Skip to main content

Favorite Shows of the 2017-2018 Season

Okay, okay, the 2017-2018 season is mercifully over and I've scraped together a list of my favorite shows:
  1. Angels in America. I mean, must I say more? Perfect. James McArdle and Denise Gough gave two of my favorite performances of the season.
  2. Spongebob Squarepants the Musical. Don't be a snob, see this show. It's smart and hilarious and fun fun fun and Tina Landau's work is excellent. Ethan Slater as the titular sponge gives the best performance in a musical this season.
  3. My Fair Lady. Bartlett Sher did it, he did it, he said he'd do it and indeed he did! It's a stunning, beautiful production, and Lauren Ambrose and Harry Hadden-Paton are wonderful as Eliza and Higgins. Eliza could've danced all night but I could've sat and watched this show all night.
  4. Torch Song. *takes a moment, gathers myself, gets on my soap box* I am not a religious person, I haven't found God, but you know what? After seeing Torch Song (and The Government Inspector and Hamlet), I had an "Amazing Grace" moment; I once was blind but now I see. Michael Urie is one of the best stage actors working right now. His work in Torch Song is both hilarious and heartbreaking, and it's one of, if not my top, performance of the season. And yeah, the play is great and so was this production. I am glad we all get to see it again in the fall.
  5. Mary Jane. Terrific and harrowing without ever falling into the trap of sentimentality. The best new play of the season. The cast, led by Carrie Coon, was one of the best on stage this season.
  6. Jesus Hopped the A Train. Stephen Adly Gurgis is one of the best playwrights writing today, and the work done by Sean Carvajal and Edi Gathegi in this production was remarkable.
  7. The Red Letter Plays (In the Blood and Fucking A). Suzan-Lori Parks is a true genius and legend, and it's apparent in these two revivals done by the Signature this season. In the Blood also had my favorite set of the season.
  8. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. It's not perfect, the writing is a bit weak, but it's delightful, fun, and dare I say, magical. Sometimes it's okay to have a good time at the theater. Anthony Boyle's performance is another one of my faves of the season.
  9. School Girls; or the African Mean Girls Play. Another terrific cast in a show that was truly great fun.
  10. The Band's Visit. Expertly acted with a beautiful score and proof that musicals don't have to be big, bloated, and cartoonish (or based on major properties) to be on Broadway.
Honorable mentions go to The Wolves, Amy and the Orphans, and Charm. And dammit, I am the only one around who liked Mankind. Also, if I could rank Hamlet at the STC, Chess at the Kennedy Center, and Brigadoon at City Center, I would. Those were among the best theatrical experiences I had this season.

Least favorite of the season? Bella, On the Shore of the Wide World, Fire and Air, Twelfth Night, The Last Match, Cardinal, The Treasurer, For Peter Pan..., Oedipus el Rey, Saint Joan, Junk, etc., etc., etc.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fireflies by Donja R. Love at the Atlantic Theater Company

Okay, look, I get it, two-handers are tough. You have two characters with which to tell your story, and you have to somehow tell this story with as little exposition as possible. You have to show, not tell. Are you listening, Donja Love? Love's current play, Fireflies , tells the story of a married African American couple in 1963. He's a preacher, traveling the southern part of the country to speak at the funerals of other African Americans who have died due to racial terrorism. (When the play begins, the church bombing that claimed the lives of four little girls in Birmingham has just occurs.) She's a doting and devoted housewife who goes so far as to write her husband's speeches and sermons for him. But what her husband, Charles, doesn't know is that she secretly smokes, she wants to abort the baby she's carrying, and she writes explicit letters to a woman she's in love with whom she only met once, briefly. Oh, and did I mention she, Olivia, has PTSD a...
Post a Comment
Read more

I Was Most Alive With You by Craig Lucas at Playwrights Horizons

There's something incredibly exciting (for me) about going to a show at Playwrights Horizons. I don't know what it is--maybe it's because two of my favorite theater-going experiences ever were there, Mr. Burns and The Christians, and every time I enter those doors on 42nd street, I think, "will this be another play just like those great ones?" Sadly, they rarely tend to be these days (although, for all their faults, I enjoyed Mankind and Log Cabin .) And for as ambitious as Craig Lucas' new play,  I Was Most Alive With You is, I can't help but say, "c'mon, Craig, less is more." Lucas sets out to write a play loosely based on the Book of Job, highlighting one man's suffering. This man, Ash, who is Jewish, is a successful TV writer (apparently the writer of the longest-running show of all time? No, he's not Matt Groening) who is a recovering addict and let's not forget, did time for domestic abuse. (His Gentile wife, Pleasant, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mean Girls at the August Wilson Theater

I love the movie Mean Girls . It's a perfect funny and smart movie with an amazing that transcends the "teen movie" label. And now it's a musical. I can see why screenwriter Tina Fey thought it was a good idea to turn it into a musical. In addition to Mean Girls being a very strong property, it has captured the zeitgeist and fourteen years later people still say things like "Four for you, Glen Coco" and "fetch" and "is butter a carb?" Yours truly even has one of those phrases on a t-shirt. The love for this movie alone would turn the musical into a big, fat hit. But something is missing. I'm at loathe to say that lightning doesn't strike twice because that's not quite the problem here. No, I think there are two major problems with Mean Girls . The first being the score by Jeff Richmond and Nell Benjamin isn't strong enough to a make case to turn this movie into a musical. No song is particularly strong or memorable...
Post a Comment
Read more