2021 Theatre Productions of the Year
Despite the necessary limitations imposed by the Pandemic and the Omicron variant, live theatre is gradually reemerging to reengage more audiences for 2022. The devastation felt by smaller companies and houses is undeniable, and yet co-productions, smaller immersive theatre productions, Zoom readings, previously taped and live streaming shows and audio plays have to some degree counterbalanced the paucity of live stage over this dark, challenging time.
Los Angeles was hard hit not only because of the proliferation of small theatres that cannot financially go dark as long as the Music Center or the Geffen Playhouse, but also because Actors Equity rules made it even more expensive to produce what were called Equity waiver shows. Despite this, the Fountain Theatre in Hollywood presented a stellar and emotionally captivating production of Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children. A three-person piece about husband, wife and female friend who must deal with their tangled past and unnerving present — with a nuclear plant threatening the British coast — The Children is constructed with interlocking brilliance. Director Simon Levy again shows his mastery and his actors, Ron Botitta, Elizabeth Elias Huffman and Lily Knight, are perfectly cast, in a Tony-nominated play that’s so timely in its questions about the acceptance of scientific fact and personal responsibility.
The Fountain had previously reopened after a coronavirus hiatus, with a newly constructed outdoor stage in their former parking lot, putting on Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s radical retelling of the 1859 melodrama An Octoroon, which played against racial and gender expectations in a brave and theatrically bold manner. It’s a reminder that theatre can reinvent itself with enough will and vision.
As for the idea of staid, standardized Zoom readings, the Cherry Artists’ Collective and the New Ohio Theatre exploded that assumption, as they presented the stunning, poetic Hotel Good Luck by Alejandro Ricaño, streamed from the State Theatre in Ithaca, New York.
Actor Seth Soulstein, aided by the live musical accompaniment and additional acting of Desmond Bratton, took the viewer on a metaphysical journey, made all the more effective by hand-held camera work, video and sound effects, directed with great precision by Samuel Buggeln. Hotel Good Luck is indicative of that rare but necessary staple of COVID-era theatre — small cast, highly creative streaming shows that allow the audience anywhere on the planet to be lost for a time in the magical transcendence of the stage. As such, it and The Children are productions of the year, throwing down a gauntlet for what is to come on the stage, insisting that despite the need for safety protocols for attending the theatre, we should strive for more in its presentation.
