With New Year-End Lists in, Sweeney, Glengarry, Jersey Boys, Continuum, Orson Collect Honors
By Robert Simonson
29 Dec 2005
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From Left: Sweeney Todd; Glengarry Glen Ross; Jersey Boys.
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As the year 2005 takes its final bows, publications are training their gaze back over the calendar year as they compose their annual roundups of the year's best productions.
Included in several lists were the Joe Mantello-directed Broadway revival of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross; the jukebox musical about the history of the Four Seasons pop group, Jersey Boys; the Off-Broadway revival of Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful, starring Lois Smith; the Broadway production of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, starring Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin; and the recently opened Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd.
There were, as usual, a few oddities among the tallying. The Daily News' Howard Kissel included in his 2005 top ten John Patrick Shanley's play Doubt, which premiered Off-Broadway in late 2004 (though it did transfer to Broadway in early 2005). And Newsday's Linda Winer concluded her list with Movin' Out, the Billy Joel-Twyla Tharp musical, which concluded a three-year Broadway run in December.
Here's a running list of this year's top theatrical contenders (to be updated as more lists are published):
The Daily News (Howard Kissel)
The top 10 (In alphabetical order)
Boozy
Doubt
Jersey Boys
The Light in the Piazza
Moonlight and Magnolias
Private Fears in Public Places
Souvenir
The Trip to Bountiful
Walking Down Broadway
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
New Jersey Star-Ledger (Michael Sommers)
1. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
2. Drumstruck
3. In the Continuum
4. Jersey Boys
5. The Light in the Piazza
6. Private Fears in Public Places
7. Romance
8. See What I Wanna See
9. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
10. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Entertainment Weekly
Best:
1. Sweeney Todd
2. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
3. The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
4. Orson's Shadow
5. Glengarry Glen Ross
6. The Pillowman
7. Jersey Boys
8. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
9. After Ashley
10. The Ruby Sunrise
Worst:
1. In My Life
2. Lennon
3. The Blonde in the Thunderbird
Newsday (Linda Winer)
1. Glengarry Glen Ross
2. Spamalot
3. Sweeney Todd
4. The Pillowman
5. Third
6. Seascape
7. Miss Witherspoon
8. In the Continuum
9. See What I Wanna See
10. Movin' Out
The New York Times (Ben Brantley)
"Dream Teams"
Glengarry Glen Ross
Hurlyburly
Spirit
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
"Celestial Star Turns"
Victoria Clark in Light In The Piazza
Rebecca Hall in As You Like It
Antony Sher in Primo
Lois Smith in A Trip To Bountiful
John Lloyd Young in Jersey Boys
New York Magazine (Jeremy McCarter):
Best Musicals:
1. Sweeney Todd
2. See What I Wanna See
3. The Light in the Piazza
Best Plays:
1. Doubt
2. Hope Leaves the Theater (Charlie Kaufman half of Theater of the New Ear at St. Ann’s Warehouse)
3. In the Continuum
Time (Richard Corliss)
1. Private Fears in Public Places
2. KA (the Cirque du Soleil show playing at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas)
3. The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
4. The Woman in White
5. The Pillowman
6. Seascape
7. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
8. Miss Witherspoon
9. Orson's Shadow
10. Darling of the Day and It's a Wonderful Life (concert performances by, respectively, Musicals in Mufti and the Actors' Fund)
Time Out New York
David Cote:
Best:
1. Sweeney Todd
2. Le Dernier Caravanserail (Odyssees), at Lincoln Center Festival
3. Thom Pain (based on nothing)
4. Apparition
5. The Pillowman
6. Pastoralla at P.S. 122
7. The Ruby Sunrise
8. Orange Flower Water
9. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
10. Holy Cross Sucks
Worst:
1. In My Life
2. Good Vibrations
Adam Feldman:
1. Le Dernier Caravanserail (Odyssees), at Lincoln Center Festival
2. Sweeney Todd
3. The Pillowman
4. Hope Leaves the Theater
5. Thom Pain (based on nothing)
6. Souvenir
7. The Revenger's Tragedy
8. Orson's Shadow
9. Boozy
10. Swimming in the Shallows
Worst:
1. A Very Naughty Greek Play
2. Miracle Brothers
3. The Ark
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