Susan Stroman and John Weidman's "dance-play," Contact, Christopher Durang's scathing satire Betty's Summer Vacation and the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman are common sightings among the "best of" theatre lists currently being published by U.S. magazines and newspapers.
Contact, a sold-out hit at Lincoln Center, and soon to transfer to the larger Vivian Beaumont Theatre, was on every critic's top-ten list. Other favored production include the Broadway revivals of The Price, Kiss Me, Kate and The Iceman Cometh. Also receiving multiple mentions were Neil LaBute's trio of brutal one-acts, bash, and David Hare's one-man show, Via Dolorosa.
While most critics specified particular productions as the top theatrical attractions of the year, more than one list featured actress-singer Audra McDonald as an entry -- not Marie Christine, the Broadway musical in which she stars, or "Way Back to Paradise," her debut album, but McDonald herself.
A selection of year-end lists follows:
The New York Times (Ben Brantley):
1. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (a one-night-only reading in New York City, starring Uta Hagen, Jonathan Pryce, Mia Farrow and Matthew Broderick)
2. Susan Stroman and John Weidman's Contact (Off-Broadway) 3. Kiss Me, Kate (Broadway)
4. Not About Nightingales, The Iceman Cometh and Death of a Salesman (all Broadway)
5: Conor McPherson's The Weir (Broadway) and This Lime Tree Bower Off-Broadway's Primary Stages)
6. House/Lights (Off-Off-Broadway's Wooster Group)
7. David Hare's Via Dolorosa (Broadway)
8. Christopher Durang's Betty's Summer Vacation (Off-Broadway's Playwrights Horizons)
9. Audra McDonald USA Today (David Patrick Stearns):
1. Laurie Anderson's Moby Dick (Brooklyn Academy of Music)
2. Audra McDonald
3. Neil LaBute's bash (Off-Broadway)
4. Noel Coward's Sail Away (a concert reading at Carnegie Hall starring Elaine Stritch)
5. Candide (England's Royal National Theatre)
6. Contact (Off-Broadway)
7. Betty's Summer Vacation (Off-Broadway)
8. Cornelius Eady and Dierdre Murray's Running Man (Off-Off Broadway at HERE)
9. Marc Wolf's Another American: Asking and Telling (Off Broadway)
10. The first act of Jonathan Tolins' If Memory Serves (Off Broadway)*
*Stearns listed the second act of If Memory Serves as one of the top-ten worst theatre offerings.
Time:
1. The Iceman Cometh (Broadway)
2. Contact (Off-Broadway)
3. Martin McDonagh's The Lonesome West (Broadway)
4. Annie Get Your Gun/Kiss Me, Kate (Broadway)
5. Rebecca Gilman's Spinning into Butter (Chicago's Goodman Theatre)
6. Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman, The Price, an opera based on A View From the Bridge)
7. bash (Off-Broadway)
8. Patrick Marber's Closer (Broadway)
9. David Marshall Grant's Snakebit (Off-Broadway)
10. August Wilson's Jitney (various regional productions)
New York Newsday (Aileen Jacobson):
1. Death of a Salesman and The Price (Broadway)
2. Contact (Off-Broadway)
3. The Iceman Cometh (Broadway)
4. Via Dolorosa (Broadway)
5. Kiss Me, Kate (Broadway)
6. bash (Off-Broadway)
7. Amadeus (Broadway)
8. Lee Blessing's Chesapeake (Off-Broadway)
9. Closer (Broadway)
10. Cheryl L. West's Jar the Floor (Off-Broadway's Second Stage)
New York Newsday (Linda Winer):
1. The Iceman Cometh (Broadway)
2. Death of a Salesman (Broadway)
3. Babes in Arms (Off-Broadway's Encores!)
4. Contact (Off-Broadway)
5. Jar the Floor (Off-Broadway)
6. Aviva Jane Carlin's Jodie's Body (Off-Broadway)
7. Marcia L. Leslie's The Trial of One Short-Sighted Black Woman vs. Mammy Louise and Safreeta Mae (Off-Broadway)
8. Caryl Churchill's Blue Heart (Brooklyn Academy of Music)
9. It Ain't Nothin' but the Blues (Broadway)
10. Jeffrey Hatcher's The Turn of the Screw (Off-Broadway's Primary Stages.
