Some of the most memorable moments on stage this year were not just unplanned — they were on unexpected stages. The student survivors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas H.S. gave a surprise performance of “Seasons of Love” from Rent on the stage of Radio City Music Hall during the 2018

Tony Awards. Katrina Lenk sang “If I Were A Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof, accompanying herself on violin (!), as part of MCC Theater’s annual Miscast gala. The kiss between Caitlin Kinnunen as Emma, a Indiana high school student, and Isabelle McCalla as her closeted girl friend Alyssa, had far more power — and got far more attention — when they did so in front of Macy’s while performing the musical number from The Prom as part of the Thanksgiving Day Parade broadcast.

Still, there were enough memorable moments in ongoing New York shows (even some one might not otherwise have cared for) to fill a gallery, like the one below.

Click on any photograph to see it enlarged and to read the extensive caption that explains the moment. Not all these moments were lovely; some were ugly. All were memorable.



In The Damned, Ivo van Hove’s adaptation of Visconti’s film about the rise of Nazism and its corruption of a German industrialist family, son Martin (Christophe Montenez) cruelly and methodically tars and feathers his own mother, the scheming Baronne Sophie von Essenbeck (Elsa LePoivre.) It was one of the many startling moments that drove home the horror. In “Be More Chill,” George Salazar sings a show-stopping number “Michael in the Bathroom At A Party,” which includes lyrics that couldn’t be more straightforward, or more affecting: I am hanging in the bathroom At the biggest party of the fall/ I could stay right here or disappear/ and nobody’s even notice at all King Kong is an expressive creature — those dreamy eyes, that sensitive sniffing of his nose – but he’s most impressive when he’s rushing through the dizzying streets of New York, and then up the Empire State Building, floor by floor, emitting that earthquake of a roar. ,(The projection, lighting and sound design are sensational.) In “The New One,” Mike Birbiglia’s latest monologue, it’s not clear what the show is about until his seemingly random jokey anecdotes suddenly focus on what it’s like for him to be a first-time father — and suddenly, the detritus of babyhood (stuffed toys, little plastic furniture crumpled sheets, etc) are abruptly dumped on the stage from on high, surrounding him. (Something similar happened in Collective Rage, but it wasn’t just one moment. Items dropped from the ceiling as needed throughout the play.) In Adrienne Kennedy’s cryptic “He Brought Her Heart Back in A Box,” there was a chilling moment that consisted of little more than the woman walking down a steep staircase toward the man. But somehow, thanks to Christopher Barreca’s set design and Donald Holder’s lighting, the moment suggested both Gone with the Wind, and Hitchcock, speaking loudly albeit silently about the terrors of racial injustice. Monica Blaze Leavitt was one of the Jews in hiding from The Nazis in “The Hidden Ones,” a piece where the six audience members at each performance found a chai or a corner of the bed to sit in the attic as daily life unfolded.just by candle and flashlight. But then there was a loud knocking, the lights were extinguished, and, before she disappeared, she rushed toward me and thrust something into my hand. When a man came to retrieve us to safety, I saw in the hallway that it was her ring. In “KINK HAÜS, ” Frank Leone swirled in, around and over headless blue mannequins. It was one of the many vigorously athletic and erotically choreographed moments performed by seven skilled performers who are in remarkably good shape and often mostly undraped. Their movement veered between balletic, playful, graphic, and dangerous-looking. Jackie Hoffman, in the Yiddish Fiddler on the Roof: Avrom, I have a golden match [ “a goldenem shidukh”] for your son, a girl, a diamond. Who is she? Rokhl, the shoemaker’s daughter. Rokhl? She can barely see. She’s almost entirely blind. The truth is, Avrom, what is there to see in your son? The way she sees, and the way he looks— it’s a match from heaven. All this was accompanied by English subtitles, but the Yiddish was not just as musical as the songs. In a single instant, the exchange revealed the source of much of American comedy — the shrug and the whine and the wisecrack — as derived from the rhythm of the Yiddish language. Cherise Boothe portrays Undine, the rich and elegant owner of a PR agency, in “Fabulation.” Robbed or all her savings by her con man of a husband, who then disappears, she’s pregnant and penniless, and forced to go back to the poor Brooklyn neighborhood where she grew up. There she runs into two women she used to know. She pretends she doesn’t know them, but then they launch into the singing-and-dancing routine they perfected as double dutch champions in junior high school — and Undine can’t help but join them. There’s a joy here in the choreography, but a deeper point is planted. The moment ends with one of her childhood friends explaining she now works as a senior financial planner at J.P. Morgan. So Undine — and the audience — learn a valuable lesson about making assumptions about other people. Suddenly dancing The Madison in The Boys in the Band: Robin De Jesus, Michael Benjamin Washington, Andrew Rannells, Jim Parsons Carousel , see June 5 The shimmering effect of the time-travel scenes (not captured in this or any other production photographs, and perhaps uncapturable.) “Funny how hope changes everything. Funny how hope changes nothing,” a singer chanted standing on the High Line overlooking 18th street, as a light in his black baseball cap eerily illuminated his face. A few feet away, competing with the noise of a construction site, another singer chanted “Funny how construction next store changes everything. Funny how construction next store changes nothing,” while putting his hands in front of his face in a comical expression of annoyance. Nearby other performers sang how money or sex or tears or “a glass of really good red wine” change everything and nothing.This was the most memorable moment for me in The Mile Long Opera, in which 1,000 performers sang or recited monologues in stationery positions along the entire 30 block length of the High Line. The moment in The Hendrix Project, when it became clear that all the characters attending Jimi Hendrix’s 1969 New Year’s Eve concert as the Fillmore East — the last such concert before he died — would be staring at us like zombies for the whole show (as if watching Hendrix) and not say a single word in the entire time.

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