As it turns out, getting over my perfectionism and posting to Diva Drivel more often was harder than I thought. Between my own hang-ups and the demands my graduate classes made on my time last semester, I found it difficult to write. For the moment, however, I’m back because I realized that I could come up with the time and energy to make a simple list of my favorite theatre from 2021. Perhaps this is something that I could manage on a month-by-month basis in 2022? No promises.

Top 5

5. Kimberly Akimbo. Book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire, music by Jeanine Tesori. Directed by Jessica Stone.

Kimberly Akimbo is a musical about a 17-year-old girl who looks like a 72-year-old-woman; she has a rare disease which accelerates the rate at which she ages. The musical follows Kimberly (Victoria Clark) as she deals with the complications her disease creates in her school life and home life. Kimberly’s elderly appearance underscores how the adults responsible for her well-being—her self-absorbed pregnant mother (Alli Mauzey), alcoholic father (Steven Boyer), and ex-convict aunt (Bonnie Milligan)—are chronologically older, yet less mature than she is. It would be a disservice to the excellence of this piece and its phenomenal cast to say that Bonnie Milligan stole the show, but in the ten weeks since I saw it, she is still the most memorable part to me. Milligan, who made her Broadway debut in Head Over Heels in 2018, has excellent comedic timing and an impressive belt. I was in stitches for nearly every scene she was in; I even made a fool of myself standing for her at the end of one of her numbers as my belongings fell to the floor in front of me, but it was worth it.

Kimberly Akimbo closed on January 15th, but you can probably catch it again since it will likely transfer to Broadway either this season or next. Hopefully next, because this season is already PACKED—thirteen shows are opening on Broadway in April—and I want Bonnie Milligan to take home a Tony. (This year’s award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical is, much to my chagrin, Patti LuPone’s to lose.)

4. Preparedness by Hillary Miller. Directed by Kristjan Thor.

I may be biased in my assessment of Preparedness since the playwright, Hillary Miller, taught the Contextual and Intertextual Studies in Drama class I took last semester, but when Alexandra, a friend from my cohort, and I saw it we were both floored by the production, even though it was the very first night of previews. As theatre professors in the making, the premise appealed to us: faculty members of a college theatre department going through an “active shooter preparedness response training.” The absurdity of the training and the varying degrees of competence of the cast of characters are great fodder for comedy. Reflecting on it now after reading the script (Thanks, Hillary!), though, what grabs me the most is, first, the way theatrical paradigms are woven into the dialogue and, second, how the struggles of this department can be generalized to broader institutional problems in academia, particularly the corporatization of higher education and the legacies of sexism and racism that have plagued colleges and universities since their beginnings. Preparedness shows us how this corporate model limits what theatre students can make—here only inexpensive musical extravaganzas of the 1910s in the public domain—and how faculty interact with each other on an interpersonal level.

One last note: I have seen four plays so far that have included some reference to COVID-19, and this is the only one where the pandemic was relevant, well-integrated, and not showy. (Looking at you Designing Women, Assassins, and Long Day’s Journey into Night.)

3. Dana H. by Lucas Hnath. Adapted from interviews with Dana Higginbotham conducted by Steve Cosson. Directed by Les Waters.

Dana H. was the first piece of documentary theatre I’ve seen, and it was a great introduction to the genre. The entire play is constructed from fragments of an interview with the real-life Dana Higginbotham about being kidnapped held captive for five months. Her son, Lucas Hnath, edited the fragments together and the resulting audio played in the theatre while Deirdre O’Connell mouthed the words. Her performance was uncanny; not only was O’Connell perfectly synchronized with Higginbotham’s speech, but she also replicated other noises from the recording with props, like jangling bracelets or rifling through a purse. The subject matter itself was harrowing and illuminating; Higginbotham’s captor was a neo-Nazi, and her account reveals an often overlooked aspect of racism—its entanglement with misogyny.  

2. David Byrne’s American Utopia. Choreography and musical staging by Annie-B Parson.

For a while, I felt sheepish telling people that my (then) favorite show I’d seen since moving to New York was American Utopia. It’s commercial theatre, which some people in my circle turn up their noses at (unfortunate if your bread and butter is musicals, like me), and some dismissed it as “just” being a concert in a Broadway theatre. That’s not what it felt like. The energy was electrifying. People in the audience were jumping to their feet to dance and clap along even before Byrne invited them to. I was in one of the box seats, so I could look out at the orchestra and the mezzanine and marvel at the way the music flowed through all these people. Between the audience’s engagement and Annie-B Parson’s choreography, which included relatively simple, pedestrian movements that everyone on stage performed—from David Byrne to the dancers to the musicians with instruments strapped to their bodies so they could move around—it did feel like a utopia. Every person in the theatre was an integral part of the experience.

If you can’t make it to New York to see American Utopia, with a subscription to HBO or HBO Max you can stream Spike Lee’s film of the production or rent it on another video on demand platform.

1. Flying Over Sunset. Music by Tom Kitt, lyrics by Michael Korie, book and direction by James Lapine.

I was in the first year of my English MA when I planned to squeeze Flying Over Sunset in over a spring break trip to New York that never happened because of COVID. By the time I finally had the chance to see it, I didn’t need to plan anymore; now living in the city, I simply won day-of lottery tickets to see the show for its second preview. By this point I was thoroughly excited, having been blown away by Carmen Cusack, first as Julia Sugarbaker in Linda Bloodworth-Thomason’s Designing Women play and then at her 54 Below show in late October. I was all in, already pre-disposed to like the show for Carmen Cusack, if nothing else. Reader, I saw it four more times in the remaining two months it was on Broadway.

The show was inspired by a kernel of an idea: What if these three people, Cary Grant (Tony Yazbeck), Aldous Huxley (Harry Hadden-Paton), and Clare Booth Luce (Cusack), who were all similar ages and experimented with LSD at the same time went on an acid trip together? Act 1 shows us each of these characters using LSD individually and Act 2 shows us their collective trip.

So, what brought me back to this show again and again?

Michelle Dorrance’s choreography was haunting. At the beginning of the first and second acts, the action begins with all the play’s characters walking around the huge circular stage of the Vivian Beaumont theater, their steps occasionally punctuated by the sound of their shoes dragging across the floor. (I eventually noticed that this sound effect was achieved through the attachment of microphones to the actors’ shoes.) Finally, the characters rhythmically tap their shoes against the stage in quick succession, staring vacantly out at the audience. Other dance highlights were Cary Grant’s LSD-induced manic British musical hall tap number in the first act, and a power struggle dance between Cary and Sophia Loren in the second.

The projection design was gorgeous. The set was very spare, which could have been a fault given the vastness of the stage, but it didn’t swallow the actors up because of tall moving stage pieces on which images and designs were projected. It’s hard to find the words to explain them because they were so varied and complex, but one of the most interesting projection innovations was a scene in the second act wherein Aldous Huxley does a television interview onstage in front of a scrim onto which footage of the interview is projected. Behind the scrim, Aldous’s wife, Maria (Laura Shoop), and friend, Gerald Heard (Robert Sella), are still visible. It wasn’t until I saw the show the third time that I knew for sure it was a live feed of Hadden-Paton answering the interview questions projected on the scrim, not a pre-recorded clip that Hadden-Paton performed in sync with. At that performance, the scrim wouldn’t come up, so Hadden-Paton entertained the audience while the technical issue was worked out, so I could see all his unscripted movements projected behind him on the scrim.

Then there’s the score. I didn’t love all the lyrics, but the music itself was consistently impressive. My favorite number is the one that starts the show, “The Music Plays On,” a duet between Aldous and Maria in which he starts a lyric, can’t recall the ending, only for Maria to appear and complete it. There are only a few lyrics: “When the stars begin to fade / And the dark gives way to dawn / As the dancers bow farewell for now / The music plays on.” It’s reflective of one of two main sorts of demons the musical explores: grief and the way our childhoods haunt us.

In the passage of time between Aldous’s first scene in Act 1 and the final scene in the act when our three heroes come together, Maria dies; in that opening sequence, which seems to exist outside of time, Maria calls out to Aldous from beyond the grave, and the message she carries is one of connection and continuity. This idea permeates throughout the musical in the characters’ ability to slow down and appreciate the infinitesimal details of the world around them—from the seams on a pair of old trousers to a sapphire dragonfly—and recognize the unity of the universe, whether they attribute it to god or science.

I’m still ruminating on this beautiful work of art, but for now I’ll leave you with these impressions.

Honorable Mentions

Assassins. Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by John Weidman, directed by John Doyle.

I’ll admit that I was lukewarm on this Sondheim musical, but seeing it performed in person made everything about the piece fall into place for me. This show would’ve been near perfect for me, were it not for the grossly obvious engagement with the pandemic and the 1/6 insurrection, via bizarre mask choreography and an image of the insurrectionists projected over the presidential seal on the set.

Judy Kuhn was the best part of the show, and I’ll be seeing her at the Green Room 42 on Valentine’s Day.

Caroline, or Change. Book and lyrics by Tony Kushner, music by Jeanine Tesori. Directed by Michael Longhurst.

This is another piece that I had listened to before but didn’t really get until I saw it. I used Roundabout’s Hiptix program for persons 18-40, so I got seated in the rear mezzanine at Studio 54, which, as it turns out, is basically a torture chamber. I was cramped and I’m only 5′4″. Anybody over 6′ must have had their knees up to their chest. I mention this 1) to warn anyone buying seats for a show at Studio 54 in the future, and 2) because I think it’s possible that if I wasn’t so uncomfortable, that this could’ve been in my top five. Sharon D. Clarke (the eponymous Caroline) was excellent, but I was especially fond of Chip Zien’s performance.

Designing Women by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason. Directed by Harry Thomason. [Streamed]

Was this play good? No. Was Carmen Cusack in it? Yes.

There were funny moments in this overlong play set during the 2020 presidential election, but the humor leaned too much on topicality and fell into some obvious clichés. I binged Designing Women this past summer after Mare of Easttown and Hacks got me on a Jean Smart kick, but it was Julia Sugarbaker I fell in love with, not Smart as Charlene Frazier. Dixie Carter’s performance is so singular, you would think no one else could capture Julia’s spirit, but Carmen Cusack did—no small feat. Unfortunately, the supporting cast was not as strong, except for Carla Renata as Cleo Bouvier—who is surely supposed to be some relative of Anthony Bouvier from the series (What is it with Bloodworth-Thomason and making all the new characters relatives of the old ones?). There are also many, many inconsistencies with the series both in story details and in characterization, which is one of the biggest reasons the play fell short. In this adaptation, Suzanne Sugarbaker was basically irredeemable until the last few minutes of the show, not the impertinent yet loveable beauty queen immortalized by Delta Burke in the original series and Women of the House (a spin-off for which all the episodes are up on YouTube—I binged them all as soon as I found out they were there). Charlene was also conspicuously absent for most of the play—another misstep since her character brings a crucial optimism and goodness that balances out the other characters.

All that said, there’s some there there and I hope Bloodworth-Thomason continues to workshop this play. The most important changes would be to not rely on topicality—which had really expired by the time of the October 2021 production—and getting back to the character and situational driven comedy that made the series so beloved. I don’t want to know why Julia Sugarbaker doesn’t like Donald Trump—that’s obvious, and ground already tread by the show back in the 1990s (though Trump was a different kind of menace then). I do want to know what Julia Sugarbaker thinks about the condition of women and the contemporary feminist movement—issues that Bloodworth-Thomason consistently returned to in the original series.

Can you tell I really love Designing Women?

Diana, The Musical. Book and lyrics by Joe DiPietro, music and lyrics by David Bryan. Directed by Christopher Ashley.

I did not get into Diana as much as some musical theatre lovers, but it was a campy good time. Despite the show’s poor reviews, in its brief run on Broadway, it found a cult following to the point that it was fodder for memes on Twitter and audience members began to chime in during the show by, for example, shouting “Asshole!” when Prince Charles (Roe Hartrampf) was particularly cruel to Diana (Jeanna de Waal). The performances by De Waal, Erin Davie (Camilla Parker Bowles), and Judy Kaye (Queen Elizabeth/Barbara Cartland) were delightful.

Diana closed in December, but it was filmed and released on Netflix before the production began. I have yet to watch the film version, but friends tell me there are differences between this version of the show and the opening night version on Broadway.

The Merry Wives by William Shakespeare. Adapted by Jocelyn Bioh. Directed by Saheem Ali.

This was my first Shakespeare in the Park and even though The Merry Wives is not the strongest of Shakespeare’s plays, I enjoyed the Black queer twist of this production. Just seeing the play—on closing night, no less—outside on one of the last days of summer when it was just starting to get chilly at night and feasting on the visuals at the end, with the stage and the trees behind it bathed in gorgeous orange and purple light, was an unforgettable experience.

Morning Sun by Simon Stephens. Directed by Lila Neugebauer.

This was a pretty good play. I saw it twice—once for the first preview and again after it opened—because, well, Edie Falco was the lead. I've seen musicals multiple times, and they always feel fresh when I go back, but with Morning Sun I felt impatient the second time. I’m not sure if that speaks to a weakness in the play, or that maybe plays aren’t re-watchable the way musicals are for me. Anyway, Edie Falco was marvelous, and I felt honored just to be in the same room as her! I love watching her act. Her facial expressions and the way her body moves mesmerize me.

Trouble in Mind by Alice Childress. Directed by Charles Randolph-Wright.

Interestingly, this was another Roundabout show for which I was overwhelmingly uncomfortable. I was in the rear mezzanine again (or the balcony? Regardless, I was at the very top level). I had leg room this time, but it was sweltering up there for all of the first act, to the point that though it was probably about 20°F, I went outside without my coat just to cool off at intermission. Miraculously, there was cool air circulating during Act 2, which, perhaps not coincidentally, I enjoyed much more than Act 1. I liked the play, but my main takeaway was that LaChanze—who gets to sing in the show—is a STAR. I already knew she was amazing because I saw her in If/Then back in 2014, but it was different seeing her in a starring role. In one scene, she wears a gorgeous purple dress that reminded me of the one Bernadette Peters wore during “Rose’s Turn” for the 2003 Sam Mendes production of Gypsy, and now I desperately want to see LaChanze play Mama Rose.