Standing Ovations and Oh, No’s! The Best and Worst of 2018

Denise Gough and Andrew Garfield in ‘Angels in America.’ (Photo: Helen Maybanks)

The curtain lowers on another year of theatrical endeavors. Some filled us with awe, others with dread. Here’s a look back at the best, the worst, and some of our favorite interviews with the artists that continue to inspire us to attend the theater.

STANDING OVATIONS

Angels in America
Returning to Broadway for the first time in 25 years, the plays were as bristling, dynamic and relevant as when they first appeared. If they were willing to give themselves over to its characters’ desperate search for inner truth, audiences were rewarded with a theatrical experience that was both devastating and exhilarating. Angels in America was a testament to where we stand today: at the precipice of self-destruction and a soaring re-invention of one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

The Ferryman
The Ferryman, directed by Sam Mendes, is essential theater-going. Playwright Jez Butterworth makes the play’s three hours and 15 minutes fly as black comedy mixes with darker tragedy and familial bonds. The clash of unrequited desires, music, dance, confessional sanctity, and brutality intrude into a mashup of politics, poetry, profanity, and prophecy. Even people with colds hold back their coughs. The Ferryman is theater at its best.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is an all-encompassing experience and an unforgettable theatrical journey thanks to director John Tiffany’s keen eye and a stellar creative team. The two-part play is able to maintain focus as well as a captivating emotional integrity throughout as audiences gasp at theatrical magic and performances conclude with a roaring sound of applause at evening’s end. The triple-threat integration of stagecraft, technology, and good ole’ acting chops legitimize Harry Potter’s Broadway arrival.

Dance Nation
Playwrights Horizons presented Clare Barron’s non-apologetic, visceral play about girls growing into women — a 105-minute explosion of theatricality that drew inspiration from a multitude of performing styles with a primal underbelly thanks to director/choreographer Lee Sunday Evans. But it was Barron’s supercharged script, wildly veering on adolescent emotional tangents, that catapulted the play into a realm of exceptional theatricality.

Hangmen
Playwright Martin McDonagh proved again that, when it comes to sucking you into the vortex of a darkly funny, violence-tinted, dramatic world, nobody does it with quite the same reliably mesmerizing results. These things coalesced in a gruesome, wickedly funny, technically clever denouement highlighting McDonagh’s themes of crime, revenge, and punishment in Atlantic Theater Company’s production. Hangmen had its feet in surface realism but, as devilishly well directed by Matthew Dunster, it was up to its neck in theatricality.

OH NO, THEY DIDN’T!

Escape to Margaritaville
Director Christopher Ashley and the creative team tried their mightiest to make diamonds out of sand with this Jimmy Buffet jukebox musical. The pay-no-attention plot and Kelly Devine’s lacking choreography missed the high-energy kitsch factor needed to shake up island time. In spite of its shortcomings, Escape to Margaritaville had its frothy and fun moments, but not enough of the top shelf trappings to keep the theatrical hangover at bay.

King Kong
Build it and they will come… then wonder why. The $35 million puppet extravaganza features a 20-foot wonder at its centerpiece, but it’s not enough to save this epic fail.

But when Kong has to run, no amount of technology or actors can make it believable. Instead, he lumbers along, as if he’s stumbled out of Rudy’s dive bar after one too many — wishing, like us, that this was all a dream.

Cardinal
Greg Pierce’s script struggled to find its voice in spite of its resonating themes related to industrialization, gentrification and racial prejudice. But the jarring tone leaned heavily on one-liners. Star Anna Chlumsky (HBO’s VEEP) was literally at sea, with her two leading men delivering less-than-buoyant performances in this fictional waterside town.

Days to Come
Mint Theater Company’s revival couldn’t make sense of Lillian Hellman’s 1936 play, which mingled multiple subjects in a somber and garrulous plot that, because of a lack of compression and synthesis, had more themes that it could comfortably contain. For all its Depression-era relevance, it became mired in a melodramatic mélange of adultery, family strife, labor problems, murder, hoodlum rivalry, and legal chicanery. Splattered with awkward blocking and dull, conventional acting, not a single performance dug deeply enough to strike more than a one-dimensional note.

Who We Loved Talking To…

Eva Noblezada
The star of the hit revival of Miss Saigon brought her solo show to The Green Room 42 and is currently appearing in Hadestown at London’s National Theatre. (Broadway-bound this spring!)

Favorite interview quote:

“Love is a necessity that the world is lacking right now and we’re trying to bring that to the surface. Yes, Miss Saigon has amazing vocals and all of the features of a Broadway show, but it’s not just about that. You can’t experience the fall of Saigon and not be emotionally connected, and this is what I love about the show – that we’re able to keep an open dialogue about how Miss Saigon is still so relevant.”

Jason Tam
Jason Tam returns to Broadway this spring in Be More Chill. We chatted with the actor right before the Off-Broadway production opened and right after he appeared in NBC’s Jesus Christ Superstar Live.

Favorite interview quote:

“I’ve had wildly mediocre results during my time in LA. New York City and the people here are my home — this is the place for me.”

Jennifer Simard
Ms. Simard had quite the year, wrapping up her role in Hello, Dolly!, premiering her solo show Stigma at The Green Room 42, and joining the cast of Mean Girls.

Favorite interview quote:

“I’m not a brand. I’m a person. I’ve gotten this message that comedy is my brand, but I’ve had training in Shakespeare and all kinds of things. But if I were a brand, it’d be that Walt Whitman quote: ‘Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.’”

Michael Urie
Mr. Urie reprised his role in the revival Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song when it transferred from Second Stage to Broadway. He’ll be heading out on a national tour starting in Los Angeles in Fall 2019.

Favorite interview quote:

“Minorities are at risk… and these plays speak to the way in which we must stand and be counted. Torch Song is about equality as much as it’s about homosexuality, and all three plays are about family. Families are being torn apart and rights are being stripped away – these plays speak to that and inspire us to hold one another tight and fight.”

Justin Keyes
The Broadway Blog’s longstanding Theater Buff column continued in 2018 with some of the industries sexiest gentlemen baring their souls for our readers! Justin Keyes appeared in The New Group’s hit production of Jerry Springer – The Opera… in a diaper, among other things.

Favorite interview quote:

“As far as the diaper goes, it just seemed like a really good time and I knew it would be funny. Now when I actually put it on… that took a second to get used to. Being butt naked on a thrust stage with the audience on all sides is a wild experience.”