(Charles Isherwood’s article appeared in The New York Times, 12/15.)
FOR the second year running I quickly totted up my list of my favorite nights at the theater before noticing, to my happy surprise, that the lineup didn’t include a single revival. This year, perhaps just as remarkably (if less happily), it doesn’t include a single musical either. True, it was hardly a stellar year for either genre.
The ecstatically received “Book of Mormon” practically swallowed the Broadway season whole, critically and promotionally speaking, while the endless debacle that was “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” gobbled up all the attention left over. And although the New York theater continues to be a leader in the recycling business, aside from Brian Bedford’s scintillating revival of “The Importance of Being Earnest” and a frisky and fresh “Cherry Orchard” from the director Andrei Belgrader, the year was mostly devoid of revelatory reimaginings of classics.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/theater/favorite-nights-at-the-theater.html?_r=1&hpw