Year in review: Theater critics pick Marin’s 10 best plays of 2023
Here are some of the standout shows that shone brightest for our reviewers.
Theaters everywhere are still slowly recovering from the effects of the pandemic, but for Marin theaters in particular, 2023 has felt like a year of renewal.
New artistic directors have taken the helm, including Lance Gardner at Marin Theatre Company and Jon Tracy at Marin Shakespeare Company. San Rafael’s AlterTheater also shifted in its shared leadership model with the departure of erstwhile artistic director Jeanette Harrison, with Eric Avery becoming producing artistic director and Diana Burbano becoming director of new play development.
Along the way, Marin theaters have offered some truly outstanding shows. Here are some of the standout shows that shone brightest for our reviewers.
“Native Gardens,” Ross Valley Players
A staid Washington, D.C. neighborhood was the setting for small-scale guerrilla warfare between next-door neighbors in Karen Zacarias’ elegant comedy at Ross Valley Players. Steve Price and Ellen Brooks shined as conservative pair Frank and Virginia Butley, tussling with new neighbors Tania and Pablo Del Valle (Jannely Calmell and Eric Esquivel-Gutierrez) over a property dispute threatening Frank’s ambitions to win an annual garden club competition. A gorgeous set by Malcolm Rodgers added a huge dollop of realism. Superbly directed by Mary Ann Rodgers, the four ostensible adults quickly devolved to kindergarten level, while a running theme regarding who and what is “native” gave a fascinating intellectual twist to this uproarious comedic rollercoaster by Ross Valley Players.
— Barry Willis
“Dragon Lady,” Marin Theatre Company
The first part of a trilogy covering three generations of her family history, Sara Porkalob’s solo cabaret musical turned out to be the perfect way to close out the year. Porkalob deftly shifted between characters as she traced her grandmother’s life story from being orphaned by gangsters as a small child in the Philippines through growing up working in a Manila nightclub/bordello and survival as a single mom of five in a Pacific Northwest trailer park. It was a powerful performance full of humor and peppered with poignant songs.
— Sam Hurwitt
“Kinky Boots,” Throckmorton Theatre
In early summer, Mill Valley’s Throckmorton Theatre delivered a wonderful production of recurring Bay Area favorite “Kinky Boots the Musical,” in which an old-school British shoemaking company reinvents itself in the face of a changing market. Sleiman Alahmadieh starred as Charlie Price, tasked with saving the company inherited from his father. Adam Green equaled him as Lola, a former boxer turned drag queen, who offers marketing insights and footwear designs that irk company employees while saving their jobs. The Angels, a gaggle of imperious drag queens, provided plenty of help in this diversity-positive, song-and-dance extravaganza with music by pop icon Cyndi Lauper.
— Barry Willis
“Twelfth Night,” Marin Shakespeare Company
Rarely does one see a Shakespeare production as dynamic as director/adaptor/choreographer Bridgette Loriaux’s passionate and propulsive “Twelfth Night,” a hilarious, sexy, dancerly and compassionate take on one of the Bard’s most adaptable and reliably funny comedies, with a terrific cast from top to bottom. The only trouble was there was so much going on that it was sometimes hard to know who to look at, lest you missed something priceless that someone else was doing.
— Sam Hurwitt
“The Addams Family – A New Musical,” Novato Theater Company
Novato Theater Company ushered in the Halloween season with a “spooktacular” musical riff on Charles Addams’ comically dysfunctional clan. Marvelously directed and choreographed by Marilyn Izdebski, the show featured the entire family, most as we remember them, with daughter Wednesday (HarriettePearl Fugitt) having become a cranky teenager in love with a normal boy, much to the dismay of her family. Bruce Vieira was fantastic as the irrepressibly passionate patriarch Gomez, as was Alison Peltz as his slinky seductive wife Mortica. Jane Harrington’s big breakout moment was straight-arrow Alice’s complete loss of inhibition after accidentally imbibing some of Grandma’s “acrimonium.” A hard-driving band led by Judy Wiesen propelled the performers through two hours of hilarious hijinks and delightful songs on a delightfully gloomy set by Michael Walraven.
— Barry Willis
“Odyssey,” Marin Theatre Company
Playwright-director Lisa Peterson’s fresh take on the ancient Greek epic lent new resonance to the seemingly endless twists and turns of Odysseus’ 10-year voyage home from the Trojan War by setting the story in a present-day refugee camp, where four young women fleeing from different lands read the Homeric epic poem to pass the time and take on its many characters. A production of New York’s the Acting Company, this powerful piece made its world premiere at Marin Theatre Company before touring across the country.
— Sam Hurwitt
“The Glass Menagerie,” Ross Valley Players
A production delay caused by the pandemic proved to be a blessing in disguise for Ross Valley Players with Tennessee Williams’ mid-century classic “The Glass Menagerie.” Set in a shabby apartment in St. Louis in the spring of 1939, the Wingfield family drama was a masterclass in straightforward storytelling, starring (and directed by) David Abrams as disaffected son Tom, with Tamar Cohn as his obsessive mother Amanda, Tina Traboulsi as asocial daughter Laura and Jesse Lumb as Jim, the good-natured gentleman caller. Cohn was at her theatrical peak as the aging manipulative Southern belle who never let go of her glory days attending cotillions in the Mississippi Delta. On an austere set by Tom O’Brien, this “Glass Menagerie” was perhaps the best-balanced and best-paced drama of the year.
— Barry Willis
“Hamlet,” Marin Shakespeare Company
In a trial run producing Marin Shakespeare Company’s summer season before officially being hired on as artistic director, Jon Tracy brought things roaring back to life with the company’s first mainstage season since 2019. First up was his own radically re-envisioned adaptation of “Hamlet,” ever-moving and crackling with energy, its famous speeches remixed and reapportioned. Most striking was the unconventional take on Ophelia as barely coping with crippling anxiety, compellingly portrayed by désirée freda with booming music on her omnipresent headphones.
— Sam Hurwitt
“It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play,” Ross Valley Players
Ross Valley Players had an incredible year, closing out the season with Joe Landry’s stage version of a 1940s radio production of Frank Capra’s classic film “It’s a Wonderful Life.” In many ways a counterpoint to the downer that was “The Glass Menagerie,” this tale about George Bailey, a selfless fighter for small-town justice in the fictional town of Bedford Falls, New York, was both tremendously funny and entertaining. The Barn Theatre’s compact stage was transformed into the quite plausible Studio A of Manhattan radio station WBFR, complete with an applause sign for the audience, a piano, guitar, ukulele and two tables full of props for sound effects — all performed by an excellent cast of five while voicing multiple characters — an astounding, seamless blend of acting and choreography. “It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play” was the perfect coda for a year of excellent theater.
— Barry Willis
“Where Did We Sit on the Bus?,” Marin Theatre Company
This hip-hop-steeped solo show was an unusual thing: an autobiographical coming-of-age tale now gender-flipped and performed by somebody else. But Satya Chávez is an irresistibly exuberant presence in Brian Quijada’s touching, humorous tale of a Salvadoran American theater kid always feeling like the odd one out growing up in a Chicago suburb. And multi-instrumentalist Chávez’s looping vocals and original music added mesmerizing additional layers to an already deft performance.
— Sam Hurwitt
Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and president of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact him at barry.m.willis@gmail.com. Sam Hurwitt is a Bay Area arts journalist and playwright. Contact him at shurwitt@gmail.com or on Twitter at twitter.com/shurwitt.