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Every year, we run down the list of ten best shows to emerge on the NYC theatre scene.
In 2016, actual Broadway shows are somewhat underrepresented. Part of this is due to not yet having caught all the shows that premiered in the fall, but part is also due to a somewhat uninspiring year on Broadway. Fortunately, off-Broadway picked up the slack, so here’s the ten best shows of 2016!
#10: Babes in Arms (off-Broadway)
Musicals Tonight is an off-Broadway company focused on briefly reviving forgotten musical classics, such as this Rodgers & Hart gem from 1937. This show was the prototype of all “kids put on a show to raise money” stories, and includes classics like “My Funny Valentine” and “The Lady Is a Tramp.” It was performed by a talented ensemble, though only for a week, and makes us wish the show would get a proper revival.
#9: Lisa and Leonardo (NYMF)
As we wrote earlier this year, good historical musicals are hard to find, but the NY Musical Festival has been steadily adding to the category. This was a clever and intriguing look at Leonardo da Vinci and the woman he painted as Mona Lisa, leading me to spend hours on Wikipedia afterwards as the songs remained stuck in my head.
#8: The Most Miserable Christmas Tree (off-Broadway)
This new holiday musical played the Narrows Theater on the edge of Brooklyn – about as far from Broadway as one can be while still within the city limits. But those who schlepped to Fort Hamilton received a perfect bit of Christmas cheer, watching a Toy Story for Christmas trees. The biggest selling points were the catchy music, where each character had very distinct musical cues, and the hilarious costume design.
#7: You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown (off-Broadway)
I’m a sucker for Peanuts, so this musical was a must-see. There was no way to replicate the epic cast of the 1999 Broadway production (Roger Bart, Kristin Chenoweth, Anthony Rapp). So the York Theatre cast actual children to play the Peanuts gang, gathering all the most talented kids currently on Broadway (and there’s a surprising amount of them!). The gamble paid off, with the kids perfectly capturing the childhood innocence integral to Peanuts, in a show that was both touching and funny.
#6: The School for Scandal (off-Broadway)
The Red Bull Theater presented a revival of this eighteenth-century play, written by a famous British satirist, Sheridan. The show is a comedy of manners about aristocrats that occupy themselves with various scandals, and it’s a much more pleasant treatment of the subject than Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The cast captured the incredibly sharp wit of Sheridan’s script, complemented by lavish costumes. It’s incredible that the play holds up centuries later, and is still funny.
#5: The Robber Bridegroom (off-Broadway)
This musical is based on the novella, about a Robin Hood figure in the American South of the 1700s. To set the scene, the music is folksy, sounding unlike most other things on Broadway. Roundabout got Steven Pasquale back on the stage as the title character, giving us all a sigh of relief since it seemed we’d lost him to television. Everything in the show is played incredibly over-the-top, since it’s supposed to be a folk tale, and that added to the humor.
#4: Shear Madness (off-Broadway)
Readers must be shocked to find this on a 2016 list, given that it’s been running in several American cities for decades, but it’s only now made it to NYC. Shear Madness is an interactive murder mystery, where Act 1 is a traditional comedy that ends with a murder, and the audience spends Act 2 trying to figure out whodunit. Part of the appeal is the timeliness of the jokes, which are constantly being updated – I saw it two days after Brexit, and Brexit jokes were already in the script. This show is still running at the Davenport Theatre, and has likely incorporated a wealth of new material over the past months.
#3: The City That Cried Wolf (off-Broadway)
At 59E59 Theaters, there was a detective noir play based on nursery rhymes. Private eye Jack B. Nimble investigates the murder of Humpty Dumpty in a play packed to the brim with puns. The plot is surprisingly intricate, incorporating Bo Peep, the Three Little Pigs, Chicken Little, and a host of other familiar faces. The audience members who paid attention were rewarded with hilarity.
#2: Noises Off (Broadway)
Noises Off is a classic, popping up on Broadway every fifteen years or so, about a screwball ensemble trying to put on a show, but getting derailed by the intrigue among the cast. Act 1 shows the dress rehearsal of the play, Act 2 flips the curtain and shows backstage at a performance, and Act 3 shows the final derailed performance of the show. Roundabout gathered a terrific ensemble, including Megan Hilty and Andrea Martin, and crafted one of the funniest shows I’ve ever seen. The show builds as it goes, to the point where there were multiple pauses in the final act as the audience was left gasping from laughter. Here’s hoping the show comes back soon!
#1: School of Rock (Broadway)
No one expected a musical based on School of Rock to be more than an amusing diversion. But Andrew Lloyd Webber and Glenn Slater teamed up to craft a nearly perfect score, got Alex Brightman to give a tour de force performance as Dewey Finn, and had the brilliant idea to cast a gaggle of talented kids to play all their own music. The musical is sweet and fun, fleshing out a lot of the characters from the film. And if you look around during the reprise of “If Only You Would Listen,” you’ll see quite a few people in the Winter Garden wiping their eyes. It’s still playing, and likely will be for years to come.
What were your favorite shows of 2016?