SOME YEAR-END 2023 LISTS AT THE BEGINNING OF 2024

FAVORITE FILMS AND THEATRE EXPERIENCES AND PERFORMANCES

(Above: Teo Yoo and Greta Lee in Past Lives written and directed by Celine Song.)

As 2024 begins, here are some 2023 lists as we embark on imbibing emotionally in culture again for the next 12 months. I don’t like Ten Best Lists because I honestly think all reactions to artful endeavors are correct and what some consider very good, others consider really rather awful. And we are correct. Plus, the older I get the more I don’t think in the binaries of good/bad, moral/immoral etc. I just live within one construct: kind/unkind. So in some way I just think it is not only more accurate to define these lists as my Favorites, but it is also kinder.

I have not seen many of the films on other lists this year. For example, I am certain that Andrew Haigh’s film All of Us Strangers would have made my list but it doesn’t open here in London until the end of January and it was sold out for all its screenings at the London Film Festival back in October. I still haven’t seen American Fiction either and I trust I’m going to like that. I haven’t seen Passages, Origin, The Taste of Things, A Thousand and One, Perfect Days, Blackberry, Showing Up, Fallen Leaves, Air, or Ferrari. I am also sure I’d have put theatre productions in New York or London I’ve missed on my lists - i.e. Appropriate and Uncle Vanya in New York, Brokeback Mountain maybe here in London - if I had had a chance to see them.

So with all that in context, here are some of my favorites chosen from those films and plays and musicals and ballets I did see in 2023.

TEN FAVORITE FILMS

Past Lives directed and written by Celine Song

Maestro directed by Bradley Cooper, written by Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer

May December directed by Todd Haynes, written by Samy Burch

The Holdovers directed by Alexander Payne, written by David Hemingson

Oppenheimer directed and written by Christopher Nolan

Godzilla Minus One directed and written by Takashi Yamazaki

Women Talking (I didn’t see it until 2023 in Paris when it was released there) directed and written by Sarah Polley

Saltburn directed and written by Emerald Fennell

The Burial directed by Maggie Betts, written by Doug Wright and Maggie Betts

Paris Memories (Revoir Paris) directed and written by Alice Winocour

OTHER FILMS I LIKED

Killers of the Flower Moon, The Color Purple, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, The Zone of Interest, Anatomy of a Fall, Nyad, Rustin, Theater Camp, You Hurt My Feelings, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, One Life, Firebrand, Femme

(Above: Colman Domingo who starred in both Ruskin and The Color Purple. Photo from Netflix.)

FAVORITE TANDEM FILM PERFORMANCES

Fantasia Barrino as Celie and Taraji Penda Henson as Shug in The Color Purple

Danielle Brooks as Sophia and Corey Hawkins as Harpo in The Color Purple

Colman Domingo as Bayard Rustin and Johnny Ramey as Elias Taylor in Rustin

Sandra Hüller as Hedwig Höss in The Zone of Interest and Sandra Hüller as Sandra in Anatomy of a Fall

Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein and Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre Bernstein in Maestro

Annette Bening as Diana Nyad and Jodie Foster as Bonnie Stoll in Nyad

Jamie Foxx and Willie Gary and Mamoudou Athie as Hal Dawkins in The Burial

Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer and Robert Downey, Jr. as Lewis Strauss in Oppenheimer

Paul Giamatti as Paul Hunham and Da'Vine Joy Randolph as Mary Lamb in The Holdovers

Jude Law as Henry VIII and Simon Russell Beale as Stephen Gardiner in Firebrand

Greta Lee as Nora Moon and Teo Yoo as Hae Sung in Past Lives

Julianne Moore as Grace Atherton-Yoo and Natalie Portman as Elizabeth Berry in May December

Charles Melton as Joe Yoo and Cory Michael Smith as Georgie Atherton in May December

Rosamund Pike as Elspeth Catton and Barry Keoghan as Oliver Quick in Saltburn

Judith Ivey as Agata and Ben Whishaw as August in Women Talking

Anthony Hopkins as Nicholas Winton and Helena Bonham Carter as Babi Winton in One Life

Virginie Efira as Mia and Benoît Magimel as Thomas in Paris Memories

Zainab Jah as Older Mac and Kaylee Nicole Johnson as Young Mack in All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

Lily Gladstone as Molly Buckhart and William Belleau as Henry Roan in Killers of the Flower Moon

George MacKay as Preston and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as Jules in Femme

And, okay, already:

Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken in Barbie

(Above: Colin O’Brien who starred in the title role of Dear Edward on Apple TV. He gave my favorite performance by an actor this year - surprising and subtle and deeply felt and rather wondrous for someone so young. I know loss and trauma - especially at the age he was in the series - and he captured how they instill a curdled stillness in you. He also played the younger Willy Wonka - and thus the younger Timothée Chalamet - in Wonka. Photo by Raen Badua.)

TEN FAVORITE STREAMED SHOWS

The Gilded Age - Season Two on Max

The Morning Show - Season Three on Apple TV

Fellow Travelers - on Showtime and Paramount+

The Diplomat on Netflix

The Crown’s final season on Netflix

Heartstopper - Season Two on Netflix

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s final season on Amazon Prime

Dear Edward on Apple TV

The Bear - Season Two on Hulu - although I caught up with Season One in 2023 as well

Granchester - on PBS

(Above: Ashlie Atkinson, Kelli O’Hara, Donna Murphy, Carrie Coon, and Taissa Farmiga from Coon’s Instagram page.)

FAVORITE PERFORMANCES ON STREAMED SHOWS

The Gilded Age’s costume designer Kasia Walicka Maimone because her dresses make their entrances before the actresses wearing them do.

Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey and Allison Williams in Fellow Travelers

Billy Crudup in The Morning Show

Lesley Manville in The Crown and World on Fire’s Season Two

Harrison Ford and Jessica Williams in Shrinking

Colin O’Brien and Connie Britton in Dear Edward

Gary Oldman in Slow Horses

All the young actors on Heartstopper

Ali Wong and Steven Yeun in Beef

Jamie Lee Curtis in The Bear

Lewis Pullman in Lessons in Chemistry

Idris Elba in Hijack

FAVORITE THEATRICAL AND DANCE AND OPERA EXPERIENCES/PERFORMANCES

Above: Ben Daniels and Sophie Okonedo in Medea at Soho Place directed by Dominic Cooke. Daniels played all the male roles in a tour-de-force. Okonedo? A fucking force of nature. Acting at the heights - and depths - of the gods. Photo by Johan Persson

Larry Kramer’s Memorial Service at the Lucille Lortel Theatre New York/You can watch it here on YouTube. Everyone from John Cameron Mitchell to Tony Kushner to Anthony Fauci.

Tannhäuser at The Royal Opera London Lise Davidsen’s performance as Elizabeth moved me not only when she had to stay focused when the original title role was sung by Stefan Vinke unable to sing it because of not being “in voice” but went on anyway - which was maddening and made me love Davidsen even more, which I didn’t think possible - but also when I returned to see her when Norbert Ernst replaced Vinke and she could really relax into her artistry. She is my favorite on an opera stage right now.

Phaedra at The National Theatre in London. Janet McTeer did not allow the technological marvel of Chloe Lamford’s set to upstage her in director Simon Stone’s controversial production. She was even grander than it.

The Lady and the Sea at The Comédie-Française Paris. I re-read the play before attending. I already knew it, but I wanted more deeply to experience the acting when I did not understand the language - plus I wanted to witness the Comédie-Française technique which seemed to consist of a deeply naturalistic flow until it erupted into an aria-like swell of emotion before settling down again in the stream of human consciousness. It all seemed orchestrated more than directed or acting and it was breathtaking to behold in this visually beautiful and realized production.

Pit choreographed by Bobbi Jene Smith at the Paris Opera Ballet. Dancing at its most visceral and troubling. The Paris Opera Ballet had a bit of trouble with the precision of Balanchine earlier in its season but they shed all prissiness to press on with this work. I found it stunning on lots of levels - and incongruous in the ornateness of the Palais Garnier.

Above: Nicole Scherzinger and Tom Frances from Sunset Blvd. They along with Rachel Tucker and David Thaxton and Grace Hodgett Young in Sunset Blvd directed by Jamie Lloyd are more than exciting, they are integral to the revelation that this production is. I have seen it five times - three with Nicole as Norma and twice with Rachel who played the role on Monday nights. It is coming to New York in November and Nicole has committed to six months. Do not miss Lloyd’s revelatory production. Scherzinger is unforgettable. I wrote about it all in a previous column. I’d see it five more times.

Mary Said What She Said directed by Robert Wilson and written by Darryl Pinckney at Théâtre de la Ville Paris. I read the work in English before attending so I again I knew the narrative without knowing the language in this heightened - it was on a level past haughty - one-woman show. Isabelle Huppert, who starred, still haunts me.

Champion at the Metropolitan Opera New York. Four words: Bass/Baritone Eric Owens. He played Emil Griffin. Composer Terence Blanchard/Librettest Michael Cristofer.

Days of Wine and Roses at The Atlantic Theatre New York. Kelli O’Hara channeling something darker in her usual pristine presence.

Into the Woods at The Curran Theatre San Francisco. The national tour of this Broadway production had at its heart a great performance from Stephanie J. Block as the Baker’s Wife. And then I saw her later in the year at London’s Cadogan Hall in one of the great concert performances I have ever witnessed. She was magnificent.

The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window at The Cort Theatre New York. Rachel Brosnahan was as brilliant in this as she was in the last season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

New York, New York at The St. James Theatre New York. One of the oddest musical performances turned into one of the best before my eyes: Colton Ryan’s.

The Comeuppance at The Signature Theater New York. One of the three best ensembles I saw all season. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is my current favorite playwright.

Goodnight, Oscar at The Belasco Theatre New York. Two words: Sean Hayes.

Lucie Arnaz’s “I Got the Job” at 54 Below New York. Lucie wrote a beautiful arc to her stage narrative. It was a beautifully crafted evening. Cabaret as an art form. I wrote about it here.

Merrily, We Roll Along at The Hudson Theatre New York. Jonathan Groff anchors this critically hailed production. He has grown from the corrupted innocence he embodied in Spring Awakening as a twenty-something juvenile into the man who is now just short of 40 who nudges his innocence back into being from a person who internalizes being told that he has corrupted his talent with success. Groff has not corrupted his own. His instincts are now honed with age. There is a keen awareness to the power he holds on a stage. My Sondheim column here.

Above: William Jackson Harper, who gave the most profound and moving stage performance of the year in the Roundabout’s production of Primary Trust by Eboni Booth directed by Knud Adams. He played a mentally challenged person with an imaginary friend and turned a role that could have twisted most actors into knots of tweeness into an act of courage and grace and utter, devastating seamlessness, the kind of seamlessness with which not only great actors are sewn into their characters but also with which this character itself was sewn into his selves. It was the kind of mirroring that art can manifest. It sounds dizzying but this remarkable actor found the deep recesses of the millpond beneath the rushing rapids of his character’s brain in which he serenely floated and which fueled so much of the sweetness and need and wisdom that accompanied his troubled place in this world where he had to swim on the dry land where we more stable others - are we really? - wash ashore once we learn to shun the water where such people exist with the guileless gills we can’t comprehend because of the guile that fills our lungs with the shrewd shreds of air we need to breath in order to live in the construct of landed uprightness. I wept at not only the narrative he told us but also the beauty of this actor’s art.

Death of England: Closing Time at The National Theatre London. Haley Squires, so great in this, played Mae in the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that starred Sienna Miller as Maggie. I’d love to see her do Maggie.

Jake Shears in London’s long-running Cabaret made me reassess my reaction to this production. He’s extraordinary in the role. The best since Alan Cumming.

Elephant at The Bush Theatre London. Anoushka Lucas starred in her own one-person show that was more than agitprop. It was musical and deeply personal. I only knew her as Laurey in the reimagined Oklahoma!. I will now follow her anywhere.

The Score at Theatre Royal Bath. I went to see Brian Cox play Bach but discovered an actor I will now also follow: Stephen Hagan. He played King Frederick II.

Vanya at the Duke of York Theatre London. Andrew Scott played all the characters. Enough said.

Here We Are. Tracie Bennett, playing several roles, stole this production of Stephen Sondheim’s final musical.

Operation Mincemeat at The Fortune Theatre London. Jak Malone’s rendition of “Dear Bill” unexpectedly left me in tears during this uproarious naughty transgressive show.

Above: Patsy Ferran as Blanche and Dwane Walcott as Mitch (photo by Marc Brenner) - they along with Paul Mescal as Stanley and Anjana Vasan as Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire - which moved from the Almeida to the West End and sadly has yet to move to New York so probably won’t - proved to me why I love theatre so much. I wrote about it all previously. Directed by Rebecca Frecknall, it too was revelatory. I will never see another Blanche in the same way after Ferran, London’s finest stage actress, found a steeliness in her longing, an intellectualism tethered to her torment. She spewed forth the poetry - often just spit it out to wring her mouth of it - as she spied anew on this character and then became her in a completely new way for that is what actors do: they are our spies into human nature as, undercover, they uncover who we all are by specifically mining the psyches and motives of the characters to whom they give emotive sinew. These four actors - but especially Ferran - were devastating in their artistry. I saw this production four times and since the fourth was in January of 2023 and it moved to the West End later in the year, I put it on this list. All the performances were all finely wrought and yet there was a ferocity unloosed within Frecknall’s construct of the play - no set, barely any props, like a rehearsal studio longing itself to be Elysian Fields. Ferran, who has a feral quality as an actor ,was more than magnificent as Blanche; she was transmundane, transcendent, daring - that unlaundered daring that the self-aware damned wear no longer caring what wafts in their wake. Greatness wafted in hers in this role. She also brought her singularity to an Eliza Dolittle in Pygmalion at the Old Vic, not a simper in her, not a hug needed at all from Higgins.

The Effect at The National Theater London. This is moving to The Shed in New York in March. Jamie Lloyd directed this play by Lucy Prebble and he once more proved to me that he is my favorite director at the moment. Do not miss the performances by this four-member ensemble. The second of my favorite ensembles.

Carlos Acosta’s Don Quixote danced by the Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House in London and Christopher Wheeldon’s Like Water for Chocolate danced by both ABT at the Met in New York and the Royal Ballet version in the cinema in London. I will see anything that my favorite principal dancers at the Royal Ballet are in - Yasmine Naghdi, Marianella Núñez, Vadim Muntagirov, William Bracewell, Matthew Ball, Francesca Hayward, Marcelino Sambé, and Reece Clarke. But I especially loved seeing Reece in his debut in this ballet this season. Indeed, I have tickets to see Manon five times to see all the different dancers - these plus others - in the company dance the leads in the next couple of months.

Crazy for You at The Gillian Lynne Theatre London. Yes, Charlie Stemp proved his mettle as a West End star in this and I saw him twice in it. But I also loved his standby Jack Wilcox whom I saw one night and was thrilled at his performance. He was my favorite discovery of the year.

Dear England at The Prince Edward Theatre London. I know nothing about soccer - or football as it is called here in England - so I knew nothing about the real-life characters in this narrative about the national team nor did I know any of the history. But I do know acting and theatre and this was great middlebrow West End fare done with flair. Professional theatre in a story about professionalism. I adored Will Close as Harry Kane.

Royal Ballet’s Dante Project at the Royal Opera House London. William Bracewell proved his star quality in this.

Infinite Life at The National Theatre London. My third favorite ensemble, the original American cast in this play by Annie Baker. Plus, any play with the great Marylouise Burke in it, I am prone to like just to marvel at her singular talent. Indeed, I am interviewing her this week for an upcoming column.

Ghosts at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe London. I saw this Joe Hill-Gibbins production twice just to witness the performance of Hattie Morahan as Mrs. Alving. I also was moved by Stuart Thompson who played Osvald.

Stranger Things at The Phoenix Theatre London. Young actor Louis McCartney is making his stage debut as the lead character Henry Creel. It is hard to believe he has never been on a stage before. He is eerily good.

I will never forget the night in New York in September when I attended an all-Balanchine program at New York City Ballet. Tarantella and “The Unanswered Question” from Ivasiana were part of the program but it was Western Symphony and Stars and Stripes that moved me, exhilaratingly so. As I floated from the theatre that night on my on toes, I tried to decipher why I was feeling so elated and I realized it that those two ballets instilled in me with their artistry a love of being an American I had not felt in a long, long time. Art - not politics - renewed my patriotism.

The Motive and the Cue at the Noel Coward Theatre London. Mark Gatiss as John Gielgud (photo by Mark Douet) gives a curtain speech at the end of Act One that left me holding my breath as I held back the tears as he as Gielgud recites the “Speak the speech, I pray you,” monologue from Hamlet, the play in which Gielgud is directing Richard Burton (Johnny Flynn) in Jack Thorne’s play so beautifully directed itself by Sam Mendes. Gatiss is giving one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen, a melding of himself with the legendary actor that is not an impersonation but an immersion that creates something completely new even as the essence of Gielgud - and all actors really - is captured in this performance and then unleashed into the theatre each night to immerse us all in the alchemic allure of theatre itself.

I am grateful for this year of paying witness to such alchemy.