Regardless, Broadway Rises to Opportunity. Mostly.

The Broadway season kicks off, which will be celebrated with the Tony Awards presentation on June 12 – we don’t remember when. That was at least two years and three waves of Covid. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything worth seeing, loving, or discussing. Far from that, as Jesse Green (chief theater critic) and Maya Phillips (general critic) find as they try to open the 34 productions that dared the pandemic under the most demanding circumstances imaginable. Here are excerpts from their speeches.

JESSE GREEN Would you believe the irony A season filled with doubt, difficulty, and the almost existential threat of constant cancellation has nevertheless been surprising, vibrant, and compelling. Or at least that’s how I experienced it. What about you Maya?

MAYA PHILLIPS Yes, when I think about how Covid has impacted my experience, I think about the changing requirements to get into a theater and how the pace of the season has changed overall. To mask or not to mask – that is the question. And then a series of closures and delays suddenly turned this spring into a frenzied wave of openings! But despite the madness, we’ve seen some great work.

GREEN In many ways it was the kind of Broadway season we wanted: more serious, more diverse, more experimental. It remains to be seen, however, whether this hope is misplaced in a commercial setting. Even on a vast list of Tony nominations there wasn’t enough room for major plays, with 29 of the 34 productions starring. “To go past” and “Is This a Room” to get any.

Both were Off Broadway transfers that would most likely stay Off Broadway in previous years, with commercial interest focused very narrowly on what producers and theater owners thought they could sell. Are we happy to have them anyway – and “For Girls of Color” and “Dan H.” and “Clyde’s” Which was nominated on Broadway even if they didn’t do well alongside “Wicked”, “Hamilton” and the like?

PHILLIPS I’m glad to see such innovative work on a bigger stage, but yes, it seems that in almost every case, Broadway did not rise on the occasion of excellence, rather than shows that did not rise on the occasion of Broadway. Some were overlooked by Tony’s and many closed early due to low ticket sales.

It is worth noting that these productions are also mostly written by or about women, sometimes by women of color such as “Pass Over,” “For Colored Girls,” and “Clyde’s.” I fear the makers will see the backlash as further proof of their misunderstanding about marginalized people or that art made by marginalized people will not succeed. But then again, there were such things. “A Strange Loop” that got them right, which was amazing to see.

GREEN Most of the dozen or more shows we mentioned were critical successes: “Skeleton crew,” “Missing Blues” and “Trouble in Mind” among them. These three were produced by corporate theaters – the first two by the Manhattan Theater Club and the third by the Roundabout Theater Company – which to some extent spares them the problem of profit. But you can say that others are somehow prepared for commercial failure.

I hope “A Strange Loop” will refute me; its content is extremely engaging and offers a rethinking of the form and formula that Broadway musicals really need right now. But I’m afraid it sounds like “Dana H”. and “Passed” and “For Girls of Color” landed on Broadway in response to calls for more representation, diversity, and experimentation rather than a response to the pandemic. It’s as if Broadway said yes, we’ll find room for new stories and new genres of storytelling. If you open it during the greatest theatrical disaster of the century. Too sarcastic?

PHILLIPS Not at all. Unfortunately, there is a long history of unfair double standards in experimental art – especially the various experimental arts. Not just in theatre, but in every discipline. As a result, what really stood out to me was the other side of the equation: shows that felt solemn and irrelevant. i think about “Flying At Sunset” “Music Man” “Plaza Suite” “Mr. Saturday night”; All of these productions had winning elements, but I found myself in the audience, “Did we need this?” I found it while thinking. Especially after watching programs like “Trouble in Mind” and “The Lehman Trilogy” — It was like seeing the future of Broadway restrained by the specter of the Broadway past.

GREEN “The Musical Diana” definitely bothered me. And I’m with you in the “Plaza Suite” and others that sell well despite us. And I featured it in my Most Inappropriate Title category I just invented “Funny Girl.” But let’s look at the Tony nominees instead of our own nominees. It hasn’t been a strong year for new musicals or any musical, has it?

PHILLIPS No, there was a small handful that I loved – “A Strange Loop”, of course, and “Six” and “Caroline or Change” – but the rest I found either mediocre or more often, just bad. I support your view of “Funny Girl” which isn’t funny. I was intimidated by “MJ,” which felt like a very expensive but soulless karaoke night at the theater. and i like it “Company” better than you but i don’t like “Girl from the North Country” for his melodramatic book, which I know is a controversial idea.

GREEN But don’t you agree that musicals like “Girl From the North Country”, which I find poignant and profound, at least reinforce strong emotions, including your own negative ones? And vice versa, the “Company” that you deal with but adopt? Most of the other shows, including Biggest Tickets, offered little to grab, critical or otherwise.

PHILLIPS In fact, I’ve noticed a lot of sluggishness this season – and by that, I mean I’ve been put into an almost catatonic state during the shows! Even in the most boring productions, there was always one or two elements that caught my eye. Take “The Music Man” – OK but mostly forgettable except for the choreography. But that also seemed to be a theme this season – the choreography that made productions stand out and even overwhelm.

GREEN Yes, in some performances the choreography was so strong that it seemed to sink the rotten book on which he was dancing. I was grateful for the choreography “Paradise Square” By Bill T. Jones et al, because it told the mess of a story in a clear and exciting way. It’s frustrating, though, that dance solves problems that one has to solve.

In “MJ” The Michael Jackson iterations and predictions by Christopher Wheeldon and others were exciting, sure, but it felt like a frenzied distraction from what couldn’t be dramatized. On the other hand, Camille A. Brown’s choreography in “For Colored Girls” provided a useful second channel of information and emotion, beautifully linking the various stories of the show. Or the third channel – because in all of this, of course, there was also music.

PHILLIPS The musicals that stood out for me this season were “A Strange Loop” and “Six,” which I praised in my review. I love watching Broadway shows that pluck from various genres and time periods and seamlessly put them together. The biggest fun of “Six” was its homage to contemporary pop, hip-hop, rap and R&B – and the gorgeous women who reigned in those genres like Beyoncé and Ariana Grande – with catchy lyrics and aptly baroque (or Tudor, rather?!) performances.

But when it comes to vocals, there has been a lot of wishful thinking this season, especially on the part of defiant celebrities like Beanie Feldstein in “Funny Girl” and Hugh Jackman in “The Music Man.” Thank goodness in our ears for Sharon D Clarke (“Caroline or Change”) and Joaquina Kalukango (“Paradise Square”) and Mare Winningham (“Girl from the North Country”) and Shoshana Bean (“Mr. Saturday Night”) who dropped some honey.

GREEN We needed that honey to sweeten some bitter substances. And flavoring is something Broadway is uniquely suited to do, at best. I’ve seen all of my favorite musicals before – “Six”, “Caroline”, “A Strange Loop” and “Girl From the North Country” – in smaller theaters, but they do better with big audiences and big budgets. This also applies to games.

The wow factor of the giant spinning ice cube in Es Devlin’s “Lehman Trilogy” facilitated the game’s questionable mix of history. Two hanging inside “Executioner” It went well on the scary set of Anna Fleischle, too. It was amazing to see the picture of Thornton Wilder. “Skin of Our Teeth” It’s an important but difficult job that Lileana Blain-Cruz has staged in a Lincoln Center Theater production as gloriously as that company’s one of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classics. Indeed, Adam Rigg’s sets—plus the costumes, lights, sound, and even the giant carnival slide—approximately served the function of music in musicals. Most of the season’s games are more experimental than usual, but also welcomed the fantastic visual interpretation that “sings” the stories.

PHILLIPS Yeah! The massive puppet creations directly from prehistoric times in James Ortiz’s “The Skin of Our Teeth”—a woolly mammoth and brachiosaurus—were also a visual treat. And I enjoyed the artfully curated examples of what I would call clutter—the ornaments and trinkets from the “American Buffalo” set by Scott Pask and the mementos hovering above the kitchen in “Birthday Candles” (designed by Christine Jones).

But I also don’t want to forget all the tight communities in this season’s games. I don’t think you’re as much a fan of the best game nominee “The Lehman Trilogy” as I am. I was stunned to watch the three-man cast of Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Adrian Lester, all nominees for best actor, play multiple characters over a period of 163 years, with not only aplomb but also a kind of gravita. such an epic story is needed.

Similarly, Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse excelled in their roles in one of the most exciting revivals of this season, “How I Learned to Drive.” I also loved the cast of “Trouble in Mind,” especially LaChanze; “Skeleton Crew” (does not have a tough Phylicia Rashad); and the three stars in “American Buffalo” – Laurence Fishburne, Darren Criss and Sam Rockwell. Although Fishburne and Criss was Rockwell’s show from start to finish, it offered plenty. Also, Jesse Williams’ graceful Broadway debut in “Take Me Out”; Edmund Donovan and Ron Cephas Jones in “Clyde’s”; and a cast of hilarious ladies who can’t quite save the otherwise frail, faltering bullshit “POTUS.”

GREEN There was a lot of awesomeness this pockmarked season. I found running elections on my unofficial Tonys ballot intolerable. Even if you agree with the idea of ​​the “best” show or performance, which I do, there are different ways for them to be the best. How pure is the pleasure of seeing Parker and Morse, or LaChanze and Chuck Cooper in “Trouble in Mind,” or Kalukango, Clarke, or David Threlfall in “Hangmen,” or what the “Six” queens are doing? however it is never pure. make. (Leave Emily Davis stunned in Is This a Room.)

Context brings out the best in more than awards can admit. That’s why it’s important to get noticed here, even if many of this season’s most daring businesses only survive for a short time. They make the Broadway spotlight brighter, and more importantly, bigger.