1. Next To Normal (NY/ Broadway) ****
2. Our Town (NY/ Off Broadway) ****
3. Cripple of Inishmaan (NY/ Atlantic Thater) ****
4. Norman Conquests (NY/ Broadway) ****
5. Othello (Seattle/ Theater for New Audience) ****
6. Brother/Sister Plays (NY/Public) ***1/2
7. Ruined (NY/ MTC) ***1/2
8. Farragut North (LA/ Geffen) ***1/2
9. Ragtime (NY/ Broadway)***1/2
10. American Idiot (Berkeley Rep) ***1/2
Honorable Mention: Lydia (Taper/LA); reasons to be pretty (NY/ Broadway); Anita Bryant Died For Your Sins (LA/ WCE); Let Me Down Easy (NY/ Second Stage)
Remarkable Returns to Shows First Viewed In Prior Years: Memphis (NY); Mary Stuart (NY)
Number of shows attended: 87 (up from 83 last year)
Top 10 breakdown: 2 new musicals, 3 new plays, 5 revivals
2009's Top 10 Acting Performances
1. Jude Law (Hamlet)
2. Ayesha Anoine (My Wonderful Day)
3. Angela Lansbury (A LIttle Night Music)
4. Dearbhla Molloy (Cripple of Inishmaan)
5. Wyatt Fenner (Anita Bryant Died For Your Sins)
6. Thomas Sadowski (reasons to be pretty)
7. Chris Pine (Farragut North)
8. Bobby Steggart (Ragtime)
9. James McMenamin (Our Town)
10. Portia (Ruined)
The Worst in Theater:2009
Happiness (Lincoln Center)- which describes what I would have felt if there was an intermission that would have relieved me from my misery watching this disaster
West Side Story (Broadway)- an anemic, boring production of a show that I previously thought was near indestructible
Pain & The Itch (Boston Court)- the title accurately describes what one feel watching this unpleasant work
Parade (Taper)- illustrated what results when you cast a musical with actors who cannot sing, and it was not pretty
Finian's Rainbow (Broadway)- why?
Fela! (Broaway)- see Finian's Rainbow
Equivocation (Geffen)- nothing equivocal about it; this was one bad production
What Michael Ritchie is doing to LA's Center Group Theater (Ahmanson, Taper & Kirk Douglas)- he is slowly destroying the artistic institution that Gordon Davidson built; the dismantling of a real season at the Kirk Douglas is especially sad
