YEAR IN REVIEW


   
     
Once’s Cristin Miliotti and Steve Kazee                                                                  Gob Squad’s Kitchen

   
      James Corden (One Man Two Guv’nors);   Untitled Feminist Show; Colin Donnell and Elizabeth Stanley (Merrily We Roll Along)

   

 
                          Beasts of the Southern Wild                                                                                Moonrise Kingdom


What was 2012’s defining cultural moment or phenomenon?
Nothing I saw or read approached the Republican-primary debates. I still can’t get over front-runner Michele Bachmann, and then front-runner Rick Perry, and then front-runner Newt Gingrich, and then front-runner Little Ricky Santorum … These stumblebums, along with that dwarf among dwarves, Mitt Romney, nonetheless haunted my dreams.

--
David Edelstein , New York

TOP THEATER OF 2012

I saw fewer shows this year than I usually do, so this list can’t claim to be any kind of comprehensive overview.

 1. ONCE – my favorite Broadway show of the season lodged in my heart as firmly as recent winners Spring Awakening and Fela!, thanks to the beautiful staging by John Tiffany and Steven Hoggett and a terrific cast headed by Steve Kazee.

 2. UNCLE VANYA – it’s never been my favorite Chekhov play but Sam Gold and Annie Baker’s intimate version at Soho Rep (with the actors sitting among the audience) knocked me out. Among the strong ensemble cast, Maria Dizzia lingers in my memory.

 3. ROMAN TRAGEDIES – the theme of audiences invited to share the stage with actors continued with Ivo van Hove and Toneelgroep Amsterdam’s intellectually ambitious and theatrically inventive back-to-back performances of Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra at BAM’s Next Wave Festival.

 4. HEARTLESS – Sam Shepard gave us an astonishingly free and weird new play. I had mixed feelings about Daniel Aukin’s direction and leading man Gary Cole but the otherwise female cast was pretty incredible (Lois Smith! Jenny Bacon!).

 5. VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE – another beloved playwright gave himself fantastic permission to mash up Chekhov’s plays with contemporary life in Bucks County , providing Kristine Nielsen with another bravura comic turn.

 6. ONE MAN , TWO GUV’NORS – Nicholas Hytner’s lavish, sure-handed staging of The Servant with Two Masters adapted to early ‘60s Britain gave us the delightful lead performance by endearingly understated James Corden.

 7. TURBULENCE – Keith Hennessy and his San Francisco-based Circo Zero brought to New York Live Arts this chaotic and compelling spectacle addressing the economy by exploring failure as a performance.

 8. GOB SQUAD’S KITCHEN – another intricately audience-interactive piece at the Public Theater riffing off of Andy Warhol’s everybody-can-be-a-star philosophy.

 9. LA MAMA CANTATA – Elizabeth Swados’s dense, funny, and moving tribute to the late great Ellen Stewart.

 10.  UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW – inveterate genre-buster Young Jean Lee’s piece at the Kitchen remains memorable and not just for a stage full of skyclad women.

 HONORABLE MENTIONS: Cynthia Nixon in the revival of Wit; Audra McDonald in the otherwise unimpressive Porgy and Bess; James Lapine’s staging of Merrily We Roll Along at City Center with terrific performances by Colin Donnell, Celia Keenan-Bolger, and Elizabeth Stanley; and Denis O’Hare in his own adaptation of An Iliad at New York Theater Workshop.


SOME OTHER CULTURAL HIGHLIGHTS (no special order):

1. Alison Kleyman’s documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
2. Wu Tsang’s documentary Wildness at the Whitney Biennial
3. A good year for documentaries, especially historicizing the AIDS crisis – on the heels of We Were Here, there were Jim Hubbard and Sarah Schulman’s United in Anger and David France’s How to Survive a Plague, two different and strong portraits of ACT UP
4. Louis C.K.’s series Louie has hooked me the way TV rarely does
5. The child actors in Beasts of the Southern Wild and
Moonrise Kingdom
6. Ann Hamilton’s installation The event of a thread at Park Avenue Armory

 

7. All the amazing runners, swimmers, and gymnasts competing at the London Olympics – Gabby Douglas! Michael Phelps! Dani Leyva! Yordan Yovchev!
8. The re-election of President Obama
9. Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner’s Lincoln
10.
Brazil

                       

PLAYLIST (an iTunes-friendly conglomerate of 2012 favorites):

 

“Do It with a Rockstar,” Amanda Palmer (Theatre is Evil)
“Je Suis Rick
Springfield ,” Jonathan Coulton (Artificial Heart)
“I Fink U Freeky,” Die Antwoord (Ten$ion)
“Let’s Have a Kiki,” Scissor Sisters (Magic Hour)
“F*** Yeah (Seamus Haji Remix),” Scissor Sisters
“Shady Love (Seamus Haji Remix),” Scissor Sisters
“Mutual Core,” Bjork (Biophilia)
“Lotus Flower,” Radiohead (The King of Limbs)
“Swing Lo Magellan,” Dirty Projectors (Swing Lo Magellan)
“Elliptical” and “Shirk,” Me’Shell Ndegeocello (The World Has Made Me the Man of my Dreams)
“Living a Lie,” Aimee Mann with James Mercer (Charmer)
“Dues” and “Let the Wind Carry Me,” Justin Vivian Bond (Silver Wells)
“Subete No Hito No Kokoro Ni Hanna O,” Shoukichi Kina with Ry Cooder
“Falling Slowly,” Steve Kazee and Cristin Milotti (Once
OCR )
“Gold (A Cappella),” Once cast (Once
OCR )