“A Strange Loop,’ is the most acclaimed show among theater critics whose lists of top 10 New York theater for 2022 are featured below. Following close behind is “Oratorio for Living Things” and then three shows that were each selected in half of the ten lists: “A Case for the Existence of God,” ‘Kimberly Akimbo,” and “Into The Woods.”
Seven of the ten lists include Michael R. Jackson’s musical “A Strange Loop,” about a big Black queer man trying to write a musical, which originated Off-Broadway in 2019, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2020, and then transferred to Broadway this year, winning the Tony Award for best musical. (At least one of the three critics that omitted the show from this year’s list, Adam Feldman of Time Out New York, had put it first on his top 10 list in 2019.) In his list, Jesse Green of the New York Times writes of “A Strange Loop” that it “rightly has been called radical in both form and content. But what will most likely make it last, as its excellent Broadway transfer suggested, are its stagecraft (Stephen Brackett directed) and its songcraft.”
Except it isn’t lasting, not on Broadway. “A Strange Loop” is closing after only nine months, an unusually brief run for a Tony winning musical. I’m not sure what to conclude from this: Is this a sign of a difference in taste or perspective between professional theatergoers and the ticket-buying public; a straightforward matter of economics; a lingering reluctance to risk one’s health to return in person unless it’s to something already familiar?
It’s been a strange year — post lockdown but not post pandemic. As New York Magazine’s Jackson McHenry observes in the introduction to his list: “The theater feels as if it has been perpetually in the state of coming back over the past year, an ecosystem shifting after a wildfire but never quite looking as it did before.” This condition is arguably reflected in these end-of-year lists. A hidden example: The erratic schedule caused by incessant Covid cases among theater companies (and critics too) meant that many critics didn’t get to see any number of shows they might have liked.
A more direct example: In praising Heather Christian’s “Oratorio for Living Things,” (which was included in six of the ten lists), Helen Shaw of the New Yorker comments:”‘ Oratorio’ is my winner for most appropriate covid piece that was written pre-covid. You had to be in the room with it. The singers were in one another’s faces; they were at your shoulder. It was so audacious to do when covid was still such a ferocious problem, but it was also so incredibly apt—it was all about telling time. “
Charles Isherwood of the Wall Street Journal praised “Kimberly Akimbo” for its book and songs being “perfectly attuned to the show’s admixture of the sorrowful and the celebratory.”
Isn’t that the admixture for the year as a whole?
It probably shouldn’t be surprising that there is not a true consensus this year in the way there has been in the past. None of the critics who listed “A Strange Loop” ranked it first, the way almost all critics did for (an obvious example) “Hamilton” when that musical debuted. That’s in part because many critics no longer rank their choices, instead ordering them alphabetically or chronologically by opening date — another possible outgrowth of the challenging times: Critics understand how difficult it has been just to get anything staged these days, and may want to avoid coloring their appreciation as if it’s a competition. Indeed even the practice of creating top 10 lists (or even lists of “best” or “favorite” or “memorable” theater of the year) seems to be going out of favor. Much has changed since I began aggreggating these top 10 lists a decade ago. Fewer critics are putting together an end-of-year assessment at all, and even some who do so are swerving radically from the traditional format. (See the three critics from the New Yorker Magazine as prime example.) Even those major out-of-town critics who more or less have kept to a top 10 list chose more shows from their local region this year than usual.
Each of the lists below is linked to its full article, which provides descriptions and explanations for the choices, and usually links to the original reviews.
Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater
Leopoldstadt
A Strange Loop
Suffs
A Case for the Existence of God
Oratorio for Living Things
The Suppliants Project Ukraine
Out of Time
The Hang
Intimate Apparel
Into The Woods
Jesse Green, New York Times (organized chronologically)
Intimate Apparel
Oratorio for Living Things
Cyrano de Bergerac at BAM
A Strange Loop
A Case for the Existence of God
Wedding Band
Into the Woods
The Piano Lesson
Topdog/Underdog
Kimberly Akimbo
Charles Isherwood, Wall Street Journal
Funny Girl with Lea Michele
Leopoldstadt
Downstate
The Minutes
Cost of Living
A Case for the Existence of God
Chester Bailey
Kimberly Akimbo
Ohio State Murders
Adam Feldman, Time Out New York
Downstate
Oratorio for Living Things
Topdog/Underdog
English
A Christmas Carol
Into the Woods
Merrily We Roll Along
A Case for the Existence of God
Ain’t No Mo’
The Hang
Jackson McHenry, New York Magazine/Vulture
Into the Woods
The Nosebleed
Oratorio for Living Things
Kimberly Akimbo
A Strange Loop
Hamlet at BAM
Wedding Band
The Skin of Our Teeth
A Case for the Existence of God
Funny Girl with Lea Michele
Maya Phillips, New York Times
“Here are the plays, musicals, shows and films that stuck with me this year.”
Cost of Living
300 el x 50 el x 30 el
Fat Ham
A Strange Loop
Oratorio for Living Things
English
The Sandman
Severance
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Oresteia
Candice Frederick, Huff Post
MJ: The Musical
A Strange Loop
for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf
Death of a Salesman
Topdog/Underdog
The Kite Runner
How I Learned to Drive
Take Me Out
Skeleton Crew
Vinson Cunningham, Alexandra Schwartz, and Helen Shaw, The New Yorker Magazine
Not a top 10 list at all, hardly a list, really just a chat, some of it about shows they didn’t like, and they sometimes focus on performances rather than the show as a whole, and it’s not always clear that one or the other finds the particular show they’re all discussing a favorite. As they admit themselves: “We tried to organize our talk around the idea of ‘three remarkable productions’ from the year, but we kept getting off topic.” They mean three from each of the three of them. So, despite all these challenges, I attempt to extrapolate a list of ten shows, with the critics in parentheses who are indisputably the show’s champions.
(It may be worth mentioning that in their conversation at the link all three seem to be admitting that they have never seen “The Phantom of the Opera,” the imminent closing of which is causing Schwartz “intense distress” and making all three vow to see it together before it does.)
Cyrano de Bergerac at BAM (Schwartz, Shaw)
The Hang (Shaw, Cunningham)
Oratorio for Living Things (Shaw, Schwartz)
Topdog/Underdog (Shaw, Cunningham)
English (Schwartz)
The Skin of Our Teeth (Cunningham)
Intimate Apparel (Cunningham)
Kimberly Akimbo (Shaw)
A Strange Loop (Shaw)
The Piano Lesson (Shaw)
Peter Marks, The Washington Post
Guys and Dolls (DC)
Kimberly Akimbo
Downstate
A.D. 16 (DC)
Into The Woods
Fat Ham
Just for Us
Prima Facie (London)
John Proctor is the Villain (DC)
American Prophet (DC)
His list is entirely of productions in Los Angeles, but in the introduction to the list he writes: “There were too many exceptional local productions for me to make room for Broadway highlights. But let me just say that
Michael R. Jackson’s groundbreaking “A Strange Loop,”
Lea Michele’s tour de force in “Funny Girl”
and, what is for me the best play of the year, Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,”
would be at the top of my list.”
