Finest acting performances on Broadway?- Page 3

[binau]

Posted: 12/23/13 at 4:42pm

I didn't see it live but when I watched the taping on the OBC SUNDAY and I saw/heard Bernadette singing the title song of "Sunday in the Park With George" it changed my perspective on what it meant to act a song, and I became somewhat obsessed with Bernadette. Those "your eyes, George" lines right up until "I love your painting" get me every time.

[undercoveractor]

Posted: 12/24/13 at 3:38am

Julie White - THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED

[madbrian]

Posted: 12/24/13 at 7:23am

Kevin Kline in Cyrano de Bergerac
Tovah Feldshuh in Irena's Vow

[quizking101]

Posted: 12/24/13 at 9:36pm

Musical (Male) - Danny Burstein (FOLLIES) and Billy Porter (KINKY BOOTS)
Musical (Female) - Laura Benanti (WOMEN ON THE VERGE...) and Patina Miller (PIPPIN)
Play (Male) - Alan Cumming (MACBETH) and Ian McKellen (WAITING FOR GODOT)
Play (Female) - Nina Arianda (VENUS IN FUR) and Cynthia Nixon (WIT)

[jnb9872]

Posted: 12/24/13 at 10:31pm

While I would love to pass along further commendations for Mark Rylance, and Tracy Letts, and any of the fine Steppenwolf folk from OSAGE COUNTY, all must bow down before Geoffrey Rush for EXIT THE KING. A performance that spanned the entire human experience, it seemed, in the two hours' traffic of the stage. Exhilarating, exhausting, extraordinary!

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 12/25/13 at 3:16am

Yes! Geoffrey Rush in EXIT THE KING, yes! I somehow always forget about that, I think I saw it during a very eventful trip to NY and that's why. But no doubt it's one of the great stage performances. Nothing about it was short of spectacular; actually, the entire production was impeccable.

[Rinaldo]

Posted: 12/25/13 at 8:47am

Joe Mantello: Angels in America, The Normal Heart
Robert Sean Leonard: Arcadia, The Invention of Love
Billy Crudup: Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Arcadia again
Jeremy Irons: The Real Thing
Tracy Letts: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Raul Esparza: Merrily We Roll Along, The Homecoming
Laurie Metcalf: Balm in Gilead
Amy Morton: August: Osage County, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Donna Murphy: Passion, Follies
Victoria Clark: The Light in the Piazza, Follies
Glenn Close: The Real Thing

[IdinaBellFoster]

Posted: 12/25/13 at 2:32pm

Joe Mantello in THE NORMAL HEART (the entire cast actually)

It still irks me that Mantello lost the Tony to Rylance, who was also very good in JERUSALEM.

[perfectlymarvelous]

Posted: 12/25/13 at 4:04pm

I'll have to throw in another vote for Tracy Letts in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Christine Ebersole (in two great performances, really) in Grey Gardens. Letts's performance was a lesson in restraint and also towering and terrifying when it needed to be. Ebersole was brilliant in every way that it is possible to be; I will never, ever forget the pain in every inch of her body at the end of "Another Winter in a Summer Town" when her mother called for her and she made the decision to go back inside. She was heartbreaking without uttering a single word.

I'm also going to have to mention Nina Arianda in Venus in Fur, she was captivating from the moment she stepped onstage and transformed completely from beginning to end.

[justoldbill]

Posted: 12/25/13 at 4:04pm

John McMartin and Rachel Roberts in THE VISIT.

[Levviathan6]

Posted: 3/13/14 at 5:45pm

Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen in Waiting for Godot. I cried (silently) for most of the first act, and I still don't know *exactly* why. But that play was so worth the camp-out.

Natasha Richardson in Cabaret, I never actually saw her but I've heard the cast recording and she just completely owns it. She sounds so vivacious that I felt a profound sense of loss when I first heard the album, even though it had already been several years since her death.

Amra-Faye Wright as Velma in Chicago, she and her co-star Bianca Marroquin brought a kind of underlying vulnerability to the characters that made Chicago--a good show--into a really fantastic one the second time I saw it. Also she took me backstage ^^

I don't really know why she affected me so much, but Debra Monk as Big Mama in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Beth Leavel as the Chaperone in The Drowsy Chaperone, which I saw when I was only 15 but it stuck with me.

These people have spoiled me for movies.

[promisespromises2]

Posted: 3/13/14 at 6:02pm

What I haven't seen in person/only heard on cast recordings/DVDs:
-Patti LuPone in Gypsy
-The entire of cast of Sunday In the Park With George (1994 recording)
-Patti LuPone in Anything Goes. For some reason I'm obsessed with her voice the most out of all the other cast recordings I have of the show.
-Loved Katie Finnerans performance in Company (2011). I could of just watched her and Patti LuPone the entire time.
-Donna Murphy in Passion (love this cast recording)
-I LOVE Madeline Kahn in On the Twentieth Century and she is one of those people where you can physically feel her emotions and facial expressions by listening to them on an album. I feel the same for Cheno, so I'm still on my toes waiting for this revival!

What I've seen in person:
-Interestingly enough the first person that came to my head was Megan Anderson who played Meg in a recent regional production of Crimes of the Heart at the Everyman Theatre (MD).
-Kelli O'Hara in The Bridges of Madison County. She's the only person that I've ever froze up on/started shaking when meeting her at the stage door because I was in complete and utter awe at her performance.
-Ian McKellen, Billy Crudup, and Patrick Stewart in Waiting for Godot.
-An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin… need I say more?
-And I've got to add Emma Thompson from the recent New York Philharmonic concert of Sweeney Todd. I have NEVER seen her act like that before.

Updated On: 3/13/14 at 06:02 PM

[quizking101]

Posted: 3/13/14 at 6:19pm

MUSICALS:
Alice Ripley - NEXT TO NORMAL
Douglas Hodge - LA CAGE AUX FOLLES
Paulo Szot - SOUTH PACIFIC
Jan Maxwell - FOLLIES
Billy Porter - KINKY BOOTS
Patina Miller - PIPPIN
Jefferson Mays - A GENTLEMAN'S GUIDE TO LOVE AND MURDER

PLAYS:
Tyne Daly - MASTER CLASS
Nina Arianda - VENUS IN FUR
Judith Light - OTHER DESERT CITIES
Cynthia Nixon - WIT
Tracy Letts - WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF
Holland Taylor - ANN
Alan Cumming - MACBETH
Nathan Lane - THE NANCE
The entire companies of WAITING FOR GODOT (McKellen/Stewart) and THE GLASS MENAGERIE (Jones/Quinto)

[Steve721]

Posted: 3/13/14 at 6:32pm

Of the performances I've seen:

Ian McKellen in Amadeus
Angela Lansbury in Sweeney Todd
Robert Morse in Tru
Stephen Spinella in Angels in America
Donna Murphy in Passion
Cherry Jones in The Heiress, Doubt and The Glass Menagerie
Glen Close in Sunset Boulevard
Janet McTeer in A Doll's House and Mary Stuart
Elizabeth Franz in Death of a Salesman
Vanessa Redgrave in Long Day's Journey into Night
Jefferson Mays in I Am My Own Wife
Victoria Clark in The Light in the Piazza
Patty LuPone in Gypsy
James Corden in One Man, Two Guvnors
Nina Arianda in Venus in Fur
Tracy Letts in Who's Afraid of Virgnia Woolf?



Updated On: 3/13/14 at 06:32 PM