2023 had a lot of incredible theatre. Here are some reflections! Happy New Year!
SHOW THAT MADE ME LAUGH THE HARDEST
The humor in the book and the love in the show recreated the experience of being a groundling—theatre that is for everyone and makes you laugh at something irreverent.
SHOW THAT MADE ME CRY THE MOST
Despite the empowering nature of the show, those of us who have personally walked in the shoes of (or alongside) some of these characters could not stop crying—while also smiling– the whole way through.
SHOW THAT BLEW MY MIND WIDE OPEN
The Doctor
The actors were different demographics than their characters, and the character demographics were revealed slowly throughout the show to make the audience have double take after double take—do these words mean something different now that I know they were said by a white man and not a Hispanic woman? And then we all had to confront the reality that we do NOT see all people the same way.
SHOW WHOSE TRUTH HIT ME THE HARDEST
I appreciate Larissa Fasthorse for exposing that taking anything too far, even if it seems like a good thing (in this case, wokeness), can still lead to culturally uncomfortable implications.
BEST REIMAGINED CLASSIC
A Doll’s House
Jon Clark’s lighting was fantastic and the shadow work was incredible; I was most fascinated by Nora’s dance routine being a seizure. Secondarily, the only thing specified in Ibsen’s script about the set is that there’s a door by which Nora can leave—I appreciated the fact that in this production, Nora had to create the door herself (via the loading dock and walking out of the theatre into the NYC night).
BEST BROADWAY DEBUT
Good Night, Oscar
This mental health journey was raw and real, and everything, from the unabashed humor to an incredible “Rhapsody in Blue” was dazzling.
BEST EXPERIMENTAL THEATRE
The Incomplete Collection
An immersive venture into an art gallery where the ideas that make good art are personified and portrayed by actors. A brilliant depiction of “the curator” struggling to release these ideas.
BEST SOLO SHOW
Monsieur Chopin
Hershey Felder is always a delight, but the way he captured Chopin’s madness and lack of dignity was brilliant. I always think of Chopin in terms of nocturnes and comfort; this performance systematically deconstructed his work while constructing a complete picture of the man behind it.
SHOW THAT WAS TREATED MOST UNFAIRLY BY CRITICS
Every other genre of entertainment has feel-good pieces that are not profound but are still necessary to make us laugh and smile. It’s okay to go to the theatre to have a good, empowering time and not have it have to mean something. This show was upbeat and lively and had everybody dancing in their seats. For some, it was just what we needed.
SHOW THAT DIDN’T MAKE IT, BUT DESERVED TO
There was nothing structurally wrong with this show. It missed the mark in choosing a Broadway venue because it had very limited appeal despite the big names on the creative team. The recreation of historical photos of New York and attempts to blend voices that are incredibly different are the hallmark of being a New Yorker. The show was exactly as advertised, “a love letter to New York.”
SHOW MOST SABOTAGED BY MISMARKETING
This was not a bad show. It was also not a comedy. It was a character study of desperate artists on a boat who couldn’t figure out what they wanted out of life. If it had been marketed that way, the same exact performances would have done very well. It was a let down for everybody who went in expected a comedy because it was not funny.
SHOW THAT SCARED ME SO MUCH I WANTED TO EXIT THE THEATRE
Covenant
I don’t like jump scares. Some of the demonic possession stuff was very creepy in a small space where the seating banks are surrounded by actors and the sudden loud sounds and blackouts genuinely freaked me out. But if that’s your genre, this show did it brilliantly.
LEAST EXPECTED PLOT TWIST
This show went from learning about African immigrant experiences in a lighthearted, playful way, to seeing the stark reality of the dangers of moving to America for a better life. The playwright brilliantly set us up for how each character was going to react to the ending in an impressive tour de force of writing.
MOST LOVINGLY PREDICTABLE
Amid Falling Walls
Presented by National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, the oldest continuously operating Yiddish theatre company in the world, this song cycle told Holocaust stories through resilience and hope by showcasing music written during the Holocaust in camps and ghettos. Predictable songs with predictable references, but nonetheless an evening of incredible hope.
STAND OUT SHOW-STOPPING PERFORMANCE
Sara Porkalob, 1776
It has to be said. After “Molasses to Rum”, I forgot everything that happened on stage before and was listless through everything that happened on stage after. Porkalob stole the show and was on a completely different level than her cast mates.
BEST ACTOR, LEAST ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Kevin Cahoon, Shucked
Of all the acting performances that I saw this year, many of the roles were fairly straightforward. Characters with internal struggles earnestly wanting something. Peanut in Shucked was one of the only real “character acting” roles that I saw this year where the actor had to do an accent, say ridiculous things without breaking character, and completely understand the lines in order to deliver them as if he did not.
BEST FEMINIST THEATRE
The Sitayana
It was amazing to see this in a theatre where South Asian people and everyone else enjoyed the story and the journey, but saw different things in it depending on where they were from. The show was accessible and aggressively feminist in ways that were meaningful across a wide range of the audience’s life experiences.
BEST LGBT THEATRE
Merry Me
How about one for the queer women! Thanks to Hansol Jung for what felt like an insider experience. People who haven’t walked this journey may not have fully understood what you did here, but it is important for representation in theatre to really be representation in theatre, and I loved the way this interwove the reality of being a queer woman with societal expectations and misunderstandings of what it means to be a queer woman.
BEST STAGE MAGIC
Back to the Future
I think flying cars and the incredible driving projection calibrations speak for themselves on this one.
FAVORITE OPERA OF THE YEAR
Dead Man Walking
While unapologetically operatic, this opera told a relevant story about a current political issue that brought a very different demographic in the doors of The Met Opera. These kinds of stories are helping to save opera as a genre; people walked out with a taste of what opera is like and the desire to have this experience again.
CAST ALBUM I CANNOT STOP LISTENING TO
& Juliet
Probably unsurprising given that I’m a 90’s kid, but I love the arrangements in this show and the fun of having a full vocal ensemble in songs that weren’t released that way.
SHOW THAT I SINCERELY HOPE GETS ANOTHER SHOT
The theatrical space in which 9/10 was performed did it a disservice and directly contributed to the audience not really seeing it for what it was. This message about biases that predate the catastrophes that bring them to light is increasingly relevant, and I hope this show can come back in a space with better audience sightlines.
MOST CREATIVE MISUNDERSTANDING
Here Lies Love was all of the things that Broadway theatre goers did not like experiencing on purpose. It was part of the immersive experience that being on the dance floor—on the ground—was an experience of loss of autonomy of movement, politicians singing with their backs to you, trying to disguise the ugliness of the world with glamour and glitz, trying to make you forget that a bomb was just dropped on you—those experiences were not supposed to be fun. They were supposed to spark dialogue about how it feels when those realities are your life, not your immersive theatre adventure.
SHOW I’M REALLY SAD I DIDN’T GET TO SEE
Prima Facie
I love Jodie Comer. I couldn’t find an affordable way to get tickets. Everyone loved this show, and I’m really sad that I missed out.
HONORABLE MENTION SHOWS
There were a couple of spectacular shows I saw this year that didn’t lend themselves to categories that I wanted to mention.
Toros
Eisenhower
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