Theater in 2023 was barely surviving but also thriving, depending on which end-of-year assessment you read (see below), but everybody agrees on Stephen Sondheim as the bright spot of the year – including the theatergoers who so far have taken my two most recent polls: In Best and Worst Broadway Show of 2023? , “Merrily We Roll Along” tops the best list followed by “Parade” and then “Sweeney Todd,” and that’s the exact same three atop the Best Broadway Cast Recording of 2023 poll.
“The genius of Stephen Sondheim practically served as a rescue squad,” writes Charles McNulty in the L.A. Times, citing a six-month Sondheim festival at Pasadena Playhouse, “Into the Woods” at the Ahmanson Theatre and a Sondheim celebration at the Hollywood Ball, as well as the Broadway revivals of Merrily and Sweeney, all of which have been “helping us better appreciate the riches the maestro left us since his death in 2021.”
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
How To Dance in Ohio
“How To Dance in Ohio” is a musical adaptation of a 2015 documentary film of the same name about a group of autistic young adults at a counseling center in Columbus, Ohio, who, as part of their social skills therapy group, spend months preparing for a formal prom-like dance. The production…has some tuneful melodies, some touching moments and, above all, an exhilarated and exhilarating cast, featuring seven performers who are themselves autistic young adults making their Broadway debuts portraying the autistic characters. But the musical falls short of the documentary it has adapted in ways that make the translation to the stage feel like less than an ideal fit for Broadway. Full Review
Manahatta
Manahatta” dramatizes two pivotal, and shameful, moments in New York City history, occurring four centuries apart — the Dutch West India Company’s “purchase” of the island of Manhattan from the Lenape Indians (who had no concept of land ownership), and the world-wide financial crisis of 2008, In Mary Kathryn Nagle’s sharply written play, which is wonderfully acted under Laurie Woolery’s seamless direction, the two events tell much the same story. Full Review
Life & Times of Michael K
There is a stunning kind of poetry in the puppetry employed to dramatize Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee’s forty-year-old novel about a simple man who makes an epic journey through the physically and morally depleted landscape of South Africa. Like some of the most evocative poetry, the effect of “Life & Times of Michael K” at St. Ann’s Warehouse is often wondrous even when its exact meaning is not always clear. Full Review
The Week in New York Theater News
“Hell’s Kitchen,” the Alicia Keys musical, is transferring to Broadway’s Shubert Theatre, officially opening April 20, 2024. My review of the show at the Public Theater.
Sleep No More extends its run by four week, to February 25
NYC Indie Theatre Film Festival (NYCITFF), formerly a program of the New Ohio Theatre, which returns in 2024, from February 15 – 18, at the Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre at the A.R.T./New York Theatres (502 West 53 St.). The festival, led by Executive Director and Programmer Marc Weitz, and Producer and Programmer Allyson Morgan, is now in its 8th year.
Jennifer Lopez is set to star in her first movie musical, a film adaptation of the 1993 Kander/Ebb/Terrence McNally Broadway musical “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” to be written and directed by “Dreamgirls” filmmaker Bill Condon. Lopez will portray Aurora, a fantasy woman conjured up by Luis Molina, a gay hairdresser imprisoned in Argentina circa 1981 along with Valentin Arregui Paz, a Marxist. As a form of escapism during his sentence, Molina dreams of Aurora in classic movies, including her role as a spider woman.(Variety)
Lopez is the third Molina – William Hurt won an Oscar in the role in 1985 feature film adaptation of Manuel Puig’s original novel, and Chita Rivera won a Tony for the role on Broadway in the musical adaptation.
Theater in 2023: Three views
“This is the hardest season yet,” said Casey York, the president of the Off-Broadway League, citing the combined effects of smaller audiences, shifting philanthropic patterns, rising wages and costs, and labor shortages at a time when the emergency government assistance that helped many theaters stay afloat through the lengthy pandemic shutdown has largely run out. “There is an incredible squeeze.”
The biggest sign of trouble in the nation’s theater capital: fewer productions. During the last week of October, 31 shows were running Off Broadway, down from 51 during the same week in 2019, according to figures compiled by the Off-Broadway League. (NY Times)
The reasons for the crisis are numerous: competition for audiences from streaming and phones; corporate philanthropy’s pivot away from the arts; crime driving audiences away from downtown districts; didactic plays that alienate audiences. .. But a closer look at not-for-profit theaters across the country shows that many are finding ways to thrive. The leaders of these theaters define success differently than they did before the pandemic, but they are optimistic about the future and intent on connecting with new and younger audiences. (Wall Street Journal)
A Harlem Renaissance: How theatres in the historic NYC neighborhood are stepping up their game with artists and audiences. (American Theatre Magazine)
In Memoriam
Norman Lear, 101, creator of such groundbreaking TV series as “All in the Family.” Few might know he was also 1. a theater publicist (briefly) 2. a Broadway producer, in 1986, or “Arsenic and Old Lace”…starring Jean Stapleton (who was Edith Bunker in Lear’s All in the Family)
Edwin Wilson, 96, theater critic at the Wall Street Journal from 1972-1994. He taught at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center for thirty years, served as the Director of the Center for Advanced Study of the Theatre Arts at CUNY Graduate Center, and co-authored several college theater textbooks with Alan Goldfarb.
Ellen Holly, 92, first Black soap opera star, began her acting career on New York City and Boston stages, earning instant critical acclaim. She made her Broadway debut in Too Late the Phalarope in 1956 and she went on to star in the Broadway productions Face of a Hero, Tiger Tiger Burning Bright and A Hand is on the Gate. From 1958 to 1973, she led productions of numerous Joseph Papp New York Shakespeare Festival productions.
Sheila Smith, 90, actress who made her Broadway debut in “Hot Spot” opposite Judy Holliday in 1963, and was one of the few performers left from the original Broadway production of Mame, where she served as the standby for both Angela Lansbury and Bea Arthur as Mame.
This Week’s Theater Video
