Fifteen for '15

It's humbling, really, just how much theater happens in this town--and just how much talent there is making it. Because I've been on sabbatical this year, I've seen many, many more shows than I typically do over the course of a year. Even so, it's a little overwhelming to think of the fact that I haven't even scratched the surface of what's out there--and that for all I've seen, I've still missed plenty of must-see shows that were gone before I could find time to get to them. How do the critics do it?

Even though I'm not a critic, it's fun to play one at this time of year. So here's my top 15 list for 2015. The shows are in rough chronological order. Links to the original posts I wrote about them, if I wrote about them, are embedded in the titles. I've embedded links to preview clips, interviews and the odd critics' review in the body of the text in case you prefer to skip my yammering and go right to the visuals. 

Happy new year, all. Here's to the theater--and to a happy, peaceful 2016!

2014: A Year in Review

Rebecca Hall and Morgan Spector in Machinal.
Photo: Joan Marcus

2014 was, like most theatre-going years, a grab bag of exquisite highs, painful lows, and a wide, bland middle. But as Wendy and Liz have both so rightly noted in their end-of-year essays, one of the beauties of being an unpaid blogger is that we have the luxury to focus on that which we enjoyed the most. Those who read my reviews regularly probably wish I would heed that advice more often--since rejoining this site over the summer, I've noticed that my negative columns seem to outweigh the positive--but I believe that one of the functions of this site, other than highlights and promoting the productions I absolutely love, is to advise readers to steer away from (or, at least, proceed with caution towards) that which I feel isn't worth the time and expense. Before I shower with praise the productions that lifted my spirits and transported me in the way that only good theatre can, I'll briefly highlight the hours of 2014 I spent in theatres, wishing I was somewhere else.

The Year-End Roundup

Every year, I rack up regrets over shows I never got the chance to see. I missed Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 &3) this year, for example, and also Sticks and Bones and Bootycandy. That being said, I got to see some great productions, among them 18 I blogged about for Showdown. While a few of them--Bread and Puppet Theater's summer circus and New Hazlett Theater's production of Parade--were so far off Broadway as to be in different states entirely, most of them were right here in New York, a city that I love mightily and want the very best for.

Sure, this year, I experienced some theatrical lows. I made no secret of really, really disliking If/Then. And I really have no idea what the fuck was going on with Outside Mullingar, despite some good performances and a nice set. There were a few shows I chose not to blog about at all because I had nothing terribly insightful to say about them (and, in the case of The Death of Klinghoffer, because I just didn't want to wade into the controversies that drew away from what was, in the end, a beautiful if flawed opera in a beautiful if flawed production).

But as Wendy notes in her end-of-year post, one of the joys of being a theater blogger is that we don't have to see stuff that we know will suck. We might pay for all our tickets, sit in crappy seats, and waste far more time on this blog than we should, especially when we have books to work on and classes to prepare for. But on the other hand, we are predisposed to like the things we choose to see, and we get to share our impressions with people who read our blog posts and almost never feel compelled to leave abusive comments or spam us with porn. Really, as I see it, it's a win-win situation.