2019-2020: Looking Back, Looking Forward: The Glories of Off- and Off-Off-Broadway

I was going to do a "best-of" for 2019 plus a "looking forward" for 2020, when I realized that their focus would be much the same: the treasure that is non-Broadway theatre.

I'm not denying the treasure that is on-Broadway theatre. There's something undeniably magical about those buildings, with their plush seats, ornate ceilings, and theatrical history. And there are always incredible shows running. But the prices are truly insane.

Once, when I was a kid, my parents were complaining about the price of something. I said, "But that's what it costs now." And my dad said, "Someday you'll be faced with a 'that's what it costs now' that you just refuse to pay. You just can't." I recently decided to bite the bullet and spend a small fortune to see American Utopia. But a small fortune wasn't enough. Could I have afforded the actual price? Yes, as a special treat. But I just couldn't do it. My dad was right.

Maybe it's because I'm old enough to have spent $9 on a "special treat" ticket--Debbie Reynolds in Irene, first row center. I was making $1.95/hr, minimum wage. Now minimum wage is ~$15/hr, and tickets are hundreds of dollars. Something is wrong on Broadway.

But Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway, something is right. You can see fabulous shows with brilliant casts from great seats, and it doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Not even a finger.

Here are ten of the theatre companies that I have found to provide reliably top-notch work at accessible, even cheap, prices. (All are linked to their websites; they're in alphabetical order.)

APAC. It's a pleasure to start with APAC (Astoria Performing Arts Center), which is high on my list of favorite theatre companies, mostly because the artistic director--Dev Bondarin--is one of the most reliably excellent directors in New York. In fact, when Roundabout announced their production of Caroline, or Change, my first thought was that I hoped it would be as good as APAC's!

And here's the thing: APAC's tickets for Caroline were only $25 for adults and $20 for students and senior citizens--an insane bargain. (I don't know if they will go up in the future, but even so, APAC will remain a bargain. Their Caroline was every bit as meaningful, beautiful, and heart-breaking as the original Broadway production!)

APAC has given us brilliant productions of Follies (amazing) and Merry We Roll Along (my favorite of all the productions I have seen, including the original), to mention only a couple. The rest of the 2019-2020 season includes the New York premiere of Jump by Charly Evon Simpson and a revival of Man of La Mancha. And who knows what 2020-2021 will bring?

Bedlam. I'm new to Bedlam, but after seeing their excellent revival of The Crucible (and also on the recommendation of a friend whose opinion I respect), I don't plan to miss any of their shows going forward. They don't seem to have announced their 2020 season, and I wasn't able to track down their ticket prices. (I bought my Crucible tickets on tdf.) But click here for their Facebook page, which may provide more up-to-date info than their website.

Elmwood Playhouse (Nyack, NY). I've only seen one show at the Elmwood, and to be honest I've heard some non-raves about their earlier work. But their production of The Little Foxes was solid, entertaining, and moving. Currently running is the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and tickets are only $27 ($24 for seniors and students). The rest of the season includes Born Yesterday, The Drowsy Chaperone, and Calendar Girls.

Flux Theatre Ensemble. I have been a huge Flux fan since 2009 when I saw the wonderful Lesser Seductions of History, a lovely and deeply humane play by Corinna Schulenburg, beautifully directed by Heather Cohn. In the intervening years, I've seen another 15 or so Flux productions, and an insanely large percentage of them have been amazing, incredible, thought-provoking, funny, and all the other things one hopes plays to be.

And talk about inexpensive! Flux doesn't even ask you to lay out money to get a ticket. They do ask you to support Flux in any way you can, but they don't want the price of a ticket to keep people from seeing their shows. (For more info, click here.) I donate to Flux every year.

Next at Flux: the world premiere of Rage Play by Nandita Shenoy, directed by Lori Elizabeth Parquet. Runs March 28 through April 11.

Mint Theater Company. The Mint's tag line is "lost plays found here." And what treasures these lost plays are! Also, the Mint has a truly astonishing batting average, providing excellent production after excellent production after excellent production. There was one show I hated, but about a dozen that I liked, liked a lot, or loved. And Mint productions are often eye-opening. Who knew that plays in the early 20th century were grappling so honestly with sexuality and class?

Currently at the Mint is Chekhov/Tolstoy: Love Stories. While I prefer it when the Mint focuses on more obscure writers, I am sure that this production will be worthwhile. After all, it's the Mint! (Ticket prices: $35.00 - $65.00.)

PTP/NYC. The PTP/NYC is yet another theatre company that provides excellent production after excellent production. Here's how they describe themselves on their website:

PTP/NYC is an Off-Broadway powerhouse of veteran and emerging talent creating socially and politically acute theatre for the 21st century. In its 27 seasons [actually, it's 33 now], the voices of PTP/NYC’s writers have addressed the necessity and difficulty of art, homelessness, censorship, pornography, AIDS, totalitarianism, apartheid and gender wars—always in passionate, deeply human terms. Playwrights whose work is often seen on the company’s stages include Howard Barker, Caryl Churchill, Harold Pinter and Neal Bell. 

I have been blown away again and again by PTP/NYC, particularly by plays directed by co-artistic director Cheryl Faraone. Faraone's productions are lucid and smart; she lets the plays tell their stories with a subtle and smooth hand.

I don't know what PTP/NYC has up their sleeve; unfortunately, their website is terrible. But I do know that, whatever they produce, I'll be there.

Red Bull Theater. The Red Bull focuses on past centuries--often far past. For example, their next (one-night) event is a January 27 reading of Women Beware Women, Thomas Middleton's 17th century social satire. (There are $47 tickets left, and the reading has a very classy cast. For more info, click here). Sometimes I wish Red Bull productions were clearer; sometimes I wish they were truer to the original plays. But I'm always grateful to have seen their productions, feeling entertained and/or educated. And sometimes I'm blown away.

Signature Theatre. The Signature has a unique role in NY theatre, focusing largely on living playwrights but often including revivals of their earlier works. Signature used to pick one playwright per season; now they combine "legacy" and "residency" playwrights. The 2019-2020 season includes plays by Anna Deavere Smith, Horton Foote, Katori Hall, and Lauren Yee. And tickets are $35. Thirty-five dollars! (And ticket packages eliminate any fees, while providing a generous exchange policy.)

Voyage Theater Company. The VTC is brand-new to me, but I'm putting them on this list based on their production of The Hope Hypothesis. There's no way to know if their future productions will be as good, but I do know I'll give them a try.

York Theatre Company. The York is devoted to musicals, old and new, with main stage productions (such as the wonderful Desperate Measures and Unexpected Joy), concert readings (the fabulous Mufti series, recently including the very entertaining The Decline and Fall of the Entire World as Seen Through the Eyes of Cole Porter), and a developmental series of over 30 readings a year. (Shows developed or partially developed at the York include Avenue Q and the brilliant, insanely funny Musical of Musicals: The Musical.) Some York shows are flat-out wonderful; minimally, the Muftis are of of historical interest; the casts are often top-notch; and the voices are unmiked. Main stage tickets are $67.50 - $72.50; Muftis are $45 - $50. Plus you can get a York membership, which reduces the ticket prices significantly, and there are various forms of rush tickets.

***

Strange to think that, for a price of a pair of tickets to a Broadway show, you could see a show or two at all ten of these theatre companies! And I hope you do.

Wendy Caster

Boesman and Lena

It often occurs to me, especially lately, just how much the trajectory of any life comes down to dumb luck. Sure, people can work hard to change their lot in life, or screw up enough to piss everything away, but ultimately, it's a dizzyingly random combination of birthright, time, place, and culture that results in the access--or lack thereof--to food, water, education, safety from persecution, or parents who will buy your entry into Yale. The three characters in Boesman and Lena, Athol Fugard's 1969 masterwork currently running in a truly humbling revival at Signature Theater, are utterly devoid of luck, dumb or otherwise. Written in response to South Africa's apartheid laws, the play has only become more powerful and sad since apartheid ended. There's just so much need in the world.

Joan Marcus

Living in a place and time that has hierarchized its citizens according to how they look and to whom they've been born, the title characters have in many respects not only numbly accepted but also thoroughly internalized the sick logic that has conscripted their unrelentingly difficult lives. Boesman (Sahr Ngaujah, typically excellent) is brittle and angry and hard, and he regularly takes his powerlessness and frustrations out by beating his partner, Lena (Zainab Jah, remarkable). Lena's trauma manifests itself less violently than Boesman's, but it roils nonetheless: in early monologues, she takes careful count of her bruises and lists all the places she and Boesman have been forced from as a means of reminding herself of her own existence and remaining sanity. Both characters have to work awfully hard not to sink into despair, to give up, to destroy themselves or one another. When an old African man in his death throes (Thomas Silcott) arrives at their campsite, the tension between the couple spikes ever higher. 

  

This is a deeply unsettling and moving piece of immersive theater that's not easy to sit through and that you should nevertheless try your damnedest to see. I haven't stopped thinking about how painful and dignified it is, how beautifully performed, how shattering. At curtain call of the performance I saw, an old man in the front row stood and repeatedly thanked the actors, who didn't break character as they stood for applause. I was too stunned to chant along with him, but he spoke for me just the same. 

Best Performances of 2018

I am frequently blown away by the depth and quality of the New York acting community. Brilliant performances are everywhere.

(I've linked to my reviews for shows I did indeed review.)


THE ENSEMBLES

In the following shows, everyone was wonderful.

A Chorus Line

Band’s Visit

Dance Nation

Desperate Measures

Follies

Hello Dolly

Ordinary Days

The Possibilities/The After-Dinner Joke


ENSEMBLES, PLUS

In the following shows, everyone was wonderful but one or two people stood out, usually in lead roles.

Conflict--great cast, especially Jeremy Beck

Fabulation--great cast, especially Cherise Boothe

Ian Lassiter and Cherise Boothe
Photo: Monique Carboni

Happy Birthday, Wanda June--great cast, especially Jason O'Connell and Kate MacCluggage

Holy Ghosts--great cast, especially Oliver Palmer

Jerry Springer The Opera--great cast, especially Will Swenson


INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCES

And then there are two individual performances I want to single out.

Farah Alvin was a new discovery for me in Inner Voices 2018. I think she can do pretty much anything.

Farah Alvin
Photo: Russ Rowland

In contrast, Ethan Hawke has long been a favorite of mine. I enjoy his all-in, balls-to-the-wall commitment to his roles, and I enjoy even more that he knows when to pull back. In True West, he is mesmerizing.


SECOND THOUGHTS?

Now I'm wondering if I should have included Jerry Springer The Opera, Ordinary Days, and The Possibilities/The After-Dinner Joke on my "best of" list. They were all wonderful. But what would I have removed from the existing list to make room?

Wendy Caster

Best of 2018

In 2018, I saw 74 shows. Only nine of them were on Broadway; those prices, even when discounted, keep scaring me away. However, I've lost little by skipping Broadway shows (as much as I would have liked to see some of them). But Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway remain amazing, with OOB being particularly affordable.

Before making this list, I did a quick grading of the shows I saw. It was a good year: 27 rated A; 28 rated B; 7 rated C; and 12 rated D. I didn't rate any of them F, because I love and admire theatre and the people who make theatre happen.

This is not a top ten. It's a top 13, and I managed to actually include 18 shows. In cases where I reviewed the show, I've linked to the review. Oh, and I certainly understand that this is really a list of "shows I liked best of the shows I saw" and not truly a "best of" list. But calling these lists "best of" is the custom, and I'm going along with that.

The list is alphabetical.

A Chorus Line: It was a truly extraordinary experience to get to see a first-class production of this wonderful show in such an intimate setting. Kudos to the Gallery!

Wakey, Wakey

The man in the pajama bottoms, slippers and suit jacket is terribly confused but always polite to the crowd he is somehow suddenly responsible for entertaining. He has snacks and juice stashed in side pouches in his wheelchair, and a large stack of note-cards to fall back on when his memory fails or he loses his train of thought, which is often. He occasionally gets up gingerly to trudge across the stage, which is dotted with moving boxes and piles of unsorted clothing. He sometimes wears the strange grimace of a patient with advanced Parkinson's disease, but otherwise makes no mention of what ails him. He is amicable, calm, attentive, and funny. He is very soon about to die.

Wakey, Wakey, Will Eno's meditation on life and the end of it, is gently, beautifully performed by a cast of two (Michael Emerson is the man in the wheelchair, ambiguously named Guy, and January Lavoy is Lisa, his nurse). The show is brief, at an hour and change, which I suppose fits the concept: life is ephemeral and no matter what, the end always comes too soon. And its short finale, which I won't give away here, is flashy, fleeting, sweet, and (literally) generous.

While in no way a chore, the show itself nevertheless feels a bit half-baked. Wakey, Wakey is given over almost entirely to the celebration of the millions of tiny, seemingly insignificant moments that together make up a long and full life. Certainly, all the little things--standing with dozens of others on a subway platform awaiting a train, the feeling of becoming vaguely irritated by a fire alarm's dying battery, taking pleasure in watching in a funny animal clip on YouTube--matter a great deal in a life, especially as one is so actively contemplating the utter absence of any of it. But Wakey, Wakey never manages to quite transcend such moments; as lovingly as they are described, they just don't build into a play. As a quiet reverie about the final moments in a quiet life, Wakey, Wakey gets the message across, elicits a chuckle or two, and occasionally brushes at the heartstrings. But it never quite blooms into something much bigger than the sum of its parts.

Small Mouth Sounds and Men on Boats

Small Mouth Sounds, a play by Bess Wohl currently being restaged at the Signature Theater after an initial run at Ars Nova last year, is sweet and diverting, if not as deft or probing as it seems to want to be. Still, it's fun, and very well-performed. The general thrust: six people, only two of whom know one another, attend a weeklong silent yoga retreat (a seventh cast member, not seen until the curtain call, is the group's instructor, who frequently addresses the retreaters over a particularly unyogic PA system). Despite their silence, which is only occasionally broken over the course of the week, the various participants nevertheless get to know one another (or think they do), make meaningful connections (or fail to), and do their level best to get away from what ails them.

Small Mouth Sounds has been getting raves, and I hate to poison the well, even a little--especially since the cast is so winning and the production so warm. Still, I didn't fall completely in love with the play, the overarching narrative of which sometimes felt a little too easy in some places, and a little forced in others. Don't get me wrong--this isn't a pan, it's more like a 7 out of 10. The play does fine with its depictions: humans are messy and interesting and quirky, and the characters all deliver the goods on that front. Also, one of the play's greatest strengths is how brilliantly it nails contemporary American yoga culture. As a longtime practitioner of yoga (if not of silence), I was frequently tickled by everything from the instructor's softly-intoned, inspirational fables to the outfits Rodney (Babak Tafti) wore--and by his name, even, which was surely a reference to Rodney Yee.

And yet I was a little underwhelmed by some of the play's plot points and thematic conceits. Yes, right, sometimes the most devoted and seemingly spiritually connected people end up having major flaws, and can even turn out to be less enlightened or enlightenable than those who initially seem ridiculously out of place at a spiritual retreat. Yes, sometimes, whether we talk too much or not at all, we can fail to truly hear or understand one another. And yes, conversely, sometimes connections between two people happen instantly and deeply, as if by magic, also regardless of whether words are exchanged at all. Is that all there is?

As an extended acting exercise that has been placed in the hands of a very, very good ensemble, Small Mouth Sounds is better than good. I'm just not sure that the characters' stories, whether spoken or not, fully add up to the sum of their parts.

Sara Krulwich

John

In her absorbing new play, John (directed by frequent collaborator Sam Gold), Annie Baker shows that there are many ways to be haunted and many ways to be in touch with the universe--but perhaps fewer ways to love.

Engel, Abbott, Smith
Photo: Matthew Murphy

It's the present. Jenny and Elias are staying at a bed and breakfast in Gettysburg, where Elias wants to see the historical sights and both want to work on their damaged relationship. They are haunted by one partner's past indiscretion, their childhoods, and even an American Girl doll. Mertis, known as Kitty, is the owner of the bed and breakfast. At first glance she seems to be kind of simple, even silly, but she isn't, and her relationship with the universe is unusually close. Genevieve, Kitty's blind best friend, speaks frankly of "the time I went crazy," explaining how her ex-husband took over her brain after their split, in the most intimate form of haunting. Genevieve's craziness was the literalization of heartbreak.

John

photo: Matthew Murphy

No one path leads to an indelible, unforgettable performance. Sometimes an actor takes a classic, timeless role and makes it truly their own, to the point where anyone else repeating it seems pointless. For me, Vanessa Redgrave's fearless Mary Tyrone (in 2003's Long Day's Journey Into Night) and Simon Russell Beale's intense, broken Lophakin (in Sam Mendes' underrated production of The Cherry Orchard, at BAM) fill out this category. Sometimes, an actor plays a real person more clearly than the person herself: think Christine Ebersole' Little Edie in Grey Gardens, or Audra McDonald's Billie Holliday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, both instantly legendary. Occasionally, a writer creates a role for an actor that fits them like a glove, and the synergistic effect is immediately evident inside the theater: I felt it watching Tonya Pinkins at the first performance of Caroline, or Change, and I felt it again more recently, at two performances of Annie Baker's John at Signature Center.

The actor, in this case, is Georgia Engel, probably best known as the daffy Georgette Franklin on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. That instantly-recognizable voice -- something between a squeak and a wheeze, though carrying layers of possibility underneath -- is still there, but Engel's current creation couldn't be any further from her sitcom past. She plays Mertis Katherine Garven, the amiable proprietress of a tchotchke-stuffed bed and breakfast in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where she's as likely to discuss the transmigration of birds or theories of love as she is to serve Vienna fingers and chocolate tea to the young couple (Hong Chau and Christopher Abbott) who serve as her only guests.

The Liquid Plain

Ito Aghayere, Michael Izquierdo, and Kristolyn Lloyd
Photo: Joan Marcus

As with her previous offering earlier this season, And I and Silence (which Wendy reviewed), Naomi Wallace's The Liquid Plain is daring, messy, serious-minded, and unapologetically poetic. It's also quite possibly the most interesting and invigorating play I've seen all year. Working from the true story of a smallpox-infected female slave who was thrown into the Atlantic Ocean, Wallace constructs an admirably complex narrative that encompasses the history of slavery in America, the fluidity of love and gender, and the overwhelming familial bonds that even profound indignity cannot weaken. In the first act, Adjua and Dembi (Kristolyn Lloyd and Ito Aghayere, respectively), two runaway slaves, toil on the docks of a Rhode Island port town to earn enough money for passage to Africa. They are deeply in love and long to start a family, a fact complicated by the fact that Dembi is biologically female. One day, an amnesiac sailor (Michael Izquierdo) washes onto their docks, sitting in motion a series of mystical events that threaten the two lovers best laid plans. Act Two takes place forty-six years later, when Adjua's daughter, Bristol (the extraordinary LisaGay Hamilton), a free black woman raised in England, arrives stateside to enact a long-dreamed revenge plot. However, it doesn't take her long to realize that the history she believes she's been sent to avenge is far more complicated than she could imagine.

Big Love

photo: T. Charles Erickson

"There is no such thing as an original play." Those words belong to the playwright Charles Mee, who has spent the better part of the last twenty years proving that, while plots and dialogue and situations in theatre may not be strictly original, what you can do with them certainly can be. (Just look at Shakespeare). Mee calls his effort the (re)making project, and he focuses mostly on harvesting, re-focusing, and re-telling the works of Ancient Greece. One of his earliest efforts, Big Love (2000), is just now receiving its New York premiere, in a superb production by Tina Landau for the Signature Theatre Company.

Mee's foundational text for Big Love is Aeschylus' The Danaids, in which fifty sisters abscond from their grooms (who are also their cousins) on their wedding day. In this revision, the brides sail to modern-day Italy and take up residence at a luxurious seaside villa. Only three of the fifty brides appear on stage: the gentle Lydia (Rebecca Naomi Jones), who believes in the power of love, if not the duty of forced wedlock; the fiery Thyona (Stacey Sargeant), who views the male sex as a dangerous insurgency and quotes from Valerie Solanus' SCUM Manifesto; and the bewildered Olympia (Libby Winters), whose evident inexperience marks her as a target for the agendas of others. In short succession, their three grooms (played by Bobby Steggert, Ryan-James Hatanaka, and Emmanuel Brown) decamp, and the ensuing hundred minutes is a fantasia on the roles marriage, gender, culture, expectation, and, of course, love play in the formation of society.

A Particle of Dread (Oedipus Variations)

Photo: Matthew Murphy

Sam Shepard came to prominence chronicling the battered and bruised families of the American West, so it should come as no surprise that he would set his sights on the most dysfunctional family in the history of theatre. His latest play, A Particle of Dread, is, as its subtitle suggests, a duel reimaging of Sophocles' trilogy, transported to two of Shepard's favorite locales: Ireland (by way of Thebes) and the contemporary Southwest. The former is a fairly straightforward retelling of Oedipus the King, albeit with strong brogues; the latter, a bloody true crime mini-epic that could be the love child of Breaking Bad and True Detective. The two narrative strands unspool through interlocking scenes, sometimes with accentual erasure, in order to keep the audience sharp to the dramatic parallels. And while the elements don't always come together harmoniously, the high-octane proceedings are never boring. Shepard's gift for tight, menacing language is sharp as ever, and the crack cast (which includes Tony winner Brid Brennan and, as the Oedipus figure, the great Stephen Rea) is, to a person, superb. A Particle of Dread concludes its run at the Pershing Square Signature Center on West 42nd Street this Sunday; it is brief, engrossing, and well-worth the effort.

[Sixth row center, TDF]