Artistic Success, No Name Brand Necessary By BEN BRANTLEY

December 20, 2009
Artistic Success, No Name Brand Necessary By BEN BRANTLEY

THIS was the year that Broadway asked itself the question "What's in a name?" and answered, "Everything." Three above-the-title Adonises — Jude Law (in "Hamlet") and Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman (in "A Steady Rain") became the season's biggest newsmakers by stepping from screen to stage and drawing around-the-block lines in talky plays, sans songs or elaborate scenery.

It may take guts for established movie stars to expose themselves live, in three dimensions, in unforgiving Manhattan, where everybody's a critic. But the list that follows (in alphabetical order) celebrates a different kind of courage: a willingness to buck the trends of a theater culture more and more dominated by the spirit of corporate group-think that has ruled Hollywood for years.

Most of my favorite shows of 2009 — which include a musical about an African revolutionary, a quiet drama about a gay couple wrestling with religious faith and three marathons of interconnected works — hardly fit into prefabricated commercial molds. (The one that could be said to do so — a revival of "A Streetcar Named Desire" starring Cate Blanchett — took its own unflinching artistic risks.) But each exists coherently in its own universe, on its own terms. And those terms are tough, inventive and seriously ambitious.

BRIEF ENCOUNTER This imported British production, now at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, might seem to be yet another example of one of the theater's most pervasive, and least imaginative, trends: turning a well-loved film into a stage show. But Emma Rice's song-spiced adaptation of the 1945 movie — about a pair of middle-class lovers too honorable to commit adultery — is an extraordinarily imaginative (and expressly theatrical) commentary on a cinema classic's appeal, our relationship with the movies and the romantic ambivalence of Noël Coward, who wrote the original screenplay.

THE BROTHER/SISTER PLAYS Tarell Alvin McCraney's trilogy of poetic dramas, seen at the Public Theater, confirmed that its young, closely watched author is that great rarity, an original and authentic playwright. Directed by Tina Landau and Robert O'Hara, these works combined Yoruban mythology, lyric tragedy and a dizzying infatuation with words into a rich portrait of poverty-blighted lives in Louisiana.

THE EMPEROR JONES Ciaran O'Reilly's lucid, lambent production for the Irish Repertory Theater restored dignity and majesty to a Eugene O'Neill play generally regarded as an embarrassing anachronism. And in the title role of an African-American railroad porter turned tin-pot island despot, John Douglas Thompson (previously seen off Broadway as a truly majestic Othello) staked his claim as one of the most compelling classical stage actors of his generation.

FELA! Bill T. Jones's thrilling musical biography of the Nigerian revolutionary and pop star Fela Anikulapo Kuti brought a new and totally hypnotic energy to Broadway. Testimony (along with "The Brother/ Sister Plays") that the Yoruban religion (and whoda thunk it?) is a gold mine for theatrical energy.

MARY STUART Women of power played to the hilt by powerful actresses in the year's great historical potboiler: Phyllida Lloyd's crackling production of Schiller's 1800 tragedy gave Janet McTeer (as Mary, Queen of Scots) and Harriet Walter (as Elizabeth I) the chance to chew the scenery with infectious gusto and theatergoers the chance to see that spin-driven politics were not a recent invention.

NEXT FALL Geoffrey Naufft's gentle, probing examination of the nature of religious faith — as embodied by a gay couple of very different beliefs — demonstrated that the conventional, well-made play can still explore unconventional territory in ways that stir depths of thought and emotion. This Naked Angels production, first staged off Broadway last summer by Sheryl Kaller, is bravely heading for Broadway next year with its original first-rate cast (without one marquee name in the lot).

NEXT TO NORMAL A musical about manic depression? Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey's searing portrait of a bipolar housewife (Alice Ripley, in a Tony-winning tour de force) and her bewildered family, directed by Michael Greif, dared to ask audiences to feel their pain through a pulsing rock 'n' roll score. A triumph of empathetic boldness.

THE NORMAN CONQUESTS A British farce from the 1970s about marital infidelity — spread over three full-length plays, to boot — would hardly seem to be the stuff of a riveting revival. But this London-born production of Alan Ayckbourn's comedies, directed by Matthew Warchus and featuring the year's most fine-tuned ensemble, was as packed with insightful character analysis as it was with impeccably staged pratfalls (both literal and psychological).

THE ORPHANS' HOME CYCLE Horton Foote's nine interrelated plays about one man's lonely life in early-20th-century Texas, are being presented together for the first time by Hartford Stage and the Signature Theater. On the basis of the first six (presented as two evenings at Signature), directed by Michael Wilson, the cycle has the complexity, richness and narrative hold of a juicy 19th-century novel. This fitting tribute to its singular author, who died this year, is far too filled with life to be only a monument.

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE A Norwegian director and an Australian cast were foolhardy enough to take on what may be the great American play of the 20th century. Liv Ullmann's traveling production of Tennessee Williams's masterpiece, seen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, dispensed with the usual local New Orleans color to focus with uncompromising intensity on the wounded woman at its center, Blanche DuBois. And in that part Cate Blanchett gave the performance of the year.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 27, 2009
An article last Sunday about the year in theater misspelled the given name of the person who wrote the score for the musical "Next to Normal." He is Tom Kitt, not Thom.
‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ Among Year’s Top 10 - Review - NYTimes.com (27 December 2009)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/theater/reviews/20brantley.html?pagewanted=print
http://snipurl.com/tvvm7