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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
)
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