What Kind of Year Has it Been? Looking Back on the 2022 Theater Season
2022 was the year that everything was supposed to go back to normal, and in many places it did — but not for the performing arts. Not yet. Theaters were the first to close when COVID hit the country and they were the last to reopen. And while we’re not wearing masks in our everyday lives much anymore and vaccines are easily available, COVID is still having an enormous effect on theater companies, whose casts submit to mandatory testing while artistic directors and box office staffs hold their breath to see if the full cast can perform in their scheduled shows. And the shadow of the pandemic looms large over subscribers and ticket buyers, who have been reluctant to make long-term plans by subscribing, and hesitant to share a theater space with hundreds of audience members, even if they are masked. This lack of confidence from former theater-goers has been reinforced by last-minute cancellations of big ticket Broadway shows and smaller shows closer to home due to cast illnesses.
So it’s not surprising that 2022 was the year of the understudy. What had traditionally been an afterthought for theater casts suddenly became a necessity, meaning that companies were scrambling to find double the number of actors for their productions, in case the first string cast got COVID. Performers waiting in the wings were called on more than ever before to fill in for sick actors. In a pinch, directors even stepped into onstage roles and substitutes went on at a moment’s notice, some with books in their hands.
It was also a season of extremes. In an American Theater magazine article from Septemberr, editor Rob Weinert-Kendt noted that nationally, the programming for 2022 offered “musical revues and murder mysteries, alongside meaty contemporary dramas and thorny classics, resulting in sharp contrasts between unapologetic escapism and what we might call no-exit theater.” In Wisconsin, more companies programmed horror than ever before — dystopian nightmares or stark political disasters — and offset it with frivolous fluff. There was a desire either to engage with our ever-more-complicated reality or to escape it all together with a ridiculous comedy, a ridiculous musical, or a ridiculous musical comedy.
But there was also a new wave of inclusivity. More female playwrights and more playwrights of color were featured in theater seasons, from Broadway to L.A., than ever before. This year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama went to Black playwright James Ijames for his interpretation of Hamlet set in a Black family’s backyard. And the most talked about show on Broadway was Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop, which featured a queer Black man grappling with his identity and his desires. Wisconsin followed these trends and also added a new play festival, which will consist of world premieres across the state in the coming year.
But before we get to 2023, I’d like to recognize some extraordinary moments on stages across Wisconsin in 2022, with the following, completely subjective list of awards and appraisals:
Understudy of the Year
Kailey Azure Green, American Players Theatre
Green began the season at American Players Theatre as the choreographer, intimacy choreographer, and assistant director to Aaron Posner on Sheridan’s The Rivals. They ended up performing as an understudy in three different shows, sometimes with just seconds to prepare. According to Artistic Director Brenda DeVita, one night after Isabel Bushue suffered a knee injury during the first half of APT’s production of Sense and Sensibility, Kailey was called on to play the Dashwood family’s youngest sister for the remainder of the performance. When Kailey arrived up the hill they had three questions: “Which play is this?” “Do I have a wig?” and “Can I go to the bathroom before I go on?” This versatile actor also appeared as an understudy in The Rivals and Loves Labors Lost, mastering sword fights and Shakespearean verse as if they had been engaged to play the roles all along. If we've learned one good thing from COVID, it’s that the play doesn’t have to go on if it is going to put actors in danger. But audiences who traveled from all over the Midwest to see productions at APT were very happy that these plays were able to proceed due to the efforts of many understudies, including Kailey. Well done.
2. Best Dystopian Horror Story
Babel, The Constructivists
As I mentioned above, there were a lot of gothic and modern horror stories on Wisconsin stages this year, including Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s Misery, Forward Theater Company’s Feeding Beatrice, American Players Theatre’s The Moors, Milwaukee Opera Theatre’s Night of the Living Opera, and The Constructivists’ The Totalitarians. But the starkest, most horrifying evening of theater goes to Jacqueline Goldfinger’s Babel, hands down. The taut Constructivists production imagined a future where, in an effort to create a perfect society, genetic research is used by the government to determine whose babies live or die. It was shocking, hilarious at times, and very disturbing. And then the talking stork showed up. A stellar production all around, the play takes on new, even more troubling meaning now, as women's body autonomy is being debated nationally.
3. Best One-Person Band
Janice Martin, Ernest Shackleton Loves Me, Skylight Music Theatre
There are so many delightful things to say about this small-but-mighty musical that started off Skylight’s year – it was visually stunning, musically challenging, and infused with the creativity of one of Milwaukee's best directors, Jill Anna Ponasik. Ernest Shackleton Loves Me requires that one of the two actors not only be able to act and sing, she must also play a virtuoso violin in multiple styles and record herself singing and playing through live looping. There are very few actresses in the country who can accomplish this, let alone do it with such energy, passion, and style as Janice Martin. A literal musical whirling dervish, she was phenomenal. Her co-star Matt Daniels was also charged with singing, dancing, playing multiple characters, and accompanying himself on the banjo, but even he was upstaged by her musical brilliance. She was simply astonishing.
NB: While I am delighted to hear that this production will be remounted at Porchlight in Chicago in 2023, it will not be under Ponasik’s direction, which seems bizarre at best and completely misguided at worst. I can’t imagine the show reaching the heights that it did at the Broadway Theatre Center without her relentless imagination and bold vision.
4. Most Inappropriate Laughter
Heathers, UW-Madison Department of Theatre and Drama
Directed by Jake Penner and choreographed by Brian Cowing, the musical Heathers was extraordinary on every level. Not only did the show completely sell out, with rabid college student fans packing themselves into every square inch of the Hemsley Theater, it also attracted cast members from across the entire university, from an array of majors. The musical, based on the 1980s pitch black comedy movie of the same name, was flawless, with outstanding talent in every role, exceptional choreography, and voices worthy of a cast album. Experiencing the show for the first time surrounded by hundreds of fans who knew the words to every chorus was exhilarating. And like the frequently crude and innappropriate Book of Mormon, Heathers produced more gales of guilty laughter than any other show this year. Clearly the best of the “perils of high school” genre (Mean Girls and The Prom also toured to Madison this season) I found myself convulsing with laughter while covering my mouth, thinking, did they really just say that? It was a catharsis much-needed and much appreciated.
5. Best Performance by a Fish (technically an aquatic mammal)
The River Bride, American Players Theatre
In Marisela Treviño Orta’s The River Bride, a mysterious young man comes to a small village in Brazil seeking love and marriage in order to break a spell that keeps him confined to the water for most of the year. The most striking moment of this beautifully poetic production is one that will live forever in my mind’s eye. When Moises (Ronald Romàn-Meléndez) returned to his life in the river as an enchanted dolphin, tumbling through extraordinary lighting, blocking, and sound design, the audience was able to see a magical transformation – morphing from a desperate human lover to a heartbroken animal. It was one of the most wrenching and gorgeous moments I’ve ever seen in the theater.
6. Most Unorthodox Holiday Programming
Misery, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre
Amidst several Christmas Carols, the stories of Rudolph and The Nutcracker, and a holly jolly Disney songfest, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s artistic director Brent Hazelton decided that the Christmas season was the perfect time to scare the bejesus out of people. He programmed Stephen King’s well known novel-turned-movie-turned play, Misery in the theater’s December slot. When I first read about this choice in the season brochure, I admit I had no intention of seeing it. Not only had I had enough horror this season, but I really wasn’t in the mood for a dark tale, in the darkest, coldest time of the year. But the caliber of the actors – Milwaukee favorites Jonathan Wainwright and Kelly Doherty – convinced me to give Misery a try and I’m very glad I did. Exceptional performances from both actors propelled the taut story of a writer who crashes his car in a snowstorm and is rescued by his number one fan, who also happens to be psychotic. Directed by Hazelton, the intense 90 minutes was grueling, in the best way. It was impossible not to be completely drawn to these two characters, their battle of wills, and their fight for survival. I am not advocating for a stage version of The Shining next December, but Misery was indeed a visceral, exciting, captivating piece of theater.
7. Best Out-of-Body Experience
DiMonte Henning, Kill Move Paradise, Next Act Theatre
Kill Move Paradise is the story of Black men killed in their prime and stuck in limbo. It was also fascinating evening at the theater, watching breathlessly as the characters struggled to understand the events that brought them to this purgatorial plane, searched for similarities in their stories, and expressed their rage that people of color had once again suffered enormously at the hands of the police. All of the Black men in the cast where captivating to watch as they grappled with their circumstances but as the character Daz, DiMonte Henning was absolutely inspiring. Pure energy unleashed, he was by turns the funniest, the most frenetic, and the most devastating actor on stage. Loud, brash and in-your-face, he pivoted in an instant to heartbroken and confused about his life’s abrupt end. The largest voice and the largest personality with the largest pain, his performance was raw and staggering. I have seen Henning in many other roles, but this is the one that I will treasure.
8. Best Interspecies Romance
The Moors, American Players Theatre
Core company members James DeVita and Colleen Madden have played all of the greats in Shakespeare’s canon and have racked up superlatives for performances in tour-de-force one-person shows, the funniest comedies, and the darkest tragedies. But this season they embodied an equisitely bittersweet romance between an injured moor-hen and an English mastiff in Jen Silverman’s bizarre, funny and horrifying play The Moors, where playwright turns the tropes of gothic literature on their heads. On other parts of the stage the peculiar ladies of the house, Agatha and Huldey, prepared for the arrival of a governess from London, and a single maid with anarchic fantasies tended to the entire estate. But audiences swooned while watching the touching love story unfold between two truly doomed creatures, whose unnatural desires could not overcome their natural predilictions. Madden and DeVita have seldom been more compelling then when trying to sort out the affection between a tortured, brooding dog and a moor-hen, so clearly in over her head. If you saw it, you know. If you didn’t, you missed a singular treat.
9. Best Use of Imaginary Props
Stones in his Pockets, American Players Theatre
Actors Marcus Truchinski and Nate Burger took on some enormous roles this season at APT – Burger even tackled the moody Dane in Hamlet to great acclaim – but Stones in his Pockets was still a herculean task for these two very skilled performers. The pair created more than two dozen characters between them, in multiple, specific settings across the entire Irish countryside, and interacted with dozens and dozens of props as they told the story of two disenchanted Irish lads trying to find a way forward after personal troubles and tragedies. Contrasting the reality of modern-day Ireland with the fictional, happy-go-lucky Emerald Isle that is so often featured in movies, without a scrap of scenery and only a couple of chairs to stand in for sets, these two actors conjured entire worlds replete with clipboards and scripts, catering operations stacked with plates of pie, overcrowded pubs filled with locals raising pints of Guinness, historic-looking castles on movie sets, a somber, flower-filled funeral at a Catholic church, and a late night rendezvous with an American actress in her trailer. Their artistry ensured that every line was crystal clear, every character beautifully formed, and every prop so real in our minds’ eyes that they could have been in an actual movie. Not only did they make it look easy, they made the whole play real – literally out of thin air.
10. Most Magical Snow
The Wanderers, Forward Theater Company
There was a surprising amount of snow on stages, and even in the audience this year: falling softly from the fly space on Ebeneezer Scrooge; showering the audience with actual snow that melted on our shoulders during A Jolly Holiday; dancing above Rudolph and the rest of the reindeer friends in beautiful swirls created by the lighting magic of Jason Fassl. But the most magical snow this season wasn’t in a holiday show. It was in FTC’s The Wanderers, the story of two couples falling in and out of love with disastrous consequences. While one romance occurred online, the other was IRL. While one was caught up in virtual reality, the other was escaping from an insular Hasidic Jewish community in New York. Over the course of the play, Esther and Schmuli (Elyse Edelman and Paris Hunter Paul) hurt each other in brutal ways, as their marriage and their family was ripped apart. But reaching out to one another in a final scene, they shared a moment of awe in a sprinkling of light snow. It was a beautiful reminder that love and relationships are incredibly complicated and that even after a couple comes close to self-destructing, those people can still witness something breathtaking and miraculous together.
11. Best Entrance
American Players Theatre’s Loves Labor’s Lost
Although Ernest Shackleton’s entrance into Kat’s apartment through the refrigerator was unexpected and clever, and David Daniel’s appearance as the ghost of King Hamlet was bone chilling, the best entrance – hands-down – goes to the French princess (an elegant Phoebe González) and her women-in-waiting as they descended upon the university where young King Ferdinand (Nate Burger) and his merry men have just sworn an oath to shun the fairer sex so they could study for three long years. Pausing on the steps of the center aisle of the Hill Theatre, the women (Samantha Newcomb, Melisa Pereyra and Jennifer Vosters) floated effortlessly into place, dressed and accessorized impeccably in color-coordinated, high society fashions of the 1950s. The Princess and her entourage not only presented an incredible runway show, they ladies entered singing in four-part harmony, a cappella. From this very first moment, the audience knew what the would-be scholars did not – that the men didn't stand a chance of keeping their vows.
12. Best Multicultural, Multi-Media Celebration of what Makes Each of Us Special
Stellaluna, Children’s Theater of Madison
CTM’s Stellaluna tells the story of a fruit bat who is adopted by a family of birds and tries her best to fit in. Eventually Stellaluna and the rest of the cast realize that although she could never succeed at being a bird, she was very successful at being herself – a bat with her own set of unique skills. In addition to the joyful storytelling and colorful puppetry, which ranged from small marionettes to giants bird and butterflies, the story was richly enhanced by the narrator (John Kinstler) who, like Stellaluna, was truly beautiful being his authentic self – a deaf performer fluent in American Sign Language. This production celebrated differences in so many inventive ways, illustrating perfectly that a diverse group can create something much more beautiful than a homogenous one could produce on its own.
13. Greatest Love Story:
The Brothers Size, American Players Theatre
Directed by Gavin Lawrence, The Brothers Size is a stunning family drama based on Yoruban storytelling traditions. We first meet the serious, pragmatic brother Ogun Size (Rasell Holt), who fixes cars during the day at a small garage he owns. At night he is tormented by dreams about the fate and future of his younger brother. Oshoosi Size (Derrick Moore) has just been released from jail and is staying with Ogun while he tries to find his way on the outside. His dreams, remembering his incarceration, are also so troubled he gets little rest. Oshoosi’s former cellmate, Elegba (Nathan Barlow), tries to lure his friend away from Ogun’s serious lifestyle of early mornings and hard work toward an easier life of endless time off, willing women, and dreamy nights on the Louisiana Bayou. As Ogun and Elegba battle for Oshoosi’s attention and allegiance, the three explode with anger, resentment, jealousy, and frustration. Told through dance, improvised music, songs, and brilliant acting, the greatest love story of the season was undoubtedly between these two brothers, whose whole beings were consumed by devotion to each other. When they were finally separated at the end of the play the heartbreak was unbearable.
14. Best Reinterpretation of a Classic — A tie!
Hamlet, American Players Theatre
This invigorating production presented Hamlet’s classic conflicts and cast of characters in an eclectic, modern setting and refocused the essential questions of love, family, duty, life, death and revenge in a way that made them astonishingly fresh and relevant. It was edited, directed and carefully reshaped by core company member Jim DeVita, who has also played the troubled prince previously on the APT stage. The solid cast, led by Nate Burger in an extraordinary performance, lifted Hamlet out of the dusty archives and made it crackle with intelligence, energy, passion and desperation. Standard characters were completely reinterpreted. Familiar lines sounded brand new. Forgotten scenes took on new importance. And themes that had been hidden in plain sight leapt off the page. The entire performance proved that classic plays can still contain new revelations.
and A Christmas Carol, Children’s Theater of Madison
Director/Choreographer Brian Cowing and adapter Charlotte T. Martin succeeded in creating a version of the much-loved Christmas tale that reinvigorated the entire story, while preserving all of the moments that audiences hold dear. The new script and production design literally illuminated the plight of Scrooge and the Cratchits like never before. Adding new lamplighter characters and scenes to surprise us; expanding on the relationships of Scrooge, Belle, and Marley; removing Tim’s physical disability to match modern sensibilities; and condensing sections of the story that were repetitive freshened up the play tremendously. A complete departure visually from CTM’s recent iterations, this production also celebrated light, the love and connections of family, and the potential we all have to be more generous and caring towards others.
And Now for 2023. . .
As we move together to another year of amazing performing arts experiences, I wish you a theater filled with rapt audiences, spontaneous applause, and earned standing ovations from patrons with completely unobstructed views, where no one would even think of bringing a cell phone or unwrapping pieces of candy during the show. Enjoy.