I would like to offer my list of the TOP TEN BEST PLAYS and the TOP FIVE WORST PLAYS that I saw in 2019. This year I was able to take in 36 plays – and I assure you that my list is totally unlike ANY of the various people that review NYC theatre. Please do click on the title of the following plays to read the full review:
Greater Clements
Written by Samuel D. Hunter
Directed by Davis McCallum
Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
December 31, 2019 Production website
💉💉💉💉💉 out of 5.
Tonight was one of the most disturbing evenings I can remember having in the theatre in a long long time.Again, this was another play that I did no preparation for.Boy was I surprised!Tonight I saw two of the best acting performances of the year – for sure!
Edmund Donavan as Joe and Judith Ivey as Maggie just took me away!Never have I seen acting that just took my breath away and truly scared me.Usually I am not such a fan of realism – finding it a bit too much like so much of TV – but this is modern realism done right.Three hours went by and I never checked my watch. Continue reading Greater Clements→
One in Two
Written by Donja R. Love
Directed by Stevie Walker-Webb
The New Group at Pershing Square Signature Center
December 30, 2019 Production website
💉💉 out of 5.
The statistics behind one is two are just frightening.The play is built on a study that shows that of the men who have sex with other white men, 1 in 11 will contact AIDS.If the men men are hispanic the odds move to one in five. Most terrifying of all, one in two black man will contract HIV – and this is NOW – not some decade old statistic.
I have to admit I was a bit reluctant to see another play that deals with gay men and HIV/AIDS.I have truly seen all the plays that have come out – from As Is and Normal Heart to Angels in America and The Inheritance.I have seen these hallmark productions and all of the good, bad and ugly productions in between.What excited me here was a chance to see one showing TODAY’s landscape and to explore the world of this epediimc from a black perspective. Continue reading One in Two→
Grand Horizons
Written by Bess Wohl
Directed by Leigh Silverman
Second Stage Theatre – Helen Hayes Theatre
December 29, 2019 Production website
💉💉💉 out of 5.
This is going to be a gold mine for community theatre everywhere in just a few years.That I am sure.Grand Horizons offers roles foractors in their twenties and seventies and beyond.It is a simple unit set (apart from a U-Haul truck that you must see to believe).It is funny and the humor is only mildly adult.Only would the most conservative of communities find this offensive.
The plot centers around Bill and Nancy that have spent 50 years together as a couple totally in sync.But then, in the first moments of the play, the unthinkable happens and Nancy wants out.This sudden move to divorce after so many years is unimaginbleto their grown children, and they work to unweave their parents predicament.The play is full of two and three person scenes that are true gems.Nothing is radically new here – it becomes the very best of TV scripts. Continue reading Grand Horizons→
The Sound Inside
Written by Adam Rappelled
Directed by David Cromer
Studio 54
January 29, 2019 Production website
💉💉💉💉 out of 5.
Wow! This is the most unexpected play of the entire trip and one of the most beautiful.I had no idea what to expect – I had read notihng in advance of the show.I knew that it was at Studio 54 and I expected it to be big and bold.It was, but in a totally unexpended way!It was my first surprise in an afternoon full of surprises.
The play is a two-hander featuring the REMARKABLE Mary-Louise Parker coming to the story with 30+ years of remarkable stage work – she is an entire theatrical event in herself. The plot revolves around awriting professor at Yale who has just received a diagnosis of stage 2 cancer. In much of the play, she addresses the audience directly as if reading a novel-in-progress aloud.The story then eventually includes Christopher Dunn, a freshman in a course of hers called Reading Fiction for Craft.She is a mysterious teacher with surprises up her sleeve and he is a misfit of Yale that just doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere. Continue reading The Sound Inside→
