From the Ukrainian infant-actress breastfed on stage at the beginning of the year, to the four old bums who collapse on top of one another at the end, 2023 has been full of memorable moments on stage.
There are memorable moments every year, of course, which is why I have been putting together an annual post of memorable moments for a decade, although I initially referred to them as magical. A memorable moment can offer a visual spectacle or a verbal tickle or an emotional punch. It can be achieved through state-of-the-art stagecraft wizardry or be as visceral as a scream. It can last a split second or for much longer; your memory of it might last forever. The moments I find memorable are often in shows that I otherwise didn’t care much for.
The gallery below presents just a sample of the many moments I found memorable in 2023.
Click on any of the 14 photographs to see it enlarged and to read the extensive caption that explains each moment. In at least half the cases, the precise moment is not represented in the photograph (often because the production wants to spring them on us as a surprise.) I tried to choose a photograph that was close. (For those who are reading this on a device that doesn’t allow you to click on the photographs to get the captions, I reprint them below, roughly in the chronological order in which the show was mounted on stage.)
The Ukrainian baby
Yes, it was a surprise when in “Mothermotherland,” Audrey Rose Dégez breastfed her baby on stage, but far more jaw-dropping was how the baby in question, 11-month-old Lili Maritchka Dégez, performed on stage like a pro, engaging actively with her mother and the four other actresses in this theater piece in January inspired by a brutal moment in the history of Ukraine.
“Lili was always going to be a part of the project,” her mother told me, “but actually it was in our early improvisation exercises that we realized that she really loved performing and she really loved when the audience was looking at her. And so from very early on, we made the decision she would be an actress inthe show.”
A Doll’s House, Out standing
In Jamie Lloyd’s mannered reimagining of Ibsen’s play “A Doll’s House,” most of the cast spent most of their time sitting in chairs. It was thrilling when Jessica Chastain as Nora left her husband, but not just because she finally got up from her chair. There was also a coup de théâtre: The backdrop lifted to reveal 45th Street, and Nora went out into the New York of 2023.
Life of Pi, Underwater
There were many impressive moments of magical stagecraft and puppetry. To pick just one: At one point, the stage became a roiling ocean, but not with water, with what looked like wooden slats. Still, Pi convincingly dives into one end, and emerged yards away, as if having swum underwater.
New York, New York: The bridge
Beowulf Boritt’s spectacular sets in the Kander musical “New York, New York,” enhanced by a first-rate design team, added up to a three-dimensional travelogue of New York City, from Times Square, Central Park and Grand Central Terminal to the neighborhood stoop and fire escapes full of kibitzers. In the scene in Central Park, doormen who had just been clearing the snow from their walkways, lifted their shovels together to form the railing along the park’s Bow Bridge, upon which a couple smooched.
Fat Ham, Gingerbread Man
In “Fat Ham,” a queer modern update on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Chris Herbie Holland’s character Tio offers a vivid lesson of turning trauma to joy. A weed-smoking, porno-watching, street philosopher, Tio delivers what is perhaps the single most memorable moment in “Fat Ham,” a long soliloquy (very much not Shakespearean) about a dream encounter that climaxes in, um, sexual congress with a gingerbread man cookie. The dream taught him about life; “You begin to consider what your life would be like if you chose pleasure over harm.”
The Tempest costume
Sometimes a memorable moment is simply the first time you see a spectacular costume — this one worn by Jo Lamport as Ariel in the Public Works’ production of “The Tempest” in Central Park
Back to the Future
The fiery, flying, booming, suddenly disappearing DeLorean car in “Back to the Future” feels like something of a theme park ride – the production even makes your seat rumble.
Dimanche The Wind of Change
In “Dimanche,” a cautionary tale about climate change, we are taken around the world, including to a family’s to a family home, with a middle aged couple and a (puppet) elderly mother beset by calamities but trying to make the most of it. The wind sweeps them away – a moment of clowning that’s both impressive for its acrobatics and alarming in its implications. The wind howls louder and louder – an assault on our senses, and an appeal to come to our senses about what’s happening in the world.
Life & Times of Michael K
A kindly stranger gives a sandwich to the hungry Michael K to eat. He takes a look at it, and pauses – perhaps thinking “But I’m a puppet without a mouth that opens; how can I eat this.” Then he comes up with the solution; he gives it one by one to the three puppeteers who operate him; each take a bite out of it.
Dmitry Krymov Big Trip Canary
In its dramatization of the Hemingway story “A Canary for One,” Dmitry Krymov’s Big Trip went to town with that canary, especially its feathers.
Food – a dining table transformed
In Food, we’ve been sitting around a table as big as a pickleball court while Geoff Sobelle pretends to be a waiter at a fancy restaurant. In response to an order of Arctic char, he puts on a snowsuit climbson top of the tablecloth and digs a hole in it, as if it’s suddenly an ice-covered lake – and extracts a slithering fish that he puts on a plate and handed to one of the diners (which happened to be me.)
Laurie Anderson screaming
At her show at BAM’s Next Wave Festival, Laurie Anderson asked her audience to scream in honor of Yoko Ono, who screamed for three minutes in 2016 when asked for her reaction to the winner of the U.S. election. Anderson asked us to scream for only ten seconds, in reaction perhaps to “the war in Ukraine, the genocides around the globe, the hostages in Gaza, the melting of the Arctic, the burning of the Amazon – or, you know just how messed up your own life is.” And so we did.
Waiting for Godot, collapsing
In a welcome moment of slapstick in the latest stark production of Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” at Theater for a New Audience, four of the characters all collapse on one another.
