In Southern California, the post-pandemic malaise finally started to lift. And the theater, quite unexpectedly, turned out to be 2024’s silver lining.
The Mark Taper Forum reopened for business in the fall with a pedal-to-the-metal revival of “American Idiot,” a collaboration with Deaf West Theatre that marked Center Theatre Group artistic director Snehal Desai’s directing debut at his new home. The Tarell Alvin McCraney era began in earnest with a seismic production of “The Brothers Size,” the play that introduced the theater public to his unflinching, lyrical truth-telling.
The most memorable productions may have involved classics of one kind or another, but these works were reborn in stagings that refused to play it safe. The just-wrapped “Pacific Overtures” and “Waiting for Godot” (running through Dec. 21) reclaimed their timelessness while the Old Globe’s “Henry 6” created what seemed like a Shakespeare history play hot off the press.
Of the new and newish plays I saw in the region, James Ijames’ “Fat Ham” and Eboni Booth’s “Primary Trust” proved their award-winning mettle to Southern California audiences. Stephen Sachs’ “Fatherland,” a verbatim drama about a Jan. 6 insurrection case that has the momentous family stakes of a Greek tragedy, had its electrifying world premiere at the Fountain Theatre before heading to New York with its all-too-prescient political warning in this tumultuous election year.
Speaking of New York, the best plays I saw on Broadway were inseparable from their stupendous productions. Paul Vogel’s “Mother Play,” starring a luminous Jessica Lange and ballasted by the excellent supporting performances of Celia Keenan-Bolger and Jim Parsons at the Helen Hayes Theater, brought breadth and depth to a personal family drama enlivened by Tina Landau’s adventurous direction.
Brash British playwright Jez Butterworth’s “The Hills of California,” a Chekhovian drama with a modern edge about the vigil variously embittered sisters are holding for their dying mother, who unsuccessfully groomed them for showbiz glory. It unfolds with novelistic scope in a production (running at the Broadhurst Theatre through Dec. 22) made theatrically propulsive by a dream ensemble, headed by a blazing Laura Donnelly and impeccably directed by Sam Mendes.
As for star power, it would be hard to compete with Nicole Scherzinger’s nuclear radiance in Jamie Lloyd’s current hit Broadway revival of “Sunset Blvd.” at the St. James Theatre or the heaven-made comic pairing of Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone, who are ending their run on Dec. 15, in Jen Silverman’s “The Roommate” at the Booth Theatre. But my most rapturous experience of the year came from director Maria Friedman‘s Tony-winning revival of “Merrily We Roll Along.” The production, which made a believer of me in the greatness of this tricky Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical when I saw the revival off-Broadway, had me once again basking in Jonathan Groff’s astonishing lead performance as Franklin Shepard, the hypotenuse of a friendship triangle perfectly balanced by Daniel Radcliffe’s Charley Kringas and Lindsay Mendez’s Mary Flynn.
Kenny Leon’s still-running Broadway revival of “Our Town,” an inclusive 21st century American reboot of Thornton Wilder’s classic, was the most healing drama I saw all year. Balm for our divided national soul, the production at the Ethel Barrymore served as a reminder of the theater’s unique potential to knit us back into a collective, even if only for a couple of hours.
Lists inevitably leave off the worthy, even a top 10 list that cheats with 11 items. Echo Theater Company may not have made the cut this year, but it showed why it’s the most vital center for offbeat drama in Los Angeles. Abigail Deser‘s hypnotic production of Abby Rosebrock‘s compellingly strange “Dido of Idaho” and artistic director Chris Fields’ acutely sensitive production of Samuel D. Hunter’s “Clarkston” made me wish that other local theaters had Fields’ acumen for defiantly weird playwriting.
And while I may have taken a dissenting view on Tom Jacobson’s “Crevasse,” finding the two-hander about Leni Riefenstahl’s meeting with Walt Disney to be somewhat confusingly structured, I have nothing but praise for director Matthew McCray, his design team and the production’s superlative cast, Leo Marks and Ann Noble.
Finally, two irreplaceable artistic leaders bade farewell to their longtime posts at companies they co-founded: Sachs at the Fountain Theatre and John Perrin Flynn at Rogue Machine Theatre. For their extraordinary theatrical service, I give my most heartfelt thanks.
Here, in alphabetical order, are my SoCal theatrical highlights.
“The Birthday Party: A Theatrical Catastrophe,” Henry Murray Stage at the Matrix Theatre. Nick Ullett spilled the tea on the Harold Pinter revival at the Geffen Playhouse that never got out of rehearsal in this rewarding Rogue Machine Theater offering that presented a raconteur master class of backstage lunacy, involving director William Friedkin and actor Steven Berkoff and a dream cast caught in the crossfire.
“The Brothers Size,” Geffen Playhouse’s Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater. The intimacy of the Geffen Playhouse’s second stage helped crystallize Tarell Alvin McCraney’s “The Brothers Size,” part of the playwright’s acclaimed “Brother/Sister” trilogy set in the Louisiana bayou and incorporating West African mythology. Directed by Bijan Sheibani, the production was set ablaze by the percussive accompaniment of musician Stan Mathabane and the in-sync rhythms of the three-person cast: Sheaun McKinney, Alani iLongwe and Malcolm Mays.
“Company,” Hollywood Pantages Theatre. The touring production of Marianne Elliott’s touted gender-swapped revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s “Company” may not have had Patti LuPone, who sang the vodka stinger heart out of “The Ladies Who Lunch” in her Tony-winning performance as Joanne. But there was more than enough intoxicating firepower in the resplendent performance of Britney Coleman, who played Bobbie (Bobby in the original), the commitment-phobe protagonist wondering if it’s time to get married. Updated for a new era, the show succeeded on its glorious score that Coleman made speak in sometimes unexpected but always thrilling ways.
“Fat Ham,” Geffen Playhouse’s Gil Cates Theater. James Ijames’ Pulitzer Prize-winning riff on ”Hamlet,” relocated to a backyard barbecue in the South, was as raucously entertaining as it was philosophically reflective. A well-tuned ensemble found the comic joy and slathered it around like scrumptious barbecue sauce as questions about fate, family duty and moral choice were hotly debated.
“Fatherland,” Fountain Theatre. Conceived and directed by Stephen Sachs, this documentary drama about a family divided by the Jan. 6 insurrection had its world premiere in Los Angeles before opening in New York to further acclaim. The production, executed to perfection, starred Ron Bottitta and Patrick Keleher as the radicalized father and his conscience-stricken son in a tense dramatic standoff that told a story about America we’re still convulsively living through.
“Funny Girl,” Ahmanson Theatre. The shadow of Barbra Streisand’s immortal performance is not easy to overcome, but Katerina McCrimmon put her own spin on Fanny Brice, the subject of this 1964 crowd-pleasing musical. While delivering with éclat the jewels of Jule Styne and Bob Merrill‘s score (“I’m the Greatest Star,” “People” and “Don’t Rain on My Parade”), McCrimmon portrayed the vaudeville star with piercing authenticity in the national tour production that brought Broadway’s golden age momentarily back to life.
“Henry 6,” San Diego’s Old Globe’s Lowell Davies Festival Theatre. With this sensationally entertaining production of Shakespeare’s early and seldom-revived three-part history play, the Old Globe reached a producing milestone, completing the Shakespeare canon. Artistic director Barry Edelstein prepared the accessible and highly gripping two-part adaptation and directed the production with a combination of textual care, theatrical boldness and inspiring public-mindedness that invited San Diegans into the collaborative process. This is what Shakespeare for the people really looks like.
“Kimberly Akimbo,” Hollywood Pantages Theatre. Carolee Carmello was heartbreakingly magnificent in David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori’s Tony-winning musical spun from Lindsay-Abaire’s quirky 2000 play, about a New Jersey teenager with a genetic disorder that’s turning her into an old woman in high school. Carmello’s unsentimental performance found the humor as well as the stoic resilience of a character determined to live life to the fullest while she still can.
“Pacific Overtures,” David Henry Hwang Theater in the Union Center of the Arts. Under Tim Dang’s intrepid direction, East West Players’ revival of Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s mind-blowingly ambitious 1976 musical went off with pyrotechnic brilliance. This production of one of the most difficult works in the Sondheim canon made an abstract musical about the opening up of Japan to Western trade in the 19th century vivid, exuberant and provocatively resonant.
“Primary Trust,” La Jolla Playhouse’s Mandell Weiss Forum Theatre. The most affecting recent play I’ve seen all year, Eboni Booth’s 2024 Pulitzer Prize winner might be the “Our Town” for the 21st century. Knud Adams, who directed the New York premiere, re-created the magic in the La Jolla West Coast premiere, which centered on the exquisite performance of Caleb Eberhardt as Kenneth, a sweet yet troubled man recalling how he turned his lonely life around with the help of friends, real and imaginary.
“Waiting for Godot,” Geffen Playhouse’s Gil Cates Theater. The stark beauty of Samuel Beckett’s absurdist classic, part music hall romp, part abstract painting, was awakened in a production starring two gifted comics who didn’t overplay their slapstick hands, Rainn Wilson and Aasif Mandvi. Judy Hegarty Lovett, from the theater company Gare St Lazare Ireland, directed a cast that included her husband, gifted Beckettian actor Conor Lovett, who played Pozzo, and Adam Stein, who played Lucky. This well-balanced revival emphasized the tender, vulnerable, helplessly dependent humanity of the playwright’s uncompromising and indelible vision.
