5 Glengarry Glen Ross
At the movies, Peter Jackson is showing us Kong on Broadway. But some of
us were lucky enough to see him live. He was performing under the name
Liev Schreiber, and his reinvention of red-meat real estate salesman
Ricky Roma in the blistering revival of David Mamet's Reaganomics
crack-up derby was nothing short of monstrous. (We mean that in a good
way.) Precise as an atomic clock yet unfailingly organic, Schreiber
seemed both massive and risibly small-time, a joke you were scared to
laugh at. Meanwhile, as his pathetic mentor Shelly, Alan Alda just plain
broke our hearts.
6 The Pillowman
Those who traipsed off to John Crowley's chillingly inventive production
of Martin McDonagh's lightning-rod drama expecting the balm of
absolution as the curtain fell had only themselves to blame: The queasy
power of The Pillowman — a glitteringly grim totalitarian fable featuring
Billy Crudup as Katurian, a writer of horrifying stories about murdered
children, accused of enacting those fantasies in life — lies in the
playwright's brutal insistence on pressing bruises in the debate about
the freedoms and responsibilities of being an artist. Kafka himself
wouldn't have had the nerve to invent Katurian's gentle, mentally dim
brother.
7 Jersey Boys
If shows based on the songs and/or lives of the Beach Boys, Elvis, and
John Lennon couldn't cut it, why would one on the admittedly lesser Four
Seasons? Chalk up Boys' left-field accomplishment to an absorbing
backstory (the Mob banished one of them to Vegas?), deft staging (by Des
McAnuff, the man behind Broadway's The Who's Tommy), a spot-on cast, and
one AM-heyday classic after another — from ''Sherry'' to ''December, 1963
(Oh, What a Night)'' — that reminds you they were the Beach Boys, East
Coast division.
8 The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
The songs aren't William Finn's best, nor can the material — an adapted
improv show about middle-school orthographic contests, lampooning the
competitive instincts of the North American yuppie — compare in emotional
maturity to his masterpiece, Falsettos. But what it lacks in substance
(musical and thematic), Bee makes up for in mood, verve, and playful,
meta-theatrical audacity. The characters — coddled, dented, hilarious kid
savants like tic-driven William Barfee (Dan Fogler) and meek Olive
Ostrovsky (Celia Keenan-Bolger) — will take up permanent residence in that
little school gymnasium we all carry around inside.
9 After Ashley
A scathing satire on the Dr. Phil-ization of America and the media's
mining of personal suffering for entertainment, Ashley also featured one
of 2005's best performances. As a teen whose father turns his murdered
(and engagingly bitter) mother into a saintly pop-culture franchise,
Kieran Culkin imbued a cynical and potentially didactic character with
heart and soul. Thanks to Culkin and the fine cast of this Vineyard
Theatre production, Ashley transcended Gina Gionfriddo's sometimes
heavy-handed finger wagging — though given her target, a heavy hand
(particularly when it's this funny) can be forgiven.
