12.14.09 My Top Ten Broadway Plays of the Decade

1. The Pillowman (2005)

There is no doubt in my mind that this was the best play of the decade.  The creepy and haunting show about interrogation and a murderer copying horrifying killings of children straight out of unpublished short stories still permeates my mind five years later.  The quartet of Broadway performances from Billy Crudup, Jeff Goldblum, Zelijko Ivanek and Michael Stuhlbarg are etched into my mind as much as the stunning visuals of the gruesome brutality of the stories, beautifully recreated on stage to let the imagination fill in the more appalling blanks.  Sure, I’m one for the dark and twisted, but this was as much of a gross out as a thinking man’s work of fiction, calling into question the power of art, the power of suggestion, and the ultimate sacrifice one will make for their art to live on.  If only all nights at the theater could hold this kind of power.

2. Rabbit Hole (2006)

David Lindsay-Abaire’s play was gut wrenching for very different, much more emotional reasons.  It’s all about understanding other people’s pain, attempting to find reason in the horrible things that befall us and others, and ultimately how we cope with what the world keeps serving up to challenge us.  Cynthia Nixon led a stellar cast, including Tyne Daly and John Slattery, with such a nuanced and entrancing performance that this ultimately simple story just washed over me with its power.  A single scene in a child’s bedroom between Nixon and Daly had me absolutely bawling, and while I’m not sure it’s the true test of the power of theater, I can say without a doubt that there was not a dry eye in the house.  Now that’s powerful stuff and we can only hope the movie holds up, although I’m concerned with Nicole Kidman takingt he lead, because her botoxed face might be a touch too nuanced to really capture what Nixon did on stage.

3. The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia (2002)

It is with a great deal of sadness that I have to admit that I did not see this on Broadway and therefore never saw the original cast of Mercedees Ruehl and Bill Pullman, or what I’m sure was the stunning sub in of Sally Field and Bill Irwin.  But I did see the fantastic Chicago mounting of this play and was floored, as always, by the inimitable work of Edward Albee.  I was overwhelmed and spellbound by the hysterics that transpire over the course of this play, taking such an absurd inciting incident and turning it into the perfect metaphor for the destruction of a family unit.  It is hard in the current crop of Broadway mountings to find such insightful and pointed writing that this piece was a blessed relief.

4. August: Osage County (2007)

This feels like an obvious choice after the amazing run it had on Broadway and subsequently in the touring production, but it truly was an astounding three and a half hours of family discord presented in that beautifully constructed set of a house.  This was a perfect marrying of cast and script (thankfully the majority of the original Chicago Steppenwolf cast came along to NYC) with each character so carefully crafted to the original performer.  It’s a wonderful example of the Chicago style of theater, with its troupe dynamic creating that uncanny sense of familiarity and precision in timing to make the stage truly come alive.  And to think that you could sit still for that extended a period of time and never once look at the clock speaks highly to the craft, and even more highly to the fact that there is indeed an audience in this world that is willing to be challenged by a theatrical work without celebrities and in a show that takes its time to develop.

5. The Seafarer (2007)

Conor McPherson beautifully challenges modern notions of hell and the devil with this gripping piece of drama that he wrote and directed on Broadway.  As usual with his work, it’s all about character.  These people are at once real and mythic, floating in this world that is filled with pain but also overwhelmingly lyrical that they could only exist in the world of this Irish poet.  And with such beautiful portraits, you require nothing but the best acting, which is truly what this show delivered thanks to the intricate work of Jim Norton and Ciaran Hines.  But for me it was all about David Morse, so stunningly warm for his gruff exterior, creating the moral center to a play that was filled with surprises and twists but above all else the folly and fault of human interaction.

6. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (2005)

I actually had to travel halfway across the world to see this Broadway show (I missed it in NYC and was lucky enough to be in London to catch the original cast).  And thank god I made it because it would have been a downright shame to miss Bill Irwin and Kathleen Turner tear their way through Albee’s beautifully crafted and upsetting vision of a couple tearing each other apart in front of dinner guests.  Compared with The Goat, this play feels more grounded in its psychology, but the emotions here seem to run even more to the extreme, and thanks to delicate directing from Anthony Page, the play never jumps off the tracks as you watch with painful delight these people all descend to their lowest depths.

7. The Little Dog Laughed (2006)

Douglas Carter Beane might be an acquired taste, and admittedly this play wasn’t smooth sailing throughout, but every once in awhile you have to admit to enjoying something because it was actually fun (and as you can see from numbers one through six, this is decently rare for me).  This play was simply fun, with its absurd Hollywood skewering plot, focused on the difficulty of keeping Hollywood heartthrobs in the closet in hopes of keeping their career alive.  The hilarity of this piece all comes from Julie White as the insane agent trying to keep her client together.  Her spot on skewering of the agent type was laugh out loud hilarious, completely deserving of the Tony award and made this one hell of a night at the theater.

8. Proof (2000)

I sadly think this show has fallen a bit on this list due to the horrible film adaptation that sits more clearly in my mind now than seeing this show on Broadway (give me a break, I was 15 when I saw it!)  David Auburn’s work was something to behold, so simple and elegant and authentic.  The math provided a glorious other world for these characters to inhabit, people who are too smart to really understand themselves let alone human interaction beyond that.  And who better to take on that kind of neuroses than Mary Louise Parker, who simply shines from beginning to end.  It is a shame that they didn’t maintain her for the movie, it was a performance truly worth capturing.

9. The History Boys (2006)

I can only say that I was just so happy to be sitting in the theater and watching something intelligent, erudite, clever, basically not playing to the common denominator of shows that are just trying to fill seats.  It’s a decently lengthy show and it is filled to the brim with bookish references that I’m sure to have missed at least half (whether that’s my own intelligence level or the thick English accents is anyone’s guess) but it was an absolute delight to watch this young cast tear through such heady dialogue like it was natural to them.  And the ultimate fight between teaching styles, that’d be to the test versus for the actual sake of educating the soul, reverberated beautifully both in the theater and in my own upbringing.  I wish the movie had captured a bit more of the energy from the stage, but it was an able adaptation and is always pleasant to see the original cast gracing the screen.

10. The Retreat from Moscow (2003)

I can actually think of at least six other shows that are better than this one (you can find them below this entry) and yet I’m putting this at the bottom of my list for personal reasons.  Sometimes an only decent play can end up changing your view of the world, demonstrating the ultimate personal nature of going to the theater.  On a winter night I bought an impromptu ticket to this show and found myself transformed by the time I stepped back into the cold night.  Watching Ben Chaplin being torn apart by his divorcing parents was as sad as it was therapeutic. This comes from the delicate creation of a couple that weren’t meant for each other, yet lasted three decades and were ultimately too competent and intelligent to separate in an intelligent way.  With John Lithgow and Eileen Atkins taking on those parental roles, the whole piece came together as best as it possible could creating a transforming, if not fully formed night at the theater.

If only there were room for it all:

A Day In the Death of Joe Egg (2003), Take Me Out (2003), Frozen (2004), A Touch of the Poet (2005), The Vertical Hour (2006), Mary Stuart (2009)