I'm gonna have to say my favorite show of 2012 was Venus in Fur. I didn't see this show until the night before the Tonys, but I loved it so much I went to closing the next week. I have never walked out of a play feeling so excited and just in love with the writing and acting. Even when the ending was revealed I still walked out of the theatre thinking "what the hell did I just see?" But in the good unpredictable, satisfied way. Just mindblowing.
And a very close runner up will have to be One Man Two Guvnors! I have NEVER laughed so hard in a Broadway theatre before. That is physical comedy at it's best! I wish I would have seen it more than once.
Runners up: The Mystery of Edwin Drood Silence! Carrie
I don't see as many plays and musicals as I used to in my youth because of the high price of tickets and the distance from my home in Philadelphia to Broadway.
For me, my favorite show of 2012 was the Encores City Center revival of "Pipe Dream." Whoever thought that R & H's biggest flop would be restaged in such a charming and delightful production with a fabulous cast?
Biggest disappointments of 2012: "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," a show I dearly loved in its original 1985-'86 Broadway production because of a stellar cast headed by the late, incomparable George Rose. What you are now seeing at the Roundabout Studio 54 is a pale comparison to the original due to the lethargic staging by Scott Ellis and Warren Carlyle and the miscasting of Chita Rivera, Will Chase, and Jim Norton. "The Lyons," Nicky Silver's rehash of a Jewish family dealing with the impending death of the breadwinner and the son's angst in accepting his homosexuality. Linda Lavin's performance got quickly repetitious in her line readings in Act One and totally unbelievable in her character's decision to run off with a younger man in Act Two."Barbara Cook's 85th Birthday Concert" at Carnegie Hall, in which Barbara mistakenly thought she should devote the evening to singing jazz and blues numbers when her longtime fans were present to hear her Broadway repertoire of hits. The highpoints for me were special guests Sheldon Harnick's clever parody of his and Jerry Bock's hit, "She Loves Me," and Josh Groban's beautiful rendition of Mr. Sondheim's "Not While I'm Around" from "Sweeney Todd." I know that this last selection is not considered a show but rather a concert; but I feel compelled to bring it up as a postscript to a question I raised on this website in October when I asked if anyone knew who the surprise guests were going to be for this concert and got all kinds of verbal abuse from my fellow readers of Broadwayworld.com.
Peter and the Starcatcher by several hundred miles. Giant is the only new musical I saw this year that was not truly awful. But I didn't see Dogfight, which looked promising.
THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. I went in not knowing what to expect and came out completely charmed by the show (as a bit of a Dickens nerd, I admit I was pretty excited either way) and amazed by what an incredible cast has been assembled for the production. Brava!
"People have their opinions and that doesn't mean that their opinions are wrong or right. I just take it with a grain of salt because opinions are like as*holes, everyone has one".
-Felicia Finley-
