Best Plays of 2016

There weren't too many good things about 2016, but there were a few stand-out theater productions in New York, so once again I'm compiling a list of the best shows I saw that opened in New York City this past year.

Remember, these are shows that opened in 2016, so I couldn't include Sense and Sensibility, The Woodsman, and some other great plays I saw this year. Here are my picks in reverse order:

10. Blackbird - David Harrower wrote Blackbird more than a decade ago, but the play didn't make its Broadway premiere until this past February. That's a sad commentary on the state of American theater, but better to arrive late than never. Jeff Daniels and Michelle Williams were excellent in this two-hander (or is it?) and the play kept audiences guessing right until the end.

9. Othello: The Remix - This hip-hop update of Shakespeare's tragedy re-imagines the story with a comic twist, but the Q Brothers manage to create a few touchingly dramatic moments as well. This show is still playing at the Westside Theater off-Broadway, and if you haven't seen it yet, get your tickets now! It's only running until January 15th, so you better act fast.

8. The Bacchae - The Faux-Real Theatre Company does some magnificent work re-imaging the Greek classics, and this year's production of The Bacchae at La Mama was no exception. The masks were excellently done, and the moments when they came on and off of the actors were especially powerful. Lynda White's puppets brought added excitement to Euripides' tragedy. Be sorry if you missed it!

7. The Humans - Stephen Karam's off-Broadway hit The Humans transferred to Broadway this year, winning a Tony Award for Best Play in the process. While the cast of The Bacchae was filled with young up-and-comers, this production features veteran actors Reed Birney and Jayne Houdyshell giving performances of a lifetime. The Humans is also closing January 15, so get your tickets if you haven't seen it yet!

6. The Place We Built - Kudos to The Flea for staging this play about a right-wing takeover in Hungary that seems scarily prescient of our own country's position today. Sarah Gancher's script gives a shocking account of recent events in Hungary told through the eyes of a young American filmmaker (played touchingly by Isabelle Pierre). The play's use of music also added tremendously to the performance. Particularly given recent events, we need more plays like this.

5. Widowers' Houses - The Actors Company Theatre is known for their quality revivals of classics, and this co-production they did with Gingold Theatrical Group earlier this year even surpassed expectations. George Bernard Shaw's first performed play doesn't get done much anymore, and this production proved what a shame that is. Widowers' Houses exposes not just the corruption of our economic system, but also how all of us are implicated. More than a hundred years after the play was written, it is still sadly relevant.

4. Puffs - Yes, this show has been around for a while, but it only opened off-Broadway this year, so I'm including it on the list. If you haven't seen it yet, Puffs tells the story of a certain boy wizard during seven increasingly eventful years at a magical school that shall not be named for copyright reasons. The brilliance of this play by Matt Cox is that instead of focusing on Harry and his friends, it gives us an account of three losers at the school who belong to the one house that perpetually comes in last. If you're a Potterhead and haven't seen it... where have you been! Get your tickets now!

3. Hadestown - New York Theatre Workshop's production of Hadestown has got to be the best new musical to come out of 2016. Based on a concept album by Anais Mitchell, the show tells the story of Orpheus and Eurydice against the background of Depression-era rural America. When Patrick Page as Hades asks the musical question "Why do we build the wall, my children?" chills will definitely run through your body. Though the brilliant production directed by Rachel Chavkin is closed, a cast album is being released, and I'm holding out hope that this show will eventually return, perhaps even on Broadway.

2. Butler - Richard Strand's comedy about the Civil War general Benjamin F. Butler has been making the rounds at regional theaters, but when New Jersey Repertory Company brought their production to 59E59, it was the first time New York City audiences got a chance to see the play. Ames Adamson was perfect as the title character in this comedy about how history-shaping decisions really get made. Strand proves that serious topics like war and slavery can be laughing matters after all. Though theater in New York City may be struggling, this production proves that in many places, regional theater is still going strong.

1. A Doll's House - My favorite production this year was Theatre for a New Audience's magnificent staging of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House. Starring Maggie Lacey and John Douglas Thompson, this play could not have asked for a better cast. Director Arin Arbus placed the audience on two sides of the stage, making sure that everyone had an intimate experience with the classic play. This rendition was funny, sexy, and ultimately heartbreaking. Thorvald and Nora's marriage made sense in this version, though that didn't mean it wasn't still doomed from the beginning. Make a note to check out TFANA's shows next year. They could be just as surprising!

Honorable mentions this year go to Mabou Mine's Imagining the Imaginary Invalid and Ivo van Hove's Broadway production of The Crucible. Hopefully 2017 will be a better year, for the theater and for the world!

Trojan Women at The Flea

Last night, I saw The Flea Theater's production of The Trojan Women in a new adaptation by Ellen McLaughlin.

Set in modern times, this production remains faithful to the spirit of the original play by Euripides. It begins, like the original, with a prologue by the god Poseidon (played here by Thomas Muccioli). McLaughlin leaves out the conversation between Poseidon and Athena, however, and goes right into the chorus of captive women, led by Hecuba, once Queen of Troy, now a slave.

DeAnna Supplee (in spite of being way too young to play an old woman like Hecuba) does an admirable job, summoning up a queenly grandeur, despite her degraded position. Even more impressive is Lindsley Howard as Hecuba's mad daughter Cassandra. Granted by Apollo the gift of prophesy, but cursed to have no one believe her, Cassandra has known all along precisely what will happen to everyone, but has always been as powerless as the rest of the women are now.

The biggest change McLaughlin introduces into the play has to do with Helen, the woman whose abduction and subsequent faithlessness caused the whole Trojan War. Euripides makes the conflict in his play between Helen and her husband, Menelaus. Helen blames her affair with Paris (also known as Alexander) on Hecuba, claiming (in the Richmond Lattimore translation):

                    She mothered the beginning of all this wickedness.
                    For Paris was her child. And next to her the old king,
                    who would not destroy the infant Alexander, that dream
                    of the firebrand's agony, has ruined Troy, and me.

Though for Euripides, any justice Helen will receive will be at the hands of her husband, McLaughlin decides to show a more harrowing account of the legendary beauty. Anticipating that Menelaus might relent and let Helen live, the chorus turns on her, torturing her savagely offstage. The Flea's production allows the audience to picture the brutality in their imaginations. When Helen (touchingly played by Rebeca Rad) re-emerges, we see the depths of depravity of these women. They are now not only victims, but perpetrators as well.

The heart of the play, however, is the story of Hector's wife, Andromache (played here by Casey Wortman). The Trojan princess cradles an infant son able to--perhaps--one day return and rebuild the towers of Troy. It is a credit to Anne Cecelia Haney's directing that for a moment in this production, we actually believe that there could be a happy ending, in spite of what we know comes next. The soldier Talthybius (Phil Feldman, from The Flea's wonderful production of The Place We Built) enters to take the boy away and hurl him to his death from what remains of Troy's walls.

It has been said that if theatre really could change the world, after The Trojan Women there never would have been another war. Even if it seems like we can't change the world, however, that doesn't mean we can't try. Kudos to McLaughlin and The Flea for at least trying to do their part.

The Place We Built

Last night, I saw The Flea Theater's wonderful production of The Place We Built by Sarah Gancher. The play takes the audience on a moving journey through recent history in Hungary, erupting in a riotous party along the way.

The story of The Place We Built gets filtered through the character of Aisha (Isabelle Pierre), an American woman living in Hungary. Aisha is documenting on film the government's efforts to shut down the Seagull, a Budapest nightlife hotspot that has also become a center for political dissent.

A rag-tag assembly of the Seagull's founders try to decide whether or not to stay in their cramped building while a mass of police assemble outside, ready to break arms if they need to in order to shut down the club. Julia (Cleo Gray) is intent on staying, but others favor abandoning the space in order to survive and fight again another day.

The play then flashes back to the history of the Seagull, which begins when Ben (Tom Costello) throws a "Grandma Party" inviting his friends to his grandmother's old flat. Squatting in the abandoned building, they wear the dead woman's old wigs and read aloud from her very personal letters. A heart-rending tale of the grandmother's survival in Budapest's Jewish ghetto during the Holocaust gets filtered through 20-something hipsters, and the result is oddly effective.

Most moving is a song composed by a closeted gay musician, Mihaly (Brendan Dalton), utilizing the text of one of the grandmother's letters. Music joyously erupts a number of times in this production, and my one regret about the show was that there wasn't more of it.

While some of the characters in the play tend to blur together (there are only so many variations on young, sexy, idealistic artist), Mihaly stands out. In a New York City where Gay Pride has corporate sponsors and same-sex marriage is a legal right, it can be easy to forget that there are places that seem very much like our own city, but where appearing in public with a partner is an act of near-suicidal bravery.

Danya Taymor does a deft job directing the piece, and Claudia Brown's costumes wonderfully evoke the Bohemian atmosphere of the Seagull. The play also utilizes some delightful puppets designed by Marte Johanne Ekhougen.

The Place We Built is only running through May 30th, so see it while you still can. For more information, visit:

The Flea

Puffs

Last night I saw Matt Cox's wonderful play Puffs, or: seven increasingly eventful years at a certain school of magic and magic. This hilarious spoof of the Harry Potter series, told from the point of view of the school's least talented students, is oddly affecting, and definitely worth going to see.

In fandom, House Hufflepuff has been the butt of a number of jokes, but this show embraces the fact that not all of us are brave of smart or ambitious. Some people just plod along, never far from the kitchens, staying out of trouble and trying to do the right thing. As the play maintains, there's nothing wrong with that.

The plot follows Wayne Hopkins (played by Zac Moon), whose parents died, leaving him to be brought up by an uncle. One day an owl arrives with news that Wayne has been accepted to a school for magic. Oops! His uncle forgot to tell him that his parents were wizards. Or that wizards exist. Like Brian in a certain Mony Python film, Wayne then stumbles through a series of adventures in which some other kid named Harry seems to always get credit.

Like Harry, Wayne forms his own trio, including Oliver (played by Langston Belton), a math genius who can't seem to get the hang of this magic thing, and the self-proclaimed outsider Megan (played by Julie Ann Earls), who wants desperately to be bad-ass, but underneath it all is quite a nice person. They constantly cross paths with that other trio, much like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern bumping into characters from Hamlet in Tom Stoppard's famous play.

With a cast of eleven actors performing multiple roles, Puffs gives everyone a chance to shine. Particularly notable are the former stars of The Flea Theater's Smoke, Madeleine Bundy (who plays Harry as well as the perpetually terrified Susie Bones) and Stephen Stout (who does a spot-on Alan Rickman impression as Professor Snape).

Kristin McCarthy Parker does a wonderful job directing the production, which includes some effective use of puppets to create a magical world within a bare-bones theater.

You can find out more information about the play here:

PUFFS

The Best of the Grand Guignol

The Theatre du Grand-Guignol opened in Paris in 1897, serving up concoctions of naughty sex farces and horrifying blood baths to audiences looking for a thrill. This venerable (or not) institution shut down in 1962, but The Flea Theater has revived a number of its plays for its Cutthroat Series.

Last year, audiences were treated (or subjected) to evenings of short Guignol plays, all revolving around a particular theme, such as lust or gore. Audiences voted for their favorites, and now the best of those plays have returned for a victory lap at the Flea.

I went last night, and had a fiendishly good time. The first play was Tics, or Doing the Deed by Rene Berton. When I saw this splendid production (directed by Stebos) last year, one of the main actors had recently injured himself, so his bizarre physical tic was a comically shaking leg. Now, back at full strength, he is able to do what he originally planned. The result is downright acrobatic.

The second play was Agnosiophobia by the contemporary playwright Jason Gray Platt, though it was billed as an adaptation of a play by Giuseppe Giacosa. The piece takes its name from the fear of not knowing something, and it portrays a husband who torments himself over the exact nature of the relationship between his wife and a friend who recently committed suicide. The play is mainly psychological horror, until the very last moment.

Next up was Private Room #6 by Andre de Lorde, the principle author for the Grand-Guignol for more than 25 years at the beginning of the 20th century. Though de Lorde often collaborated with other authors, the Flea gave him sole billing for this one. (Pierre Chaine is sometimes listed as co-author.) This production was of the adaptation Jose Levy did for the London version of the Grand-Guignol, which flourished briefly in the 1920s. Rest assured, both revenge and Russians are on the menu.

The final play was The System, an adaptation de Lorde did of Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether." Poe has always been a great favorite with the French, and de Lorde also adapted for the stage "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Masque of the Red Death," and "The Fall of the House of Usher." This darkly comic play is surprisingly close to Poe's original, though the gore at the end is a bit different from what Poe describes.

These plays are still showing until January 25, so get your tickets here:

The Flea Theater

Grand Guignol

Last night, I had the pleasure of attending the Theatre du Grand-Guignol in Paris!

Well, not quite, but The Flea Theatre did perform three plays from the Grand-Guignol tradition. The performances were a part of their "Cutthroat Series" and the theme for the evening was Gore. This was not a case of false advertising, by the way.

The first play, Madhouse, was originally written by Andre de Lord (the most prolific author of plays for the Grand Guignol) and Alfred Binet. Corbin Went did the adaptation for the piece, which follows a young woman about to be released from an insane asylum. If she can survive the night....

At the original Grand Guignol during the turn of the century, horror plays would alternate with short sex comedies, and the Flea stuck to that method by following up Madhouse with Tics, or Doing the Deed by Rene Berton. Directed by Stebos, whose wonderful production of The Cherry Orchard I saw a while back, this light-hearted romp was probably the most successful of the three pieces. Three men with post-coital tics find themselves being very naughty... and then being found out.

The Final Kiss filled out the evening. This play by Maurice Level tells the story of the victim of a vitriol attack who actually speaks out in order to get a lighter sentence for the woman who splashed acid in his face. Of course, he might have had other motives than pure benevolence. This 1912 play had staying power, and even made it into horror comics of the 1950s. It's worth checking out.

At the end of the evening, the audience is invited to vote for their favorite play. The Cutthroat series has more installments, featuring plays on Cruelty, Night Terrors, and Lust. The winners will return for an extended run in January.

The series runs through December 22nd. Find out more here:

The Flea Theater

Smoke

Last night I saw Smoke by Kim Davies. Tom Costello directed this wonderful production at The Flea Theater starring Stephen Stout and Madeleine Bundy. The play rework's August Strindberg's Miss Julie, resetting the story in a Manhattan kitchen while an S&M sex party is raging just outside the door.

My first thought upon hearing about the show was... why? The sadomasochism in Miss Julie is pretty explicit, but what makes the play so powerful is that the two main characters don't always know when they're playing a role. How would that work when translated to the modern BDSM community which is usually as careful as possible to create the safest environment it can for participants?

Davies' answer is to make the safe environment unsafe--to have characters playing power roles both inside and outside of the scenes they enact with each other. This might not help the reputation of the BDSM community, but it makes for some very interesting drama.

As Julie, the privileged daughter of a famous art photographer, Bundy immediately projects an air of self-consciousness, an affected naivete one sees so often in the children of the rich. Toward the beginning of the play, instead of lighting her own cigarette, she pretends to be afraid of the lighter in an effort to coax a handsome man into lighting it for her. She acts the part of the beginning smoker, but we soon see she knows precisely what she's doing. The games begin.

Stout plays John, an aspiring artist who works as an intern for Julie's father. The ringing bell in Strindberg's Miss Julie is replaced in this production by John's cell phone, which periodically goes off with late-night calls from his boss making ridiculous requests. John informs us he's a dom, but he is clearly submissive to his alpha-male employer. His kink, by the way, is knives. Though I'm informed the props were "professionally dulled" for this production, they look as razor sharp as the characters' verbal barbs.

The design for the show is excellent, but most impressive is Lee Kinney's sound design, which realistically provides ambient noise from the next room, growing louder each time the kitchen door is opened. Jesse Geguzis provides the fight choreography, and like a good S&M participant, makes what is safe feel dangerous.

If you're interested in seeing Smoke, it's playing through November 9th at The Flea. More information here:

The Flea Theater