Old Year, New Blog

Top Ten Theater Productions of 2009

Although I started 2009 reviewing theater for one paper and ended the year reviewing for another, when I look over the list of the 108 shows I saw over the course of the year to determine my top ten, I realize that none of my favorite shows are ones that I actually reviewed. Those respective papers have space, money and geographical constraints, and it just happened that there was no overlap between the shows in my review docket and those in this year’s top ten.

On the one hand, that makes me feel that all those busy weeks of seeing three to five shows back to back weren’t wasted, but on the other hand it seems like a shame for all concerned—for me as a critic, for the theater artists involved, and for potential theatergoers that might not have heard about them—that I wasn’t able to properly trumpet the virtues of standout shows while they were still running. That more than anything is a good kick in the pants to get this blog started, as a place to collect my thoughts about all the plays that I’m seeing but not reviewing per se, as well as whatever else I’m watching, reading or thinking about.

Much as I’d like to do a lavish writeup on each, that would only mean that this thing would never get posted, so without further ado (and more or less in order of impact), these were my favorite productions all year.

1. Thom Pain (based on nothing) by Will Eno (dir. Marissa Wolf), the Cutting Ball Theater

Jonathan Bock in Thom Pain (based on nothing). Photo by Bryan Wolf

2. Yellow Face by David Henry Hwang (dir. Robert Kelley), TheatreWorks

Pun Bandhu and Francis Jue in Yellow Face. Photo by Mark Kitaoka

3. American Hwangap by Lloyd Suh (dir. Trip Cullman), Magic Theater

Keone Young and Jon Norman Schneider in American Hwangap. Photo by David Allen

4. The Creature by Trevor Allen (dir. Rob Melrose), Black Box Theatre

James Carpenter in The Creature. Photo by Alessandra Mello

5. T.I.C. Trenchcoat in Common by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb (dir. Ken Prestininzi), Encore Theatre Company

Arwen Anderson and Liam Vincent in T.I.C. Trenchcoat in Common. Photo by Clayton Lord

6. August: Osage County by Tracy Letts (dir. Anna D. Shapiro), SHN

Shannon Cochran and Estelle Parsons in August: Osage County. Photo by Robert J. Saferstein

7. Miss Julie by August Strindberg (dir. Mark Jackson), Aurora Theatre Company

Lauren Grace and Mark Anderson Phillips in Miss Julie. Photo by David Allen

8. Machinal by Sophie Treadwell (dir. Evren Odcikin), Brava! for Women in the Arts

Juliet Tanner, Linda Ayres-Frederick, Randy Rollison, Madeline H.D. Brown & Christopher White in Machinal. Photo by Nathanael Keck

9. Fat Pig by Neil LaBute (dir. Barbara Damashek), Aurora Theatre Company

Jud Williford and Liliane Klein in Fat Pig. Photo by David Allen

10. The Lieutenant of Inishmore by Martin McDonagh (dir. Les Waters), Berkeley Repertory Theatre

Daniel Krueger and Blake Ellis in The Lieutenant of Inishmore. Photo courtesy of mellopix.com

Thom Pain brought new meaning to the term “direct address,” singling out individual audience members with squirmworthy intensity while constantly setting up familiar standup comedy expectations and immediately deflating them. Hwang’s metafictional comedy was a dazzling blend of fact and fiction using his own part in the flap around Miss Saigon casting as a jumping-off point. With a wholly out-of-town creative team unknown to me and a mysterious title, I had no idea what to expect from Suh’s familial Tex-Korean comedy about a long-AWOL dad’s abrupt return, but it proved a delightful surprise, and my favorite world premiere this year. Right up there were Nachtrieb’s hilarious romp about a teen blogger, a probable flasher and suspected murder and Allen’s mesmerizing and remarkably faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, with Frankenstein and his creature telling their own stories in artfully overlapping monologues. James Carpenter not only provided a masterful, haunting performance in the latter’s title role, but he was also priceless as the thickheaded Donny in the gushingly bloody comedy Inishmore, flailing to keep his psychotic terrorist son from finding out about his favorite cat’s death. Estelle Parsons and Shannon Cochran gave knockout turns as the tussling mother and daughter in Letts’ epic dark dramedy of domestic cruelty. Aurora bowled me over twice with problematic plays made magnetic by pitch-perfect stagings and stellar casts, and Odcikin’s stylish and intimate take on the Impressionist classic of marriage as wage slavery Machinal packed a wallop.

Near misses included Berkeley Rep’s Green Day musical American Idiot, in which I loved the set, the music, the electrifying performances and even the appendicitis dance everyone did all the time, but the lack of discernable story made it fall just under the wire. Marin Theatre Company’s My Name Is Asher Lev and TheatreWorks’ The Chosen grappled with faith in a beautiful duet of Chaim Potok adaptations by Aaron Posner. Cutting Ball’s The Bald Soprano did right by a delightful absurdist classic, and Jon Tracy’s Shotgun Players premiere The Farm proved a compelling propulsive musical revamp of Orwell’s Animal Farm.

And there was much, much more where those came from.Not a bad year for Bay Area theater on the whole, and I’m eager to see what the new year brings.I’ll keep you posted.