The Weekend Special

Pieces are given up to three Knapps (for fiction), Downeys (for essays), or Fords (for random picks). As with restaurant stars, even one Knapp, Downey, or Ford indicates a generally positive review.

🥐 Fiction

“Understanding the Science” by Camille Bordas. One Knapp. bakery, balcony, bad. Bordas does excellent work quickly sketching the personages at this slightly dull dinner party, and their conversation is spot-on; neither so boring it loses you nor so riveting you can’t understand why Maria is a bit enervated. It’s both textually and metatextually amusing. Maria and Adrian’s scene on the balcony is less successful; their conversation might feel dynamic in the moment, but on the page it’s stiff; there is not even the chemistry of two strangers quickly getting to know one another. The ending is memorably strange, floating into Adrian’s point of view with resolute irresolution, though the Hollywood satire is so deliriously over-the-top it slides everything else off-kilter. Is that purposeful – a late shift in the center of gravity, flinging people into chaos? Could be. No clue what to make of the title. Bordas says make of this what you will; I suppose I appreciate the freedom.

🥐 Weekend Essay

No weekend essay this week, but I’m not gonna include an extra random pick because the Something Extra list of my favorite plays of the year has also been an undertaking.

🥐 Random Pick

Okay, to be honest, I spun George W.S. Trow’s Within the Context of No-Context, a very famous, extremely long, rather delirious piece that filled the entire features section of an issue of the magazine in 1980. Reader… I need more time with it. But I spun again and got something very fun, and fitting!

“The Anniversary of a Great Magazine” by Corey Ford. Three Fords, naturally! A followup to the legendary series of faux-making-ofs in the very early magazine, this was published in the very first anniversary issue as if the magazine had been running for fifty years. Look how far we’ve come! Ford’s quips are Groucho-esque. (“[Grant’s] tomb was demolished the following year, owing to the discovery that Grant hadn’t died yet.. This, of course, was before the subway had been heard of; and even if it had it wouldn’t have been believed.”) There’s a snappy riff on prohibition, and one on the city’s traffic problem. It makes sense that a hundredth anniversary would be more self-serious than a first, but the sense of humor of the early magazine remains remarkably fresh.

🥐 Something Extra

I saw one hundred and twelve pieces of theater last year. Here are my twenty-five favorites and my twelve least favorites! Counting down…

FLOPS:

12. Macbeth in Stride (BAM) – My highs and lows are weirdly full of, one, Shakespeare, and two, opera. I suppose that’s because they’re both potent lineages that curdle quickly when treated stupidly. (Speaking of which, I saw Hamnet yesterday and it is my least favorite film of the decade! More details on that to come, maybe.)

11. Kowalski (The Duke at 42nd) – They’re trying to bring this to Broadway?! This is not going to make it to Broadway, and if it does it will close within the hour.

10. King Lear (The Shed) – Lifeless, dreary. I had to pee and there was no intermission for over two hours.

9. [[Not naming a deeply unpleasant one-person show that was part of Under the Radar. Here for experiments, even when they super fail.]]

8. [[Not naming a scrappy group thing with a woo-woo script that made the audience stand up and move like three times for no apparent reason. Stop that.]]

7. Sunset Blvd (Broadway: St. James) – A cynical remounting of idiotic slop.

6. Lacrima (BAM) – Both didactic and stupid, both melodramatic and weirdly plotless and low-energy, both obviously expensive and cheap-looking, pathetic in both senses. I had to pee and there was no intermission for two and a half hours.

5. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Met Opera) – The worst time I had at any show this year. You really have to strain to make hideous apolitical pap out of such good source material, but they did it!

4. Playing Shylock (TFANA) – Despicable! What is this reactionary tripe doing at TFANA?!

3. Grounded (Met Opera) - Someone really needs to do this opera but campy and in drag. It would be a masterpiece. A head-clutching, jaw-dropping, “who approved this?!” bomb; a parade of terrible ideas; the best worst show of the year.

2. Infamous Offspring (Skirball) - Tried everything, succeeded at nothing. The closest I’ve ever come to yelling “Stop it!” at the stage.

1. Redwood (Broadway: Nederlander) - As bad as it looks, somehow far worse! Can’t decide whether it wants to be insane or mediocre, thus landing in some bizarro hideous amalgamated superposition, like Jeff Goldblum at the end of The Fly. Idina was pitchy!

SMASHES:

25. Deep Blue Sound (The Public via Clubbed Thumb) - A solid thinker.

24. we come to collect: a flirtation, with capitalism (The Flea) - Hugely charming, witty, well-paced.

23. By Heart (L’alliance Francaise) - When is a one-person show not a one-person show? When there are ten chairs onstage and I’m sitting in one of them…

22. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA (The Public) - Allegedly clowning, really more like a magic show where there are no illusions needed. The only show this year where I accidentally gave away my boyfriend’s sock to be burned at 2AM on a future date.

21. Bowl EP (Vineyard) - A delicious queer Black emo ollie; a vivacious mess; a stunner. Extremely different from the year’s other amazing Nazareth Hassan show!

20. Caroline (MCC) - A note-perfect three-hander; one of two David Cromer-directed shows this year that show you can get a lot of juice out of solidly executing pre-existing theatrical forms.

19. Meet the Cartozians (Second Stage) - And here’s the other, an Armenian riff on the Clybourne Park race-relations-in-two-time-periods setup. The first act is a dynamite little drama on its own. My guess so far for this year’s Pulitzer winner.

18. Grangeville (Signature) - A smash of a character study; just keeps gathering momentum.

17. My First Vagina (Brick Aux) - So happy I stumbled on the brief run of this hilarious stripped-down chunk of metatheater, which seriously deserves more eyes.

16. Jewish Plot (Theatre 154 via OOTB) - The season’s gutsiest show, a riotous farce whose bottom falls out into something far more interrogative and strange.

15. Wine in the Wilderness (Classic Stage Company) - Thank goodness for the continued rediscovery of Alice Childress, the apex of which was this vicious, timely take on urban Black class relations, with two perfectly pitched lead performances.

14. La Sonnambula (Met Opera) - A Bauhaus-y, chorus-forward take on this baffling classic that somehow made it make total sense; the rare revisionist-ending twist that I totally bought; dynamite performances.

13. I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan (Atlantic) - The year’s best title, which the show, a gentle satire of thirtysomething theater people, totally paid off; I love a show where the script is both everything and nothing.

12. La Fille du Regiment (Met Opera) - A side-splitting rendition of this weirdo operetta, full of delirious directorial touches and deliberately deflated bombast.

11. Blue Cowboy (Bushwick Starr) - A deeply felt, deeply engaging monologue; a poetics of the everyday.

10. Real Women Have Curves (Broadway: James Earl Jones) - There is not much sadder than a musical that only flops because it hasn’t been marketed well. This sensational, politically pertinent, heartfelt but never sappy bildungsroman of ‘90s LA was saddled with a groaner of a title and uninspiring promo art. Such a shame, since the show itself was nearly note-perfect.

9. Operation Mincemeat (Broadway: Golden Theatre) – Meanwhile, it’s a thrill to see this semi-scrappy, exceedingly British farce roll on and on. Dynamic and winning, with a point of view that’s cockeyed enough as to not risk pap.

8. Nina (Theaterlab) - The year’s tightest ensemble played the five women in a conservatory dressing room in this tart drama of personalities. Just as each turn threatened to become a too-early climax, the next would arrive to twist and deepen all we’d seen before. Give this a longer run!

7. Fidelio (Met Opera) - Among the strongest pure displays of vocal prowess across a cast I’ve ever witnessed, which would be plenty on its own – but a very clever staging, emphasizing the more communal aspects of the score, builds to a gorgeous and seriously moving last half hour.

6. A Wonderful World (Broadway: Studio 54) - I will continue to blast my adoration of this short-lived, unloved show, which presented some of history’s most glorious songs in full voice, and linked them together with a script that was neither overbearing nor weightless; the four-wives setup, retrograde on paper perhaps, was rescued by four smashing performances that embodied figures far deeper than any cliché; and at the center was a phenomenal James Iglehart, embodying the man entirely. The year’s best musical and the platonic ideal of a jukebox bio-show.

5. Practice (Playwrights’ Horizons) - Hassan’s equally ambitious but far more polished followup to Bowl, a tripartite (if you count the year’s best intermission, and you should), transformative triumph, a show that rung in my ears for days. One for the discussion group. Still up for a few more days!

4. Can I Be Frank? (SoHo Playhouse) - The year’s best solo show was the rare slab of comedy-theater that’s both theatrical and keel-over funny. (Arguably, given Bassichis’ sideline in video art, it’s a performance installation, too.) It’s also a grand put-on of the form, undercutting its own aims to delirious effect. I badly want to see Bassichis as Mary Todd Lincoln; I would also watch Cole Escola do this – which might be the only way to make it even more bizarro-metatheatrical.

3. Henry IV (TFANA) - A firing-on-all-cylinders staging of my favorite play (and its sequel, smashed together then edited down). A cast composed entirely of ringers, on a postage-stamp square stage and, more often, all around you – in ways that emphasized the many joys of immersiveness and minimized the usual discomfort and awkwardness. Four hours of pure bliss.

2. Prince Faggot (Playwrights’ Horizons; up for three more days right now at Studio Seaview) – The year’s two best shows share a director, Shayok Misha Chowdhury – also behind last year’s smash Public Obscenities and this year’s fascinating Gospel at Colonus. A lot of triumphs in a short span, and this discursive, multifaceted romance deserves its every second in the zeitgeist. Queerness is multiple, political, unending. I sobbed!

1. Rheology (Bushwick Starr) – Opens as a lecture on sand delivered by the director’s mother, then, very slowly, opens up. But if you’re expecting a loosely biographical piece on lineage and longing, you’ll find something much deeper, darker, stranger, more fun, more eclectic, more electric, more poetic, more prophetic. I am absolutely thrilled that the show will be playing Playwrights’ in April 2026. If you missed it, go. Metaphor has never been more human.

Sunday Song:

(from the Pitchfork year-end songs list)