Carmelita Tropicana.

Don Shewey’s Best of 2024

NYC Theatre, Movies & TV

Written by:
Don Shewey
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Give Me Carmelita Tropicana! Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

Theater Highlights: My two favorite theater events this year both originated at Soho Rep, the adventurous company that recently decided to give up the tiny 65-seat Walkerspace it’s inhabited since 1991. They closed up shop with Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!, a collaboration between Alina Troyano (who established herself in the heady East Village ‘80s with her cartoonish Cuban lesbian character Carmelita Tropicana) and Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins (her former NYU student who’s gone on to become a major award-winning playwright). Tired of her alter ego, Troyano strikes a deal to sell her to BJJ (played by Ugo Chukwu). The results unfold as a hilarious, theatrically inventive phantasmagoria in which, among other crazy events, those two find themselves at a karaoke bar belting out a Spice Girls tune along with Walt Whitman, Maria Irene Fornes, and Sor Juana de la Cruz. Eric Ting directed a spectacular cast (above) including Octavia Chavez-Richmond, Keren Lugo, and Will Dagger (who is practically a one-man show within the show).

Public Obscenities. Photo: Hollis King.

My other favorite was Public Obscenities, Shayok Misha Chowdury’s three-hour bilingual play (English/Bengali) about a queer theory grad student who visits his aunt and uncle in Kolkata with his black photographer boyfriend (Jakeem Dante Powell, above with Gargi Mukherjee). The play captures life in India, class/caste, race, technology, gender, grief, and scholarship in a way that is both hyperrealistic and thrillingly theatrical, while swatting away cliches and stereotypes every step of the way. The evocative physical production with its remarkable performances – directed by the author – was one of several brilliant Soho Rep shows in recent years remounted in Brooklyn by Theater for a New Audience. (Others: Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Fairview and Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon, both staged by Sarah Benson, former artistic director of Soho Rep.)

Best of the rest:

Symphony of Rats. Photo: Spencer Ostrander.

Symphony of Rats – the Wooster Group’s dazzling remake of Richard Foreman’s 1988 play co-directed by Elizabeth LeCompte and Kate Valk with an (almost) all-male cast and new music by Suzzy Roche.

Merrily We Roll Along – Maria Friedman’s production finally made Stephen Sondheim’s 1981 musical a Broadway hit with heartbreaking lead performances by Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe, and Lindsay Mendez.

“Illinoise.” Photo: Stephanie Berger.

Illinoise – Sufjan Stevens’ album blossomed into an unusual dance-theater piece directed and choreographed by Justin Peck with a scenario devised by Jackie Sibblies Drury. At Park Avenue Armory, where the show began, Robbie Fairchild (above, center) stole the show.

Mary Jane – Amy Herzog’s tough, impressive Broadway play depicted the daily existence of a single mother caring for a special needs child, exquisitely performed under Anne Kauffman’s direction.

Can I Be Frank? Photo Mario de Lopez.

Can I Be Frank? – Morgan Bassichis’s passionate personal account of discovering queer comic ancestor Frank Maya became an exploration of the previous generation of downtown artists who died of AIDS. A laugh riot under the direction of Sam Pinkleton at La Mama.

Fish. Photo: Valerie Terranova.

Fish – Kia Corthron’s smart, dense drama (directed for Keen Company with theatrical flair by Adrienne D. Williams) steered straight into a burning issue of our time, in this case education, specifically the nightmare that is New York City public school education.

Magnificent Bird/Book of Travelers – Playwrights Horizons hosted Gabriel Kahane’s two song cycles of idiosyncratically structured songs pairing dense, brainy lyrics with unpredictable melodies.

Orlando. Photo: Joan Marcus.

Orlando — Director-choreographer Will Davis assembled a juicy cast of queerdos (led by Taylor Mac in the title role) who confidently leaned into the theatricality of Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s fantastic fable.

Suffs – Composer-lyricist-performer Shaina Taub and her director, Leigh Silverman, turned their primer on the women’s suffrage movement into a sharp, smart Broadway musical that didn’t gloss over race and class divisions.

We Live in Cairo. Photo: Joan Marcus.

We Live in Cairo — Daniel and Patrick Lazour’s musical followed six young artists swept up in the events that brought down the regime of Hosni Mubarak. Taibi Magar’s richly textured staging had the scrappy feel of its famous predecessors at New York Theater Workshop (most notably, Rent).

Live Music Highlights:

Madonna’s Celebration Tour. Photo: Don Shewey.
Anohni and the Johnson’s “It’s Time to Feel What’s Really Happening”. BAM.

Khruangbin’s “A La Sala” tour stop at Bowery Ballroom.
Romy at Knockdown Center.
Cecile McLorin Salvant at Zankel Hall.

Movie Highlights:

I watched more than 70 films this year and still haven’t gotten around to a bunch of the hot titles that opened in the last month. It wasn’t a year when a handful of movies announced themselves as Best of the Year. But I saw all kinds of fascinating stuff, largely thanks to MUBI (streaming) and MUBIGo (its ingenious program entitling subscribers to a free movie in the theater every week. In no particular order, a dozen highlights:

Perfect Days (Wim Wenders)

Don’t Expect Too Much From the End of the World (Radu Jude)

The People’s Joker (Vera Drew)

Sabbath Queen (Sandi Dubowski)

Anora (Sean Baker)

Bird (Andrea Arnold)

Sebastian (Mikko Mäkelä)

Sing Sing (Greg Kwedar)

Slave Play. Not a Movie. The Play (Jeremy O. Harris)

Conclave (Edward Berger)

All We Imagine As Light (Payal Kapadia)

Crossing (Levan Akin)

TV Highlights: William Kentridge’s Self Portrait as a Coffee Pot, Somebody Somewhere, Hannah Gadsby’s Gender Agenda

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