STAGE WEST: The Best in San Diego Theater for 2023

Men, women, even a goose: all part of New Village Arts' "The Ferryman."             Photo by Daren Scott

              Please. Don’t give me that “Theater’s dying” talk. As more than one purveyor of the craft has told me this past year when I float that doomsday scenario, theater’s been “dying” for years, yet here we are. If you want to reduce this noblest of performing arts to mere ticket sales, dollars and cents, and butts in the seats, go ahead and make your case.
          I’m not going there. If 2023, arguably the first full post-pandemic year of live theater, is any indication, there is life … and bursting creativity … and inspiration … and, hovering over even the darkest of dramatic productions, joy onstage. That goes for behind the scenes and in the stalwart hearts of theater makers everywhere.
          This means you too, San Diego. Especially you.
          Selecting the top 10 productions of any year is daunting. So it is with 2023. For what it’s worth, I don’t pretend to be all seeing or all knowing. I do know what moved me, what entertained me, what stirred my imagination and rattled my conscience the most, and these are reflected on this list.
          Theater is alive. Here is proof.
       1. “The Ferryman,” New Village Arts Theatre. When I reviewed this incredibly ambitious production way back in January I wrote that it was practically Shakespearean in scope: Multiple intertwining plot lines. A cast of 21 including those portraying the 14 members of the Carney family of County Armagh (one of them a baby). Live animals. But “The Ferryman,” written by Jez Butterworth and directed by NVA’s Kristianne Kurner, was more than about scope. Its deep dive into the Irish troubles and family dynamics, and how they intersected in time, was captivating. Yeah, it was over three hours’ long with two intermissions. So what? 
          2. “August: Osage County,” Backyard Renaissance Theatre Company. Start with a deservedly Pulitzer-winning drama by Tracy Letts. Add as close to an all-star cast as any local production this year has enjoyed. Top it off with one of the supreme performances of ’23 – Deborah Gilmour Smyth as drug-addled family matriarch Violet Weston. Backyard Renaissance delivered a stellar season with this collective tour de force, the acidic comedy “Gods of Carnage” before it and the thoughtful “Proof” a month ago. Its “August” compared favorably to the production the Old Globe did back in 2011. Edge-of-your-seat theater in intimate confines.
           3. “The Outsiders,” La Jolla Playhouse. I was not a fan of the 1981 Francis Ford Coppola film, and I hadn’t read the original novel by S.E. Hinton from the ‘60s, so I didn’t quite know what to expect when the Playhouse world-premiered this show with a book by Adam Rapp and music by the rootsy Jamestown Revival. What a wonderful surprise. “The Outsiders’” coming-of-age tale set in a dusty, bygone Tulsa was beautifully conceived, musically affecting and acted with no pretense at all by a young and talented cast. “The Outsiders” is set to open on Broadway in April. It earned that opportunity, no matter what happens in the Big Apple.
            4. “Public Enemy,” New Fortune Theatre Company. This is the only production on this list that I saw twice. Even when I knew what was coming the second time around, I felt the anxious tension in my neck and shoulders that only a fiery adaptation (by David Harrower) of Ibsen’s “Enemy of the People” could elicit. Most of the credit for that goes to New Fortune Artistic Director Richard Baird, who starred as the well-meaning then betrayed Dr. Thomas Stockmann. Like Gilmour Smyth’s in “August: Osage County,” Baird’s performance was physically and emotionally, no-holds barred astounding.
           5. “Birds of North America,” Moxie Theatre. Were I to name a Director of the Year it would be Lisa Berger, who was at the helm of this gentle and thoughtful production as well as Diversionary Theatre’s “The Glass Menagerie,” which I’ll discuss a bit later. Anna Ouyang Moench’s “Birds of North America” found a disconnected father and daughter (Mike Sears and Farah Dinga, both first rate) working out their issues about each other while birding. The wooded scenery backdrop by Robin Sanford Roberts and Matt Lescault-Wood’s extraordinary sound design transported audiences to a special, private place in nature and in the heart.
          6. “El Huracan”, Cygnet Theatre. Performed in both English and Spanish, Cuban-American Charise Castro Smith’s metaphorical play articulated the desperation of loss: of a woman’s memory and, in the bigger picture, of hope. Hurricane Andrew in 1992 in Miami (to this day still the most destructive storm to ever hit Florida) was the backdrop for a family tale that was frequently heartbreaking even as it found joyous escapism in moments like a flashback of dancing to Sinatra at the Tropicana Club in Havana. Cygnet’s marvelous cast included Catalina Maynard, Sandra Ruiz, Amalia Alarcon Morris and Carla Navarro.
          7. “Sunday in the Park with George,” CCAE Theatricals. At the California Center for the Arts, Escondido’s 400-seat Center Theater Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s daring bio-musical about pointillist painter Georges Seurat unfolded as it was intended to, with his painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte” coming alive before your very eyes. Broadway veteran Will Blum was sublime as Seurat in the superior Act I, complemented by the versatile Emily Lopez. The technical wonderwork: from scenic designer George Gonzalez, costumer Janet Pitcher, projectionist Patrick Gates and lighting designer Michelle Miles.
           8. “La Lucha,” La Jolla Playhouse. The year’s most immersive theater experience had to be this production created for rooms inside the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego Downtown by designer David Israel Reynoso and Optika Moderna. Inspired by the culture of lucha libre masked wrestlers, the hourlong “La Lucha” walking experience challenged the senses --and both cultural and gender expectations-- in startling ways. The luchadores masks worn by the actors and the meticulous rooms’ set pieces enhanced the dreamlike atmosphere inside the MCA building on Kettner as well as a palpable sense of love, death and magic.
           9. “The Glass Menagerie,” Diversionary Theatre. Still playing (through Dec. 23) at the University Heights LGBTQIA+ theater, Tennessee Williams’ devastatingly sad family tale, much of it purported to be autobiographical, is a master class in inhabiting a character from Shana Wride, portraying the domineering, self-deceived matriarch Amanda Wingfield. Luke Harvey Jacobs is tortured Tom, the story’s narrator. According to director Lisa Berger, Diversionary’s is a collaborative interpretation of “Menagerie” in which Tom is closeted and daughter Laura (Julia Belanova) othered. If so, it seems very, very subtly executed.
          10. “Lonely Planet,” OnStage Playhouse. If the future of Chula Vista’s OnStage Playhouse is unclear at this writing, it can be nonetheless duly proud of this sensitive staging of Steven Dietz’s AIDS-era play. Onetime OnStage artistic director Teri Brown directed her successor, James P. Darvas, and Salomon Maya as friends navigating the fear and loss of the epidemic in very different but intertwined fashion. In the small OnStage space, the raw emotions loosened inside what’s supposed to be a scarcely patronized map store (designed to fine detail by Patrick Mason) are all the more chilling.
           Honorable mention: “Sumo,” La Jolla Playhouse, “Normal Heights,” Loud Fridge Theatre Group, “Gods of Carnage,” Backyard Renaissance Theatre Company, “Sharon,” Cygnet Theatre, “Head Over Heels,” Diversionary Theatre.
 
                                                          FOOTLIGHTS FOOTNOTES
          • A highlight of my theater year was attending a production at the famed Steppenwolf in Chicago. While “Another Marriage” by Kate Arrington was neither as funny nor as tender as it aspired to be, the Lincoln Heights theater itself boasts energy and a definite hipness quotient.
            • Fond adieus and good jobs well done to Matt Morrow and Jennifer Eve Thorn who departed the theaters for which they were artistic director, Diversionary and Moxie respectively, this year.
         • This year marked the debut of the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle’s first podcast, “Downstage,” which I co-hosted with colleague Alejandra Enciso-Dardashti. We had a lot of fun over the course of 12 episodes and enjoyed the presence of many enlightening guests. Looking forward to more “Downstage” in 2024, beginning early in the year with a preview of the SDCCC’s Craig Noel Awards (to be handed out on Feb. 12).
               • The boorish behavior of Rep. Lauren Boebert at a Denver theater in September exemplified the ever-increasing audience misbehavior at live performances. While the congresswoman’s vaping and groping was an extreme manifestation of this, I witnessed in theaters many times this year audience members talking, looking at or lighting up their phones, wearing big floppy hats to block others’ views and in one case drunkenly babbling while a serious drama was unfolding onstage. Call me a scold if you will, but enough is enough.
          • To end on a positive note, a salute to a couple of fledgling San Diego companies that distinguished themselves in ’23 and demonstrate promise for the years ahead: Loud Fridge Theatre Group and Blindspot Collective.
            That’s it, everybody.
            Curtain.