15 for '15 - My Top Theatrical Experiences This Year

Daniel N. Durant as Moritz in Deaf West's Spring Awakening.
Photo by Kevin Parry.

We don't need no stinkin' rules! Especially not rules that limit me to choosing only 10 shows for 2015. That's just cruel and unusual punishment. And, as I'm not an accredited journalist, and this is my house, we're doing 15 for 15 this year.

I'm quite proud to report that my attendance bumped up from last year - I saw 130 shows in 2015, and when we remove the repeats, it comes out to 121 unique shows - only one fewer than I saw in 2013, and 24 up from last year. It's been an odd mix this year - some truly extraordinary theater, including the groundbreaking work by Broadway's biggest nerd, Lin-Manuel Miranda - but the Fall season on Broadway, at least in terms of straight plays, was oddly disappointing. However, Off-Broadway picked up the slack, there's still plenty of good work to remember from this past Spring, and loads to anticipate for 2016.

So let's get started. (and before anyone calls the dogs out on any shows I omitted, the list started at 32 for the year, which I then had to painstakingly cull down to its present length)

Honorable Mention: I can't officially include Hedwig and the Angry Inch on this list, since the production made my '14 list last year, but if I didn't include John Cameron Mitchell's incredible performance in the role he created, I'd be doing a disservice to all of us. I saw him only after his injury early in his run, but even hobbled as he was by multiple knee braces, his Hedwig was a terrifying and heartbreaking force of nature. The role (and the show) transformed under his care, running a good twenty minutes longer from all the riffing and adlibbing. This was Hedwig as I knew her from before - bitingly cruel one moment, sweet and loving the next. A deeply-bedded river of bitterness ran through her, even as she valiantly soldiered on, crutch tucked under her arm. And oh god, the moment JCM opened his mouth in the first song, sounding just like he did twenty years earlier, I started to cry. (I feel it would be remiss if I did not also mention the fact that my friend Marissa received the infamous car wash treatment when we attended together - without a doubt, an unforgettable evening).

Margin Notes: POPTART!

POPTART!

Seen on: Thursday, 12/3/15.
My grade: B+

Monique St. Cyr and Allison Strickland as Monique Jackson and Anna Martin.
Photo by Patricia Phelps.

Plot and Background

Monique Jackson is a rising singer-songwriter star acting out the role of a spoiled diva for anyone who will tolerate her. James Pearce is a gifted songwriter with a lofty view of the business of show. When Monique's assistant Anna maneuvers a meeting between the two to negotiate a collaboration, personalities collide in a big way. POPTART! is a new play by Krystle Phelps, co-founder of Girl Just Died, a NY-based theater company "dedicated to bringing to life new, exciting, and honest work that heavily features a variety of voices."

Disclosure, and
What I Knew Beforehand

I've worked with - and am friends with - director Gwenevere Sisco. Beyond that, I'd seen and reviewed her previous collaboration with Krystle Phelps, James Parenti, and Monique St. Cyr, May Violets Spring.

Thoughts:

Play: There's always something rather thrilling about a real-time play with an approaching deadline. As Monique stalks about her dressing room, primping, drinking, changing clothes, writing "Bitch" on her mirror with lipstick, we know she has a performance (to a pre-recorded "live track") at an unspecified awards show only moments away. This is borrowed time: a chemistry meet with a new collaborator, dodged calls from her mother slash former manager, and a showdown between a diva and her only friend. Time seems to both expand and contract around moments - music plays and everything holds still. Tragedy strikes, and the show must go on. While Monique does her best to drive everyone away, there remains a moment of hope at the end - perhaps she recognizes that she is worth saving, after all. The final performance is thrilling, a release for both Monique and the audience.

Margin Notes: Aftermath

Aftermath

The cast of this is my (trigger warning). Photo by Bobby Alford.

Seen on: Friday, 11/13/15.
My grade: B-.

Plot and Background

Aftermath is two one acts presented as part of Ivy Theatre Company's 2015 Trellis Project, a page-to-stage partnership with playwrights. this is my (trigger warning), an Ivy ensemble original piece conceived and directed by Audrey Alford, presents the female experience with PTSD through physical and vocal exploration. Reach, by Ryan Sprague, takes place in New Orleans one year after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, to explore the lasting effects on one woman who refuses to leave.

Disclosure, and
What I Knew Beforehand

I've worked with and greatly admire Audrey Alford, the creator of this is my (trigger warning), the first of the two pieces, and I've contributed money to Ivy's fundraising. Beyond that, I knew only that it was an evening of two short pieces.

Thoughts:

Although the two pieces are vastly different in tone and content, their themes are (obviously) connected - an exploration of the aftermath of intense trauma - and thus work in conversation with each other. While the language of the first piece is largely breath and movement, those are the healing tools Leila lacks in the second piece. She relies on words - unread letters she faithfully composes daily, a fierce armor against all of Jordan's efforts to reach her - she is frozen, unable to breathe, unable to move from her home except for her daily pilgrimage to visit her comatose husband. What's really remarkable about the conversation of these two pieces, then, is how both resolve - in Reach, Leila begins to heal through her connection with Jordan, with her ability to finally breathe and change; in this is my (trigger warning), the women who have been having their own private crises in isolation, weeping and contorting, find strength and their center by joining in singing, "she was never crazy," and building together a creature that is equal parts silver-armored strength and a finally-chrysalized butterfly. In terms of that conversation, the evening is successful; however, individually, each piece is rather lacking on its own. this is my (trigger warning) is perhaps a bit underbaked - what language there is, is rather sparse and never particularly explicit - while it's clear each woman is dealing with the after-effects of trauma, the nature of the trauma or its lingering savagery of their psyches is never clarified. However, the seeds are there for a longer piece, for something poetic and affirming - it just needs shape. Reach, meanwhile, has definite craft in the structure of its narrative, but it's hindered by somewhat stilted dialogue and a too-repetitive pattern of tactics by its characters.

Both pieces make excellent use of the space - in tim(tw), the windows that back the playing space are uncovered, allowing the occasional passing traffic - both sound and lights - to penetrate our consciousness, the always-threatening outside world lingering outside the cocooned women. Reach, meanwhile, scatters Leila's unfurnished apartment across the space, littered with books and dying plants, and places the door to her apartment - the bridge to an outside she can't bear to see - completely behind the audience, as outside our experience as it is hers.

***

Running: Now playing at Lucid Body House (Ivy Theatre Company) - Opened: November 5, 2015. Closing: November 21, 2015
Category: two short pieces
Length: 1 hour, 40 minutes, including intermission.

Creative Team

Playwrights: Ivy Theatre Company (this is my (trigger warning)) w/additional collaboration by Diane Chen and Shoshanna Richman; and Ryan Sprague (Reach)
Directors: Audrey Alford (tim(tw)) & Andrew Block (R)
Designers:  Audrey Alford (Costume - tim(tw)), Kitty Mortland (Costume - R), Jorge Olivo (Sound).
Cast: Audrey Alford, Phoebe Allegra, Ciarah Amaani, Alexandra Moro, Jeanne Lauren Smith (tim(tw)); Katie Braden, Christopher Lee (R)

Phoebe Allegra in this is my (trigger warning). Photo by Bobby Alford

*note: no production photos for Reach were available at the time of writing this*

Margin Notes: Richard II

Richard II

Morgan Hooper as Richard II (with Kitty Mortland as
Duke of Aumerle). Photo by John Hoffman.

Seen on: Wednesday, 10/28/15.
My grade: B.

Plot and Background

Richard II, a young king given to whim and jest more than serious thought, is in the final years of his reign when an arbitrary banishment to end a dispute leads to rebellion by his cousin Bolingbroke. Although Richard abdicates his throne readily - if unhappily - it soon becomes clear that it is not so simple to merely lock away the fallen king in a prison. One of Shakespeare's histories, Richard II was probably written in 1595 and serves as the first part of the Henriad tetrology (followed by Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, and Henry V). Richard II is presented in rep with Romeo and Juliet by Hamlet Isn't Dead, the self-proclaimed "286th-best Shakespeare-related theatre troupe" in New York. Their mission is to present Shakespeare's work in chronological order.

Disclosure, and
What I Knew Beforehand

I've seen Mark Rylance play Richard II at The Globe, and Ben Whishaw play the role in The Hollow Crown series for BBC, which featured it as the first in the series. I've seen some of Hamlet Isn't Dead's work in the past, and I'm friends with the director, Emily C. A. Snyder.

Thoughts:

Play: From the first line of the play, director Snyder makes her vision clear. King Richard II strolls onstage alone and begins his famous Act V monologue:
     I have been studying how I may compare
     This prison where I live unto the world:
     And for because the world is populous
     And here is not a creature but myself,
     I cannot do it; yet I'll hammer it out.
And suddenly the stage is flooded with courtiers, and the play begins proper. Thus the narrative is framed as a sort of flashback - Richard is able to repopulate his prison and examine how he got to this point. The motif continues when his wife, Queen Isabella, trapped in her courtly life to a husband she does not fully understand, begins the same speech; and then again when Bolingbroke, at sea in the growing momentum of his rebellion against Richard, finds himself with crowd and crown in hand. This is a world of prisons where each character is his own jailer. The tragedy of Richard II is how many points along the way the audience can see a bloodless solution hiding in the characters' blind spots. So many times, were the characters able to pause and examine, perhaps swallow a bit of pride, could this all have sorted differently - no banishment, no insurrection, no murder, no abdication, no secret plotting. But in their isolation, in their individual prisons, all they can do is stumble on, heedless of the bloody barriers in their way. Snyder understands this acutely and crafts her production - staged in the challenging alley formation - cleanly and with little ornament, relying on the words and the people speaking them to convey the narrative.

Margin Notes: Daddy Long Legs

Daddy Long Legs

Megan McGinnis as Jerusha Abbott. Photo by Jeremy Daniel.

Seen on: Monday, 9/14/15.
My grade: B+

Plot and Background

Jerusha Abbott, an orphan with more energy and wit than is desired at the John Grier Home, finds herself suddenly sponsored by an unknown trustee for a full university education to help her pursue a career as a writer, with the only stipulation being that she send letters to her "Mr. John Smith" benefactor, apprising him of her progress. This two-character chamber piece, based on Jean Webster's 1912 novel of the same name, first premiered in 2009 at the Rubicon Theatre Company (starring its current lead Megan McGinnis) and has toured both regionally and internationally, leading up to its Off-Broadway debut.

What I Knew Beforehand

I loved Paul Gordon's last Broadway musical, Jane Eyre, and I knew that this show was a reunion between its two writers, Gordon and John Caird. I knew nothing about the plot, but I was so excited to see his new work.

Thoughts:

Play: Perhaps the plot itself, as summarized, isn't the most compelling story. But - I say this as someone who herself has written an epistolary play - it comes down to the storytelling, and in that the show is largely successful. It's like if you went poking in the attic of a distant relative and found a packet of letters tied with a ribbon - it's a sweet valentine, a simple clear view into a young woman's mind as her horizons expand. The narrative itself isn't as intensely shattering as that of Jane Eyre, Gordon and Caird's previous collaboration, but it is still engaging and light, as warm-hearted as its heroine. Gordon's score bubbles and trips along, and Caird's book is funny and economic. If I were to register a complaint, it's that there is a bit of a tonal inconsistency between the two characters - Jervis's songs are a bit emptier, and feel somehow more contemporary than Jerusha's. Maybe it's McGinnis's legit soprano against Nolan's pop-ier tenor. Maybe it's the sliding notes he's given, which are largely absent from her songs. Maybe it's just that his songs have far less story to tell - he reacts, while she lives. His numbers aren't necessarily bad, but they're distinctly less engaging than hers. Luckily, most of the show is hers, so you'll still leave smiling and content. (also for fellow nerds, there's a shout out to Jane Eyre that I'm sure the writers just couldn't resist!)