Who's the best director working in New York theatre?

This came up in a conversation with an old time theatre friend of mine who lamented the fact that New York theatre is in a current static creative place because of a lack of great, visionary theatre directors. He pointed to the sixties and seventies when plays and musicals seemed blessed by the talents of such directors as Peter Hall, John Dexter, Tommy Tune, Michael Bennett and Mike Nichols.

Its true we aren't getting the kind of landmark productions today we experienced during that time period - but since the theatre boom is at an all time high in New York - the crop of talented directors must be strong.

Who do you think are the best directors currently doing work in New York and why?

I would have to agree.

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Personally, I'd have to say John Doyle. Not because of the instrument thing but because he has a fine sense of stage placement - and, NO, let's not turn this interesting thread into a John Doyle debate.

Both Doyle and Sher show extreme promise, that's true.

You're right, Yankee. O'Brien can do everything from campy comedy to Shakespeare. And win Tonys for both.

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I don’t know if I would call her the best, and I don’t know if she counts as working on Broadway now, but you have to throw Kathleen Marshall’s name into the mix as both a director and a choreographer.

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EASILY Jack O'Brien.

Of all of the directors working on Broadway, I would have to agree that Jack O'Brian is the most versatile and does the most consistently excellent work.

But in New York Theater, not just Broadway, I have seen productions guided by two directors who have marvelous talent: William Pomerantz and Jessica Davis Irons. They are both gifted and do extraordinary work. Just not on Broadway. Yet.

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Jack O'Brien
George C. Wolfe
Howard Davies (brilliant with revivals)
Daniel Sullivan (especially for play revivals)
Elizabeth LeCompte (visionary genius with her Wooster Group)
Nicholas Hytner
Doug Hughes (consistently good with new work in recent years)
Mark Brokaw (inconsisent with revivals, but has been very good with new work)
Edward Hall (specifically his Shakespeare work with his Propeller Theatre UK)
Declan Donnellan (UK)
Michael Grandage (UK)
Stephen Daldry (UK)
Michael Blakemore
Bartlett Sher


Emeritus (old masters who are still active):

Hal Prince
Peter Hall

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A case could be made for Mike Nichols.

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John Rando.

Well, Nichols did direct the all-star SEAGULL in the Park in 2000 with Streep, Kline, Walken and company, but my sense there as well as with SPAMALOT is that 99% of his work is done in casting and he really doesn't bother to do much actual "directing," but acts more as a traffic cop at best. In SEAGULL, some performances were solid, some were awful, some were bland, and no attempt seemed to have been made by Nichols to impose any overall vision on the production or performances and as a result they never cohered as an ensemble and it was just a series of unrelated star turns with acting styles that were all over the map. It was fun to watch because of all the stars, but it was pretty bad Chekhov.

I also thought SPAMALOT lacked a truly coherent overall vision and only worked at all because of the great cast and those classic sketches that much of the audience came into the theater knowing by heart (and recited aloud line by line along with the performers on stage) .

I think he probably was a great director once upon a time, but with his shelf full of Oscars, Tonys, Emmys and Grammys, I get a sense that he basically coasts on his reputation and no longer has any desire to actually work all that hard anymore.

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John Rando? For what? He's being sued for basically stealing much of the staging of URINETOWN from the original Fringe director (and members of that production have gone on record pointing out the many similarities). Everything else he's done has flopped -- A THOUSAND CLOWNS, DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES, THE DINNER PARTY, WEDDING SINGER...... This is the work of one of the GREATEST directors currently working in New York????

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People like Bartlett Sher and Kenny Leon, while very talented, wouldn't be immediate choices for me because they rarely venture out of their comfort zones. I give Sher credit for staging an opera this past fall, but he mainly stays in the genre of period pieces. Likewise, Kenny Leon rarely does anything other than African-American themed plays. I'm very interested to see his CAT, which I think will be his baptism by fire.

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