I Just Didn't Get It

God of Carnage
Photo: Joan Marcus

My last entry of the year (Happy New Year, everyone!) lists shows that received raves and/or were big hits, and I don't understand why.

Streetcar Named Desire: Full of itself, hammy, overblown, dumb. Cate Blanchett chewed the ugly scenery.

Our Town: While I didn't find it bad enough to make my "worst shows" list, it was, uh, boring.

God of Carnage: Not one of the four characters was remotely believable, and the show's reach for significance fell far short. (And if she was that nauseated, she would have gone into the bathroom, you know?)

Orphan's Home Cycle: I made it through 5/9ths of this before giving up. I found it wordy, slow, and (with a few exceptions) unexcitingly acted.

The Norman Conquests: Who cares? I sure didn't.

Five Worst Shows of 2009

Desire Under the Elms
Photo: Liz Lauren

This list is easy--these five shows were squirmingly wretched:

(In reverse alphabetical order.)

• West Side Story: A breath-taking example of how to direct the life out of a show.
• Loaded: Completely lacking wit, drama, believability, or a reason to exist.
• Impressionism: Bafflingly bad on every level. Confusing plot, bad acting by good actors, dumb premise.
• Hedda Gabler (with Mary Louise Parker): What were they thinking?
• Desire Under the Elms: Not only the worst show I saw this year, but one of the very worst I've seen in 40 years of play-going. Stultifying, pompous, and excruciating.

2009's 5 Worst

I wasn't planning on publishing my worst list, but since Wendy posted hers, I see no harm in following suit. Again, a lot of easy decisions here.

1. Our Town
This year, the emperor's new clothes were an ill-fitting flannel, beat-up jeans and a cell phone. And while bacon was frying mere feet away from me, all I could smell was corn.

2. The Starry Messenger
Star Matthew Broderick didn't know his lines, first-time director Kenneth Lonergan had no idea how to present his own text, and the result was a three-plus hour trainwreck with no plot and no guidance.

3. Desire Under the Elms
What happens when you combine a Tony Award winning director (Robert Falls), arguably the best Eugene O'Neill interpreter alive (Brian Dennehy) and one of the strongest actresses of her generation (Carla Gugino)? Not much, as evidenced by this streamlined, anachronistic production that opened and closed quickly in May.

4. West Side Story
How do you say "misfire" in Spanish?

5. The Bacchae
Jonathan Groff is usually wonderful, but as the vicious and sexually voracious demi-god Dionysus? I think not.

photo: The cast of Our Town at The Barrow Street Theatre. Credit: Joan Marcus.

Hansel and Gretel

Once the Witch has been roasted, the family reunited, and the Witch's gingerbread victims restored to humanity, the opera concludes with a lovely chorale proclaiming "When in need or dark despair, God will surely hear our prayer." But the religious patina is purely a matter of faith; the children have survived their ordeal solely because of their own quick thinking, Gretel's in particular. It's a fairy story, after all, a crusty old folk tale gathered by the Grimms from ancient sources, and the Christian God is a latecomer to this musical feast; perhaps he'll be seated during intermission, but only at the discretion of the management. A joy for all ages, this production would make a fine introduction for any opera neophyte, child or adult. Hansel and Gretel runs in repertory through Jan. 2 at the Met. Read the full review.

The Marvelous Wonderettes

When a friend had an extra ticket I realized that somehow I had never gotten to this revue show, roughly described as a female Forever Plaid. I'm not too fond of the genre - revues typically sit in some awkward space between concert and authentic musical theatre - but I did enjoy the first act of this one, set at a high school prom in 1958, for the enormously likable performers and for the string of hit parade gems such as "Lollipop" and "All I Have To Do Is Dream". But after the intermission the ole Revue Show Impatience set in when the action jumped to the gals' tenth year high school reunion performance - instead of deepening the characters or giving us the chance to enjoy seeing how the ladies have survived most of the socially turbulent 60's, the script is more of the same with diminishing results: thin, transparent set-ups for songs for each of the written-in-stone "types" in the quartet. It's a long way sociologically from "Mr. Sandman" in the first act to "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" ten years later in the second, but save for a pregnant belly here and a cursory mention of a divorce there, the gals are written to be inhumanly unchanged. Even given the feel-good, nostalgia-stirring limits of the genre, couldn't the second act have tried for some feeling of the late '60's the way the first tried for the '50's?

The Emperor Jones

photo: Carol Rosegg

I finally caught up with Irish Rep's celebrated production of O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, one of only two shows to be featured on both Brantley and Isherwood's year-end best lists at the Times. It's easy to see why the production, now enjoying a commercial run at SoHo Playhouse, has been almost universally praised - Ciaran O'Reilly's directorial vision and John Douglas Thompson's raw-nerve performance fully meet the challenge of the "problematic in this day and age" dialect (be prepared to hear the "N" word regularly amid a lot of "sho' nuff"-style speeches.) Most compellingly, the production mixes puppets with actors to create a theatrical landscape that brings fresh vitality to O'Neill's depiction of the dictator's decline into powerlessness and mental deterioration.