My 16: 2016's Top Theatrical Experiences

James Ortiz and Eliza Martin Simpson in The Woodsman.
Photo by Matthew Murphy.

This year's post has been very hard to write. In a year that looks increasingly like the prologue to a dystopian franchise, it's difficult to look back with my usual optimism and joy. It feels frivolous, like I'm one of Panem's Capitol residents, merrily engaging in trivialities. I don't always know how to reconcile the feeling of uselessness against my passion for, and celebration of, live theater. As Richard II and I try to hammer it out, with Chrismakkuh looming this weekend, we'll review what didn't suck about this past year, and appreciate the small good things hiding in the garbage.

My overall play-going count is a bit lower than it's been since I started these posts - 122 plays total, with 11 repeats, which leaves us with 111 unique shows for the year. I'm not enough of a statistician and too lazy a researcher to look at the volume of how many shows were produced this year to comment further, but I'll try to comfort all of us by saying that the list I've made of shows to see for the spring season of 2017 is terrifyingly dense. As usual, for the purposes of this list, I am not including any shows I saw in earlier years (so while yes, I did see both Hamilton and Bedlam's Sense and Sensibility in 2016 and adored them to pieces, they topped my 2015 and 2014 lists respectively, and don't get to be included again).

One further note before I begin: I'm writing this list without having yet seen the final two shows on my 2016 docket - the pre-Broadway run of Amélie in Los Angeles and NYGASP's The Mikado. If it turns out I've made a huge mistake in omitting either, I'm making a note now to include them next year.

Let's go!

Margin Notes: King Lear

King Lear

Kitty Mortland as King Lear. Photo by Joseph Sebring.

Seen on: Saturday, 12/10/16.
My grade: B-.

Plot and Background

King Lear, eyeing retirement, announces that she will divide her kingdom equally among her three daughters, once they have sufficiently declared their love for her. When her beloved youngest, Cordelia, cannot bring herself to the same ornate oration as her fawning sisters, Goneril and Regan, Lear disinherits and banishes her. Intending to split her time between visiting her two remaining daughters, Lear soon finds herself instead the unwelcome houseguest of both, and goes mad in the storm, as old kings often do. Meanwhile, advisor Gloucester's bastard son Edmund frames his legitimate brother Edgar for attempted murder, and seduces both Goneril and Regan. It all comes to a head: the good end unhappily, the bad end even more unhappily, and I've left out the Fool, the blinding, and everyone going around in disguise. King Lear is presented by What Dreams May Co., in partnership with Queens Shakespeare Inc., two companies dedicated to exploring classical work.

What I Knew Beforehand,
and Disclosure

I'd seen Derek Jacobi's King Lear at BAM a few years back and came away with an excellent appreciation for the play, though I haven't actually sat down to read the script. I'm friends with director Emily C. A. Snyder, as well as several cast members.

Thoughts:

Play: In her director's note, Emily C. A. Snyder talks about the necessity for these characters to "unbecome" themselves - to break out of their prescribed identities of title and duty and reduce to their smallest, truest selves. This narrative is articulated most clearly in the title character, who begins the play all pomp and formality, but as she descends into madness - as she (literally) lets her hair down - we see at last the loving parent, the lonesome friend, the repentant ruler searching desperately for an emotional lodestone. In other characters, such as Goneril, Regan, and Edmund, this reduction reveals the petty bitterness beneath filial protestations. And in others, like Albany, Edgar, and Kent, it allows them to reveal their better nature, the heroes within that might have kept to the benches had a war not begun. While this narrative becomes easier to extrapolate now, behind the comfort of my keyboard, it was not always as clear in performance. Individual moments of transition and transformation were sometimes muddied, and the amorphous use of the intimate space meant I couldn't always place where we were. The play's strongest moments come as the King declines further and further; though King Lear is full of battle and bombast, this production finds its strength as its characters approach closer to their quiet, inner humanity.

Margin Notes: Merchant of Venice

Merchant of Venice

Leo Goodman and Michael Satow as Shylock and Antonio,
with Joshua M. Riffle and Emily Loewus as Salanio
and Jessica. Photo by Andrew Arvin.

Seen on: Thursday, 12/8/16.
My grade: A.

Plot and Background

In love with Portia (whose father had set a puzzle to dissuade unworthy suitors from her hand), Bassanio entreats his merchant friend Antonio to lend him money so that he may properly woo her. Not having the money himself (but expecting returns on several ships at sea), Antonio turns to the moneylender Shylock to supply the sum. Shylock, remembering many past mistreatments at Antonio's hand, agrees to lend the sum, with the stipulation that should Antonio not repay him, he should give to the moneylender a pound of his flesh. While Bassanio goes off to win fair maiden, Antonio's ships are lost at sea, and his bond to Shylock is forfeit. Then there's a big courtroom scene, a famous speech or two, and a bit of crossdressing, because this is Shakespeare. Merchant of Venice is presented by Hamlet Isn't Dead, a Shakespeare company dedicated to performing Shakespeare's works in chronological order.

What I Knew Beforehand

I have many strong opinions about this play (it makes me really freaking angry how much glee is taken in punishing the Jew and stripping him of his religion, let's leave it at that) and have seen it done numerous times. I'm also familiar with - and have reviewed past productions by - the company Hamlet Isn't Dead.

Thoughts:

Play: Seasoned as I now am to Hamlet Isn't Dead's productions, I can summarize their style - unadorned and intimate staging (often alley or thrust playing spaces), immaculate yet disarmingly casual text work, and a sense of fluidity and play. One of director David Andrew Laws's primary goals for this production in HID's mission is to remind us all that Shakespeare intended the "problem play" that is Merchant of Venice to be a comedy - and he achieves this goal handily. Peppered throughout by song (including pre- and post-show mini concerts), squired by the guitar (or banjo or mandolin) toting pair of Solario and Solanio, and running at a bright and brisk ninety minutes, this Merchant marks the first time I was able to watch without getting angry, and actually enjoy the story and its players. I could enjoy the interplay of the smaller characters, the hyperboles of the clowns, the wit of Portia and Nerissa, and the delicate intricacies of the shifting power dynamic between Shylock and Antonio (Shylock and Antonio, by the way, are the only two characters who don't know they're in a comedy - a dichotomy that bolsters both the light and dark elements of the narrative by throwing them into relief). The answer to how Laws achieves this feat lies not only in his confident and playful staging, but in the judicious cuts made to the text. Most significant among these cuts are the grotesque extremes around the problem of Shylock - on both sides of the conflict. The antisemitic verbal abuse thrown at him by the gentiles is reserved only for his beleaguered servant Gobbo (which makes Antonio and his plight easier to swallow), Shylock's "comically" mercenary grief that his jewels were stolen, and most importantly Shylock's forced conversion to Christianity as his final punishment - all these are cut. With these excesses of nastiness removed, we can instead see only the antipathy between Shylock and Antonio, and how Shylock - a soft-spoken, reasonable-seeming businessman - can be driven to the point of bloodthirstiness he reaches in the trial. When this is the cruelest act of the narrative, rather than all the rest, somehow balance seems better restored, and it is easier to follow the rest of the characters to their happy conclusions. I am thinking, though, of the revisionist adaptations I have seen this year, such as Ivo Van Hove's The Crucible on Broadway and Daniel Sullivan's Troilus and Cressida at Shakespeare in the Park - both productions tinkered with context and with authorial intent, for better or worse. Laws's director's note in the program indicates he is aware that there are changes he is making to the play as we know it. Unlike the above mentioned examples, however, he is not adding in non-canonical content, nor recontextualizing moments. I do wonder, with the nastiness cut out, if it is still the same play. Honestly, though, I prefer this version. As Laws points out, Shakespeare wrote for his audience, and HID is performing for its audience. One of the joys of the malleability of Shakespeare is how endlessly and variably his work can be performed. HID hasn't mangled the text - they've cut, perhaps, a pound of flesh away, but it wasn't too near the heart that it did damage. Perhaps it was just shaving off some diseased tissue.