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Best Of theatre

Best of 2023 – Theater/Opera/Dance

Brother/Hood/Dance, photo by Ryan Muir, courtesy of the Wexner Center

What a great year for theater – seeing 53 shows over four cities, with particularly good batting averages on the three New York trips. Also, every company in Columbus was hitting this year. Some of the best work I’ve seen in years from MadLab, Opera Columbus, and Evolution, lined up with front-to-back strong seasons from The Contemporary (formerly CATCO) and Available Light, a renewed interest in dance and theater from the Wexner Center, Short North Stage stretching its wings, all added up to more I wanted to see than I could make happen. Even when I didn’t love some of the work, almost every single thing I saw, I admired the effort and the swing they took. It’s a good time to be a fan of theater in town, get out and see as much as possible,

Everything listed here is in chronological order and in Columbus unless otherwise noted. The companies provided all photos for promotion, either sent to me directly or taken from websites.

Wilma Hatton and Ricardo Jones in ‘Snowville Cafe’, photo by Steve Malone
  • KL II by Kaneza Schaal, directed by Kaneza Schaal and Christopher Myers (Under the Radar Festival, NYC) – I only made it to one thing out of the three I had booked at Under the Radar this year – one canceled early, one canceled while I was at the Public – but this reaffirmed what a great thing the festival is for those of us who love experimental theater. Kaneza Schaal braided the text of Mark Twain’s King Leopold’s Soliloquy with a personal history with Patrice Lumumba’s independence speech with personal history with so much else and fused it to a blue flame of a performance and fascinating design and direction choices.
  • Snowville Cafe by Julie Whitney-Scott, directed by James Blackmon (MadLab) – Julie Whitney-Scott, one of my favorite theater artists in town, had an astonishing year directing a regional premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Lynn Nottage, classics like Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun, leading her spectacular tradition of Columbus Black Theater Festival, writing her first novel, it was a dazzling record of work. But my favorite piece, the thing that I kept talking about months after it closed, was this luminous slice of life James Blackmon directed for MadLab. I called it “a poetic character study that also makes its setting a vibrant, fascinating character, with a real love for its characters but a sometimes unsparing eye for their faults. The empathy of the writing and direction are so perfectly in sync they almost seem invisible,” in my review for Columbus Underground.
  • Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, directed by David Glover (Available Light) – Available Light continued their astonishing streak this year. Everything they did had the unshakable feeling of “I can’t picture anyone else doing this.” David Glover’s stunning production and brilliant cast were up to the challenge of fusing the technical difficulty – the main five actors pull their characters out of a hat – to the piece’s deep themes and rich humor. I said it, “[highlights the shifting volatility, the danger of using our friends as a mirror of ourselves, but the absolute necessity of friends,” in my review for  Columbus Underground.
  • Afro/Solo/Man by Orlando Zane Hunter, Jr. and Ricarrdo Valentine (Brother(hood) Dance, presented by Wexner Center for the Arts) – The Wexner Center also pulled itself up this year, drawing on some local talent and some far-flung relationships, to put out work I can’t picture any other presenting organization bringing to town. This gut-wrenching dance piece by Hunter and Valentine, about generational trauma and internalized shame but also abundant, bursting-at-the-seams joy, had me babbling about it for weeks after seeing it.
Monica Danilov-Marquez, Maria de Buenos Aires, Opera Columbus; photo by Terry Gilliam
  • Maria de Buenos Aires by Astor Piazzolla and Horacio Ferrer, directed by Christopher Darling (Opera Columbus) – Opera Columbus continues killing it and this Piazzolla operetta lined up with my tastes with sniper-like precision. I said, “The parallel singing and dancing choruses also set the world of the play, accentuating the collage aspects and the surging drama and eroticism. This riff on an opera-ballet with tango feels simultaneously organic and surprising,” in my piece for Columbus Underground.
  • Seven Guitars by August Wilson, directed by Ron OJ Parson (Playhouse in the Park, Cincinnati) – Finally got to see the last of the August Wilson Pittsburgh cycle with this sumptuous production at one of Ohio’s shining theaters, Cincy’s Playhouse in the Park. Bryant Bentley’s Red Carter and Dimonte Henning’s Schoolboy Barton are performances burned into my brain.
Sue Wismar in foreground, Elizabeth Girvin and Sydney Jordan Baker in background, When We Were Young and Unafraid, photo by Cat McAlpine
  • When We Were Young and Unafraid by Sarah Treem, directed by Michelle Batt (eMBer Women’s Theatre) – eMBer Women’s Theatre has come into its own over the last few years, and this year they blew me the hell away with a gorgeous, knife-twisting look at shifting social mores, pervasive sexual violence, the need to connect – and the way that can be a source of strength or twisted into something terrible, with astonishing performances, especially by Sue Wismar and Matthew Sierra. I said, “[The] characters’ arguments about the times changing and the chilling prescient words “They’ll change back,” resonate long after the lights go back on the play,” in my review for Columbus Underground.
  • The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe, directed by Aviva Helena Neff (The Contemporary Theatre of Ohio) – The second production of Sarah DeLappe’s magnificent coming-of-age play The Wolves I’ve seen in a few years, and I’m still knocked out by the play and the synchronicity in coming together and splitting apart personified by the cast hear left my jaw in my lap with awe and broke me in the right measures. For Columbus Underground, I said, “[It] reminded me of its ability to surprise through the quality and sharpness of its execution. It’s hard for me to picture seeing a better production of this beautiful, life-affirming, heartbreaking play.
  • Machinal by Sophie Treadwell, directed by Ryan Naughton (The Sound Company) – Ryan Naughton and Jessica Hughes gave the Columbus theatrical scene a powerful shot in the arm in their few years here, teaching at OSU, and their crowning achievement was a powerful production of landmark expressionist play Machinal by their Sound Company. I said, This production is rich with jagged beauty and a perfect example of how irony can be used to make something hurt more, not less. How much more potent can abstraction be at evoking a feeling than spelling something,” for Columbus Underground.
Jessica Hughes, Machinal, photo by Blake Mintz
  • Beautiful by Doug McGrath and the music of Carole King et al, directed by Dionysia Williams (Short North Stage) – I didn’t see a bad production by Short North Stage all year, but this jukebox musical – which might have had the hardest go with me walking in, given the depth of my familiarity and love of the Carole King-Gerry Goffin songs and the milieu around them, and this captured it so perfectly, anchored by brilliant performances by Britta Rae, Corbin Payne, and Nick Lingnofski. For Columbus Underground, I said, “The book has enough pain and richness to give ballast to the material, but Beautiful never lets anything get in the way of the power and beauty of these songs.”
  • The Comeuppance by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, directed by Eric Ting (Signature Theatre Company, NYC) – Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is one of the playwrights I’ll see anything that comes out if I can at all make work. I was overjoyed that one of the last matinees overlapped with our middle trip to New York this year. I got there – after two hours a few blocks north of the Signature complex having some drinks and laughs at staple Rudy’s Bar and Grill- and was dismayed to find out the performance was over two hours with no intermission. I’m used to that meaning, “We don’t trust the material/we want to exert some dominance over the audience/people will leave.” But for 2:15, I was staggered, enraptured, blown away. Every tool Jacobs-Jenkins has carefully sharpened is deployed in heartbreaking, unsettling ways with a phenomenal cast in this mythopoetic riff on The Big Chill that tells a story about reckoning with youth, trauma, and who has the right to a story; to pain; that I haven’t heard before. I’m dying to see this again and have already pre-ordered the script in book form (coming out next summer). I saw a couple of things this year where I both immediately said, “This is the best thing I’ve seen,” and I still think that later in the year (you’ll see the other further down this list); this was one of them.
  • Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, directed by Thomas Kail (Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, NYC) – I’ve seen a good number of the recent Sweeney Todd revivals, the first Sondheim I loved thanks to an introduction to the taped George Hearn/Angela Lansbury performance from childhood friend Matt Porreca, and I love the attempts at realism, psychological or otherwise. But it was an unalloyed joy to see this Thomas Kail-directed version that focused on the sumptuous music, playing the original orchestrations and with a dynamite lead from Josh Groban, in almost a sharp-edged comic book interpretation. And as with the Sunday Anne and I saw a few years ago, Annaleigh Ashford’s Mrs. Lovett runs away with the whole goddam show, just a dynamite performance.
The Comeuppance photo by Monique Carboni
  • The Inheritance by Matthew Lopez, directed by Joe Bishara (Evolution Theatre Company) – Evolution has been swinging for the fences the last couple of years, and, in my eyes, it’s really paid off. The ambition of this huge cast recasting of Howard’s End to deal with the aftermath of the AIDS crisis, which was the play everyone was talking about when Anne and I were in London (and I couldn’t fit it into the schedule), follows great work Evolution has done with Lopez’s writing like the intimate character-driven Poz and gets to luxuriate in this over two three-hour parts. I called it, “About how we tell stories, how stories bring us together, give us a framework for living, and in the same breath – and sometimes the same story – let us delude ourselves and others, build walls, and slowly (or slowly-then-suddenly) rot us from the inside,” as I reviewed Part 1 and Part 2 for Columbus Underground.
  • POTUS by Selena Fillinger, directed by Leda Hoffmann (The Contemporary Theatre of Ohio) – Fresh off Broadway, POTUS affirmed Hoffmann’s commitment to brand new work and stewardship as CATCO transitioned into The Contemporary Theatre of Ohio. It’s a crackling burlesquing of the highest hallways of power and riotous, hilarious entertainment. It may have been the hardest I laughed all year. I said the production was “A springloaded machine of everything getting worse in ways we see coming, but at just enough of an angle, the wind is knocked from our lungs as a precursor to the following laughs. Hoffmann and her cast excel at this, ratcheting in the tension up, weaving in call-backs (if there’s another inflection you can put on “ass play” we don’t see in this play, I can’t think of it) so they embed in our brains and still getting that jolt of surprise when they detonate, with just enough release to make the pace feel frenzied without being exhausting,” in Columbus Underground.
  • What the Constitution Means to Me by Heidi Schreck, directed by Dakota Thorn (Available Light) – Dakota Thorn, who I’ve long admired as an actor, hit it out of the park with her first – I think – directing and Available Light member Michelle Schroeder-Lowrey is the perfect fit for this funny, intensely moving snapshot of a slice of America from Heidi Schreck. I said, “Hilarity – starting with the 15-year-old Heidi talking about the constitution in bodice-ripper terms (“a sweaty, steamy document”), deep dives into specifics of language, and abject horror bump right up against one another, without feeling unbalanced. In the late-play discussion of Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, the play draws a clear line between an abstraction being the point, the nitpicking of “shall” as a dodge, a way to avoid letting people into the argument being seen by the court, and the breathless, sometimes delirious love of words as a way to let people in, to truly see them, instead of shutting them out, as the play does,” in my review for Columbus Underground.
  • Infinite Life by Annie Baker, directed by James Macdonald (Atlantic Theatre, NYC) – I can’t think of a contemporary writer who burrows into the most banal – and simultaneously most intimate – spaces of modern life with more agility and a sharper knife than Annie Baker. This look at seven women in a spa/health retreat that’s not explicitly described is a master class in interweaving perspectives; the way we talk with the knob turned all the way up until it seems strange. Anne and I talked about this all the way down 8th Avenue to the Vanguard (see this year’s live music list), and I’m still turning it over in my head, trying to make sense of it in the best way.
Laurie Carter Rose, Arriah Ratanapan, Noelle Anderson, and Shanelle Marie, POTUS, photo by Terry Gilliam
  • Merrily We Roll Along by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, directed by Maria Friedman (Hudson Theatre, NYC) – Everything you’ve heard about this is true. Easily the strongest, most fully realized version of this underdog of the Sondheim canon, directed with a sure hand and razor-sharp timing by Maria Friedman, who uses her storied history with Sondheim and her internalizing of those rhythms to make everything breathe and, crucially, peels back a little more of the onion on Franklin Shepherd (a stunning Jonathan Groff) to show the people pleaser quality at the heart of all that grasping – the first time I really believed that line, “I’ve only made one mistake in my life but I’ve made it over and over again: saying ‘Yes’ when I meant ‘No.’” Daniel Radcliffe kills me as the righteous purist Charley Kringus, and Lindsay Mendez, new to me, gives a more fleshed-out version of Mary Flynn, taking her out of the Dorothy Parker caricature while still nailing those lines than I’d previously seen.
  • Which Way to the Stage? by Ana Nogueira, directed by Edward Carignan (Short North Stage) – I didn’t realize how much I’d missed Short North Stage’s taste in non-musical plays until this breath of fresh air reminded me. It felt really good being back in the Green Room, laughing and thinking. In Columbus Underground, I said, “[It] treats these heavier themes with the gravity they need – how does this thing you love change, and what happens when it doesn’t? How do we look to other people? – but they never get in the way of the laughs. It’s a delightful comedy with a sniper-targeted sense of its audience.”
  • Ghost Quartet by Dave Malloy, directed by Drew Eberly (Available Light) – The other thing that stood out to me as the best thing I saw all year, a song cycle with theater running through its veins, that denied my easy understanding as much as it made me love it. For Columbus Underground, I said, “Malloy and the cast, under Eberly’s sure hand, dig into a purer emotional landscape, the way a song feels as it moves through you, and the late nights of wanting to one-up one another because you love the people you’re with so much; while still having all the insecurities and viciousness that makes us human.”
  • Good Grief by Ngozi Anyanwu, directed by Shanelle Marie and Alan Tyson (Contemporary Theatre of Ohio) – Shanelle Marie and Alan Tyson collaborated on directing this lovely meditation on loss, friendship, and growing up by Ngozi Anyanwu, a jewel in a very strong season from The Contemporary Theatre of Ohio. For Columbus Underground, I said, “The ability, starting in Anyanwu’s text and emphasized by Marie and Tyson’s direction, not to demonize anyone, to find drama without making anyone a villain, showing us people who are all doing their best is a rare gift and a pleasure I don’t get often enough in any medium.”
Amy Rittberger in the foreground, Katie Giffin and Jo Michelle Shafer in background on the bar, Ghost Quartet, photo by Kyle Long
Categories
Best Of theatre

Best Of 2021 – Theater/Opera/Dance

God, it felt good to be back in a room with people sharing the vibration of other humans on a stage, the feedback loop of energy and – dangerous as it sometimes felt – sharing breath. Starting literally two weeks after my second shot, I was lucky to see 30 shows and miracle of miracles, none of them were bad.

Every company that’s returned, making work, is bringing it right now – playing to their core strengths and stretching their muscles. Beyond what made this list? I saw crisp, vibrant shows from Evolution and Gallery. Otterbein and Short North Stage’s sister/adjunct company Columbus Immersive crafted productions that fully turned me around on shows I actively didn’t like previously. All four of the Actors’ shows and all four Red Herring productions left me talking about them into the night if not for weeks. MadLab and CATCO revealed the fruits of the energy and enthusiasm of new artistic directors (in the latter case after a year’s preview of fascinating streaming work). Imagine returned with a brand new, original musical with 19 cast members.

This town rang with the echoes of gauntlets dropping and examples of exactly what keeps me going out night after night. I enjoyed every minute of that energy and enthusiasm being back, even when the finished piece didn’t work for me. But the 10 here would have blown me away in any circumstances and it was a hard call whittling down to them.

Back to NYC for Under the Radar and sundry in January, great stuff on the books for the Wexner Center in Spring, fingers crossed we get closer to “back” with every month.

That NYC trip in January includes the reopened revival of Company we originally had tickets to for my 40th birthday in 2020 – there will be more in my year end music playlists, but I can’t imagine my cultural life without the shining influence of Stephen Sondheim who passed away the day before I started assembling this. I grew up steeped in musicals – the heavy influence of my mom and my grandmother – including some of his, including A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, West Side Story and Gypsy. But when I discovered his mature work – starting with my massive love of Sweeney Todd and Assassins, it felt like I found musical theater pitched directly at me – this also gives me a chance to acknowledge and publicly express gratitude for the friends who opened that door: Doug Smith, Sean Klein (who we also lost this year, barely a week after we texted about getting the old gang together), Matt Porreca, and Robin Seabaugh; nothing would have fallen into place without each of you.

That said, I want to acknowledge the stellar online work that helped get me through the months beforehand, that gave me a taste, a little hint of the electricity that kept me going. Everything here is in chronological order and everything in person is in Columbus (except otherwise noted doesn’t apply this time, but I’m thirsty for when it does).

Online

Alicia Hall Moran, from her website

Online 

  • Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran by Javaad Alipoor (The Javaad Alipoor Company, presented by Public Theatre’s Under the Radar) 
  • The Motown Project by Alicia Hall Moran (Presented by Public Theatre’s Under the Radar) 
  • Fragments, Lists, and Lacunae by Alexandra Chasin and Zishan Ugurlu (Presented by New York Live Arts) 
  • Blue Ridge by Abby Rosebrock (Presented by Play Per View) 
  • Revenge Porn by Carla Ching (Presented by Play Per View) 
  • Hymn by Lolita Chakrabati (Presented by Almeida Theatre) 
  • A Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Terrence Blanchard, libretto by Kasi Lemmons (Met LiveinHD) 

In Person 

Don Giovanni, photo by Terry Gilliam
  • Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte (Opera Columbus), directed by Eve Summer – I’m not sure I could have picked a better return to live theater than this super-charged, intense reading of one of the very first operas I loved by a revitalized Opera Columbus. The safety measures had a fascinating thematic thrust and the performances, especially Jorell Williams in the title role and Amber Monroe’s Donna Elvira, singed my eyebrows off. I said “They amplify the deep loneliness of the libertine and his victims and the teeth-gnashing frustration of attempts at revenge and forgiveness… Having been 14 months since I’d been inside a theater, the longest stretch since I was 16, it was probably not unlikely I’d cry anyway. But it’s hard for me to imagine a better return to live performance than this dazzling Don Giovanni,” in my review for Columbus Underground. 
  • Carrie, book by Lawrence D. Cohen, music by Michael Gore, lyrics by Dean Pitchford, after the novel by Stephen King, directed by Edward Carignan (Columbus Immersive Theater/Short North Stage) – Growing up in awe of Stephen King’s debut novel, setting the tone for his character-focused horror novels to come, and simultaneously steeped in the lore of this musical adaptation, this came with the deck stacked against it. But Carignan and company not only hit every mark, they crushed those expectations. I took my mom as my plus-one, the reason I read Stephen King in the first place, and she was as dazzled as I was. In my Columbus Underground review, I said, “Carignan, Williams, and the cast never lose sight of the deep sadness at the heart of Carrie and the lesson that we can all be monsters with less of a nudge than we want to admit. And they make that uncomfortable identification into a riotous, quick-witted, wild carnival ride of an entertainment. It’s an alternately sticky-hot and brilliantly cold look at humanity perfect for the depths of summer.” 
  • Various Artists, Columbus Black Theater Festival (Mine4God Productions, presented by Abbey Theatre of Dublin) – One of my favorite events of the Columbus calendar returned in a slightly streamlined version, and resulted in one of my favorite conversations, with artistic director Julie Whitney Scott (I didn’t capture it as well as I would have liked in the article, a reminder to keep trying harder). After writing a preview, I paid to see this on my own dime. And while I didn’t see it all – I didn’t quite allow myself enough time for the rich marathon – the two hours I was in the Abbey sent me back into the night reeling and bending the ear of Anne and whoever else would listen. 
  • Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl, directed by Beth Josephsen (Actors Theatre of Columbus) – The classic Orpheus and Eurydice story was heavy in the zeitgeist this year and Sarah Ruhl has long been one of my favorite playwrights (her memoir Smile is on the bedstand as I write this). In the strongest Actors’ Theatre season in recent memory – I was also blown away by a Much Ado About Nothing, The African Company Presents Richard III, and a childhood favorite of mine The Secret Garden – this lovely, incisive meditation on memory kept rippling in my mind for weeks.  For Columbus Underground, I commented, “The modifications to the climax land with the thud of inevitability and surprised the audience enough at the performance I attended I heard gasps spring up around me. Josephsen and her cast balance the abstract and accessible elements of this modern take on one of the western world’s classic tragic love stories in a way that feels fresh, exciting, and powerful.” 
The Children, photo by Jerri Shafer
  • The Children by Lucy Kirkwood, directed by Michael Herring (Red Herring) – This locked-room drama, balancing intimate, personal apocalypses with a shadow growing over the world, featured blistering performances by Harold Yarborough, Nancy Skaggs, and Josie Merkel, and stood out in a season where I didn’t see anything weak from Red Herring. I said, “At every level, the characters face snowballing consequences of thoughtless choices, wounds never disinfected, from the contaminated water flowing in the power plant to old slights among each other, and have to deal with what they owe the next generation up to and including their use as sacrificial lambs,” for Columbus Underground. 
  • Let’s Hope You Feel Better by Samantha Oty (MadLab), directed by Sarah Vargo – MadLab came out on fire this year, taking some interesting chances. And this bitterly funny, whiplash-inducing sex farce was one of the best things I saw all year. Boasting killer – *rimshot* – performances by McLane Nagy and Tom Murdock at the center of a stellar cast, this crackled with reminders of the crucial energy MadLab brings to our theater scene. I commented in Columbus Underground: “The serious themes here – does a person have a right to die with dignity, what are the limits on the Hippocratic Oath’s “do no harm,” what do we owe the people in our lives – get a strong, thoughtful workout in Let’s Hope You Feel Better but nothing gets in the way of the play as a sharp, molten-hot, and sub-zero cold, often at the same time, entertainment.” 
  • Life Alert by Chris Sherman, directed by Michelle Batt (eMBer Womens Theater) – eMBer Womens Theater returned with a lovely series of shorts, Muses, and then this dazzling, delayed world premiere boasting a stellar cast with particularly strong performances by Melissa Bair and Josie Merkel. I said in Columbus Underground, “Sherman’s play is deeply concerned with who society considers disposable, whose work matters and whose doesn’t, and how demoralizing that gets. How deeply baked into so many of our consciouses those biases are, how they feel like pollution in the air we breathe and how a woman saying ‘Am I expected to sacrifice my life’ for others’ needs, putting it in the world out loud, is still a radical and necessary act. The ending gets a little more obvious and underlined than anything else but it’s a minor blip after two hours – with one intermission – that rang so true.” 
Mr. Burns, photo by Terry Gilliam
  • Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn with music by Michael Friedman, directed by Leda Hoffmann (CATCO) – More than anything else this year, this was the experience I missed so badly.  A play I’ve wanted to see since the Off-Broadway run but never made happen, and the first in-person taste of new CATCO artistic director Hoffmann’s work, this slapped me around in all the best ways. Crystallizing thoughts I’d had about storytelling, the strange era of the 20th century where we build art upon allusion on top of allusion, exploding the metaphor at the heart of all history and language. A tribute to the community of our actors, with standout performances by Scott Douglas Wilson, Jonathan Putnam, Acacia Duncan, and Shauna Davis leading a terrific cast. The production’s also – using the three spaces effectively – a reminder of the symbiosis of audience and performers. Anne and I spent the next two hours, right up until an excellent Chuck Prophet show you’ll be hearing about on my live music list, going over this in delighted detail. For Columbus Underground, I commented: “Like the best Simpsons episodes, Mr. Burns bulges with references and easter eggs but in the best sense: I felt a frisson of delight whenever I caught one – as I write this, the example jumping to my mind is Wilson delivering the play’s Sweeney Todd nod “Life has been kind to you” – but it didn’t bog me down looking for them. More, nothing felt tacked on or inessential. Everything adds to a piece I wish I could find the time to see again.” 
  • The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa Fasthorse, directed by Mark Mann (Red Herring) – Red Herring closed 2021 with a wild, ribald farce that reminded my how good their ear is for plays that have achieved some acclaim but might never have made it to Columbus otherwise. Fasthorse’s play made me laugh until my sides hurt, with a cast full of wild energy, especially Todd Covert and Elizabeth Harelik Falter. As I said in Columbus Underground, “Fasthorse’s play finds the perfect tenor for it, without getting too meta or cerebral, grounding the comedy in the ambitions and insecurities of a classic group of misfits, and it’s hard to imagine this getting a better production than Mann and Red Herring provide.” 
  • Hadestown by Anais Mitchell, directed by Rachel Chavkin (Broadway in Columbus) – I’ve been a fan of Anais Mitchell for many years, her song “Cosmic American” lighting the fire, and I loved the original Hadestown concept album when it came out. I hadn’t managed to catch this expansion on Broadway but my return to Broadway in Columbus with the touring production – featuring Audrey Ochoa who you’ll see on my playlists – reminded me how great, and how specific, that kind of big stage theater can be. How marvelous it is to see something in a packed house. So beautiful Anne and I had conversations about it with different people in different bars for the next two weeks, the only other play I kept wanting to dig into to that extent was Mr. Burns. For Columbus Underground: “Chavkin’s expansion of Mitchell’s song cycle takes one of the quintessential stories of both the transformative power of art and its limitations, its ability to change – and not change – the world and the hearts of both audience and creator, and imbues what could be a heavy slog, with all the fun of a carnival ride or a night at a wild party. As Marable sings while leading the cast in the curtain call, ‘We raise our cups to them.’” 
Hadestown, photo by T Charles Erickson

As always, thank you – to everyone who helped make these shows happen, who joined me for them, who talked with me about them after, and who reads this. Thank you so much.