Matt Wolf
Four favorites from our London critic
‘Baby Reindeer’
Bush Theater, London
London offered no shortage of commendable solo shows this year, including Ian McKellen’s riveting recapitulation of his life and art and Maggie Smith’s astonishing return to the stage. But the Scottish comedian Richard Gadd went one step further in his self-penned play, directed with breakneck energy by Jon Brittain and premiered at the Edinburgh Festival before a London transfer. Telling of the horrific intrusion into his life by “Martha,” a stalker, Gadd turned what might have merely been a tale of victimhood into a riveting self-inquiry that still haunts me, though probably not as much as “Martha” haunted this compellingly intense performer.
‘Betrayal’
Harold Pinter Theater, London
Harold Pinter’s 1978 play is regularly revived, but rarely with the understated power and near-balletic grace of the director Jamie Lloyd’s startling production, which transferred from a sellout West End run to Broadway. A soulful Tom Hiddleston provided the box-office allure to a study in adultery rooted in the playwright’s own life. Co-stars Zawe Ashton and, especially, Charlie Cox were no less crucial to the quiet power of a drama in which the characters betray each other in many ways — sexually, morally, emotionally — all of them rendered mesmerizingly.
‘Downstate’
National Theater, London
Never one to shrink from a difficult topic, the Pulitzer-winning American playwright Bruce Norris (“Clybourne Park”) outdid himself with “Downstate,” a co-production with the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago that followed its 2018 Stateside premiere with a London outing at the National Theater. Telling of four pedophiles cohabiting in societal exclusion in “downstate” Illinois, the play refused to demonize its wounded characters, instead showing them in three dimensions, as neither villains nor victims. The Anglo-American company brought English talent (such as Cecilia Noble) together with Steppenwolf company veterans, including Francis Guinan and K. Todd Freeman, who led the play to its tumultuously moving conclusion.
‘Passion’
Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte; Montepulciano, Italy
The 1994 musical “Passion” has long enjoyed success in the United States and Britain, but it took until last summer for the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine collaboration to be performed in Italy, where it is set. Performed in English by a mostly British creative team that coupled opera singers (Philip Smith, Anna Gillingham) with musical stalwarts (two-time Olivier Award-winner Janie Dee), Keith Warner’s elegant production was the centerpiece of the 44th annual Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte, a summertime arts festival in the Tuscan town of Montepulciano. Occupying a slot usually reserved for opera, the show’s tale of obsessive love was beautifully served by a staging that deserves a further life in England — which, with any luck, it will receive.
And the turkey …
‘Bitter Wheat’
Garrick Theater, London
Many plays on London stages tackled topical themes this year, from racial identity in “Fairview” at the Young Vic to a family rent asunder by Brexit in “Snowflake,” at the Kiln Theater. But writer-director David Mamet’s play, inspired by Harvey Weinstein’s fall from grace and the rise of the #MeToo movement, didn’t so much add to the cultural discourse as attach itself shamelessly to a hot-button topic. Starring a padded John Malkovich as the play’s Weinstein stand-in, the production made clear that Mamet’s sympathies lay more with this bloated antihero than with any of the unfortunate women surrounding him. But the audience was the least fortunate of all.
Laura Cappelle
Four favorites from our Paris critic
‘The Idols’
Odéon — Théâtre de l’Europe, Paris
Christophe Honoré is better known as a film director, but his highly original theater work deserves equal attention. Early in the year, “Les Idoles” (“The Idols”) featured him bringing six of his artistic heroes, all of whom died of AIDS between 1989 and 1994, back to life onstage. In this unorthodox, often irreverent fantasy dinner party, the filmmaker Jacques Demy rubbed shoulders with the playwrights Jean-Luc Lagarce and Bernard-Marie Koltès, with women cast in some of the male roles. Marlène Saldana gave one of the year’s brightest performances as Demy, but all were outrageously good company and threw into sharp relief what France’s arts world lost during the AIDS crisis.
‘Club Club Gewalt 5.0 Punk’
Venice Theater Biennale
If anything reminded audiences that there are no rules in theater, it was Club Gewalt. The young Dutch collective took Venice by storm in the summer with two left-field musical productions: “Yuri — A Workout Opera,” a tribute to the gymnast Yuri van Gelder in the form of a 39-minute fitness routine, and the immersive “Club Club Gewalt 5.0 Punk.” A punk concert, political cabaret and bingo night all in one, it proved wonderfully unpredictable, all thanks to a roguish, tireless cast of actors who doubled as singers and musicians. The Venice Theater Biennale engagement offered Club Gewalt’s first performances outside the Netherlands; they shouldn’t be the last.
‘Girls and Boys’
Théâtre du Petit Saint-Martin, Paris
There was no better actor-director duo in France this year than Constance Dollé and Mélanie Leray. Their production of Dennis Kelly’s “Girls and Boys” at the Théâtre du Petit Saint-Martin, a Paris premiere after the play’s London and New York debuts, came with a twist: Instead of delivering her monologue to the auditorium, Dollé was joined onstage every night by four volunteers from the audience, who sat next to her at a dinner table. As they listened to her story — initially lighthearted, then unspeakably tragic, as her estranged husband is revealed to have murdered their children — their unscripted reactions added a layer of realism to Dollé’s vivid, unflinching performance.
‘I Carried My Father on My Shoulders’
Théâtre du Rond-Point, Paris
In the Aeneid, Virgil’s hero hauls his father away from the burning city of Troy to safety. Their story became the starting point for an epic, lyrical new play set in a French housing project, Fabrice Melquiot’s “J’ai Pris Mon Père sur Mes Épaules” (“I Carried My Father on My Shoulders”), directed by Arnaud Meunier. As Roch, a working-class father diagnosed with cancer, the ever-impressive Philippe Torreton delivered a devastatingly earnest performance, all the way to the conclusion of a doomed road trip with his son. Through their community of neighbors, housed by Meunier on a two-tier set, Melquiot also put an unexpectedly poetic spin on class issues, often underrepresented on the French stage.
And the turkey …
‘Mont Vérité’
Printemps des Comédiens Festival; Montpellier, France
The French playwright and director Pascal Rambert has long leaned toward affectation in the name of poetry, but the text of “Mont Vérité,” a new production he created with the choreographer Rachid Ouramdane at the Printemps des Comédiens festival in Montpellier, proved so bloated and self-aggrandizing that a hefty portion of the audience decided to call it a night early. Pity the actors, all graduating students from the School of the Théâtre National de Strasbourg, who had to deliver rambling monologue after monologue before stripping naked and running laps around the play’s alfresco stage. It’s no way to start a career, but after “Mont Vérité,” they are ready for any challenge.
A.J. Goldmann
Four favorites from our Berlin critic
‘Liliom’
Salzburg Festival
The Hungarian film and theater director Kornel Mundruczo scored a hit at the Salzburg Festival with his staging of Ferenc Molnar’s “Liliom,” a Hungarian drama from 1909 best known as the basis for Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musical “Carousel.” The setting of this “Liliom,” a co-production with the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, where it was later presented, is neither Budapest nor Maine, but inside the head of the brash title character, who is forced to reconstruct his sins as part of a “woke” re-education program in the afterlife. Jörg Pohl and Maja Schöne, two Thalia ensemble actors, gave blistering performances in the main roles as they navigated Mundruczo’s darkly wondrous production, with video, machinery and minimal props helping suggest Liliom’s struggle to confront his past.
‘Baal’
Berliner Ensemble, Berlin
Many of the productions that impressed me most in 2019 were boldly stylish. Nowhere was this more the case than Ersan Mondtag’s eye-popping production of “Baal,” Bertolt Brecht’s first full-length play, at the Berliner Ensemble, the company founded by the playwright himself. Mondtag, one of Germany’s most exciting young directors, applies his Expressionism-inspired aesthetic to Brecht’s parable about a morally repugnant poet at odds with bourgeois society. The production features storybook sets and costumes, not to mention a gigantic Barbie doll with an erection. Yet it is no mere triumph of style over substance. The savage, weird and unpredictable show delivers a sustained dramatic jolt, thanks largely to Stefanie Reinsperger’s thrilling — and terrifying — turn in the title role.
‘Amphitryon’
Schaubühne, Berlin
After Thomas Ostermeier’s disappointing “Youth Without God,” a coproduction with the venerable Salzburg Festival, the Schaubühne came roaring back with Herbert Fritsch’s kinetic production of Molière’s rarely performed 1668 farce about a Theban general who returns home to find that a doppelgänger has taken over his life. Fritsch’s production combines verbal repartee, physical comedy and candy-colored visuals for one of the most pleasurable evenings at the theater I’ve had in Berlin. The members of the ensemble cast often seem on the verge of a collective breakdown. Without exception, they are stunning, but Joachim Meyerhoff, as the general’s anxious servant Sosie, is a cut above the rest.
‘On the Royal Road’
Landestheater Niederösterreich; St. Pölten, Austria
The brilliant puppeteer Nikolaus Habjan directed the Austrian Nobel literature laureate Elfriede Jelinek’s funny, surreal and hellish play inspired by Donald Trump’s election. The small Landestheater Niederösterreich, outside Vienna, hosted the work’s Austrian premiere. Working with a nimble six-person cast manipulating an array of freakish puppets that resembled diseased Muppets (I can’t imagine that Jim Henson’s estate was too pleased), Habjan created a disorienting and disturbing world onstage. Its reigning monarch was a vulgar showman whose bad taste was the least of his crimes. Sound familiar?
And the turkey …
‘All the Good’
Ruhrtrienniale Festival; Gladbeck, Germany
The Ruhrtriennale, the exciting and unpredictable arts festival that repurposes industrial buildings in Germany’s rust belt, hit a shocking low with the Belgian director Jan Lauwers’s “All the Good,” a self-indulgent romp inspired by the artist’s home life. His family and friends formed a merry band whose artistic and sexual exploits were depicted in baffling and explicit detail. Violence, pornography and pseudo-intellectualism brushed against one another for the duration of this numbingly banal performance. It’s hard to know which caused greater offense: the shallow ideas the show espoused or its eagerness to shock. Lauwers is set to direct Luigi Nono’s opera “Intolleranza 1960” at next year’s Salzburg Festival, and I pray that this inspires more than a series of empty provocations.
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