The surreal and shocking election year is arguably responsible for much of my favorite theater in 2024, for which I give thanks, as I’ve done every Thanksgiving for more than a decade. There were many overtly political plays, both domestic and international, that I’m grateful for having seen this year — so many that they could take up the entire list. But I’ll just group most of them as one entry, because I want to make room for more of my favorites, including those that explicitly or implicitly reflected another trend — theater that aimed to heal. The shows, listed more or less alphabetically below, wouldn’t all necessarily rank highest on aesthetic grounds. I’m thanking them for having given me fond, pointed or sustaining memories.
The Ally, and other plays about politics
Playwright Itamar Moses clarifies with laser precision the dilemma facing liberal American Jews largely because of Israel. But the play takes wider aim as well, exploring some of the most charged issues that have been roiling college campuses . If the play started off feeling like a comedy about a well-meaning if uninvolved character who gets roped into allyship, Moses was unafraid to turn his entertainment into an intellectual debate, each of the seven characters articulating (and embodying) a different point of view.
Full review
Other plays that dealt with (domestic or international) politics in inventive and thought-provoking ways:The Ask, Between Two Knees, Counting and Cracking, Fatherland, How To Eat An Orange, N/A , KS6: Small Forward, Suffs, We Live in Cairo,
Bark of Millions
This concert of fifty-five original songs, each inspired by a queer figure in history, was put together by the same team that produced the once-in-a-generation “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music”: The extraordinary theater artist Taylor Mac directed, performed and supplied the lyrics; Matt Ray composed the music; the “maximalist” costume designer Machine Dazzle decked. out the 22 performers and musicians in dazzling drag. Something extraordinary happened with each passing hour of this 260-minute extravaganza. My resistance broke down and I started to feel a part of it;
Full review
Other queer/camp/avant-garde theater I enjoyed: Cats The Jellicle Ball, Give Me Carmelita Tropicana
Encores!
Three of the concerts presented by New York City Center this year felt restorative. (A fourth, Once Upon A Mattress, made it to Broadway.)
“Jelly’s Last Jam” offered a starry showcase of exquisite blues singing, lively jazz playing and energetic tap dancing to tell the fascinating story of an important figure in the history of American music — although not as important as he himself claimed. In the show, his friend-turned-valet introduces him as “the Jelly Roll Morton: Lover of women, inventor of jazz, and owner of twenty- seven suits.”
I saw “Ragtime” after Election Day, which gave deeper resonance to the themes in this superb production of this musical set in New York at the turn of the 20th century, when the “new music” of Ragtime serves as metaphor for dislocation and disorientation — “an era exploding.”
Titanic was the ideal musical for an Encores! concert, focused on the music. Director Anne Kauffman dispensed with all expectations of impressive stagecraft. The story of a ship that flooded after hitting an iceberg, drowning more than 1,500 passengers, featured an abstract, minimal set with no discernible ship..What was most visible is the thirty-piece orchestra, elevated on a platform some ten feet above the stage, above the starry thirty-two member cast. The visual set-up was a preview to the overall message: Pay attention to the music.
Illinoise
“llinoise” was extraordinary, queer, often thrilling. But it could probably have used a warning label. This stage interpretation of Sufjan Stevens’ album “Illinois” could be mistakenly assumed to be a Broadway jukebox musical, given Stevens’ already popular score and the marquee names involved in adapting it for the stage…But “Illinoise” was a dance theater piece, and unconventional even as that. Full review
Maybe Happy Ending
“Maybe Happy Ending,” about two robots who fall in love, starts out cute, combining the conventions of several familiar genres — science fiction, romantic comedy, road trip, chamber musical — but it somehow turns into an original show, charmingly acted and cleverly staged, with a touching take on love and mortality. Full Review
Mary Jane and other plays about healing
I group together these three pieces that have nothing obviously to do with one another — one was on Broadway, the second Off Broadway for a very brief run, the third was not even really a play — because they were all explicitly about healing, albeit in very different ways.
“Mary Jane,” about the mother of a severely disabled son, took us on a well-crafted journey from the practical to the spiritual – from the lady who tries to unclog the drain in Mary Jane’s apartment to the lady who tries to help Mary Jane unclog spiritually — ever so subtly suggesting the connection between the two.
Emotions are raw among the characters mourning in “Someone Spectacular,” a play about a grief support group written by Doménica Feraud while she herself was mourning the unexpected death of her own mother at 51. But the bickering, resentful, guilt-ridden — grieving — characters also offer each other support – which some audience members might find as well from this low-key play as it unfolds as if in real time.
“The Story of Lot’s Wife” is, primarily, an art installation. Or maybe primarily a poem. Or maybe ultimately a radical act of queerness. There are no actors. But maybe each audience member becomes one. We are a pilgrim on a journey to turn a story from Scripture that’s ugly in a number of ways into something secular and sublime.
True Love Forever
Through interactions with the audience interspersed with interpretive dances to the music by the Heartbreak Band, this latest, literally lovely piece from Third Rail Rail Projects invites audience members to explore our personal experiences with love – inventively, memorably, sometimes uncomfortably. Full review
I’m especially grateful that immersive theater companies live on, despite all the talk about the end of an era. Another one created “Life and Trust”
Water for Elephants
The puppetry, the choreography and especially the circus artistry are extraordinary in this Broadway musical; that was apparently not enough to draw in an audience; it’s closing December 8th. But I will remember it for its heart-stopping and expressive acrobatics. Most memorable of these is the mercy killing of an injured horse, who is portrayed partly by puppetry, partly by a silk ribbon, and consummately by an extraordinary aerialist named Antoine Boissereau, who performs a ballet in mid-air, swirling and twirling with the silk. Full review
A Woman Among Women
Julia Jonas’s play, artfully and intelligently crafted and acted with a persuasive everyday grace , is one of several recent works reimagining an Arthur Miller play from a female perspective, in this case “All My Sons.” It was particularly memorable experience because it was the first production in The Bushwick Starr’s permanent new theater in Bushwick, where everything and everybody felt welcoming. Full Review
Yellow Face
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David Henry Hwang wrote “Yellow Face” almost two decades ago, comically rendering three deflating or enraging real-life events in which he was involved up to three decades ago. And yet as I watched Daniel Dae Kim portray the character based on the playwright in the first ever Broadway production of the play, I couldn’t help thinking of a long list of events that have recently happened, such as:
Kamala Harris being accused of suddenly turning Black
Haitian migrants being accused of eating pets
Jewish Americans being accused of having dual loyalties
No, there is no direct connection. Yes, “Yellow Face” is specific to the Asian-American experience, and much of it (the first two-thirds) happens just within the theater world. But the misunderstanding, hate, fear, suspicion, and outrage surrounding issues of identity seem to have taken center stage in this country. “Yellow Face” tapped into that. It closed this week after a run that was too brief, so with its closing it tapped into something else now prevalent in (certain regions of) this country: Disappointment. Full review
