By David Gordon, News Editor
It is Top 10 list time again. It was very tough whittling down all of the theater pieces I’ve seen this year, but I think I’ve managed to create a list that I’m almost happy with.
Four shows on the list were Off-Broadway. Lynn Nottage’s horrifically powerful “Ruined,” set in a whorehouse in the war-ravaged Congo, won the Pulitzer Prize. David Adjimi’s fascinating “Stunning,” gave voice to a 16-year old Syrian-American girl married to a 40-year old man in Brooklyn as she’s taken under the wing of a seemingly well-read African American maid.
David Cromer brilliantly reinvented Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” creating an atmospheric piece that, at the very end, produced a coup-de-theatre which induced smell-o-vision. Horton Foote, who died in March, proved why he is one of America’s best playwrights as his nine play “The Orphans’ Home Cycle” began at the Signature Theatre. Divided into three, three hour increments “Orphans” is a whole lot of worthwhile theater for $20.
In London in January, there were excellent revivals of the musical “La Cage aux Folles,” and Arthur Miller’s play “A View from the Bridge.” “La Cage,” traded glitz for seediness, setting the musical in a rundown joint with a bunch of drag performers who were clearly too old. The production featured a stunning turn from Douglas Hodge as Albin, which he will repeat on Broadway, opposite Kelsey Grammer, in April.
In New York, a revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s trilogy “The Norman Conquests” (a transfer from London) nicely balanced the comedy and pathos of Ayckbourn’s characters, unhappy people in unhappy marriages over the course of a weekend. There was also an engrossing revival of Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” courtesy of the Roundabout, which featured Nathan Lane, Bill Irwin and John Glover, and a large, bombastic turn by John Goodman.
My two favorites of the year, though, were London’s “Zorro,” a musical based on Isabelle Allende’s novel featuring the score of The Gipsy Kings.
On Broadway, there was an utterly extraordinary revival of Eugene Ionesco’s “Exit the King,” with the brilliant Broadway debut of Geoffrey Rush. The mesmerizing, existential absurdist exercise in the life and death of a 400-year old King and his kingdom was utterly extraordinary.