Best of the Year: Theater

My opportunities to see theater this year were a bit more limited than in other years. Still, I'm not disappointed. I had the opportunity to see stirring revivals, like Sunday in the Park with George, Equus and Gypsy, and big, new productions, like Billy Elliot and In the Heights. This was the year I finally got to see Blue Man Group, Laurie Anderson (Homeland) and Groovelily, longstanding gaps in my theatergoing education.

But this was mostly the year that I was reminded of the extraordinary power of theater to change your existance--and it happened not once but twice. There are those extraordinarily rare moments sitting in the theater where the audience becomes so engaged, so riveted, that people collectively forget to breathe. If I have two of those moments in a decade, it makes all the bad theater worth it. To have two such moments in a year is nothing short of thrilling, as both of these plays were. So, the best of the year in theater in 2008 is an unbreakable tie: August: Osage County and Passing Strange.

Traci Letts' drama topped most people's 2007 list and won five Tony Awards. My chance to see it came shortly after many in the Steppenwolf cast departed and Estelle Parsons stepped into the lead role of Violet Weston. Parsons gives an incredible performance, and she's a standout among a cast of incredible performances. But the true accomplishment is Letts beautiful words. Nearly four hours and not a single word is wasted. Every moment is raw and honest. And every person who sees the show leaves somehow different.

I hadn't expected to have a best play and a best musical, but that's how it turns out in 2008. Passing Strange was stunning in so many ways. I've rarely had such an intellectual night at a musical, with discussions of identity and race put to a rocking score. Daniel Breaker as Youth and Stew as, well, Stew were flawed, engaging human beings searching for meaning. The music was fantastic.

Passing Strange operates on a variety of levels. On one level it is the simple story of a boy and him mom. But it is also a profound meditation on the middle class African-American experience. It's an exploration of art and life--and which is, in fact, more real.

But what strikes me as most important about Passing Strange and a significant reason to lament its premature demise is the audience it attracted. This was the most age and racially diverse audience I've ever had the honor to sit in.

Passing Strange had the wonderful misfortune to be so complex and so finely integrated that it couldn't be marketed. Nothing I've seen--the commercials, the appearances on The View or The Tony Awards, the cast recording--did justice to the show. Had I not seen the show, none of these things would have attracted me to it.

Spike Lee's documentation of the final weekend of performances plays at Sundance next month. Will it finally do justice to the show that played the Belasco? I can only hope. But short of that, it will certainly provide a triptych to one of the most thrilling theatrical pieces in my lifetime.