In the end, it doesn't matter. At times, upon discovering a secret passage tucked inside a wardrobe, say, or suddenly hearing music issuing from a hidden music hall, The Masque of the Red Death could conjure the feeling of walking through oneâs own dreams. Katori Hall (The Mountaintop) turns the story of the Marian apparitions that visited a trio of Rwandan schoolgirls in 1981 into a religious and political drama with echoes of George Bernard Shawâs Saint Joan and Arthur Millerâs The Crucible. Inside your head ⦠Simon McBurney in the Encounter at the Edinburgh festival in 2015. - Michael Billington / The Guardian. It's an admirable undertaking when you consider the swathes of legendary players who have taken to the pitch … The real drama comes from how you, like the characters, deal with a situation that can't be fully understood because it cannot be interpreted in only one way. But those are incidental concerns. The top 25 Broadway (and off Broadway) plays of this century according to OnStage Blog. Charged with bringing the National Theatre of Scotland into being, Vicky Featherstone reckoned there might be a story to tell about the Black Watch regiment before it was subsumed into the Royal Regiment of Scotland. It was partly about a reformed IRA gunman whose violent past is catching up with him, partly about the power of unspoken love and partly about the Hardy-esque rituals that give a rhythm to rural life. Dealing with the relationship between an African-American housemaid and her Jewish employers, it exposed the racial, social and economic tensions in 1960s America and the vivacious score even animated washing machines and hairdryers. - Philip Fisher / British Theatre Guide, From left: Damon Gupton, Annie Parisse, Crystal A. Dickinson and Jeremy Shamos. AS Read the review. 10 Lee continued to explore themes of prejudice and stereotype in works such as The Shipment and Straight White Men, but this finds her at her most scurrilous and original. What starts out as a sort of lewd joke concerning one man's ill-fated love affair with a barnyard animal unfolds into a tragedy of Greek proportions, complete with a shocking denouement all the more devastating for its sheer improbability. 21. Celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, Wicked has brought us the power duo of Elphaba and Glinda. Jeanine Tesoriâs delectable melodies and Lisa Kronâs lyrics, just on the elegant side of conversational, give the show a remarkable intimacy. - Michael Billington / The Guardian. MB Read the review. Having summarised Austenâs plot in under a half-hour, Wade brilliantly turned the play into an argument between herself and the characters about their destiny. 14. Adam Corkâs score, deploying the everyday phrases of London Road residents collated by Alecky Blythe, acquired a fugal delicacy and opened up new possibilities for musical theatre: the savour of actuality, one felt, might one day supplant the narcissism of showbiz. Penhall nailed several issues: the myth of a tolerant community ready to receive people with a personality disorder, the high incidence of mental illness among members of the African-Caribbean population and the idea that all professions are a conspiracy against the laity. Goldoniâs 18th century comedy, Il Servitore di Due Padroni, has had many makeovers but few funnier than this one by Richard Bean. Florian Zellerâs plays, translated by Christopher Hampton, have captivated British audiences through their cryptic portrayals of personal crisis. David Harrowerâs disturbing play offers a riveting study of sexual obsession. Soccer, social issues and the difficulties of father-son relationships were recurring themes. While it might sound like a cold intellectual exercise, the use of an unprepared and often slightly baffled performer poignantly speaks to the showâs themes of loss and grief, making it one of the centuryâs best marriages of form and content. I donât know exactly what that means.â AS Read the review. An act of theatrical bad faith, this brilliant and subversive piece by the devised theatre company Forced Entertainment shreds the social contract between performers and audience. Dennis Kelly and Tim Minchinâs dizzily enjoyable musical about Roald Dahlâs telekinetic bookworm sings the importance of two invaluable resources: public libraries and arts subsidy. Lee, a Korean-American artist, populated the stage with three women in traditional Korean dress and a fourth woman, Korean-American, who despises them. Using blackface, whiteface, redface and an anarchic humour, it blows up conventional notions of identity. You are sitting in a wheelchair, blindfolded and pushed into a room where your senses are caressed: fingers run through your hair, a chocolate is popped in your mouth, a voice whispers intimate questions. “My husband and the woman he loves,” Lane responds coolly. It deals with a fraught confrontation between a 28-year-old woman and a 56-year-old man who, 15 years earlier, had enjoyed a criminally transgressive relationship. Best Yasmina Reza Plays. Joe Penhallâs compassion for those marginalised by society was seen at its best in this extraordinary play. Gojira - Silvera. Even more pertinently, he exposes how much our attitudes toward race remain mired in a communication impasse. MF Read the review. It takes us a very long distance in just an hour and 40 minutes. From “The Seagull” to “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” here are the modern and contemporary plays that every actor needs to know. Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out. MB Read the review. Much was made of Anne Washburnâs decision to imagine The Simpsons surviving the collapse of human civilisation, but really Mr Burns is about how cultures evolve and reinvent. 294: Total number of American plays receiving top-10 votes, from a panel of 177. Presented by the national theatres of Scotland and Great Britain, Munroâs timely trilogy also raised serious questions about the huge potential and possible hazards of independence. Dealing with the rise and fall of an overextended Texan energy company that started trading in the internet and even the weather, Prebbleâs play was an exhilarating mix of political satire, modern morality and â in Rupert Gooldâs production â Citizen Kane-like spectacle. David Irelandâs blackly comic play showed how a Protestant loyalistâs devotion to the unionist cause led him to murderously lunatic extremes. 11. Best culture of the 21st century; Hilary Mantel; Wolf Hall; Marilynne Robinson; Fiction in translation; Ta-Nehisi Coates; WG Sebald; features MB Read the review. MB Read the review. MB Read the review. Hallâs great achievement is that, without necessarily validating the visions, she shows how they reflected the countryâs existing Tutsi-Hutu tensions and foresaw the horrific genocide to come. MB Read the review. The 21st century's 100 best players. His presence provoked professional bitchery, press venom and popular prejudice. Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis, Jeff Daniels (with a bottle of rum) and James Gandolfini in "God of Carnage" on Broadway in 2009. Punchdrunkâs beguiling show, based on several short stories of Edgar Allen Poe, occupied the Victorian-era Battersea Arts Centre. MB Read the review. The 21st Century’s 12 greatest novels ... when 13-year-old Briony shows her mother a play she’s written to perform with her three young cousins the next evening. - Philip Fisher / British Theatre Guide, Eddie Redmayne, left, as an artist's assistant, and Alfred Molina as Mark Rothko in “Red.” Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times, Best of all is a sequence when Rothko and his helpmate prime a blank canvas by creating a base, plum-coloured layer. - F. Kathleen Foley / The Los Angeles Times, Adina Verson and Katrina Lenk in Indecent Carol Rosegg, It seems appropriate to use a German expression – gesamtkunstwerk – for Indecent. Lolita Chakrabarti seized on the stunning story of the passions aroused by the London debut in 1833 of the African-American actor Ira Aldridge as Othello. The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui 23. MB Read the review. ... 30 of 50 21… Yes, it addresses issues of great meaning to many: faith, truthfulness, determination to do what's right at any cost. It also blows up a steamship. MB Read the review. It asks questions about the whole of American society and not just the world of baseball. Wild, scorching and gleefully profane, Young Jean Leeâs early play is an Asian-American identity-politics comedy. Playwriting debuts donât come much better than this. Sophie Melville in Iphigenia in Splott at the Sherman theatre, Cardiff, in 2015. It implied that the two men, in vastly different ways, needed each other. This pioneering verbatim musical showed how an Ipswich community reconstituted itself after the gruesome murder of five sex workers on a single street. And don't children love to be scared? Thereâs a balloon-clad ecdysiast who runs off in tears, a doll who tortures his ventriloquist, a mentalist who predicts the death of most everyone watching. - Matthew Murray / Talkin' Broadway, While Disgraced has its schematic aspects, the writing effectively observes the insidious tensions that ripple through both personal and professional relationships in post-9/11 America. Hallâs play was fundamentally about the relationship between art and socialism and suggested that society had to be measured by its capacity for political change rather than by personal progress. - Michael Feingold / The Village Voice. Its beauty is that the pales and forts of reason quickly break down and bourgeois hypocrisy is exposed. MB Read the review. Here Mama Nadi and her âgirlsâ, each an orphan of war, entertain soldiers on both sides, flirting for their lives. Dramatically, that ambiguity is key. Set on a 50-acre farm in County Armagh in 1981, Jez Butterworthâs play had the richness and density of a good novel. 21. But what emerges is something rare in modern drama: a totally convincing portrait of the artist as a working visionary. - Marilyn Stasio / Variety. This was her most expansive play to date, charting the parallels and differences between the worldâs two rival superpowers. It isn’t understating to call this fantastic play a work of all-encompassing art. MB Read the review. As played by Jonathan Pryce and Eileen Atkins, it moved one to tears but also left one pleasantly perplexed about its ultimate meaning. Five Plays: Ivanov / The Seagull / Uncle Vanya / The Three Sisters / The Cherry Orchard by MB Read the review. That double vision ran right through the play. We run down the best comedies of the 21st century so far, from obvious picks like Anchorman to Bridesmaids, Frances Ha and beyond. This is a confounding comedy of race. MB Read the review. For knee-slappers you have funny-sexy, funny-psychological, funny-psychic, funny-Chekhovian boredom and funny-erudite. Theatre history is a rich subject. While her mum is at the bingo, Dahlâs Matilda spends âtwo glorious hoursâ at the library. MB Read the review. Christian Bale – The Fighter MB Read the review. This is a superb piece of commercial writing. Zimmerman's approach is painterly and literary but also acrobatically physical, and the ten-member cast bring it to life, combining athletic movement with beautifully spoken narration. Number 50 is Conor McPherson's 1997 play "The Weir." And itâs theatrically audacious, concluding with an elaborate pop-culture opera. All this and more is crowned at the end in a brilliant ranting monologue by Vanya, delivered with comedic punch and passion by Jacobs, on the demise of wholesome values in the early 21st century. (The print… Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman — Michael Sommers / Star-Ledger, Daniel Sunjata (Left) and the cast of Take Me Out (Photo © Joan Marcus), Take Me Out eventually builds to a dramatic and tragic denouement. Switching between six establishments in two continents on a single day, Inua Ellamsâs invigorating play showed how, for African men, barber shops are both pub and political platform. - Richard Hornby / The Hudson Review, Mos Def and Jeffrey Wright in Topdog/Underdog (Photo: Michal Daniel), It’s rich in both metaphor and foreshadowing as the playwright shows the brothers grappling with their distrust of each other, their desire for supremacy, their poverty, their darker natures and the pain of their past - Kelly Clawson / Ohio.com, There are plays that entertain, plays that illuminate, and plays that bring us to an exalted new place. Mission Driftâs heady mix of history, mythology and floor-shaking tunes skewered the American dream while recreating the giddy, greedy thrill it promises. - Albert Williams / Chicago Reader, Nina Arianda and Hugh Dancy in Venus in Fur (© Joan Marcus), To most minds. MF Read the review. Foo Fighters - All My Life. Durang drops in a profundity now and then, such as: “True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body: nourishment and refreshment.” - Barbara Rose Shuler / Monterey Herald, Brian F. O’Byrne, seated, as Alexander Herzen, in a scene from “Salvage,” the third part of Tom Stoppard’s trilogy, “The Coast of Utopia.” Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times, Utopia is like a stage version of a nineteenth-century novel, leisurely, historically sweeping, idealistic, overloaded with characters who talk by the paragraph rather than in grunts and expletives. Brilliantly collapsing time and space, the Teamâs dissection of US capitalism is one of the most theatrically ambitious shows of recent years. Frost, having lost his American and Australian programmes, was seeking to restore his dwindling fortunes, while Nixon craved public expiation of his Watergate sins. The play's specific story - about a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, where a priest might be carrying on an inappropriate relationship with the school's lone black student - is also beside the point. MB Read the review. 38: The percentage of survey-takers who are women. Lucy Kirkwood can do both intimate and epic. 740 views ... 21. Caryl Churchillâs play hinged on a powerful juxtaposition. The History Boys are eight pupils, with varying accents, at a minor public school in the North. Goodman Theatre's production of Edward Albee's The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?. Dealing with the bitter inheritance of Aids and the spiritual qualities of a house, it was like a cross between Angels in America and Howards End. A thrilling playwright and performer who identifies as queer and prefers the pronoun judy, Mac is no patriot, but the showâs scepticism is interleaved with joy. Jerusalem, Mr Burns and Barbershop Chronicles, The 50 best theatre shows of the 21st century. Arctic Monkeys - R U Mine? Lamb Of God - Redneck. was part of the 2003/04 season. Lin-Manuel Mirandaâs hip-hop musical about the birth of a nation and the rise to power of âa bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsmanâ was hyped to the skies. 21st-century play stubs (2 C) Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:21st-century_plays&oldid=743787553". The Complicité production matched the hallucinatory nature of Petru Popescuâs Amazon Beaming, a biography of the explorer Loren McIntyre, with a soundscape that got inside your head. (Much of the “Greatest Generation” speech would definitely make the list.) Four elderly women sit in a sunlit garden dwelling on times past, at one point even breaking into a version of Da Doo Ron Ron. Structured as a smarmy seaside variety entertainment, the show begins badly and gets much worse. The play is particularly incisive in its commentary on the volatility of certain words and talking points, rendering them unsafe in any conversation. In individualist US, we saw a photographer garlanded for his pursuit of an exiled Tiananmen Square demonstrator; in collectivist China, we watched a man punished for protesting about the smog-induced death of a neighbour. This is exhilarating, dynamic theatre which triumphantly expands the boundaries of theatricality. From the ancient Greeks and Shakespeare to Angels in America, these 50 plays rank as the greatest in the world Natasha Gordon took a theme explored by many other writers: what it means to lead a bicultural existence in which you are caught between immigrant tradition and the insistent present. The piece thrums with empathy for all its characters and the songs in which Alison discovers her lesbianism, the poignant Ring of Keys and the giddy Changing My Major, are pure joy. - Steven Suskin / Huffington Post, The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh with David Tennant,Jim Broadbent opens at the Cottesloe Theatre on 13/11/03 CREDIT Geraint Lewis, When a story is good, it's irresistible: How easy is it even for adults to turn up their noses at a children's tale if it's charmingly written and engagingly presented? But what's the truth? Terry Johnson is a prolific contemporary playwright, director and television dramatist. This gives the same pleasure in the theatre. Any "best" list, whether made at the end of a year or a century, is a snapshot of a critic's judgment and era. Roy Williamsâ play still offers one of the most vivid accounts of the variety and depth of Anglicised racism. Constitutional crisis, civil war and palace plotting, according to Mike Bartlettâs fascinating blank-verse play. Almost regardless of whether itâs Homer Simpson or the Homer of The Iliad who manages to escape apocalypse, the play wittily explores how these stories morph, mutate and lend meaning to human lives. Pantera - Revolution Is My Name. At the same time, we saw that the folkloric heroes he sought to emulate were a thing of the past in our modern, mechanised world. Cruel, unsettling and often very funny, it attacks its spectators directly, upheaving dramatic expectations and disrupting audience complacency. Epic, hard-bitten and tender, this landmark production put the NTS on the map. Rhinoceros (Eugene Ionesco) 22. Even if it eventually flirts with melodrama, Elminaâs Kitchen is a work of surging vitality that takes on board gun control, the battle between books and consumerism, and the maelstrom of life in a Hackney eatery. - Charles Isherwood / New York Times, Click Here To Sign Up for the OnStage Blog Newsletter, Click Here To Sign Up for the OnStage Blog Newslette. Instead of erupting in bitter hatred, Karam’s characters respond to these revelations with deep love. - Matthew Murrary / Talkin' Broadway. A tear rolls down his cheek. The Number one play of the past 100 years is Arthur Miller's 1949 play "Death of A Salesman," according to Entertainment Weekly's issue of July 5/12, 2013. Akhtar also provides a thoughtful examination of how denial and self-loathing can distort an individual’s sense of cultural identity. Inspired by Euripidesâs tragedy Iphigenia in Aulis, Gary Owen delivered a blistering dispatch from modern-day Cardiff, capturing just one of the many British communities on the brink, ripped by divisions and badly wounded by austerity. Beautifully complicated ⦠Saidah Arrika Ekulona and Russell Gebert Jones in Ruined at Manhattan Theatre Club, New York, in 2009. We can't know. Meshuggah - Bleed. This sweet and bitter musical, based on Alison Bechdelâs graphic novel memoir, tells twinned stories, one comic, one tragic. Include some extremely quotable lyrics and you get one of the best musicals of the 21st century. AS Read the review. Modern drama seems to oscillate between the minimal and the maximal. CL Read the review. These musicals aren't just filled with gorgeous scores or interesting characters. Jez Butterworthâs mesmerising study of a changing England was built around the figure of Johnny âRoosterâ Byron, a Wiltshire Falstaff unforgettably played by Mark Rylance. The play's insights hardly constitute breaking news, but what great fun it is watching these characters tear into one another's self-regard. Her insightfully observed characters all went to the same schools, work at the same factory, drink at the same bar, and are going to hell in the same handbasket. MB Read the review. Skiffle makeover ⦠James Corden in One Man, Two Guvnors at the Lyttelton theatre, London, in 2011. Commenting has been disabled at this time but you can still. ", Nearly every scene is based on a piece of information cunningly withheld until the last moment; and unlike playwrights who take such strategic games in ponderous earnest, Auburn perceives their essential playfulness, as do his characters, who toy with each other much as he toys with them and with us. The cast of Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning play August: Osage County, directed by Sam Gold, at The Old Globe May 7 - June 12, 2011. MB Read the review. This is more than a simple coming of age drama. The 25 Best American Screenplays of the 21st Century, From ‘Eternal Sunshine’ to ‘Lady Bird’ CL Read the review. Well-meaning liberalism may have yielded surface advancements, but the play tartly shows that patronizing insensitivity is alive and well. Can one still champion a play whose main character, Hector, likes copping a feel of boysâ balls? Simon Stephensâ detective yarn took audiences on a thrilling and disorientating trip across Europe, in a trilingual collaboration with German director Sebastian Nübling and Estonian designer Ene-Liis Semper. Best Plays by Martyna Majok Surging vitality ⦠Kwame Kwei-Armah and Dona Croll in Elminaâs Kitchen at the Garrick, London, in 2005. It’s an exhilarating ride you’ll never forget. MB Read the review. This was the first UK visit of Ontroerend Goed, the remarkable Belgian company skilled in generating heightened emotions by unconventional means. Straddling the 19th and 20th Centuries, Maxim Gorky jump-started his career with only the second play he ever wrote, aptly titled The Lower Depths. Bold, lyrical and compelling, Brand New Ancients showcased a virtuosic storyteller at her best. Apart from its touching evocation of frustrated desire, the play also offered a passionate defence of movies shot on 35mm film stock in a digitised age. Lincoln works at a shooting gallery, dressing up, in whiteface and stovepipe, as the president he is named for. The top 10 Morgan also made one nostalgic for a time when current affairs TV had theatrical power. CL Read the review. MB Read the review. MB Read the review. The Killers - Mr Brightside. It's not merely a good play. 18. Loosely based on Bertolt Brechtâs Mother Courage and Her Children, Lynn Nottageâs Pulitzer prize-winning play unfurls at Mama Nadiâs, a brothel and bar in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But that is only one aspect of a richly diverse comedy that deals with the covert eroticism of the teacher-pupil relationship, the overt elitism of the educational system and the debasement of culture by flashy presentation. 16. One can only hope that it won't fade too badly over time. - Chris Jones / Chicago Tribune, In “Sweat,” Lynn Nottage goes where few playwrights have dared to go — into the heart of working-class America. Screenplays create the world in which the film lives, whether it may be Greenwich Village in the 60’s or the fictional country of Zubrowka. It justified the drum-beating through its pulsating energy, dexterous lyrics and celebration of Americaâs overwhelming debt to immigrants. CW Read the review. The overwhelming impression was of a kingdom beset by feudal infighting and of the inescapable solitude of monarchy. Staged by Goodman Artistic Director Robert Falls, The Goat or, Who is Sylvia? Pleasantly perplexing ⦠The Height of the Storm, with Jonathan Pryce and Eileen Atkins at Wyndhamâs theatre, London, in 2018. Pulsating ⦠Carleigh Bettiol, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr and Anthony Ramos in Hamilton in 2015. Who would have thought that a TV interview would be the source of such gripping drama? While pursuing a style of realistic theatre, Gorky wrote The Lower Depths with a greater focus on creating fascinating characters rather than a … Meanwhile, one periodically cuts through the chat to offer a vision, in seven monologues, of a world of flood, fire, thirst and starvation. In random, debbie tucker green reinvigorated the monologue form, testing how many voices can be channelled through one performer. These plays serve as the very best examples of what drama should be. The key to its success is the fullness with which Ms. Ruhl’s sees her characters, who all possess complicated interior lives that begin to impinge upon one another in mysterious ways as their fates become intertwined. In an age of theatrical nouvelle cuisine, Butterworthâs play felt like a five-course feast. Stephen Karam’s warm-hearted play “The Humans ” follows the formula, but only to the point of exposing everybody’s secrets. Lucy Kirkwoodâs probing, thoughtful play showed three nuclear physicists reunited in the wake of a disaster at a local power station. Produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, it became a global sensation thanks to its sweetly spiky songs, empowering celebration of the imagination and brilliantly rebellious heroine who puts the ârevoltâ into revolting rhymes. Echoes of Shaw ⦠Our Lady of Kibeho, with Rima Nsubuga, Michaela Blackburn, Pepter Lunkuse and Gabrielle Brooks at the Royal & Derngate theatre, Northampton, in 2019. John Mayer - Neon. Others, though, were overwhelmed by Bakerâs portrait of three loners working in a rundown Massachusetts movie house. There is even a play within a play. It jolts our conscience about a forgotten conflict. With comments by those who reviewed their productions, here are our updated picks for the Best Plays of the 21st Century...so far. An exquisitely uncomfortable exploration of bias, it also includes mimed suicides choreographed to Mariah Careyâs All I Want for Christmas. Loathed and loved in equal measure, it has undoubtedly galvanised a new generation of directors inspired by continental European theatre. The concept behind Tim Crouchâs An Oak Tree is simple but brilliant: each night, a new, unrehearsed actor performs the show alongside Crouch, thus exposing the transformation that lies at the heart of all theatre.
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