Best Plays of 2022

As the end of the year approaches, I am once again making my list of the best productions I saw in New York City that opened this year.

If I were being just, I would include My Fellow Americans due to the amazing performance of Rebecca Ana Peña, but as the play's author, I'm probably a bit too close to it, so I'm disqualifying it.

Also disqualified is the virtual production of Kew Gardens as well as the live and virtual versions of A Christmas Carol at Passage Theatre Company. They weren't in New York City, anyway, nor were the productions of King Lear and Only Fools and Horses I saw in London.

Last year was rather lackluster in New York, though a couple good shows rose to the top of my list, including The Alchemist and The Streets of New York. It seems 2022 wasn't quite the year that theatre in this city got back into full swing, but at least there were a lot more good shows opening than there were in 2021.

So without further ado, here is my top-ten list in reverse order:

10. Cymbeline - New York Classical Theatre's outdoor production of Cymbeline was a blast, in large part due to Aziza Gharib, who played the show's heroine, Imogine.

9. Richard II - Another enjoyable outdoor production of Shakespeare was Hudson Classical Theater Company's Richard II at the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in Riverside Park. Nathan Mattingly played the title role.

8. Made By God - Ciara Ni Chuirc's new play that opened at Irish Rep at the beginning of this year has stayed with me. This meditation on the changing law regarding abortion in Ireland doesn't run away from tough issues of faith and society's shared responsibility for all of its members.

7. As You Like It - Generally, this is one of my least favorite Shakespeare plays, but Shaina Taub and Laurie Woolery's musical adaptation was a delight this summer in Central Park. The songs perfectly captured the goofy, conflicted nature of the play's characters. I'd like to see regional theatres pick this one up for the future.

6. Ohio State Murders - Adrienne Kennedy finally made her Broadway debut this year, with help from the star power of Audra McDonald. Playing Suzanne Alexander, a fictionalized version of the playwright herself, McDonald takes us on a harrowing journey where small things take on terrifying aspects by pointing toward much darker ends. (Still playing!)

5. Candida - Gingold Theatrical Group's magnificent production of one of Bernard Shaw's most delightful comedies did not disappoint. Avanthika Srinivasan starred in the title role, while R.J. Foster and Avery Whitted played the two very different men who are in love with her. The production also featured the best set I saw in New York all year, wonderfully crafted by Lindsay Genevieve Fuori.

4. A Touch of the Poet - Irish Rep scored another hit with their revival of Eugene O'Neill's powerful exploration of one moment in American history. Robert Cuccioli was brilliant as Con Melody, but the real discovery was Belle Aykroyd, who played Con's daughter Sara. I'll have a full analysis of the production coming out next year in The Eugene O'Neill Review. The author never saw the play performed in his lifetime, but I think he would have appreciated this staging of it.

3. Downstate - In the past, I've not been a fan of the work of Bruce Norris, but Downstate, still playing through January 7th at Playwrights Horizons, deserves to be seen. The cast, including Glenn Davis, K. Todd Freeman, and Francis Guinan as convicted sex offenders living together in a group home in downstate Illinois while overseen by a parole officer (portrayed brilliantly by Susanna Guzman), is absolutely excellent. Even more important, though, is the way Norris interrogates a culture of victimhood and portrays what it might look like for people to truly take responsibility for their actions.

2. Leopoldstadt - Tom Stoppard's latest play is more conventional than most of his work, but it packs an emotional wallop, especially in these times of rising ethnic nationalism. I spoke about the production on CUNY TV, sharing my long-time love of Stoppard's plays. Though the storytelling is mostly straightforward, its enormous cast of characters would be impossible to follow were it not for the deft direction of Patrick Marber, who makes sure we understand the steady march of time through the most terrifying decades of the 20th century. Tickets are currently on sale until the beginning of July, so if you haven't seen it yet, go.

1. Paradise Square - My top choice will no doubt be controversial, but in spite of its many problems, Larry Kirwan's reimagining of Five Points during the infamous Civil War draft riots captured what contemporary theatre can be if it has the courage to try. Choreographer Bill T. Jones did an exceptional job, and Joaquina Kalukango brought down the house singing the brilliant number "Let It Burn." The music, which is inspired by the work of Stephen Foster, deserves the cast recording we've been promised, but alas, the financial mismanagement of producers could mean this show never again sees the light of day. That would be a shame, as it deserves a much larger audience than it received during its abbreviated run on Broadway.

Here's to an even better year in 2023!

Staging History

Last week, I saw two different plays that staged historical events for a modern audience: Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard and Susan B. by Toby Armour.

Leopoldstadt is currently playing on Broadway in a production directed by Patrick Marber, who staged a wonderful revival of Stoppard's Travesties in 2018. It tells a multi-generational epic saga about a family of assimilated Jews in Vienna beginning in 1899 and continuing into the 1950s.

Marber has assembled a crack ensemble cast, including Sara Topham (who played Cecily in Travesties), as well as Brandon Uranowitz, who plays the mathematician Ludwig in Leopoldstadt, and Caissie Levy, who plays his wife Eva. Though Ludwig and Eva have remained true to their Jewish faith, Eva's brother Hermann has converted to Christianity and married a gentile.

As darkness descends following the Great War, Hermann's assimilation will not be enough to save him. Much of the play's power comes from the dramatic irony of the audience knowing what's coming while the characters do not. Austria, after being defeated, is annexed by Germany, and as most of the family either cannot or will not leave, they are doomed to die in concentration camps.

Susan B. is a completely different type of play: smaller, sleeker, and much more optimistic. Directed by Joan Kane, it starred Kathleen Moore as the famous suffrage activist Susan B. Anthony. It's too bad that the show is closed now. (I caught the last performance at Theatre for a New City.) The piece featured live piano music by composer Peter Dizozza, and in addition to the veteran actor Moore, it included the relative newcomer Elizabeth McBryde, shining in the ensemble in a variety of small roles.

What both plays have in common is their effort to process history from the standpoint of knowing those things the characters do not. We see the connections bringing everything together, even as the characters see only random events. In Leopoldstadt, Ludwig relates this to a game of Cat's Cradle in which the string has three knots. The relationship of the three knots in space is constantly changing. If you can only see the knots, you have no idea how or why, but if you understand what's happening with the string, each shift is entirely predictable.

For us stuck inside of history, those of us who are the knots, the forces that pull on us are largely a mystery. Susan B. Anthony could no more predict the future of U.S. politics than the hapless businessmen and intellectuals in Leopoldstadt could foresee the destruction of their entire way of life. That's a sobering thought as we head into a very consequential mid-term election.

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.

Travesties

Last night, I saw Roundabout Theatre Company's production of Tom Stoppard's wonderful play Travesties.

The play is an extremely witty farce Stoppard wrote after reading a biography of James Joyce. Stoppard was fascinated by a brief account of Joyce taking part in a production of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest in Zurich, Switzerland during the First World War.

Peter McDonald plays Joyce in this production, and pulls off both the ridiculous sight gags and the occasional magic trick Stoppard's script requires him to perform. The protagonist of the play, however, is not Joyce, but Henry Carr, who worked for the British Consulate at the time and was recruited to play the lead in Earnest. (As Travesties mentions repeatedly, the lead is not Earnest, but "the other one.")

Tom Hollander plays Carr, and it's easy to see why he received an Olivier Award nomination when he played the role in London. (This production, directed by Patrick Marber, was originally done at the Menier Chocolate Factory, which previously transferred a revival of Sunday in the Park with George to Roundabout.) Carr begins the play as an old man, remembering not just Joyce, but also the communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin and the dadaist poet Tristan Tzara, who as it so happens, were also in Zurich at the same time as Joyce.

Dan Butler plays Lenin, and Seth Numrich plays the monocle-wearing Tzara, who flirts wildly with a young woman named Gwendolyn (who by chance has been helping Joyce as he writes Ulysses). Gwendolyn is not a historical figure, and her resemblance to the character of the same name in The Importance of Being Earnest is not coincidental. As the play proceeds, we quickly perceive that Carr has gotten quite a bit mixed up in his head, and his memories cannot be entirely relied upon. Scarlett Strallen, who plays Gwendolyn, can more than be relied upon, however. An alumna of such farcical comedies as A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, she's very much in her element in Travesties.

The same is also true of Sara Topham, who plays the librarian Cecily, another character who appears to have walked out of The Importance of Being Earnest and into Carr's memory. Topham played the title role in Saint Joan at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake last summer, and she was also quite memorable as Beatrice-Joanna in Red Bull's production of The Changeling the year before that. In Travesties, she shows remarkable versatility, performing a racy table-top dance in Carr's imagination, and then later appearing as an old woman who helps to set the historical record straight.

Tickets for Travesties are on sale through the middle of June, so book now. It's rare to get a chance to see this Stoppard gem, and even more rare to see it performed this well!