FEATURE: Top 10 of 2019

By my count, I’ve attended 234 performances of theatre, dance, music, opera, and cabaret during 2019. Out of a field that large, it’s hard to pick just ten, but nevertheless, here are my top ten (ok, eleven) favorite shows I saw:

Note: I decided that “Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish”, “Oklahoma!”, and “What the Constitution Means to Me” were not eligible for this list since they appeared on my 2018 list.

10-11. TIE: “Make Believe” (Second Stage) and “Continuity” (Manhattan Theatre Club)
I’m shaking things up by starting with a tie between two Off-Broadway plays by Bess Wohl. While vastly different in content, “Make Believe” and “Continuity” displayed Wohl’s extraordinary wit and remarkable skill at using form to keep audiences on their toes, with each play slowly revealing itself to be something other than what you walked in expecting—childhood remembrances of sexual abuse in the former and a parable about the climate crisis in the latter. Keep your eyes on Wohl; her next play, “Grand Horizons”, opens in January on Broadway. Read my review of “Make Believe” (closed 9/22) and read my review of “Continuity” (closed 6/9)

Samuel H. Levine, Kyle Soller, and Andrew Burnap in “The Inheritance”. Photo by Marc Brenner

9. “The Inheritance” (Broadway)
Playwright Matthew Lopez’s epic and novelistic contemporary adaption of E. M. Forster’s novel “Howards End” has the instant feel of being a modern classic. Set amid a group of gay men in present day New York grappling with the legacy of the AIDS crisis alongside piercing questions of identity and community, this two part, six act, six hour and 25 minute play features a superb ensemble company directed with aplomb by Stephen Daldry, and a strikingly ascetic design by Bob Crowley. The play has its faults, which have been the subject of much ink, but it also soars to extraordinary and memorable heights. Read my review. (currently running; get tickets)

8. “Ahknaten” (The Metropolitan Opera)
The Metropolitan Opera presented a gorgeous new production of Philip Glass’s 1983 opera “Akhnaten” by director Phelim McDermott that became the sold out talk of the town this fall. Over the course of a ritualistic, diorama-like staging that unfolds with meticulous precision in near-slow motion, the story of Egyptian pharaoh Ahknaten’s reign becomes a mesmerizing meditation on power and religion. I have never seen anything else quite like it. (closed 12/7)

Daniel Freedman, Bobby Wooten III, Chris Giarmo, David Byrne, Tendayi Kuumba, Angie Swan, Stéphane San Juan, and Karl Mansfield in “American Utopia”. Photo by Matthew Murphy

7. “American Utopia” (Broadway)
Music legend David Byrne brings his latest album to life on stage, alongside hits from his beloved catalogue dating back to the Talking Heads, with the aid of a live band and dancers. The result is a unique and genre-bending evening of song and dance under the helm of visionary choreographer Annie-B Parson. Is it a concert? Is it a musical? Who cares? It’s artful bliss. (closes 2/16; get tickets)

Matthew Jeffers, Rebecca Henderson, Tavi Gevinson and Chris Perfetti in “Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow”. Photo by Joan Marcus

6. “Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow” (MCC Theater)
Playwright Halley Feiffer’s irreverent new adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” dripped with irony, meta-theatricality, and anachronistic language—making for an hilarious and unexpectedly poignant re-telling of a classic. Finely acted, directed, and designed, this millennial-voiced take on the angst of Chekhov’s century-plus-old play closely follows the original story while updating its syntax and sensibility for modern audiences, obliterating subtext and finding humor amid all the despair. I laughed until I cried. Read my review. (closed 8/17)

5. “Soft Power” (The Public Theater)
David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori’s new “musical-within-a-play” premiered in New York following two west coast engagements in 2018. This clever examination of the “disaster” of American democracy following the 2016 presidential election is a reverse version of “The King and I”, in which a Chinese film executive falls in love with a post-election Hillary Clinton, teaching her lessons from China’s perspective. A successful experiment in dramatic convention—what starts as a play becomes a musical dream—this smart and poignant show is notable for the economy of its storytelling, the tautness of its writing, its incisive interrogation of American politics and culture, and its nearly all-Asian cast. Read my review. Listen to my podcast episode. (closed 11/17)

Ato Blankson-Wood, Chalia La Tour, Joaquina Kalukango (kneeling), Irene Sofia Lucio, Sullivan Jones, Annie McNamara, Paul Alexander Nolan, and James Cusati-Moyer in “Slave Play”. Photo by Matthew Murphy

4. “Slave Play” (New York Theatre Workshop/Broadway)
No playwright made a bigger splash onto the scene in 2019 than Jeremy O. Harris with “Slave Play”. First at New York Theatre Workshop and now on Broadway, this trenchant satire of white fragility, identity politics, racism, psychotherapy, and a certain brand of its crunchy practitioners is a conversation piece to top them all. Thought-provoking, relevant, and a herald of what can be, this play rocks the complacency of audiences with the force of its manifold truths about race, gender, sex, and history. A must-see of the moment. Read my review. (closing 1/19; get tickets)

3. “Follies” (National Theatre—London)
Hopping across the pond, I caught a return engagement of Dominic Cooke’s magnificent 2017 revival of Sondheim and Goldman’s 1971 musical masterpiece. This production, in the vast expanse of the Olivier Theatre at the National Theatre in London, featured a cast of 40 and an orchestra of 21, and may very well be the defining “Follies” of our time—as close in scale and vision to the iconic, original Hal Prince/Michael Bennett production as we are likely to ever see again. More so than nearly any musical I know, awash in metaphor and intellect, the imagery of “Follies” is as important as the text, and Cooke and his collaborators nailed both. Read my review. (closed 5/11)

2. “Hadestown” (Broadway)
A breathtaking and exquisitely crafted poem, “Hadestown” is easily the most tautly constructed and beautifully realized musical on this side of “Hamilton”—a riveting, heart-wrenching, and sumptuous folk opera that vibrantly renders some of mankind’s oldest and most enduring myths as an epic and compelling piece of modern musical theatre. In short: a triumph well-deserving of its bounty of Tony Awards thanks to the alchemy of director Rachel Chavkin, composer, lyricist, and book writer Anaïs Mitchell, their top-notch team of designers, and an original cast destined to be the source of “I saw it with them!” theatregoer brags for decades to come. Read my review. (currently running; get tickets)

1. “A Strange Loop” (Playwrights Horizons)
Composer, lyricist, and playwright Michael R. Jackson’s self-referential new musical by and about “a black, queer man writing a musical about a black, queer man who’s writing a musical about a black queer man who’s writing a musical about a black queer man” shatters critical expectations and challenges societal limitations around what a queer black man’s story can and should be about. The clear product of an artist who loves musicals, “A Strange Loop” dares to expand our notion of who gets to anchor one, and how their story is told. Dramaturgically breathtaking and at once hilarious and heartbreaking, this musical—more so than anything else I saw in the past year—demonstrated the power of what theatre—and musical theatre, in particular—can be and do. Read my review. Listen to my podcast episode. (closed 7/28)

Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order, hyperlinks to my reviews and tickets):
"Ain't Too Proud" (Broadway), "All My Sons" (Broadway), "Beetlejuice" (Broadway), "Bella Bella" (Manhattan Theatre Club), "A Christmas Carol" (Broadway), "Cornucopia" (The Shed), "Derren Brown: Secret" (Broadway), "Do you feel anger?" (Vineyard), "Heroes of the Fourth Turning" (Playwrights Horizons), “Ink” (Broadway), "Into the Woods" (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival), "Julius Caesar" (Theatre for a New Audience), "Little Shop of Horrors" (Off-Broadway), "The Michaels" (The Public Theater), "Much Ado About Nothing" (Shakespeare in the Park), “one in two” (New Group), "Seared" (MCC Theater), "The Sound Inside" (Broadway), and "The Wrong Man" (MCC Theater).