The 20 moments I select below happened in an instant — an image, an action, a remark, a sudden realization, in one case a touch. All were far shorter than a scene or a song or even a monologue. I’m not writing about entire performances here (I already did that) nor about entire shows (did that too.). Indeed, the moments I find memorable are often in shows that I otherwise didn’t much like.
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 be a widely acclaimed coup de theatre or something far more personal — simply the moment that makes me realize something startling about the character or the story… or life.
I have been putting together an annual post of memorable moments since 2013. Until now, these have been photo galleries embedded with long captions. But it is hard to find production photographs that capture the precise moment that captivated me, and embedded captions are hard to read on mobile devices (which is how most of you now read this blog). So the texts below describing the brief moments, presented more or less chronologically, are paired with photographs from the same show that don’t necessarily depict the same moment. (A few of the photographs show other moments almost as memorable.)
One of the first memorable moments this year addressed the question: How long is too long to be a memorable moment? In “The Fluxus Brother Present Good Art Bad Art,” one brother held up a sign called “Good Art,” a second ‘Bad Art,” and the third told the members of the audience to line up under one or the other sign in judgment of a hypothetical work of art: “Peeing on the American flag while whistling the Star-Spangled banner for five minutes.” The audience divided up evenly between judging this as good art or bad art. Then the third brother described the same piece but replaced “for five minutes” with “for one hour,” and asked us again to make a judgment. Then “for 24 hours.” Then – and this was the memorable moment – “for six years,” which made me laugh, but also got me thinking.
When in “The Antiquities” (one of two plays produced this year by Jordan Harrison about the past and future of Artificial Intelligence) a father, mother and son stare at the eerie light of a computer as we suddenly hear the familiar clicks and whines of the AOL dial-up modem circa 1994 (which gets a huge laugh)
When “Redwood” suddenly envelopes us through a combination of set, projections, light and sound, in the majesty of the redwood forest, eliciting something akin to the sort of ineffable feeling of awe one gets in actual Nature.
When two of the 26 characters portrayed by Sarah Snook in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” materialized on stage confronting one another, and I didn’t know which one was the live person and which one a projection.
When “Boop” best illustrates the interplay between Betty Boop’s black-and-white cartoon world and the color world of New York City in the middle of the musical number “Where is Betty?” Each member of the ensemble is wearing a costume that’s in color in front, and black-and-white in back (or vice-versa) which, in coordination with Jerry Mitchell’s choreography, allows the scene, and everybody in it, to turn from color to black-and-white in an instant, and then back again.
When the immigrant factory seamstresses of Real Women Have Curve face down all the challenges of their lives singing “If you prick your finger…make sure the fabric’s red/When something breaks/Make it work instead.”
When a seemingly full-size World War II battleship suddenly materializes in “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” (and just as suddenly gets electrocuted)
When we first see the full-sized rhinoceros in Rhynoceron during Puppetopia
Among the spectacular acrobatics of 7 Fingers’ “Passengers,” Marco Ingaram (not pictured) climbs a pole to the very top and dives down head first, miraculously stopping just before his head meets the floor,
When David Greenspan appears on stage as what King Charles of the United Kingdom calls is “our lovely communications secretary Jaqueline” in fabulous white wig and all-white couture, somehow a hilariously campy moment, although he played the character straight, so to speak. This is not the moment in the photograph above; that’s when he’s one of the old kings in a dream sequence; he also portrays the gay royal butler. This is all in “Prince Faggot.” (This was Greenspan’s year. He also played himself in “Surely, you know David Greenspan.”) (this is one of the hilarious campy moments; Greenspan also plays the gay royal butler, and one of the old kings in a dream sequence of past monarchs — all to the hilt.)
When in “Punch” Harrison as Jacob finally meets in person the parents of the young man whom he killed and struggles to say anything, staring at the floor, choking on his breath.
When the Phantom of the Opera himself suddenly grabbed hold of me through the fog, his touch light and electric, and pushed me aside, having crept up behind us to make his way through the thick fog and thin crowd to reach soprano Christine Daaé, his protégé and obsession. This was probably the most memorable of the many moments in “Masquerade” that felt literally sensuous and you-are-there in a way that “The Phantom of the Opera,” the earlier version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, was not.
When during the nude scene in “Liberation” (for which unsurprisingly no production photographs exist), and the members of the 1970s women’s support group engage in an exercise suggested by Ms. Magazine of inventorying what they like and don’t like about their bodies, Celeste says the part of her body she loves the most is her brain. The answer is unexpected, and, in its own way, liberating – just like the play.
When we first realize that the couch in “Little Bear Ridge Road” –which had transformed throughout the play from the sole piece of furniture in Sarah’s remote rural home to the back of the bar where Ethan meets James to the locus of the makeshift family that James, Sarah and Ethan develop; which has gone from embodying the emotional barrier between the characters to somehow symbolizing the universe – has turned into Sarah’s deathbed.
When in “Dimension Zero” the individual slices of pepperoni pizza dance back into a whole pie, surrounded by other human-size icons of New York City – including a Greek coffee cup, a yellow cab, a row of skyscrapers, a cluster of plastic garbage bags, and a rat
When Kristin Chenoweth as the real-life billionaire’s wife Jackie Siegel in “The Queen of Versailles” brings out the full-sized guillotine she’s purchased.
When the diplomats trying to forge a world-wide climate-change policy in the play “Kyoto” suddenly all speak at once, none of which is decipherable, their having collapsed into a tower of babble,
When the countdown clock we’ve been watching from the beginning of “Oedipus” has counted down to zero, a signal not just that the election results will be announced but that the explosive revelations will begin.
When at the start of the musical number “Bread” in “The Baker’s Wife” the spotlight shines one by one on each cast member in turn, placed widely apart throughout the quaint French village, as they first smell the newly baked bread by the newly hired baker.
When I realized in “Marjorie Prime” (the other play about AI this year by Jordan Harrison)that June Squibb’s character Marjorie had turned from a human being into an AI projection, Marjorie the human being having died.
