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Best Of theatre

Best of 2024 – Theater/Opera/Dance

An astonishing year for performance art in its broadest sense – every Columbus troupe was hitting, supplemented by killer work I was lucky enough to see in Chicago and New York. Also celebrating the 10th anniversary of Columbus Underground publishing my more formal thoughts, so all thanks to Anne and Walker Evans and everyone else I work with and I’m happy to call friends.

As usual, in chronological order and in Columbus unless otherwise specified.

  • Fairview by Jackie Sibblies Drury, directed by Aviva Neff; Available Light – A decade ago, before I had an outlet, I was so struck by my introduction to Jackie Sibblies Drury’s plays I felt compelled to blog about it on my old Blogspot spot as part of the season that cemented my affinity for Available Light. In January, Available Light set the bar high for my 2024 with her powerful, uncomfortably hilarious satire Fairview. In Columbus Underground, I said, “Fairview is a Philip K. Dick-inflected MAD Magazine special with a full Three Stooges episode nested inside about race in America, how the act of looking twists both the observer and the observed, the impossibility of truly knowing other people, and the Sisyphean quest for ‘Fairness,’ to accomplish it and even define it.” In December, I’m still citing and thinking about this amazing feat of creation.
Available Light’s Fairview, photo by Kyle Long
  • Second Servings by Nancy Shelton Williams, directed by Sue Wismar; eMBer Women’s Theatre – Sue Wismar’s long been one of my favorite actors in town; on that short list where I can have no interest in subject matter or a writer, but when I hear she’s involved? Now I’m interested. This first exposure to her directing delivered on those expectations and then some, finding breathing room and also a coiled tightness that felt right for these characters in this world. As I said for Columbus Underground, “I’ve seen all three of these actors be very good in many things over my years of seeing theater in town; I’ve never seen them better. The tenuous chemistry of the three, the layers of shifting alliances, feel like they go back decades and are as fresh as an open wound.”
  • You Will Get Sick by Noah Diaz, directed by Eleni Papaleonardos; Available Light – The fact that all three of the Available Light productions I saw this year ended up on this list isn’t an act of intentional favoritism; it’s because all three of them sent me out into the night not just rethinking my perceptions of theater but of the world. Nowhere was that more evident than in this piece, which I called in my CU review, “A play I haven’t seen before, a rare blend of commentary, voice, characters, and love—leavened with appropriate disgust—for the world.”
  • Night, Mother by Marsha Norman, directed by Michelle Batt; eMBer Women’s Theatre – Ember Women’s Theatre had an excellent year – I still regret not being able to make their third production because of family and job travel responsibilities and this bracing, note-perfect production of a great play no one’s done in Columbus for a very long time was a shining example. I said of Melissa Bair’s scorching Thelma, for CU, “Everything feels natural and also like an accumulating snowball in a way that’s as dark and dazzling as a Goya painting.”
eMBer Women’s Theatre’s ‘Night, Mother, photo by Michelle Batt
  • Purpose by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, directed by Phylicia Rashad; Steppenwolf, Chicago – It was a good year for Branden Jacobs-Jenkins as he further cemented himself as one of our two or three finest voices for the stage and a hell of a year for me as a theater-goer as I got to see two brand new works. Purpose took the black family drama as microcosm, with a civil rights leader patriarch (Cedric Young the week I was there) trying to keep his reputation spotless, with children who took varied paths. The wire-tight pacing given life by Rashad’s direction, the whiplash blending of distance and immediacy, and the best performances I’ve ever seen by actors I’ve been watching for a very long time – including Alana Arenas, Glenn Davis, and Jon Michael Hill – meant this is still reverberating around in my bones.
  • An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen, directed by Amy Herzog; Circle in the Square, New York – My favorite Ibsen, adapted and tightened without losing any of its ferocious ambiguity as the intensity ramped up, by Amy Herzog whose 4000 Miles killed me at Lincoln Center in 2012, and directed by Sam Gold deploying all of the fascinating experiments that haven’t always coalesced in his recent work firing on all cylinders this time, centered around volcanic performances from Michael Imperioli and Jeremy Strong.
  • Legally Blonde by Heather Hach, Laurence O’Keefe, and Nell Benjamin, directed by Dionysia Williams Velazco; Short North Stage – This was a stellar year for Short North Stage – their The Color Purple, Ain’t Misbehavin’, and Jersey Boys were all also evidence of a company working at the height of its powers and perfect versions of the material – but Legally Blonde stuck with me both because of my surprise (I knew it was a musical and I saw the movie years ago, but didn’t know a single song) and because it was one of the purest distillations of delight I had all year, one of the key tenets of the stage, centered around jaw-dropping performances from Laura Overby, about whom I said, “Doesn’t just rise to that challenge; she sails into space, making it look easy,” and Vera Cremeans, whose “Virtuosic performance [let] the character’s hard-won wisdom, wit, and charm shine brilliantly,” (both from Columbus Underground) and a consistently killer ensemble.
  • An Iliad by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare, directed by Cat McAlpine; Actors’ Theatre of Columbus – Actors Theatre was a mixed bag for my taste this year – their Twelfth Night was also beautiful, other two didn’t work for me – but this was the apotheosis of the risks they’re taking and the more adult subject matter they’re working with over the last few years and left me a blubbering mess. I’ve been a fan of Cat McAlpine’s work both as an actor and a director for years, but this sailed over those high expectations. For Columbus Underground, I called it “A riveting night of theater that’s a reminder of the challenges inherent in telling stories, in showing up for and with people, and how easily everything can fall apart.”
Actors’ Theatre’s An Iliad, photo by Nina Martin
  • Black on Earth by Orlando and Riccardo Hunter-Valentine, Brother(hood) Dance; Wexner Center for the Arts – Brother(hood) Dance’s first collaboration between OSU’s dance department and the resources of the Wex made my Best Of list last year and the wider lens they took to grapple with Black farming and integrated society took my breath away. This year had more of the “I can’t picture this anywhere else in Columbus” feeling the Wexner Center’s performing arts program used to give me constantly than I’ve had in years – all props to Elena Perantoni and Kathleen Felder – and this was a prime example.
  • Lunch Bunch by Adrian Einspanier, directed by Eleni Papaleonardos; Available Light – This was another of the most exciting playwrighting voices I’ve ever seen brought to vibrant, touching, and hilariously vicious life by Eleni Papaleonardos with a perfect cast – I was especially struck by Wilma Hatton, Michelle Schroeder-Lowrey, and Whitney Thomas Eads. I said in Columbus Underground, “[It’s] a reminder that we’re all trying to get through and be better, and some of us have to try much harder than others. A reminder of how easy it is to turn into a bully with just a little bit of power. And an uproarious workplace comedy. And it’s more than all those things.”
  • Max Roach 100 by Ayodele Casel, Rennie Harris, Ronald K. Brown, directed by Ayodele Casel, Rennie Harris, Ronald K. Brown, Torya Beard, and Kit Fitzgerald; Wexner Center for the Arts – This was another example of what the Wex does better than anyone else when it clicks – co-commissioning with New York’s Joyce Theater; finding the perfect curator for this, Richard Colton who I interviewed for a preview in one of my favorite interviews this year; and bringing together film, three of the finest choreographers, and astonishing dancers in tribute to one of the great composers of the last century.
Ayodele Casel at Mershon Auditorium, October 2024
  • Good People by David Lindsay-Abaire, directed by Pamela Hill; Tipping Point – First time in 10 or 11 years anyone had done this gut-punch, sadly-even-more relevant gritty poetic look at Boston’s working class from David Lindsay-Abaire, and Pamela Hill and a terrific cast led by a warm, powerful performance from Sonda Staley, broke me with this terrific production that (as I said in Columbus Underground), “Refreshed and deepened my understanding of this play I love while making me dig deeper into my assumptions and reflexive responses to luck, choice, and how I treat other people.”
  • Wife of a Salesman by Eleanor Burgess, directed by Leda Hoffmann; The Contemporary Theatre of Ohio – This was a stunning home run, born of the Contemporary’s keen eye for new plays and recontextualizing some of the American theater history CATCO made its bones on, with two knockout performances from Megan Lear and Teri Clark Linden at its heart, that I said in my CU review, “Give the density of ideas – the value of duty, the ephemerality of choice, the conflicting approaches of different waves of feminism, the commonality between people if we let our guards down enough – a visceral punch that kept me on the edge of my seat.”
The Contemporary Theatre of Ohio’s Wife of a Salesman, photo by Kyle Long
  • Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 by Dave Malloy after Leo Tolstoy, directed by Melissa Lusher; Otterbein University – I tried to review a lot of college theater in my first couple of years writing for CU. I think it’s important and the two great programs here – OSU and Otterbein – are a lot of people’s introduction to live theater; including me, the first play I remember seeing that wasn’t a Broadway Across America was at OSU (I think; that same High School year also had my first Actors’ Theatre performance). A professor made the great comment on one of my reviews that sometimes a “watchable play” isn’t the best yardstick, sometimes it’s necessary to remember kids are trying their hardest even if I couldn’t recommend something to anyone else, so I backed way off and try to choose what I cover from these programs more carefully. But Otterbein’s musical theater pedigree and the fact this was the first time anyone in central Ohio did this Dave Malloy masterpiece gave me confidence in signing up to review it and I was blown the hell away. Some work fits perfectly with college students and I definitely had that sense the overheated emotion, complicated melodies and harmonies, and large cast all aligned in this phenomenal production. In my CU Review, I said “It drove home the way scale and scope excavate different feelings than smaller-scale work and how beautiful that scope is when everything comes together.”
  • Give Me Carmelita Tropicana! by Alina Troyano and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, directed by Eric Ting; Soho Rep, New York – Of any non-Columbus venue, I’ve seen the most change-my-head-around work at SoHo Rep’s tiny Off-Broadway space on Walker Street. Beyond what I’ve personally seen and been blown away by there, it’s also been a huge source of the work that made Available Light the theater company that reinvigorated my love of theater in Columbus. So when a New York trip coincided with not only the final production before they search for a new home but also a collaboration between Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and downtown performance art legend – and Jacobs-Jenkins’ former professor – who I’d never gotten to see live, Alina Troyano – made this a no-brainer. With rapid-fire wit, Troyano (as herself and longtime alter ego Camerlita Tropicana) and Jacobs-Jenkins (played brilliantly by Ugo Chukwu) pay loving tribute to experimental theater, a shifting and sometimes hard-to-find “downtown” sensibility, the various characters in Troyano’s Tropicana-verse, and the sense of possibility that hits differently being in a room full of strangers and loved ones seeing it live. There was an almost karmic sense of a circle closing in this being the final play I saw of the year being a perfect summation of what I’m hoping for any time the house lights go down. May this set the tone for another year of wonder and possibility.
Curtain Call for Give Me Carmelita Tropicana! at SoHo Rep, November 2024
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Best Of dance theatre

Best of 2019: Theatre/Dance/Opera

“Setting my palms into the mud
at the base of a gnarled vine,
I pressed them together
and whispered “speak.”
But the vine’s silence just grew
into the silence of the dead
who once tended it.

Then I saw exactly how
it was beautiful—
how it held its world whole
beneath its fog-slick bark,
while the things we ask
to hold us leave us
spent.”
-From “Where the Zinfandel Pass Their Seasons in Mute Rows” by Jane Mead

The pleasure of being in a room with performers, sitting with someone else’s voice, the feedback loop between audience and the stage, all resonated more strongly and felt more vital than ever this year. I saw a little less theatre – only one New York trip instead of the usual two and the Italian trip coincided with the opera houses being dark – about 55 performances between three cities – but still had a hard time carving out these fifteen performances.

Each one of these showed me something I didn’t know before, sent me spinning out into the night, made me desperate to talk to someone about them, and usually made me pound my fist into the heavy desk at the impossibility of coming close to doing it justice the next morning. These are in chronological order, instead of ranking, and are in Columbus unless otherwise specified. All art was provided by the companies for promotional use, either sent to me directly or on their site.

Available Light’s Appropriate

Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, directed by David Glover (Available Light) – Available Light crushed this year by bringing the best writing for the American stage to Columbus and executing on it with jaw-dropping alacrity. The two David Glover-directed plays were standouts and Appropriate started my year of theatre-going with the thunderclap of a warning-shot pistol. I called it “An acidic, invigorating evening that will make you laugh, make you hate yourself for laughing, make you hate yourself for giving someone the benefit of the doubt, but acknowledge the horrible, beautiful nature of being human.” Standout performances – in a cast full of winners – included Kim Garrison Hopcraft’s righteous fireball of desperation, Philip Hickman and Beth Josephsen’s metal-grinder of a struggling marriage, and Jordan Fehr’s devastating look at the difficulty of atonement. My review for Columbus Underground.

Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) and James Lapine (book), directed by Brandon Boring (Imagine) – It’s rare for a production of a play I love as much as Into the Woods to shock me back into myself. Director Brandon Boring’s risky choices to go off-mic – with all credit to the strong, sympathetic singing of the cast and the nuanced work of musical director Jonathan Collura and his chamber orchestra – and work up an immersive set in a tiny room known for sound problems paid off big in this jaw-dropping, real, funny take. As I said for Columbus Underground, it “took me back to the same place of childlike delight as my first encounter. I found tears coming to my eyes at exactly the places they should have been.”

The Flood by Korine Fujiwara (score) and Stephen Wadsworth (libretto), directed by Stephen Wadsworth (Opera Columbus and ProMusica Chamber Orchestra) – The Flood pointed to a rich, challenging future for two of our best institutions. An original work grappling with a painful chunk of Columbus history, the Franklinton flood, moved me in more senses than just my coming from a family who settled in The Bottoms and ended up on the Hilltop. Fujiwara’s sparkling, layered, complicated score was executed brilliantly with astonishing performances from Lacey Jo Benter, Meröe Khalia Adeeb, and Daniel Stein, among others. I reviewed this for Columbus Underground.

Netta Yerushalmy’s Paramodernities

Paramodernities by Netta Yerushalmy with texts by Thomas F. DeFrantz, Julia Foulkes, Georgina Kleege, David Kishik, Carol Ockman, Mara Mills, Claudia La Rocco (presented by the Wexner Center) – It’s rare I see something that makes me say “I’ve never seen anything like that before.” It’s even rarer I’m in the theatre for over four hours still hungry for more when the lights come up. Yerushalmy’s wild grappling with the history of modernism, scoring dances to lectures set my brain and every part of my body on fire. I walked out wanting to grab everyone I knew by the shoulders and shake, “Why weren’t you there? You missed something special.”

The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe, directed by Elizabeth Wellman (OSU Department of Theatre) – I was bummed to miss DeLappe’s play twice at Lincoln Center (once sold out by the time I got word, the revival opened the day I was flying home) so I was overjoyed OSU took it on this season and it did not disappoint. Elizabeth Wellman’s bone-deep understanding of patterns, their necessity for us to grow up but also their ability to weigh us down, sparkles here, with ferocious performances from Vayda Good and Mehek Sheikh anchoring a top-notch cast. I reviewed this for Columbus Underground.

Red Herring’s Waiting to be Invited

Waiting to Be Invited by S. M. Shepard-Massatt, directed by Patricia Winbush-Wallace (Red Herring Productions) – Red Herring’s ambitious play-a-month schedule this year yielded far more hits than misses. One of my favorites was Shepard-Massatt’s look at the early civil rights movement, directed brilliantly by Patricia Winbush-Wallace, with a stellar, perfectly balanced cast of Winbush-Wallace, Julie Whitney Scott, Demia Kandi, Harold Yarborough, and Josie Merkle. I reviewed it for Columbus Underground.

King Lear by William Shakespeare, directed by Sam Gold (Cort Theatre, NYC) – My favorite Shakespeare in an uneven – the reports were not wrong – at times gaudy and overwrought version, still had pleasures enough to make this list. Foremost among them, Glenda Jackson – I feel like I’ve seen the defining Lear of my generation, terrifying, imperious, wounded; I can count on one hand the performances I’ve seen on a stage that matched hers. Similarly, casting Russell Harvard, a deaf actor, as Cornwall paid off massively especially in the moments before the assault on the Earl of Gloucester (a brilliant James Houdyshell) with a frenzied argument between Corwnwall and his aide/interpreter, Michael Arden, in sign language.

Hillary and Clinton by Lucas Hnath, directed by Joe Mantello (John Golden Theatre, NYC) – A slice of life/secret history about the back rooms of the primaries for the 2008 election. Hnath’s uncanny ability to understand the rhythms of the way we speak to each other in different rooms and with different intentions sang through the amazing performances of Laurie Metcalf, John Lithgow, Peter Francis James, and Zak Orth.

Evolution’s The View Upstairs

The View Upstairs by Max Vernon, directed by Beth Kattelman (Evolution Theatre Company) – My favorite thing in a particularly strong season from Evolution this year. An original musical about the moments before the Upstairs Lounge arson, amplifying that tragedy by being about what brings people together for solace, especially people who are denied it elsewhere. Incredibly moving, warmly directed by Beth Kattelman and with a stellar leading role by Jonathan Collura who I did not know was a late addition until a friend told me that at a party weeks later. I reviewed it for Columbus Underground.

Fine Not Fine written and directed by Andy Batt (MadLab) – Andy Batt’s return to his former home as artistic director delighted me as it brought me to tears. I said at the time it “grapples with the most basic question of humanity: why do we keep living? What makes us want to keep living? It finds a magical strength in the lack of easy answers and in the absence of a magic bullet; in the very difficulty of the road ahead of us all. And it reminds us we don’t have to be alone in that struggle.” I reviewed it for Columbus Underground.

Available Light’s Dance Nation

Dance Nation by Clare Barron, directed by Whitney Thomas Eads (Available Light) – With every play Clare Barron stakes her claim on the title of best American playwright. This look at a teenage dance team boasted crackling direction and choreography from Whitney Thomas Eads and fantastic performances all around. I said at the time, “I’ve seen nothing that felt as much like adolescence – raging, wildfire emotions; the fracturing of friendships that used to feel like home; not everyone is special at the thing you most want to be seen for – as Dance Nation.” I reviewed it for Columbus Underground.

Between Riverside and Crazy by Stephen Adly Guirgis, directed by Ekundayo Bandele (Hattiloo Theatre, Memphis) – I’ve long admired Hattiloo Theatre’s mission. While plays have never been the primary factor in getting me to Memphis regularly, I’ve always been impressed they seem to sell out by the time I start planning. I finally rectified that error with a fiery, intense production of this rich Guirgis drama.

The Humans by Stephen Karam, directed by McKenzie Swinehart – Red Herring ended their run at the Franklinton Playhouse with this nigh-perfect take on Karam’s Tony-winning family drama. Orbiting around the devastating father-daughter dynamic of Christopher Moore Griffin and Becca Kravitz, I said at the time, “Swinehart treats what could be heavy, ponderous material with a light touch, letting her characters breathe and taking full advantage of Edith D. Wadkins’ jaw-dropping set. Love for these characters, even at their most broken, animates this The Humans, searing it into the audience’s brain.” I reviewed it for Columbus Underground.

Short North Stage’s West Side Story

West Side Story by Arthur Laurents (book), Leonard Bernstein (music), and Stephen Sondheim (lryics), directed by Edward Carignan (Short North Stage) – Carignan took this American classic and stripped it down to its raw emotion and primal darkness in this brilliant collaboration with Columbus Children’s Theatre. A shocking, wild take that preserved everything I love about this show I know so well and made me see it anew.

7 by Radouan Mriziga (presented by the Wexner Center) – Mriziga’s take on the Mershon Auditorium brought overload from every corner with voices and symbols, history being rebuilt and seen from various angles. I’d also like to take this moment to shout out the Wex’s recent commitment to accessibility, I saw people enjoying this who would have felt uncomfortable or made to specifically ask for basic accommodation at these kind of immersive performances in the past. It was fantastic to see the beginnings of that change.