My drama column in this morning’s Wall Street Journal consists of a retrospective look at the best shows and performances that I reviewed in 2008. Regular readers of the Journal and this blog will recall the enthusiasm with which I traveled from coast to coast in search of good theater, and it was a pleasure to remember some of the exciting nights that I spent on the aisle–most of them, as it happens, out of town.
Some highlights:
• I chose the amazing Zoe Kazan, who spiced up Broadway with her performances in Come Back, Little Sheba and The Seagull, as the most promising young actor of 2008.
• Itamar Moses, author of Back Back Back and The Four of Us, was my pick for the year’s best young playwright.
• For me, the best Broadway shows of the year just past were an easy call: I went for Gypsy and Dividing the Estate.
• Writers’ Theatre, based in Glencoe, Illinois, was my pick for America’s best drama company in 2008, and its extraordinary revival of William Inge’s Picnic was my favorite show of the year.
Read the whole thing here–there’s much, much more….
Archives for December 26, 2008
TT: Almanac
“I never thought of anything but a long full life with my love, but a heavy foreboding hit me about two years into this planned bliss, when he said firmly that we must never go back to the fishing village where we had spent our first Christmas. And a cruel mixture of disbelief and sadness filled me as I came to understand how thoroughly and firmly he stood by his conviction, that if people know real happiness anywhere, they must never expect to find it there again.”
M.F.K. Fisher, afterword to The Sophisticated Traveler