Looking back at 2014 in New York theater

First to arrive was Frank Langella’s imperious King Lear at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, in Angus Jackson’s dark-hued production. Langella’s charisma and titanic pride made Lear’s tragic fall all the more cathartic. Next followed Arin Arbus’s gentle production at Theatre for a New Audience, starring the elegant Michael Pennington giving an understated, deeply moving performance. After that came Simon Russell Beale’s rabid, Stalinesque Lear (taped for the HD Live at the National series). Sam Mendes directed his ferocious, fast-paced production on the same grandiose scale as his famed film Skyfall. Finally, John Lithgow — the lithest and liveliest of the Lears — culminated this rare procession of aging, angry kings at the Public’s Shakespeare in the Park, directed by veteran Daniel Sullivan.

Imagine seeing all these wildly varied, virtuosic interpretations in six short months! The cumulative experience was profoundly enlightening.

Daredevil, dazzling direction

We’ll also remember 2014 for its daredevil, dazzling direction. First and foremost came Julie Taymor’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (in January at Theatre for a New Audience). Hers is the most imaginative Dream since Peter Brook’s celebrated production of 1970. Using nothing but an empty stage and a huge white sheet, Taymor waved her magic wand and presto, we were treated to a magical transformation that would have thrilled Shakespeare himself. (The able cast, led by Kathryn Hunter, and a dozen adorable tots as forest fairies, did their share, too.)

Next came Carrie Cracknell’s crackling A Doll’s House at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, imported from London’s Young Vic. Set on a turnstile, the happy Helmer home spun faster and faster out of control, and Hattie Morahan (as a brilliantly neurotic Nora) along with it.

Dutch director Ivo van Hove kicked off the fall season with his shocking Scenes from a Marriage at New York Theatre Workshop, where he broke down the walls and reconfigured the theater into separate playing spaces. Audience members were ushered from room to room, where they were immersed in various phases of an unraveling, devastating relationship.

Across the bridge, in Brooklyn, another love story unfolded — although in a more upbeat fashion. Emma Rice’s endlessly inventive Kneehigh Theatre Company reenacted Tristan & Yseult, the age-old Cornish myth of the two lovers whom Wagner immortalized in his eponymous opera. Rice scored a directorial coup by staging it as a delightful piece of commedia dell’arte, complete with dancers, singers, acrobats, and musicians.

Miraculous accessibility

At the Theatre for a New Audience this fall, director Michael Boyd brought Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine to bloody, bristling life, starring an astonishing John Douglas Thompson as the tyrannical 14th-century Asian conqueror. Boyd, of Royal Shakespeare Company fame, adapted/directed this rarely performed classic, making it accessible to today’s thrill-thirsty audience.

And speaking of miracles, Marianne Elliott staged The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time entirely from the point of view of her protagonist, Christopher, a 15-year-old boy who suffers from autism. Through Christopher’s eyes (supported by Elliott’s brilliant design team), we see the chaos of the urban world projected in dazzling light and movement on the walls of a huge white box that filled the stage.

2014 also boasted a parade of fine new plays. London imports included the above-mentioned Curious Incident, written by Simon Stephens (from Mark Haddon’s novel), and Caryl Churchill’s Love & Information, another play about the cacophony of urban life and our inability to communicate in the advanced age of technology.

New homegrown work

Contemporary American playwrights offered substantial new work as well, featuring James Lapine’s nostalgic Act One, the Kaufman/Hart bio-play at Lincoln Center last spring. Ayad Akthar offered no fewer than three plays this year about Islamic identity. The Who & The What (on women and Islam) played at Lincoln Center this past spring, while the Pulitzer Prize-winning Disgraced is still running on Broadway and The Invisible Hand just opened at New York Theatre Workshop.

At the Public Theatre, Suzan-Lori Parks offers the first three parts of her powerful nine-part epic Father Comes Home from The Wars. This first installment tells the spellbinding tale of the slave Hero, an Odysseus figure, and his return from the Civil War. At the Signature Theatre Center, Katori Hall’s Our Lady of Kibeho recounts the moving story of the three young girls in a Rwandan nunnery who famously shared a vision of the Virgin Mary in 1982.

Meanwhile, Broadway paraded its luminaries up and down the Great White Way, including Denzel Washington (A Raisin In The Sun), Marisa Tomei (The Realistic Joneses), Neil Patrick Harris (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), James Earl Jones (You Can’t Take It with You), Hugh Jackman (The River), and Bradley Cooper (The Elephant Man). The list goes on and on, like the one in It’s Only a Play, Terrence McNally’s shameless showbiz satire currently selling out on Broadway (starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick), where famous names are dropping like flies.

Seeing stars

But to my mind, the stars of the season are the talented newcomer Alex Sharp, fresh out of Juilliard, who plays the role of Christopher in Curious Incident, and the amazing Audra McDonald, who brought Billie Holliday back to life in the heartbreaking Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill.

Speaking of stars, one of the snarky characters in It’s Only a Play remarks: “God punishes people who do plays on Broadway. That’s why they invented regional theater.” That’s why I can’t wait to see Mark Lazar in Arthur and the Tale of the Red Dragon, Pete Pryor’s panto at People’s Light, next week. It’s been the highlight of my many theatergoing years, and I’m sure it will be a delightful culmination to 2014.