Sunday was the Tonys, or as we say in New York, the good awards show. Congratulations to all the winners, all the nominees, and all the shows that got made this year.
(Btw, the photo is actually not from the Tonys but the show New York, New York, which closed way too soon last year, and was itself such a love letter to theater, music and the city.)
Personally I like to think of Tony Sunday like New Year’s Day—it’s a chance to stop and think about what this year in theater has offered, not just on Broadway but in general. What did I see? Who got to me? What did I learn?
Here’s some of my favorite things from this last season.
WHOLESALE/OUTLAW: YOU CAN DO SO MUCH WITH SO LITTLE
Some (if not most) of my favorite shows this year were actually not on Broadway, but in small off-Broadway theaters scattered around the city. In the fall the Classic Stage Company did a production of I Can Get it For You Wholesale on its tiny thrust stage, where you got to sit so close I literally had to move my leg whenever actors were going off stage so that they didn’t bump into me.
And the show was captivating. Somehow the relative lack of room the actors had to work with made every choice more meaningful, more thrilling.
Similarly in the spring Dead Outlaw took what seemed like the tiniest of sets at the Audible Theater, just one little area in which a band played, and used it to tell one of the weirdest and most heartfelt stories I’ve seen in forever.
It’s a great reminder to me of how much the obstacles involved in telling a show—like the space you’ve got to work with—can actually create opportunities.
I got to talk some of the designers on both Wholesale and Dead Outlaw, and they had such great things to say about how they turned challenges into possibilities.
MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG’S DANIEL RADCLIFFE
If you were to ask 100 theater-going New Yorkers what their favorite performance was this year, an awful lot of them would tell you about Daniel Radcliffe in Merrily We Roll Along. And almost all of them would talk about the specific moment early in the show in which his character Charlie Kringas is interviewed alongside his writing partner Franklin Shepard. Charlie, who is enormously frustrated with Franklin, slowly loses his mind, on camera, in song.
It’s an incredibly difficult song to perform, fast and funny and angry and sad and did I mention fast, God it’s fast. (Above you can hear the cast recording version. It’s great, but it cannot convey just how dazzling Daniel’s live performance is.)
And Daniel does it 8 shows a week.
I read an interview recently where someone asked whether it’s gotten easier doing that number. Daniel did the show for a bunch of months off-Broadway last year, and he’s been doing it for almost a year on Broadway. And he said the only difference was that he had finally managed to stop running the number constantly at home.
Ever since I can’t stop thinking of Daniel Radcliffe spending the last year running this one number in his head over and over every day, so that it lands every night.
HERE LIES LOVE
If you weren’t in New York over the summer or early in the fall, you might not have heard about Here Lies Love, the David Byrne-created bio-musical about Filipino leader and fascist Imelda Marcos. It was the first Broadway show to ever have an all-Filipino cast, and it also went at the story in an incredibly creative way, with a lot of the audience on the ground floor standing in a fabulous Studio 54 kind of set up and invited to dance and literally follow the action as the stage moved around them.
I was really sad to see the show close in the fall. It was a very cool experience, something totally different and a perfect match for with the show’s underlying concept of the characters as all essentially performers trying to seduce the audience.
UNCLE VANYA’S STEVE CARELL
TV and film star Steve Carell came to New York this spring to do Uncle Vanya at Lincoln Center. And it was one of my favorite lead performances of the year. Carell’s acting was filled with unexpected choices that made the show feel spontaneous and alive and real.
And more than that, he delivered an enormously generous performance. Rather that commanding the stage as the title character, Carell stayed around the edges for the first act, so much so at intermission I heard people wondering why exactly it was called “Uncle Vanya.” (I was one of them.)
But that decision meant that the rest of the cast was given that much more room to play, and they created some really wonderful performances. William Jackson Harper, Alison Pill, Anika Noni Rose, Mia Katigbak—they were all tremendous.
Carell comes originally from the world of improv, which seems like a weird marriage with Chekhov. But it seems to me like those foundations gave him the freedom to see himself as part of a bigger story and ensemble. I admire the hell out of him for taking that approach. The show was so much the richer for it.
WATER FOR ELEPHANTS’ STAN BROWN
I stumbled into Water for Elephants on a rainy Wednesday afternoon during previews, not really knowing what to expect. And while a lot of fans will talk about the circus work, which is extensive, for me the most striking element of the show was the work of Stan Brown, who plays the life-long carny Camel that befriends young Jacob Jankowski as he’s looking for a new life.
There’s something so deeply authentic about Brown’s performance, a humanity that is well-worn and played with such a light touch. The central story of Water has a lot of earnestness, which is part of its charm. But earnestness can also wear thin. Stan’s Camel, along with Gregg Edelman as the elderly Jacob, are like a leaven, adding a warmth and gentleness that is really expansive. People walk out of that theater feeling like they’re floating on air a little bit, and Stan and Gregg are a big part of why that happens.
(The fact that it was also Stan’s first show on Broadway is also incredible.)
SPEAK THE TRUTH, AND KEEP IT SIMPLE
Speaking of generous, human performances, David Hyde Pierce’s turn as an archbishop questioning his vocation in Stephen Sondheim’s final show Here We Are was a fantastic piece of work.
I wrote about the show here earlier this year. And I continue to be moved by a scene halfway through the second act where David and Rachel Boy Jones’ Marianne talk about the meaning of life. In exchange for getting to hold her high heels (lol), the Archbishop agrees to answer the question, “What is being?”
Oh being, he says. Well. First of all you might say we’re here. Actually, here, on Earth, most likely. Though perhaps not. As are other people, and also objects like these beautiful satin slippers.
Yes. And? Marianne says.
And that means…something. That we’re here. We mean something, apparently. We are what you might call matter that matters.
Or not, depending on who you read.
So we’re here, for a time on, possibly, Earth, with very soft satin slippers, and other people, etc., and we live our lives.
Then we die. And spend eternity with God. Or go to Hell. If there happens to be one.
Or else, we pass into complete nothingness. A total void, forever and ever. That we are actually unaware of, because we’re not here, any more.
The end.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that scene. Why does it seem so hopeful when it’s filled with hesitation and the possibility of, as he says, “complete nothingness”?
Part of it is clearly David’s light-touch delivery. But it’s also that it’s written with such simple, unadorned honesty. Especially when it comes to religion and The Big Questions, things are often either overwritten or filtered through one or another kind of propaganda machine that refuses to fully acknowledge the realities that we know are there.
To have a religious figure speak in a way that is both consistent with who they are and resonant with our actual lived experience is an unexpected and tremendous relief.
GREAT SHOWS TEACH YOU A NEW LANGUAGE
For me one of the two most unexpected theater experiences this year was Illinoise, a show about a young man grieving the deaths of his best friends, told entirely through dance, while three singers wearing gorgeous moth wings stood above the action, singing songs written by singer/songwriter Sufjan Stevens.
Everyone I know that sees this show talks about how disorienting it is initially. For the first half hour maybe you’re just not sure what you’re watching. A lot of it is beautiful, and sometimes also pretty strange, but what is it?
I don’t think that’s a glitch on the show’s part. That time is there to teach us a new language for experiencing story, so that when we get into the heart of things we’re ready for it. And it’s true, once the main character’s story begins things really lock in. And suddenly you’re moving forward with the story but also backward, as your brain translates what you just witnessed. Which is kind of an extraordinary experience.
As I wrote after I first saw it, having spent almost 2 hours immersed in the show, when I left the theater the world also seemed filled with the possibility of great beauty. It was like in giving me a language for understanding itself, Illinoise gave me a new way of looking at life.
SLEEP NO MORE’S ANDREW ROBINSON
Artwork by June Vigants
The number one most unexpected theater experience of the year for me was seeing Sleep No More, a long-running off-Broadway show in which you spend three hours wandering freely through a five-story building in which scenes from Macbeth, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, and the Paisley Witch Trials are being performed all around you, once again entirely through movement, most often dance.
As I wrote elsewhere recently, there is simply nothing like Sleep No More. One of the things that I loved about it, once I got used to it, is that rather than offering one extended narrative experience, the show gives you dozens of unexpected and unique moments to take with you.
Within the building sits an old-timey hotel lobby in which the hotel’s porter works. A lot of his story ends up being about interacting with different guests needing help. But early on he is “on stage” by himself. His job at this point is to get the lobby ready for the day to come. But because he’s alone, as he does his chores he dances through the space, and also on tables and couches, and with the sheets that cover the furniture. It’s like we’ve been allowed a glimpse of this man’s inner life, or perhaps his inmost dreams, and it’s just beautiful.
The night I saw this moment, the role of the porter was being played by Andrew Robinson, who is an incredibly talented dancer and performer. He brought to the moment this irrepressible freedom and joy. It was like watching Gene Kelly do Singin’ in the Rain all around you. As it turned out, I was actually alone in the lobby for much of that scene. I felt so humbled both to be allowed that kind of glimpse into this character’s life, and to be alone witnessing the work of such an amazing performer.
On other nights, Andrew plays King Duncan. I’ve had the great fortune to go back and see him in that role, and it’s crazy to see how equally compelling and convincing he is in the role. What a range. (Also, you will never see a more erotic scene involving a man shaving in your life.)
LEMPICKA’S NATALIE JOY JOHNSON
One of the early casualties of the spring season has been Lempicka, the true story of a Jewish woman in Russia who fled with her husband to Paris during the Russian Revolution and became a tremendous painter and a queer icon. Reimagined as a musical, Lempicka follows title character Tamara de Lempicka from her days in Russia to her final years in Los Angeles, and had some big stars in it, including Eden Espinoza, Amber Iman and Judy Kuhn.
It also had Natalie Joy Johnson, who plays the queer bar owner where Tamara and her lover/muse Rafaela meet. In addition to being on Broadway, Natalie is an incredible cabaret performer. Her shows with long-time collaborator Brian Nash present as comedy—she wears a big wig and loves a hilarious on the spot gummy-fueled ramble.
But then she’ll deliver in rapid fire a series of songs that in quick succession have you howling with laughter and then stunned into silence by their emotional impact. One of the last times I saw her, “Miss Natalie” took a song from the musical Working and turned it into a tune about being a Real Housewife. It sounds hilarious, but instead it was a quietly devastating moment that left me wondering what the hell just happened.
That’s Natalie in a nutshell: You show up for a kiki, and you leave wondering what the hell just happened, while feeling honestly so grateful that you don’t know and hoping you can experience it all soon again.
Here she is doing “Do You Want to Dance.”
Natalie started doing a Thursday night set at Friki Tiki in Midtown during the show. I can’t recommend it, or her, enough. She’s a goddamn star.