SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER

1. Love’s Labor’s Lost

Supposedly rarely produced because overly verbose, you’d never know it from the Public Lab’s flawless staging of Shakespeare’s four-on-four romantic jousting match. Nick Westrate’s Berowne may stand as our favorite performance of the entire year.

2. Sons of the Prophet

Stephen Karam’s Sons of the Prophet was the hit of the fall season, and with reason: it’s well-made but intuitive and filled with first-rate acting. Great moments: the tickle fight in the hospital room between Joseph (Santino Fontana) and his brother (Chris Perfetti) that drifts into something very ambiguous, and the way Timothy (Charles Socarides) makes a subtle, circular motion with his foot to signal to Joseph, “I’m interested.”

3. Nixon in China

The spectacular Met debut of John Adams’ seminal 80s opera transformed recent historical figures into mythical characters grappling with the contrast between their private lives and public personae.

4. Misterman

The action in this stunning one-man show seems set entirely in the mind of its lead character, a deeply disturbed and purely narcissistic Irishman played by Cillian Murphy; he delivered perhaps the year’s most physical and flamboyant performance, leaping between emotional extremes and embodying several characters as though possessed by multiple personalities.

5. Now the Cats with Jewelled Claws

Now the Cats with Jewelled Claws, a never-produced one-act by Tennessee Williams at La MaMa, proved to be the tastiest treat of the season, with its starry cast of cult movie stars (Mink Stole), downtown theater royalty (Everett Quinton), and downtown It Boys (Joseph Keckler and Max Steele). The unknown Williams play itself proved surprisingly muscular and absurdist, a bold step in a new direction that Williams didn’t take, and the cast was just ideal.