The Best Overall Musical Theater Experience
Merrily We Roll Along
To celebrate ten years of friendship (we met at a MLK weekend NFTY event), Matt and I decided to spend a February weekend in New York going from show to show and generally having a fantastic time. We also realized that Merrily, one of my favorite Sondheim scores (and actually probably my favorite show ever) was being done in an Encores! production in February with Lin-Manuel Miranda (!), so Arielle decided to join as well. It was fantastic to see the show done, since it's rare, and because I had the soundtrack memorized. It's a really challenging show to do well, but has some of the most poignant, heartbreaking songs of all time, and I thought the production handled the backwards-in-time thing pretty well. Afterwards, we went to the stage door and met Lin-Manuel Miranda, who recognized Arielle from their West Wing twitter interactions (amazing!).
The Show with the Best Shock-and-Awe
Carrie the Musical
This was another one of the shows Matt and I saw during our Ten-Year-Friend-aversarry weekend. I was totally NOT into seeing this, but I'm so glad I did -- the whole show was beautiful and shocking and emotionally exhausting -- Marin Mazzie in particular was my favorite as the tortured mother.
The Show That Gave me a new Pre-Shabbos Soundtrack
Godspell
This was the last show Matt and I saw that weekend, and it was SO MUCH FUN. I've always liked parts of Godspell, especially the song All for the Best, but generally felt like the show had such highs and lows that I couldn't get into it. The production we saw with Hunter Parrish did a fantastic job of taking into account all of the ups and downs by making the whole thing into a rock concert. There was lots of clever staging, some really fantastic voices, and the most energy I've ever seen in musical theater form. And -- I recently discovered that the soundtrack makes a really good prepping-for-shabbat soundtrack, so that's a big win for the universe.
The Show that Taught Me Something New
Red
My friend Glee and I went to see Red at Arena stage in the spring. I really knew very little to nothing about Rothko, but had heard such good things about the Molina/Redmayne production that I thought it would be worth seeing, and it certainly was. The show is a pretty intense experience, and beautifully uses the art as a part of the storytelling. I'm still hoping to get to the Phillips Collection to see the Rothko room, which apparently still has the same dimensions and setting as when it was originally set up (the setting of his paintings was a big part of the story of the play).
The Show with the Best Staging
Music Man
In the late spring, Arielle and her friend Barbara and I went to see the Music Man at Arena Stage. It was in the Fichandler, their theater-in-the-square, which is where I saw a smashingly good production of Oklahoma the year before. Marian the librarian was played by Kate Baldwin, who I've had a theater-crush on from afar for a years -- I missed her in Finian's Rainbow on broadway, which was one of my Great Regrets of 2009. Anyway, the show itself was great (I forgot how lovely some of the music is), and
The Show that Made My DC Years a Perfect Full Circle
First You Dream
I saw First You Dream at Signature Theatre in early 2009, right after I moved to DC. It's a fantastic Kander and Ebb revue, and the version I saw originally included Heidi Blickenstaff and the ever-fabulous Norm Lewis. First You Dream was my introduction to Signature Theatre, which was my favorite stage in the DC region, AND introduced me to a whole host of K&E songs that I didn't know before. This version included most of the original cast from Signature Theater, but also Patina Miller (recently of Sister Act: the Musical), who was cute in the show. It also kicked off a summer in which I had another Liza phase, especially the stuff from The Rink and Liza and with a Z (Ring them Bells is potentially my new favorite song of . . . all time).
My First Show in SF!
My Fair Lady
A few weeks after arriving in SF, I went to see My Fair Lady at SF Playhouse with my friend Lynda. It was a very different production in a bunch of ways -- it was a tiny cast (for such a big show), there were only two pianos instead of an orchestra, and the Henry Higgins was young so they made the Higgins-Eliza relationship into a full-fledged love story. I liked the different take, and although it wasn't my favorite way to do My Fair Lady, it was a good show and a great first show in my new city of San Francisco!
The New Sondheim Show (for me) of the Year
Assassins
As some of you know, I was a reluctant convert to the cult of Sondheim. This is, of course, because Matt S. INSISTED that I love all things Sondheim during our epic roadtrips from Boston to PA, and I really like resisting his suggestions until I realize he's totally right. However, ever since he forced me to watch the SF Symphony Orchestra Sweeney Todd, I've been adding one or two shows to my Shows I Love list a year. I was already obsessed with the music of Assassins because of a.) Matt and b.) lots of Sondheim revues, but hadn't had the opportunity to see it until my friend Lynda assistant directed it at Shotgun Players in Ashby.
The Show that Made Me a Over-Think Relationships
Closer
In November, I went with my friend Lynda to see a show that she directed (!), Closer at the Rabbit Hole. It's the play that the movie Closer (with Natalie Portman, etc) was based on, and it's a great story about these four characters and the complicated relationships amongst them. Kind of hard to describe, but the acting was really fantastic and some of the scenes in the play were absolutely heartbreakingly good.
The Show that Made Me Want to Read the Book
My Name is Asher Lev
To be honest, I didn't love this play, which I saw with Mat and Jonathan during my December visit to New York. But afterwards, there was so much discussion of the book it's based on that I'm now excited to read it (I read the Chosen as a kid, but somehow missed My Name is Asher Lev), so the show wasn't a total loss.
The Show that Made my Face Hurt from Smiling
Bring it On the Musical
Mat S. saw this musical this summer and INSISTED that I come to New York and see it with him. I was definitely a skeptic, but one weekend in early December, I came to NY for the weekend, and we made sure to get tickets. It was a cute, funny, smile-y show, and while it didn't challenge assumptions or make me think, it was one of those joyful musical theater experiences where you leave tapping your toes and giggling from the fun of it.
