The Broadway.com editorial staff is well aware that choosing the "best" of anything is largely subjective. And trust us, we have very different tastes. But on a blustery day in December, we gathered together to vote and revote on what we could collectively call the best Broadway shows of the year. Here are our picks.—Beth Stevens
1. Doubt
Walter Kerr Theatre. Opened March 31.
John Patrick Shanley's tightly drawn potboiler about a nun's suspicions in a 1964 Bronx Catholic school riveted audiences with its unanswered questions and clean-crafted performances from a quartet of actors—Cherry Jones, Brían F. O'Byrne, Heather Goldenhersh and Adriane Lenox—at the top of their game. Director Doug Hughes kept the pace swift and exciting. There is no wonder why this was the most awarded show it garnered the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Best Play Tony Award of the year.
2. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Imperial Theatre. Opened March 3.
Great big stuff indeed! David Yazbek and Jeffrey Lane's delicious musical-comedy romp in the French Riveria is populated with schemers, scammers and jokes that actually make audiences laugh. The supporting cast ranges from the charming deadpan of Joanna Gleason to the lovable Gregory Jbara and high-kicking Sara Gettelfinger—all of them are enjoyably watchable. But this show lives or dies by its trio of leading performers. Luckily, they all deliver, and dashing John Lithgow and luscious Sherie Rene Scott generously let over-the-top Tony winner Norbert Leo Butz walk away with the show.
3. The Pillowman
Booth Theatre. Opened April 10, Closed September 18.
If "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," as Tolstoy asserted, Michael McDonagh's The Pillowman looked at unhappiness in ways unseen before on the Broadway stage. The playwright examined the dark imagination of a writer of morbid tales, who is under interrogation for murder. The result is a disturbing funhouse of creepy imagery performed with precision by leads Billy Crudup, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jeff Goldblum and Zeljko Ivanek. Director John Crowley spiked the provocative storytelling with bolts of unexpected comedy.
4. Primo
Music Box Theatre. Opened July 11, Closed August 14.
An almost bare stage. A man dressed in nondescript clothing. It doesn't sound like much, but Antony Sher's Primo, which he adapted from Primo Levi's Holocaust memoir If This Is a Man and performed solo, proved that simplicity can be more engrossing than spectacle—especially when recounting horrors so shocking that one's own mind often provides detail more haunting than any set designer could achieve.
5. Sweeney Todd
Eugene O'Neill Theatre. Opened November 3.
Some say don't toy with perfection. Apparently, director John Doyle is not one of those people. Doyle's staging of composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim's masterpiece Sweeney Todd is stripped-down, bleak, funny and very bloody. It's also filled with top-notch performers—led by Tony winners Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone—who play their own instruments. You could call it a risk or a gimmick, but we call the vision of LuPone's Mrs. Lovett shaking her rump as she plays the tuba something else… genius.
Royale Theatre. Opened May 1, Closed August 28.
The mantra for the sleazy, cut-throat real estate salesman in David Mamet's searing 1984 play Glengarry Glen Ross is "always be closing." With a tight ensemble of actor's actors, notably Alan Alda and Liev Schreiber, this revival did indeed close the deal with critics and audiences alike. Under the sure-handed direction of Joe Mantello, the seamless seven-member cast was up to the difficult, staccato rhythms of the dialogue. The spot-on costumes and sets helped bring to light the frantic desperation of the greed is good mentality.
7. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Longacre Theatre. Opened March 20, Closed September 4.
Edward Albee's blistering portrait of a booze-soaked marriage gone wrong is a classic that needs no introduction. It's surprising news then that this long night's journey into day has not had a Broadway production since 1976. The recent revival featured four actors—Kathleen Turner, Bill Irwin, David Harbour and Mireille Enos—that were perfectly matched perhaps unexpectedly—for Irwin is known mostly as a physical comedian to their iconic roles. The result was one of the most gut-wrenching theatrical experiences in recent memory.
8. Jersey Boys
August Wilson Theatre. Opened October 4.
The Broadway road is littered with belly-up jukebox musicals—from Good Vibrations to Lennon—but now the funeral wreaths can be taken down for the maligned genre. A new jukebox musical has risen from the ashes: Jersey Boys. The entertaining tuner tells the story of a bunch of guys from the land of Sinatra, interstates and suburbia that rose to become the hit-making group The Four Seasons, led by the famous falsetto of Frankie Valli. The show's four leads—John Lloyd Young, Daniel Reichard, Christian Hoff and J. Robert Spencer—all turn in winning performances in this slick and entertaining nostalgia-fest.
9. Brooklyn Boy
Biltmore Theatre. Opened February 3, Closed March 27.
The idea of going home again especially when going home brings up unresolved emotional issues serves as the central point of Donald Margulies' undervalued drama Brooklyn Boy. Eric Weiss, a self-involved writer with a bad track record as a son, husband and friend, writes a fictionalized memoir and then deals with its consequences, which include Hollywood groupies and resentful childhood pals. The solid Adam Arkin managed to make audiences empathize with the leading role, and prolific director Daniel Sullivan elicited nuanced performances from supporting cast members Allan Miller, Arye Gross, Polly Draper, Ari Graynor and Mimi Lieber.
10. The Light in the Piazza
Vivian Beaumont Theatre. Opened April 18.
Many musicals can feel like kid's stuff with their bouncy scores and easy-to-digest messages. This is not the case with Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas' richly dramatic The Light in the Piazza. Based on Elizabeth Spencer's novella and set in 1953 Italy, the center of the story is an emotionally complex woman played by the spirited Victoria Clark. With a cast of talented performers such as Kelli O'Hara, Matthew Morrison and Sarah Uriarte Berry, Piazza got under the skin of its sophisticated audience.