2012-13 Theater Season Wrap-Up

Overall, 2012-13 was a mediocre theater season with a few standout highlights.   On Broadway it was a fairly dismal year for new plays and new musicals (Matilda being the one major exception), but a decent year for revivals.  As has been the case in many recent years, Off Broadway featured the most promising new plays and the best new musical of the year (in the form of Here Lies Love).

As this theater season draws to a close with tomorrow night's Tony Awards ceremony, I cannot help but note that the future prospects for exciting new work on Broadway look rather limited.  However, there is new life in New York's off-Broadway scene in the form of several of the leading theater groups that have opened new or renovated stages that one hopes will develop and stage the best new work in the future.

It was a largely disappointing year for new musicals on Broadway, with one major, and one minor exception.  The major exception was Matilda, which I found to be be smart, moving and uniquely complex for a family-oriented musical.  It is by far the best Broadway musical of the season, and if it loses the Tony Award for Best Musical to the mess that is Kinky Boots, I will lose faith in the ability of the that award to honor quality over unmitigated, nonsensical drek.  The minor exception was the short-lived Hands On A Hardbody, which was a terrific little musical with a fine score whose inability to find an audience on Broadway is one of the most disturbing symptoms of the undiscerning tastes of today's Broadway audience.

As for outstanding new plays on Broadway this season, I cannot name one.  I did enjoy Christopher Durang's Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (which I saw during its off-Broadway run), but it is a good rather than outstanding play.  Can challenging new plays that are not by well established playwrights or starring a well known film star make it on Broadway?  The answer increasing seems to be a very disturbing no.

Happily, its was a good year for revivals.  Pippin and Rogers & Hammerstein's Cinderella were both  wonderful contemporary-feeling updates to near classic musicals.  Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, was a stunningly good and perfectly cast revival that made this 1962 Albee work feel like it was written yesterday.  The casting of African-American actors in the main roles added depth and resonance in the terrific revival of Horton Foote's The Trip To Bountiful, which featured a soul-stirring lead performance by Cicley Tyson.

The hope for the future of American theater largely lies in the thriving off-Broadway and non-profit regional houses across the country, which is where one could find the best new play (The Whale at Playwrights Horizons) and best new musical of the season (Here Lies Love at the Public).  Even more promising is the fact many of the leading off Broadway houses have either new or recently refurbished homes that are vibrant, vital and producing exciting works, not the least of which are Signature Theater (that gave us the perfect revival of August Wilson's The Piano Lesson), Playwrights Horizons, the new LCT3 stage and the beautifully restored Public Theater.  I am optimistic that these off Broadway stages, along with a few others including the country's best regional theaters, will be the incubators for the best and most exciting work as we head into next season and beyond.