Ravenhill is most famous for his play Shopping and Fucking, a title which The New York Times famously refused to print in an un-amended form. My introduction to his work, however, came from Faust is Dead, a play where sex, drugs, and violence are meticulously dissected with a weltschmerz Goethe easily could have easily recognized.

Though Ravenhill wrote pool (no water) as a single block of text, director Ianthe Demos has broken it up into five voices, performed by Estelle Bajou, Eric Berryman, Nick Flint, Richard Saudek, and Maja Wampuszyc. The play begins with the actors coming out onto the stage and stretching beneath five larger-than-life projections of themselves. Those projections, it turns out, are on four long, white benches which form the whole of the set. The company moves the benches around into such creative configurations, however, you'll find yourself thinking no finer set could ever be possible.

Ravenhill's text is disturbing and honest in the same way as Faust is Dead, and includes some of the same motifs: the inscrutability of fame, the difficulty of true intimacy, and the random taking of chemical substances in a drug-roulette that serves as a metaphor for a plethora of self-destructive activities. What really makes this play stand out, however, is the cast. All five look like they're giving the performances of their lives.

If you're interested in going, you can get more information here:

One Year Lease Theater Company

The Immigrant

This afternoon I went to see James Gray's new film The Immigrant, which I heartily recommend, in part because it gives a tantalizing glimpse glimpse into the world of burlesque in New York in the early 1920s, and in part because it features two remarkable stage actors I've had the pleasure to work with in the past.

The Immigrant tells the story of Ewa, a young Polish woman who arrives at Ellis Island with her sister, only to find that her sister must be quarantined for lung disease--and that she herself could be deported because of rumors that she is an immoral woman (a charge that is flatly untrue, as we later learn). She finds both an exploiter and a protector in the form of a shady showman, Bruno Weiss, who brings her into his act featuring the Beauties of the World. Ewa becomes "Miss Liberty" in the act, complete with candle-lit torch.

Scenes in the seedy theater do a great job of showing the reality of popular entertainment during that period, including the encroachments of new technologies, like moving pictures, which were threatening the stage at the time, both legitimate and not-so-much. The movie also shows how in an industry that routinely exploited women, certain women sometimes also rose to positions of power.

Dagmara Dominczyk plays Belva, a Polish woman who shares a flat with Ewa, and who also harbors feelings for the slimy burlesque manager Bruno. I know Dagmara from my days at Carnegie Mellon, where I worked with her on my play Betty Thorpe in the Theater Lab class. Dagmara has appeared quite a bit on the New York stage, for me, most memorably in Heidi Schreck's play There Are No More Big Secrets at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater.

Closer to my heart, though, is Maja Wampuszyc, who plays Ewa's Aunt Bistricky in The Immigrant. Aunt Bistricky tries to take Ewa in, only to watch in horror as her husband cruelly throws the young woman out the next day. Her character returns toward the end of the film in another very emotional scene.

Maja played the young Uzbek woman Marina in my play Foggy Bottom at the Abingdon Theatre Company in 2006. The sexy, dynamite-wielding terrorist in Foggy Bottom was a far cry from the conflicted aunt in The Immigrant, but Maja has a tremendous amount of range. She is perhaps most famous for playing Ida Haller in the Broadway production of Irena's Vow by Dan Gordan.

The Immigrant opened this month in the U.S. If it's showing at a theater near you, definitely go! There are wonderful performances, wonderful costumes, and a wonderful recreation of a New York City of a different era.