The best play of the year was Lyric Theatres The Glass Menagerie. Smartly directed by Michael Baron, the production kept a faithfulness to the script that gave theatergoers an idea of how the play must have looked and sounded in 1945.
Dawn Drakes set design and John Fowlers lighting balanced the real and surreal in this memory play, and Baron employed Paul Bowles original score. Feel free to join the legions at Civic Center Music Hall for Lyrics summer seasons of glitzy musicals if you want to, but the company does its best, most provocative work at the Plaza Theatre.
As the years best musical, Reduxion Theatre Companys Cabaret could barely (no pun intended) be contained in the cozy Broadway Theater, made up to look like The Kit Kat Klub, featuring the scantily clad Kit Kat Girls and Boys. The director/choreographer Michael Sipress brought fresh ideas to the staging of this classic musical.
As Sally Bowles, Rachael L. Barry rendered the title song with a bitter irony that bitingly reflected the degeneration and turmoil in Nazi Germany. And thank Thespis (or Sipress) we had another chance to see the excellent Elin Bhaird as Fräulein Schneider. Kaleb M. Bruza was outstanding as the Emcee.
Pollard Theatre Company has loaded its recent seasons with musicals and presented two this year that closely rivaled Cabaret. The company revived its Passing Strange from 2011, and if anything, the show looked better on second viewing.
Avenue Q isnt
a great musical, but youd be hard-pressed find a show thats more fun.
Featuring an outstanding cast of actor-singer-puppeteers, the show was a
hoot on the Pollard stage.
Those
of us whove been waiting to see Hal Kohlman play King Lear finally got
the chance in Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Parks production of the
Bards great tragedy. Kathryn McGill staged the play with a refreshing,
mostly effective efficiency and minimal props.
OSP also presented a fine staged reading of Everyman, that
hit from the Middle Ages, in St. Pauls Episcopal Cathedral. The
company regularly presents minimally staged productions or readings of
Shakespeares lesser-known works or other classical plays. The runs are
usually short but are much appreciated by theatergoers.
Reduxion gets an honorable mention for the years single best line of dialog in Clare Boothe Luces 1936 The Women. Discussing sleeping alone after divorce, a character says, Its marvelous to be able to sprawl out in bed like a swastika.
Some
excellent work was done by our collegiate drama departments, which take
risks the professional and semi-pro theater companies avoid. Oklahoma
City Universitys production of Kurt Weills 1947 opera Street Scene featured fine voices, and the University of Oklahomas On the Town tore up the stage with great dancing. Both productions boasted excellent orchestras.
Notice anything about all of the above? Except for Passing Strange and Avenue Q, both from the first decade of this century, the newest show is from the 1960s (technically, Cabaret was the 1998 revision, but still).
The
ultimate risk for theater companies is producing new shows, and we
dont get much around here. An exception is some of the work done at a
place called The Boom on Northwest 39th Street.
I saw four new plays
there this year, more than all other theater companies and venues in the
city combined: Rebecca McCauley and Rodney Brazils Clipped!, McCauleys droll Penetration: The Game Show, A Tribute to Grease 2 by Brett Young, and Alcoholidays by
Ted Satterfield and Melanie Wilderman. The quality of plays at The Boom
is wildly uneven and the standards to judge them are iffy, but the
productions have a scrappiness that more corporate theater companies
lack. Adventurous theatergoers will want to keep up with whats
happening here.
The
Boom is a nightclub, so a plate of nachos may land next to you just as a
show begins. But thats not so bad people have offered to share.