The best theater of 2018

My Wall Street Journal best-theater-of-2018 list appeared in the paper two weeks ago. Here are some excerpts. You can read the whole thing by going here.

*  *  *

• Best new play. Lincoln Center Theater’s off-Broadway premiere of Tom Stoppard’s “The Hard Problem” proved its 81-year-old author to be the Shaw of our time.

• Best new musical. “Miss You Like Hell,” in which Quiara Alegría Hudes and Erin McKeown tell the tale of an undocumented immigrant and her long-estranged daughter, was premiered by the Public Theater to powerfully moving effect.

•Directors of the year.Lila Neugebauer, who staged “At Home at the Zoo” and “Mary Page Marlowe” off Broadway and “The Waverly Gallery” on Broadway, is an erstwhile up-and-comer who now ranks among our top stage directors. As for Hunter Foster,who directed “The Drowsy Chaperone” for Goodspeed Musicals (about which more below) and “42^ndStreet” for Pennsylvania’s Bucks County Playhouse, he’s a wonder-worker who belongs on Broadway.

•Company of the year. No company in America mounts more satisfying musical-comedy revivals than Goodspeed Musicalsof East Haddam, Conn., which gave us superb stagings of “The Drowsy Chaperone,” “Oliver!” and “The Will Rogers Follies” by Mr. Foster, Rob Ruggiero and Don Stephenson. 

•Playwright of the year. After going two decades without a Broadway production, Kenneth Lonergan hit the bull’s-eye twice in a row with unforgettable revivals of “Lobby Hero” and “The Waverly Gallery.” May “The Starry Messenger,” his best play to date, follow them there soon!