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Michael Rupert and Amy Carrey in "Ragtime." (Photo / Joan Marcus)
Best Theater 1999
By Ed Siegal
1. "Ragtime," Colonial Theatre
2. "Valparaiso," American Repertory Theatre
3. Williamstown Theatre Festival
4. "St. Nicholas," Sugan Theatre Company
5. "Killer Joe," Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre
6. "Mack and Mabel," Barrington Stage Company
7. "Three Days of Rain," SpeakEasy Stage Company
8. "The Steward of Christendom," and "Mrs. Warren's Profession," Huntington Theatre Company
9. "The Old Settler," Lyric Stage Company of Boston
10. "Sing me to Sleep," Coyote Theatre
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he story of the year in Boston has to be the rise of the small to midsize theaters. As the accompanying list indicates, there is no longer a precipitous drop in quality from the area's two large resident companies, the American Repertory Theatre and the Huntington Theatre Company, to the level below them. That some of the area's best actors - Paula Plum, Sheila Ferrini, and Ken Baltin - have recently performed at the ART and Huntington is evidence that the scene is shifting for the better.
But first things first. It's rare for a commercial vehicle to lead this list; the road isn't what it used to be for theater. ''Ragtime'' was an exceptional musical, though, harking back to the past of Broadway shows with soaring melodies and heartfelt, intelligent characterization while seeming to show a path toward the future by rounding up some of the best and the brightest in regional and commercial theater. Unfortunately, the awakening was short-lived, as the show's creator, Garth Drabinsky, apparently drove his company, Livent, into bankruptcy and ''Ragtime'' barely made it to Boston. By the end of the year the musical was back to its perilous duality - elitist productions that even elitists didn't want to hear (''Parade,'' ''Marie Christine'') on the one hand and mass-market no-brainers (''Footloose,'' ''Fame'') on the other.
The regional or resident theaters that ''Ragtime'' tapped into, however, are still alive and contributing most of what is best in American drama, like Chicago's Goodman Theatre production of ''Death of a Salesman'' with Brian Dennehy. Closer to home, the ART has had a very hot year, with its commission of novelist Don DeLillo's ''Valparaiso'' at the top of the list. DeLillo went beyond the surface satire of most plays and films about the media to find a real heart of darkness in our subservience to TV. The ART aesthetic is not for everyone, but if you like your theater on the nonrepresentational side, then ''We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!,'' ''Ivanov,'' ''Master Builder,'' and ''The Cripple of Inishmaan'' made for a fine year of theater. Even one of ART's less succesful offerings, Robert Coover's ''Charlie in the House of Rue,'' was a haunting, noble failure. (No such nobility, unfortunately, can be attached to the sophomoric ''Idiots Karamazov'' currently running at the Loeb.)
Things were not as finely tuned at the Huntington this calendar year, though the theater brought its customary intellectual polish to both the old (a fine ''Mrs. Warren's Profession'') and the new (Sebastian Barry's ''The Steward of Christendom''). This is Peter Altman's 18th and last year at the Huntington, and one hopes that the last few productions will represent the Huntington at its best. The new artistic director, Nicholas Martin, has been the associate artistic director at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, which had a magnificent summer matching top stars (Gwyneth Paltrow, Bebe Neuwirth, Ethan Hawke, David Schwimmer) to first-rate material (''As You Like It,'' ''Taming of the Shrew,'' ''Camino Real,'' ''Glimmer Brothers''). Under Michael Ritchie's artistic direction, not a whit of quality was compromised and young people who wouldn't be caught dead in a theater were suddenly flocking to WTF. And for good measure WTF threw in a superb, starless ''Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.''
Elsewhere in the Berkshires, Julianne Boyd continued her winning ways with musical revivals, bringing Jerry Herman's tuneful ''Mack and Mabel'' back to life at the Barrington Stage Company in Sheffield. Yes, they toyed with reality in the ending, but only a Scrooge could humbug at such a joyful production.
There were other rewarding journeys in New England, like the Pinter plays at the Mass. International Festival of the Arts in Springfield and the Royal Shakespeare Company in New Haven, but much of the best theater of the year could be found in rawer, more intimate spaces:
Richard McElvain telling Conor McPherson's dark-night-of-the-soul tale of a theater critic (no less) and vampires in ''St. Nicholas'' in the Sugan Theatre Company's masterful production at the Boston Center for the Arts;
The Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater blood-on-the-floor (or so it seemed), full-frontal production of Tracy Letts's ''Killer Joe,'' which made Sam Shepard's violent families look like folks who had stepped out of an A. R. Gurney play;
Richard Greenberg's ''Three Days of Rain,'' a twist on the dysfunctional-family play in which Diego Arciniegas and Dee Nelson turn in sharp-edged performances as siblings who think they know everything about their parents. They also play the parents in flashback, and as the audience finds out, they know next to nothing;
The Lyric Stage Company of Boston continued its winning ways under Spiro Veloudos with John Henry Redwood's ''The Old Settler,'' which highlighted some of the creative and too-little-seen talent in the area's black community.
While the small theaters did ample justice to all these off-Broadway plays, perhaps one of the most hopeful signs in Boston theater was John Kuntz's ''Sing Me to Sleep.'' Presented by Coyote Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts, the production brought together some of the area's great talent - Plum, director Eric Engel, set designer Susan Zeeman Rogers, and sound man J. Hagenbuckle - to help Kuntz's transition from solo comedic artist to playwright. Significantly, Kuntz, who also starred in the play, is from the area - you can barely find a small theater where he isn't starring - and ''Sing Me to Sleep'' may be emblematic of Boston's finding its voice on a larger scale than reworking New York's off-Broadway hits. (See Skip Ascheim and Bill Marx's story for other small-theater successes.)
As the millennium approaches - wouldn't that be a catchy title for a play? - this seems like a very hopeful time in the development of Boston theater.
