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Time - Man of the Year
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THEATER, Page 67THE BEST OF 1992
1. The Kentucky Cycle
These nine plays spanning seven hours -- and two centuries
-- aspire to nothing less than a history of America, mythic in
scale yet humbly rooted in the evolving fate of the same few
hundred acres of Kentucky. Playwright Robert Schenkkan proves a
spectacularly vivid revisionist, underscoring the violence,
exploitation, multiracial antagonism and unchecked injustice of
our past. Produced at Seattle's Intiman Theater and Los
Angeles' Mark Taper Forum, this was the first Pulitzer Prize
drama not seen in New York City and is thus a triumph for all
regional theater.
2. Conversations with My Father
His pal Bob Fosse gave Herb Gardner the nickname Whimsy.
But Gardner, 58, reveals a far deeper writer in this story of
a Jewish barkeep in Lower Manhattan who is sure that success
will come from assimilation, endless self-reinvention and
unstinting faith in the American Dream. The tale, narrated by
a once rebellious son who is now himself a rebelled-against
father, came from Seattle Repertory Theater to Broadway.
3. The Destiny of Me
Larry Kramer earned an Oscar nomination for his 1969
screenplay Women in Love, then co-founded Gay Men's Health
Crisis and the radical Act Up. Onstage, he retold his life in
The Normal Heart (1985) and resumed it in this off-Broadway
stunner. Jonathan Hadary gave the performance of the year,
balancing titanic rage, puckish mockery and suppressed
self-pity.
4. Angels in America
Towering over Tony Kushner's 7 1/2-hour epic about gay
liberation, AIDS and the Reagan era was a wall like the facade
of some government colossus, already cracked and waiting to
split open. It did -- to reveal an avenging angel that was just
one of the acts of theatrical and metaphysical daring in this
brilliant if roughhewn jumble of politics, fantasy and farce.
The full Angels debuted memorably at Los Angeles' Mark Taper
Forum, starring Ron Leibman as Republican dealmaker Roy Cohn.
5. Spic-O-Rama
John Leguizamo gave himself an acting tour de force as all
six members of a troubled Hispanic family, from nerdy schoolboy
Miggy to bone-dumb Desert Storm veteran Crazy Willie to their
amiably lowlife mother Gladyz, in hilarious monologues that
moved beyond performance art to become a true and deeply moving
play. The production by Chicago's Goodman Theater transferred to
off-Broadway.
6. Guys and Dolls
The greatest of Broadway musicals was exuberantly revived
there as a color-drenched, clownish yet passionate paean to a
big-city zest and vitality that no longer exist, and probably
never did. Faith Prince's Miss Adelaide was the year's musical
highlight.
7. Jake's Women
Alan Alda's unsinkable niceness tempered Neil Simon's
unyielding self-criticism in a surprisingly funny and engrossing
play about a writer who prefers to deal with people as
characters inside his head, so he can summon, alter or dismiss
them at will.
8. Oleanna
Liberals think it's about sexual harassment. Conservatives
are sure it's about intellectual terrorism. Even Playbill
splits the difference: half the front covers put a bull's-eye
on the haughty college professor, the other half on his dim,
dogmatic female student. Playwright David Mamet's off-Broadway
zinger holds a mirror up to muddled modern life.
9. Two Shakespearean Actors
Richard Nelson's quasi-historical piece about competing
19th century acting troupes, one led by a Briton and the other
by an American, had moody staging by Jack O'Brien, three superb
performances (by Brian Bedford, Victor Garber and Zjelko
Ivanek) and an unjustly brief life on Broadway.
10. Inspecting Carol
With a plot from Gogol and a play-within-a-play fiasco as
funny as in Nicholas Nickleby, artistic director Daniel Sullivan
and the actors of Seattle Repertory Theater hilariously send up
censorship controversies, the regional-theater movement's fear
of the National Endowment for the Arts and the widespread,
pathetic dependence on A Christmas Carol as a holiday cash cow.
. . . AND THE WORST
Crazy for You
The Tony winner for Best Musical was a dull
disappointment, hitching beloved Gershwin songs and sprightly
choreography to a slow narrative, undefined characters and blah
performances. It reveled in the adolescence that the American
musical outgrew.