The time has arrived to select 10 theatrical productions to be declared the best of what I witnessed during 2013. There are actually 11 titles below, but still in a Top 10 format, for reasons explained below. The list might well have made it to a dozen except for an unplanned hiatus that involved crutches, tubes, and a daily serving of stewed prunes. From what Erin Blackwell reported on these pages, and from what I heard on the street, Charles Busch's The Divine Sister, directed by F. Allen Sawyer at New Conservatory Theatre Center, deserves an honorary Top 10 nod here. Now onward to the list itself.
1. The Kneehigh company again rose to theatrical heights with Tristan & Ysolde at Berkeley Rep, a happy-sad-awesome extrapolation on the medieval love story. The UK-based theater previously visited with Brief Encounter and The Wild Bride, and the sterling reputation that those productions established is only further polished. The Berkeley run has been extended through Jan. 18, so there's still ample chance to hop aboard this theatrical rollercoaster with unpredictable director Emma Rice again at the controls.
2. One of the best new plays from a local writer was Brad Erickson's American Dream, given a high-end production by director Dennis Lickteig at New Conservatory Theatre Center. Ripped-from-the-headlines issues about gay marriage and immigration found a warm and thoughtful forum in Erickson's tale of a family pushed to the limits by barreling social changes.
Photo: kevinberne.com
3. Watching Ian McKellen's moments playing a man purposefully trying to avoid attracting attention were alone worth the price of a ticket, but audiences also got to revel in McKellen's giddy showboating as a poet of diminished circumstances in Harold Pinter's No Man's Land . The pre-Broadway run at Berkeley Rep also starred Patrick Stewart in a counterpoint performance, with ominous support from Billy Crudup and Shuler Hensley.
4. Religion, folklore, and spiritualism found connections in a story also of carnal desire, social taboos, and a fearsome love in A Lady and a Woman, presented by Theatre Rhino. Shirlene Holmes' play set in the rural south of the 1890s, specifically in an African-American community, explored the relationship between two women who were brought to exquisite life by Velina Brown and Dawn L. Troupe in director John Fisher's lovely production.
Photo: Kent Taylor
5. Having your parents name you for Chekhov characters does not portend a life without ennui, but Chekhovian templates are upended in Christopher Durang's Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike that had audiences awash in laughter at Berkeley Rep. The morosely repetitive lives of siblings Vanya and Sonia are twirled when their fading movie-star sister Masha pays a visit with an exhibitionist boyfriend who proves to have numerous talents. Sharon Lockwood, Anthony Fusco, Mark Junek, and Lorri Holt delightfully led the cast of Richard E.T. White's rambunctious production.
6. Issues of gender identity are becoming the new social frontier, while gay marriage takes on a slackening sense of dramatic urgency. Playwright Basil Kreimendahl, who prefers the label "gender neutral," created a Godot-like landscape in Sidewinders, in which two wanderers unsure of their backgrounds try to get their heads around tricky notions of masculinity, femininity, and other gender identities for which they have no names. It was a bold, intriguing choice for a world premiere by Cutting Ball Theatre.
7. San Francisco Playhouse launched itself into 2013 with a title that many publications could not print in toto. But we can: The Motherfucker with the Hat got a full-tilt staging in a story of redemption, betrayal, and confrontations that shouldn't have been nearly as funny as they were in director Bill English's staging of Stephen Adly Guirgis' comedy of bad manners and serious transgressions.
8. In Glen Berger's Underneath the Lintel at ACT, David Strathairn played a librarian who sheepishly but slyly pulled us into his increasingly elaborate explanation for why a book was returned 113 years late to his branch. The actor created through dialogue an around-the-world-journey that may have been born of miracles or madness.
9. At Berkeley Rep, Mona Golabek portrays her mother, Lisa Jura, one of the lucky children evacuated from Nazi territories via the Kindertransport. Jura thrived in England, and becomes the title character of The Pianist of Willesden Lane (running through Jan. 5). Moving between piano and centerstage, Golabek finds an unsettling, demure tone to tell a story born in calamity that finally explodes in musical epiphany.
10. To help preserve the time-tested parameters of a "10 best" list, and because they are of a different world from local productions, two of the big touring musicals will share this slot. Anything Goes brought the bright, bawdy, tuneful, artfully foolish, and high-adrenaline antics of this 1934 Cole Porter musical that felt like a needed mood enhancer in the moment. Anything Goes was coming from Broadway while Beautiful: The Carole King Musical headed to New York for a January Broadway opening after its SF premiere. Albeit a jukebox musical built around King's songs and other hits of the 60s, this production was a swirling evocation of the times and a delicious soundtrack for King's own story of cheery ups and not too un-cheery downs.