BEST THEATER OF THE YEAR

THE YEAR IN CULTURE

- Jackson McHenry

1. Into the Woods

What I’ve learned is that I’m a sucker: Cast some of the most talented musical-theater actors you can find, bring in a large orchestra, and let them weave their magic upon me. Lear deBessonet’s production of Into the Woods, first put on at Encores! and then brought to Broadway this summer, treats Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical as basically a concert, which is fine because this is an all-hits-no-skips score. The light-gauge staging reveals the structural strength of the show itself and allowed each of the cast members to present their solos like a jewel to the audience. In its bareness, Into the Woods became about the enchantment of performance, what can be spun by telling a tale simply and well.

2. The Nosebleed

At the start of Aya Ogawa’s play about her relationship with her dead father, you were handed a piece of paper and a pencil, which made some people clench up in fear of audience participation. All the more so when, later on, Ogawa asked you to write down questions for your own father that you would want to ask before his death. But in Ogawa’s nimble play, which features five other actors playing a variety of Ayas and reenactments of scenes from The Bachelorette, those pieces of paper were treated reverently. They’re transformed into something else through a bit of theatrical funerary ritual. Your parents, the point seems to be, are the sum of so many questions you don’t ask. Then Aya’s father participated in some karaoke with Princess Diana. I wept.

3. Oratorio for Living Things