THE BEST THEATER OF 1996
By CONTRIBUTORS GINIA BELLAFANTE, RICHARD CORLISS, CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY, PAUL GRAY, BELINDA LUSCOMBE, JOSHUA QUITTNER, RICHARD SCHICKEL, MICHAEL WALSH, STEVE WULF, RICHARD ZOGLIN
1 RENT (the musical). Even if author-composer Jonathan Larson had not died just weeks before its off-Broadway opening, Rent would have hit like a thunderclap. A rock update of La Boheme set in the age of AIDS, it brimmed with energy, lyric intelligence and streetwise spirit. If not quite another Hair (more memorable melodies would have helped), Rent brought the old-fashioned musical resoundingly into the '90s. Then it moved to Broadway, won Tonys and...(see below)
2 The Beckett Festival. For Samuel Beckett, life was a painful, poignant marking of time between the crib and the crypt. But no event this year had more artistic vitality than the New York City staging by Dublin's Gate Theatre of 19 Beckett works--from the 40-second Breath to the tour-de-force Happy Days, with the great Rosaleen Linehan buried up to her wit's end in sand and self-delusion.
3 Chicago. Bob Fosse's cynical 1975 musical about crime and celebrity in the pre-O.J. era was rediscovered in a sleek, spare and smashing Broadway revival. Ann Reinking, who stars as 1920s murderer Roxie Hart, choreographed the show in Fosse's slithery style, which is a glorious reminder of a whole lost vocabulary of Broadway dance. And Bebe Neuwirth, a tarty treat as Roxie's jailhouse rival, proves she has mastered the grammar.
4 By Jeeves. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alan Ayckbourn collaborated 20 years ago on this musical about P.G. Wodehouse's unflappable butler, which was a London flop. Now, with a new book and a freshened-up score, it's back at Connecticut's Goodspeed-at-Chester theater in a charming production directed by Ayckbourn. The teacup wit and inventive, less-is-much-more staging would never survive a trip to Broadway, but resident theaters across the country should have a ball with it.
5 Venus. The true story of a 19th century Hottentot woman shipped from Africa to England and displayed as a freak was turned into a chilly but gripping play by Suzan-Lori Parks. The social commentary was kept at arm's length by her neo-Brechtian stylization; director Richard Foreman's deep-space staging (at New York City's Public Theater) made it haunting.
6 A Delicate Balance. A suburban couple are paid a visit by friends who don't want to leave. Edward Albee's play may have seemed elusive back in the 1960s. But reincarnated by a fine cast (George Grizzard, Rosemary Harris), it proves to be one of the author's most poetic and vivid depictions of the dark at the bottom of the stairs.
7 Buried Child. Sam Shepard's work has been overpraised so often that this Broadway revival of his 1978 play about a psychotically dysfunctional family was a startling discovery. In Gary Sinise's high-energy staging, Shepard seems more focused, his sense of black comedy more sure, than ever before or since.
8 Randy Newman's Faust. The Lord (Ken Page) and the devil (David Garrison) face off once again, this time singing Newman's wonderfully tuneful score. In its second stage incarnation, at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, the musical still has book problems (despite help from David Mamet), and could use some Broadway-class choreography, but it's great fun.
9 One Flea Spare. In this year's festival of new plays at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Naomi Wallace's drama of life and lust during the 1665 London plague was the most ambitious, affecting, memorable. Wallace has a luxuriously poetic turn of mind and a gift for locating the heart of people on the brink of epiphany or despair.
10 Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk. The black experience in America as interpreted by the tapping, stomping feet of Savion Glover and company. The sketches--on how hard it is to hail a cab in Manhattan, or be a black dancing star in 1930s Hollywood--are satirically on target, and the dancers perform with demon drive. What a year for musicals!