With an appreciative nod to Charles Dickens, the 2023-24 Houston theater season was neither the best of times nor the worst of times. It was, in a manner, an intermediate time.

Perusing the 70-plus playbills from the diverse season, one finds obvious standouts, numerous near-hits, but few clunkers. The ravages from COVID are mostly in the past, although audience attendance is still slightly down and has yet to reach pre-pandemic highs. Name-brand musicals and Agatha Christie mysteries continue to draw large houses. (Is there ever an empty seat when The Lion King roars into town?) Income remains off the mark, with our smaller companies having to curtail their season rep by a production or two. For all this, it’s not the end of the world.

We were blessed by the paucity of catastrophic natural disasters unlike years past, although the sudden blast from May’s derecho and July’s Cat-1 Beryl put a decided crimp on the end of the season. Outlying audiences stayed home because the roads were flooded or debris littered the streets, while Midtown MATCH lost power. The weather utterly canceled Dirt Dogs’ Frenzy. Catastrophic’s annual Tamarie Cooper summer vaudeville was delayed by a few days when the star got COVID (not entirely gone yet, is it?)  Precious profits were lost. But the season went forward. What else can theater folk do?

This season seemed to bring the smaller companies into their own. Imagination and ingenuity soared at Rec Room, Main Street, 4th Wall. Overall, there was a grand mix of classics, contemporary fare, and three very fine world premieres. Shakespeare, of course, was not absent via a sparkling, orientalist A Midsummer Night’s Dream from Houston Shakespeare Festival and a witty ‘50s TV-inspired The Taming of the Shrew from Classical.

Musicals were in abundance: the irreverent Beetlejuice (Broadway at the Hobby Center), a gloriously dancey The Wizard of Oz (Queensbury Theatre), the operatic gore of Sweeney Todd (Theatre Under the Stars), or the stunning debut of a new company in town, Houston Broadway Theatre, with its sterling rendition of Next to Normal. The Ensemble Theatre glittered with its August Wilson classic The Piano Lesson, Main Street left us laughing out loud from Alan Ayckbourn’s surreal Taking Steps, and Rec Room dazzled with its grunge spin on J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.

And the big daddy of Houston theaters, the Alley, surprised us with its unearthing of a lost Thornton Wilder comedy, the evocative The Emporium, the emotional reminiscences of Sharr White’s Pictures from Home, the jubilant sounds of guitarrón in the distaff American Mariachi, and the brooding romance of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The august company's ten play season caught everyone's attention with the world premiere of Don X. Nguyen’s wistful immigrant dramedy, The World is Not Silent. Stellar.

In total, it was a very good year – theaters on the rebound, audiences returning, and craftsmanship, vision, and inventiveness behind the footlights as strong as ever. The upswing is evident in our list of award winners and nominees. The quality is unmistakable, and our gratitude and admiration for your work is boundless. The Houston Press sends its congratulations to everyone. — D.L. Groover
BEST ACTOR
Winner: Timothy Eric as Stagolee in Stagolee and the Funeral of a Dangerous Word (Main Street Theater)

Stagolee is a bold and self-determined Black man who does not suffer disrespect or attacks on his dignity. His commanding presence is an inevitable consequence of growing up with his fearless father, a notorious renegade whose name he shares. Stagolee’s bravado is rooted in a deeply convicted sense of his own worth and the worth of each person who looks like him. Timothy Eric portrays the textures of Stagolee’s swagger without relying solely on the boisterousness. His charming approach to his childhood crush contrasts greatly with the daunting glares he gives the white nationalist who called him the dangerous word.

Stagolee is audacious, but Stagolee is improved by an actor who goes beyond the confidence and grounds the character in earnest and sincere conviction. Every disappointed sigh or indignant critique comes from a desire for Stagolee and those he loves to be free and live freely. Eric has made his talent known throughout the Houston area in both supporting and lead roles over the last few years. However, it is in this year’s performance where his aptitude for playing eccentric, perceptive, and uninhibited characters is so fully expressed that no other actor could have originated this role.

Eric’s performance captivates. It’s a thrilling combination of great technique and raw charisma. The searing frustration he has as a black man who is sick and tired of having his existence debated or threatened is important fuel for how the story unfolds. The audience needs to be enthralled to keep attentive to this five-act play, and with a towering performance like Eric’s, it’s not that difficult.

Finalists: Kevin Cooney as André in The Father (4th Wall Theatre Co.), Jason Dirden as Boy Willie in The Piano Lesson (The Ensemble Theatre), Todd Waite as Irving Sultan in Pictures from Home (Alley Theatre) and Blake Weir as Matt in King James (Rec Room Arts).
BEST ACTRESS
Winner: Shannon Emerick as Heidi Schreck in What the Constitution Means to Me (Main Street Theater)

What does it mean to tour American Legion posts across the country in the 1980s to make money to pay for college by debating the U.S. Constitution?

For Heidi Schreck it meant, years later, writing a piece of political theater based on that experience, one that both honors the country’s Constitution and its high ideals while still challenging it for the people it left out in the reality she had come to know.

For Main Street Theater’s Shannon Emerick, it meant a chance to play a role she was particularly suited for, one she embraced easily and confidently. It is difficult to imagine anyone else taking it on, so seamless was the fit.

Emerick first portrays Heidi as the exuberant teenager, head full of facts about the Constitution, ready to trot them out in an engaging manner that helps her win her debates, no matter what side she is on. We know this kid. Some of us wanted to be this kid. Empowered by her studies, with a razor-sharp memory, she has a sure-footed answer for everything. On stage, that is.

Even when, at age 15, she learns disturbing facts about her own family’s history of abuse toward its women, she sets that aside and concentrates on her debate work. It’s not that she doesn’t realize there’s injustice in the world. But she’s also a big believer in the U.S. Constitution, which when it was written, did some things that had never been done before—a radical document in its own right.

As Emerick becomes the adult Heidi, who is not quite so able to compartmentalize, that’s when her perspective changes. Her character directly addresses the audience to talk about the conflicts she sees and can no longer dismiss.

The range Emerick shows is impressive. We believe in her just as much when she plays the 15-year-old debater as we do when she is older and wiser.  And still, in her own way, a supporter of the Constitution. This was a play carefully crafted not to land on the Right or the Left side of politics. And it never undercuts the passions and sincerity of the 15-year-old girl she was.

If only our government classes in high school had been this engrossing. Kudos to Emerick for keeping us hanging on to every word in a true tour-de-force performance that she made look just so easy and real.

Finalists: Jennifer Dean as Kari in The Pavilion (4th Wall Theatre Co.), Annalee Jefferies as Katharine Hepburn in Tea at Five (On the Verge Theatre), Melissa Molano as Jane Eyre in Jane Eyre (Alley Theatre), Victoria Ritchie as Dot/Marie in Sunday in the Park with George (Art Factory), Lakeisha Rochelle Randle as Bernice in The Piano Lesson (The Ensemble Theatre) and Patty Tuel Bailey as Daisy in Driving Miss Daisy (A.D. Players).
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Winner: Dillon Dewitt as Tim Padley in It is Magic (The Catastrophic Theatre)

Oh, Tim Padley, bless his heart.

We meet Tim in the basement of the Mortier Civic Playhouse as he auditions, yet again, for the role of the Big Bad Wolf in an adult adaptation of The Three Little Pigs. It’s his third audition; he’s spent the last two hours reading for the part, and he’s wearing a kilt.

Upstairs, the playhouse is about to open Macbeth, and Tim’s got the role of second murderer, but he’s still in the basement, using every second he can until someone calls “places,” trying to convince wannabe playwright Deb that he can be the canine of her dreams. But it’s an uphill battle, with Deb lobbing pretentiously baffling note after pretentiously baffling note before concluding that just listening to Tim has her “thinking only of everything that's wrong in the world.” Ouch.

Mickle Maher’s It is Magic is theater for theater folks, a self-aware and self-reflexive critique in the form of an unholy mash-up of kiddie fable and Scottish play, which becomes a playground for imaginative twists and turns, biting insight, and inspired humor – i.e., a play tailor-made for The Catastrophic Theatre. And there, caught right in the middle of this bizarre storm, is Tim, played with captivatingly nuanced versatility by Dillon Dewitt.

Dewitt’s performance is as inspired as it is unforgettable. Like Dewitt, we balk at Deb’s feedback, especially after seeing him deliver a side with an intensity that has us hanging on his every word. In our brief time getting to know Tim, Dewitt imbues him with such sincerity that even his wide-eyed idealism and love for the craft – remember, this is a man who says he makes it a point to look at every face in the audience – feel infectious. Dewitt’s likability is off the charts, so later, as the world appears to be collapsing outside the basement’s lone window, it’s brutal when he returns to the stage, drenched in blood and so much worse for the wear, to deliver a shattering, show-stopping monologue.

It’s a gut punch and a testament to Dewitt’s skill that, even surrounded by a brilliant ensemble cast and with Maher’s madness descending in and around the Mortier Civic Playhouse, he still manages to capture our attention by making, you guessed it, magic on stage.

Finalists: Curtis Barber as Michal in The Pillowman (Dirt Dogs Theatre Co.), Kyle Clark as Kevin in Heroes of the Fourth Turning (Rec Room Arts), Greg Cote as Captain Hook/Slightly/Mr. Darling in Peter Pan (Rec Room Arts), Luis Galindo as Ken Mason in It is Magic (The Catastrophic Theatre), Alex Morris as Doaker Charles in The Piano Lesson (The Ensemble Theatre) and Wesley Whitson as Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Houston Shakespeare Festival).
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Winner: Mai Lê as Linh in The World is Not Silent (Alley Theatre)

His father's health is failing, so young Don (Tony Aidan Vo) decides to move back home to be with him and to bridge their already somewhat strained connection by learning sign language since his father's hearing is worsening with age.

Much like many people in the United States, young Don has never thought there is something other than ASL or American Sign Language. He learns it only to discover his father is learning VSL: Vietnamese Sign Language.

Enter the VSL YouTuber LittleCricketLinh, played by Mai Lê. She's been invited by Don's father, Dau (Long Nguyen), who sees her as a prospective wife for Don. As we come to learn, she is bright and bubbly and a true extrovert, who connects with others but remains independent. She's there to help bridge the gap.

In the hands of a lesser actress, Linh could have come across as nothing more than a flaky free-spirit mouthing catchy one-liners and flitting from scene to scene. We would have probably enjoyed that, but Lê brings so much more depth to the role. It's the quiet spaces and her body language, as much as the words she speaks, that bring her character to life and Don out of his self-imposed isolation.

It's a standout performance, and once she's onstage in the 90-minute one-act, it's impossible to look away from her. Do so and you stand the chance of missing something important and certainly memorable. She, as the saying goes in film and TV, steals the show.

We at the Houston Press have been longtime fans of Mai Lê's work. We highlighted her as part of our up-and-coming actors class in 2019. We've seen her at Main Street Theater in Darwin in Malibu and at Stages in Song of Me, which she co-wrote and acted in—she is always someone audiences should be watching.

Alley Theatre debuted this play after a reading in its New Play Festival, an outreach effort that continues to produce good, sometimes great theater, that might otherwise never go on stage.

Casting Lê as Linh only made a compelling play even better. Mai Lê is a true force multiplier, and that's why she's our selection for Best Supporting Actress this year.

Finalists: Elissa Cuellar as Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew (Classical Theatre Company), Susan Koozin as Jean Sultan in Pictures from Home (Alley Theatre), LaKeisha Rochelle Randle as Naomi in Stagolee and the Funeral of a Dangerous Word (Main Street Theater), Sarah Sachi as Carolina in Laughs in Spanish (Stages) and Shannon Uphold as Teresa in Heroes of the Fourth Turning (Rec Room Arts).
BEST BREAKTHROUGH
Winner: Cory Sinclair as Katurian in The Pillowman (Dirt Dogs Theatre Co.)

As long as there have been musicals, actors have been singers – thousands of them. Actors as musicians, sure, almost as many. What’s rarest still are actors who are composers. There have been a few – Hoagy Carmichael (although he always seemed to be playing his own easy-going self), Charlie Chaplin, even Clint Eastwood and Anthony Hopkins.

But last season, we were thrilled to hear and see Cory Sinclair, a.k.a. Hescher, in Dirt Dogs’ production of Martin McDonagh’s gothic creeper The Pillowman. Not only was his incidental score marvelously eerie and befitting the weirdness of the story (see Best Score and Best Sound), but he played the main character Katurian K. Katurian just as marvelously: edgy, nervous, anxious, paranoid, human, all at once.

His icon-thin frame screamed Katurian, imprisoned by a nameless dystopian government that accuses him of brutal child murders, exactly parallel to his unpublished fairy tales that have been found in his home. Psychologically tortured and physically abused, Katurian’s surreal descent into hell is horribly real. Sinclair/Hescher’s electronic music pulsed with tension and fear; his mesmerizing performance matched it. Both are worthy of our respect, admiration, and award for Best Breakthrough.
BEST CHOREOGRAPHY
Winner: Bethany White for The Wizard of Oz (Queensbury Theatre)

In The Wizard of Oz (1939), Bobby Connolly, MGM’s ace dance director (four Academy Award nominations for Dance Direction before that category was eliminated), had to deal with 124 temperamental adult little people from circus sideshows and vaudeville and teach them how to dance. In Queensbury Theatre’s fantastically colorful Wizard of Oz, choreographer Bethany White used 17 children who doubled as Munchkins with the theater desire of any star-hungry wannabes. Most of these little people study at the Tribble School for the Performing Arts, and if you ask their mothers, they would probably tell you that they are all stars.

White made them so with her joyous choreography that didn’t double down on difficulty. She gave them patterns Balanchine would be proud of and little stand-out numbers that charmed. It was all endlessly adorable. Then she upped the ante by recreating the deleted “Jitterbug” number when the quartet enters the haunted forest, beset by stinging insects sent by the Wicked Witch of the West. What fun this was. (The powers that be at MGM cut the number because they thought the ‘30s dance craze would date the movie.) White’s jubilant dance stole the show and proved that Harold Arlen’s jazzy tune and “Yip” Harburg’s jaunty lyrics are timeless. So, too, was White’s delectable dance direction all through Oz.

Finalists:
William Carlos Angulo for Newsies (Theatre Under The Stars), Courtney D. Jones for Fiddler on the Roof (A.D. Players), Monica Josette for Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella (Theatre Under The Stars), Krissy Richmond for Sense and Sensibility (4th Wall Theatre Co.) and Luis Salgado for On Your Feet! (Theatre Under The Stars).
BEST ORIGINAL MUSIC/SCORE
Winner: Cory Sinclair for The Pillowman (Dirt Dogs Theatre Co.)

For our 2022 Houston Theater Awards, Cory Sinclair, a.k.a. Hescher, won this category for his electro-tinged prestidigitation in Keith Huff’s noir drama A Steady Rain from Dirt Dogs Theatre Co. We marveled at his ominous, lush soundscape that captured the play’s dank rain-swept mood. We asked, “We know his name is Cory Sinclair, an electronic musician from Houston who lives in Austin, but what a revelation. Please sir, can we have some more?”

Our prayer has been answered. He has outdone even himself for Dirt Dogs (again) in Martin McDonagh’s deeply creepy The Pillowman, superbly directed by Malinda L. Beckham. Sinclair’s score is a swirling thrum like some medieval polyphony heard in a cobwebbed cloister, which suits Sinclair’s own performance as the battered and paranoid Katurian. Sometimes, the music is just an eerie undercurrent that eddies below the surface horrors and grotesqueries. We’re always on the edge, precisely where McDonagh and Beckham want us. Sinclair pushes us to the edge, too, just close enough for vertigo. (See Best Breakthrough.)
BEST SOUND
Winner: Cory Sinclair for The Pillowman (Dirt Dogs Theatre Co.)

For a play, sound is usually off-stage. It’s there and not there. It sets mood, reveals character, leads us subtly into the drama at hand. It can be background: birds tweeting, traffic in the distance, children laughing at the playground. It can be diegetic: a mariachi band live on stage or a record on a phonograph heard by the actors; or it can be in your face: screams in a jump scare, a thunderclap, door slams. It can be incidental: a soundtrack, an incidental tune as an overture or scene change. Sound does all this and more to augment the drama.

There’s plenty of drama in Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman. He spins the Grimmest of fairy tales, one of dystopia, viciousness, revenge, horror, swathed in the blackest of black comedy. Sinclair’s music sets the scene with chilling brilliance, entwined with hollow whispers and echoed screams. The hum that underscores this tale from the dark side is its own sound effect. Mysterious and macabre, the sound from Sinclair/Hescher is what you’d hear in a nightmare. Scare us again.

Finalists: Gage Baker and Hessam Dianpour for The Turn of the Screw (The Catastrophic Theatre), Melanie Chen Cole for Jane Eyre (Alley Theatre) and The World is Not Silent (Alley Theatre), Trevor B. Cone for The Birds (Dirt Dogs Theatre Co.), Sarah Moessner and James Templeton for Cleansed (The Catastrophic Theatre) and Shawn W. St. John for The Woman in Black (Main Street Theater).
BEST LIGHTING
Winner: John Baker for The Pillowman (Dirt Dogs Theatre Co.)

Children are dying in brutal ways, and police have a hunch about the culprit. An incarcerated short story writer, Katurian, has authored stories eerily similar to the crimes. A police team willing to subject the writer to whatever necessary to induce the truth they expect to hear. All set in an ominously designed and ambiguously repressive police state. When restriction and secrecy become de rigueur, shadows and dim lighting reign supreme.

Baker’s lighting contributes hauntingly to the despair and nihilism of this world, where each truth revealed seems to sink more and more people into darkness rather than leading them to the light. When the darkness on stage spreads and the light becomes minimal, an uneasy feeling of uncertainty creeps out to remind that there is something disorienting and disquieting about this world.

When the two police officers are speaking, the overhead fluorescent lighting is dispersed but lifeless. The functionality and sterility of the lights are evocative of a government agency that harms rather than creates. The stark white lighting complemented the drabness of the stale grays of the set. When the play shifts to depicting the fictional worlds of Katurian’s stories, the lighting is warmer, surreal, and more vibrant yet still maintains the underlying macabre tone.

Baker uses more tightened and spotlighted lighting when the characters are under pressure or as a truth is about to be revealed to produce unease. In the world of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, truth produces only more darkness, and Baker’s lighting attests to that sentiment.

Finalists: Clint Allen for The Father (4th Wall Theatre Co.), Andrew Archer for It Is Magic (The Catastrophic Theatre) and The Turn of the Screw (The Catastrophic Theatre), Jennifer Fok for The World is Not Silent (Alley Theatre) and Christina Giannelli for A Case for the Existence of God (Stages) and Sense and Sensibility (4th Wall Theatre Co.).
BEST COSTUMES
Winner: Valérie Thérèse Bart for Jane Eyre (Alley Theatre)

In 1847, when Charlotte Brontë published Jane Eyre, the ideal woman of the era was modest and demure, firmly situated within the domestic sphere, and also pale. The character of Jane Eyre stands as the epitome of the era’s virtues, and yet, Valérie Thérèse Bart didn’t let that get in the way of designing richly colored, lush costumes for Elizabeth Williamson’s adaptation of Brontë’s classic novel at the Alley Theatre this spring.

Though the word “plain” appears dozens of times in Jane Eyre, Bart’s costumes for our heroine are closer to subtle opulence than plain. As Eyre, Melissa Molano’s day-to-day dress was light blue, a color that popped on stage, and it also stayed true to the high neckline, two-piece design, and silhouette you’d expect of the period. This is because Bart didn’t go down the anachronistic route either. Just like Williamson’s play does with the book, Bart stayed faithful to the time, making era-impeccable choices that featured so many markers of Victorian fashion – bodices that draw down in a V-shape, dome-shaped skirts, necklines both high and shoulder-bearing, sleeves ranging from tightly fitted to pagoda, pelerines, bonnets, frock coats and more.

On the more extravagant side, Bart’s designs absolutely dazzled, exemplified by Lady Ingram and her daughters, Blanche and Mary. There’s the fanciful and fluffy gown donned by Joy Yvonne Jones’s Blanche Ingram. Ruffled and tiered and in a lovely, pinky violet hue, its flounciful skirt and intricate detailing befit the haughty aristocrat perfectly. And though a bit less lavish, the vibrant aqua blue number worn by Lady Ingram (Susan Koozin) and the orangey, burnt amber dress on Mary (Melissa Pritchett) were just as eye-catching.

Across the board, Bart filled Thornfield Hall with sights both compelling and pleasing to the eye, including the childish mid-calf dresses and puff sleeves on Ana Miramontes’s Adèle, Koozin’s veiled, ghostly specter in the attic, and the respectable, narrow lines of Chris Hutchison’s Rochester. In every stitch and silhouette, timeless in their elegance, Bart's designs captured the spirit of the era while offering audiences visuals to feast on, and it was more than enough to name hers this year’s best costumes.

Finalists: Jodie Daniels for A Midsummer Night's Dream (Houston Shakespeare Festival), Lilli Lemberger for Peter Pan (Rec Room Arts) and The Taming of the Shrew (Classical Theatre Company), Leah Smith for Sense and Sensibility (4th Wall Theatre Co.) and Christopher Vergara for American Mariachi (Alley Theatre).
BEST SET DESIGN
WINNER: Stefan Azizi for Peter Pan, King James and Heroes of the Fourth Turning (Rec Room Arts)

It’s a two-peat for set designer extraordinaire Stefan Azizi, who again elevated the, let’s say, modest space on Jackson Street with his clear vision and deceptively straightforward – and shrewdly rendered – designs across three different productions. In the span of about five months, Rec Room and Azizi masterfully took us on a trip that led from the wilderness of Wyoming to days past spent with the Darling family and, finally, to Cleveland, Ohio, in the aughts.

In October, Azizi turned his keen eye to Will Arbery’s Heroes of the Fourth Turning, during which we spent two hours with the very conservative and very white alums of a very Catholic college as they reunited in rural Wyoming. Arbery’s right-wing intellectuals are tucked away in a secluded, rugged cabin in the middle of nowhere, one that, in Azizi’s hands, was just as rich and raw as the content of the play.

Azizi’s cabin setting, under the lighting of Paige Seber and with Robert Leslie Meek’s sound designs, was atmospheric, as well as lonely and isolated – an apt analogy for the characters of the play and quite the contrast to the attic-as-playground magic he made for Rec Room’s December production of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.

Just in time for the holidays, Azizi expertly managed to evoke home and adventure within tight quarters, making our eyes open in childlike wonder at the unexpected sights his set revealed. The tallest ask of the season, Azizi met the challenge, ensuring Rec Room's production of Pan would be one of the best we've seen.

Then, in February, for Rajiv Joseph’s King James, a deep dive into the friendship between two Cleveland Cavaliers-loving men, Azizi reveled in the play’s emphasis on naturalism. He delivered two distinctly detailed sets that, like the two-hander itself, stayed so true to reality that we always remembered the tensions Joseph so perceptively depicts – touching on and skirting around issues of race, class, and masculinity – are happening in bars and shops just like those all around the country.

We’re longtime fans of Azizi’s work, confident that every production lucky enough to boast his name as set designer will be a must-see – literally. They certainly were this season.

Finalists: Afsaneh Aayani for Cleansed with video projections by James Templeton and Tim Thomson and The Turn of the Screw (The Catastrophic Theatre), Ryan McGettigan for The Father (4th Wall Theatre Co.), Michael Locher for The Emporium (Alley Theatre), Tanya Orellana for American Mariachi (Alley Theatre) and Santiago Sepeda for The Birds (Dirt Dogs Theatre Co.) and The Pillowman (Dirt Dogs Theatre Co.). BEST TOURING PRODUCTION
Winner: Girl From the North Country (Broadway at the Hobby Center)

Girl From the North Country is at once one of the worst musicals possible and, simultaneously, one of the most beautifully beguiling.

Written and directed by Irish playwright Conor McPherson, the musical re-imagines 20 Bob Dylan songs (orchestrations by Simon Hale) and sets them in a Depression-era boarding house in Minnesota (Dylan's birthplace).

The show is a ridiculous notion. Who thought it was a good idea to wrestle Dylan’s Nobel-winning poetry-songs into showtune format? And then decide not to include many familiar hits and arrange songs so differently that it frustrates audiences’ need to sing along. Or even recognize some songs.

Thank heavens no one pushed the Dylan bio-musical idea, as that would have been utter torture.

On paper, this is a disaster. But it's also brilliant. After all, if you're going to do a Dylan musical, it better as hell break the mold. It better be the newly electric fighting against the expected acoustic, no matter who it upsets in the short term.

With a plot concerning people in dire straits during the Great Depression, the songs don’t make any sense in this show. But then, most of Dylan’s songs are unknowable. They are poetry without a confirmed genesis story, padded with theories and speculation by people trying to read a mind that wishes to remain opaque. The trick in this show is to let the numbers come when they will, gorgeously performed and interestingly arranged.

And choreography? No, not really. But then, have you ever danced to a Dylan song? The movement on stage, and there is enough to keep things visually pleasing, comes from group sways or couples dancing and the occasional shimmy when things get momentarily upbeat.

It's as though Girl has created the post-musical musical. One where we don't clap after every number. Where there are no big numbers. One where we release our expectations and let the music move us. One where the beauty of the thing is simply the thing’s beauty and not its structure or coherence at all.

The musical times as a whole may not be a-changin', but Girl From the North Country makes a case that, in certain instances, maybe they should be.

Finalists: Beetlejuice (Broadway at the Hobby Center), Jagged Little Pill (Theatre Under the Stars), The Lion King (Broadway at the Hobby Center) and Tina–The Tina Turner Musical (Broadway at the Hobby Center).
BEST ENSEMBLE CAST
Winner: Heroes of the Fourth Turning (Rec Room Arts)

It’s fitting that one of the most riveting productions of the year produced the season’s most electrifying ensemble performances.

Will Arbery’s Pulitzer Prize finalist play, Heroes of the Fourth Turning, introduces us to five white, Catholic, conservative, intellectual former college classmates, allowing a fly-on-the-wall view as they argue, debate, and often self-combust under the weight of their beliefs.

At two-plus hours with no intermission, the show is a thrilling assault. The intolerance, the anger, the distrust, the fear, the pain, the silent suffering, it’s all so crushing. That these characters need to show up for the humor in the show as well makes the task even more complex.

If ever there was a cast up for this challenge, it’s these performers. In what surely is the most intense ensemble effort we’ve seen in recent memory, these actors steal spotlights so many times it becomes dizzying.

As Justin, the rural, soft-spoken outdoorsman, Jay Sullivan is pitch perfect as the seemingly steady, dependable hand.

Polar opposite to Justin's calm is Kevin's antsy neurosis. Full of questions and contradictions without one ounce of cool, Kyle Clark is so wound he’s seemingly ready to implode from anxiety.

Shannon Uphold takes on Teresa, a Steve Bannon-type in a well-tailored yet feminine pantsuit styled for a Brooklyn address. Spewing terrifying bravado and a cruel tongue, we both fear her and fear for her.

As Emily, Shanae'a Moore is eerily angelic as she deals with some kind of mysterious chronic illness, all the while espousing the notion of grace in pain and feeling gratitude for the afflictions God has given her.

Susan Koozin’s unintentional pot-stirring as old-school college president Gina is the perfect entitled foil for her former students' modern and perhaps more aggressive methods.

The unrelenting abundance this cast conjured as they danced around each other kept us on the edge of our seats, out of breath and wondering what the hell just happened. Bravo to each immense talent and many thanks for such a wild ride.

Finalists: It is Magic (The Catastrophic Theatre) The Piano Lesson (The Ensemble Theatre), The Pillowman (Dirt Dogs Theatre Co.), Peter Pan (Rec Room Arts) and Sense and Sensibility (4th Wall Theatre Co.).
BEST NEW PLAY/PRODUCTION
Winner: The World is Not Silent by Don X. Nguyen (Alley Theatre)

The tree of the Alley's All New Festival is not only bearing fruit, it’s keeping us well fed, nourishing our appetite for good theater with enviable ease.

Since its inception eight years ago, the festival has now produced five Best New Play winners: Our 2017 winner, Nsangou Njikam’s Syncing Ink, workshopped in 2016 during the festival’s inaugural year before premiering in 2017. Rajiv Joseph’s Describe the Night, read during the 2017 festival, took home this award in 2018. Quack by Eliza Clark was read that same year and became our Best New Play winner in 2019. And who can forget Liz Duffy Adams’s Born With Teeth – so good that after its festival premiere in 2022, we had to award it both our Best New Play and Best Play awards?

Turns out the 2022 festival had yet another award-nabbing gift for us theater lovers: Don X. Nguyen’s The World is Not Silent.

Tender, humorous, and emotionally intelligent, Nguyen’s semi-autobiographical, multilingual masterpiece delves into the chasm between a father and son, the barrier between them language itself. The son, Don, relocates from New York City to Nebraska to care for his father, Dau. Suffering from hearing loss, Dau has learned sign language, so Don decides to as well in the hopes of reconnecting with his dad. Unfortunately for Don, he picked American Sign Language (ASL), while his dad chose Vietnamese Sign Language (VSL).

Nguyen’s clever and dexterous use of English and Vietnamese (spoken, broken, and translated) and ASL and VSL elevates the family dramedy into something extraordinary and unlike anything we’ve seen before on a Houston stage. He deftly maps the roadblocks thrown up by language, the distance drawn by silence, and, just as importantly, the love that continues to point the way home. Like his voice, Nguyen’s approach is fresh, his characters engaging, and his storytelling engrossing. For these reasons, The World is Not Silent shares yet another similarity with Born With Teeth. (See Best Play/Production.)

If you’re reading this, then we probably don’t have to convince you of the value of committing to new works, risky pursuit though it may be. But we will say that ahead of the play’s premiere in March, Nguyen told the Houston Press that the 2022 All New Festival was “the single best play reading” he’d ever attended. We’ll also say that when the next festival rolls around in October, we’ll have our eye on it and you should too.

Finalists: It Is Magic by Mickle Maher (The Catastrophic Theatre) and Stagolee and the Funeral of a Dangerous Word by Thomas Meloncon (Main Street Theater).
BEST MUSICAL
Winner: Sweeney Todd (Theatre Under the Stars)

Both parody and tragedy, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd (1979) is epic musical theater, operatic in score and inky dark in theme. Part English music hall vaudeville (Mrs. Lovett twinkles even when butchering Sweeney’s latest victims), Victorian Grand Guignol with its buckets of blood, and a Jacobean-inspired revenge play, the musical is in a class by itself.

Due to Sondheim’s masterful score and lyrics, abetted by Hugh Wheeler’s pristine libretto, the show is a classic, although it’s only 45 years young. Revenge is sweet until it turns sour. Dark and grim, cold and steely yet gleaming and highly polished, Sweeney Todd is unlike any else in the canon. Characters popped out of the first-tier boxes, scaring the patrons silly, or roamed the aisles glaring at us as they sang of Sweeney's dark deeds.

Mrs. Lovett's pie shop and bakery was a platform on wheels so it could revolve quickly; playing areas and scaffolding on the sides reminded us of the industrial Victorian era (and a nod to the original iron-clad Hal Prince production). The background scrim projections by Mike Tutaj bespoke a glorious panorama of hazy London rooftops, a foggy dockside with rippling Thames, slum dwellings out of lithographer H.K. Browne. Colleen Grady's costumes glistened with oil and grime, or satin and muslin. It was beautiful work. And all was sumptuously illuminated by Jason Lyons with footlights and pin spots or fiery blood-red overlay. The stage pictures read like oil paintings, rich in detail. We always knew where to look.

That is director Dan Knechtges’ fine work on display. He knows who to hire. Psychotically cool, Danny Rothman’s Sweeney had revenge on speed dial. Gruff and raspy, he purred to his friends, his now-gleaming razors. As Mrs. Lovett, Sally Wilfert stepped right into the limelight as if descending from some skewed Gilbert & Sullivan land. With a head of ginger curls, she was delightfully batty, a Cockney devil with a rolling pin. The combo of Todd and Lovett – and Sondheim and Knechtges and crew – was unbeatable. A classic newly minted.

Finalists: Beetlejuice (Broadway at The Hobby Center), Fiddler on the Roof (A.D. Players), Girl From the North Country (Broadway at the Hobby Center), Next to Normal (Houston Broadway Theatre) and Othello: The Remix (Stages).
BEST DIRECTOR OF A MUSICAL
Winner: Dan Knechtges for Sweeney Todd (Theatre Under the Stars)

What do you do with a classic musical? Some auteur directors pour out diktats like Ivan the Terrible and set the show on the moons of Saturn. Maybe they update or backdate. Sometimes, a new book is grafted onto the old songs. They crave relevance.

Dan Knechtges, artistic director of Theatre Under the Stars, knows better. He lets the show alone, lets it shine. A classic is a classic for good reason. It’s been tested. Its bones are fine, aged by the years. A show is a product of its time, good and bad. Knechtges played this musical straight. He polished what was already evident. The show sparkled. Previously nominated by HP and a former winner in this category, Knechtges rarely disappoints. He always finds the right mood, the most telling mise en scène with distinctive pacing, and has a breezy telling way with actors, just letting them be in the spotlight where they belong.

The show obviously inspired Knechtges. Atmospheric and swiftly moving, Todd came alive. It was all of a piece, whether dark, ironic comedy, social commentary, or good ol’ Broadway brass. He loves the Broadway musical – this one, obviously – and it showed. We show our love with this award, duly presented.

Finalists: Aaron Brown for Fiddler on the Roof (A.D. Players), Joe Calarco for Next to Normal (Houston Broadway Theatre) and Kristina Sullivan for The Wizard of Oz (Queensbury Theatre.).
BEST DIRECTOR OF A PLAY
Winner: Sophia Watt for What the Constitution Means to Me (Main Street Theater) and Heroes of the Fourth Turning (Rec Room Arts)

Sophia Watt has become the go-to director for cool, alternatively-staged, recently-premiered plays. Her resume reads like a hip list – Dance Nation, The Wolves, The Oldest Boy, and this season, she added What the Constitution Means to Me and Heroes of the Fourth Turning to the mix.

However, it’s one thing to attach your name to hot, successful shows and quite another to take those shows and make them work for Houston audiences and local spaces. We’re lucky that this is Watt’s superpower – the ability to honor the specialness of a show while also putting her own mark on the production and experience. The results this year have been stellar.

For Heidi Schreck’s ecumenical and autobiographical political debate play, What the Constitution Means to Me, Watt shows a strong directorial hand guiding Shannon Emerick to great heights in what is essentially a daunting one-woman show.

Emerick is always an intelligent talent worth noting on stage, but here, Watt brings out a lightness to her performance, a wondrous extemporaneous quality, as if she's making it up as she debates and reminisces nonstop throughout the play.

As noteworthy is Watt’s understanding that not all Schreck’s political zingers hit the same for a Houston audience as they did when the play premiered to crowds in New York. It’s the same play, with the same message, but Watt smartly let the work speak for itself in several spaces rather than go for the laugh or the jugular. She made way for the audience to lean in, and boy, did they!

By comparison, Watt’s work in Heroes of the Fourth Turning was an outright planned assault. Will Arbery’s play depicts five distinct nuances of the Christian right as they debate, argue, and question how to achieve a successful path forward.

We may not like what we hear. It may be wildly offensive. But good theater shows us to ourselves like it or not, and Watt was taking no prisoners in this effort to be true to her characters and this sector of America.

There is not one ounce of bias or judgment in Watt’s direction of her stellar cast. Under her wing, they show up as they are, fully formed and unabashedly righteous. Unlike Constitution, there is nothing feel-good about this show, and it’s a testament to Watt that she can expertly steer not only both sides of the political divide in her work, but both sides of the emotional barometer equally well.

Ultimately, Watt is an actor’s director. It's abundantly clear that her cast trusts her, and in turn, she steers that trust into the best performances we’ve seen from these talents. So rich is her talent that we couldn’t pick just one of her efforts to award this year. Double dynamite direction isn’t just great alliteration here; it’s a well-deserved tip of the hat to Watt this season.

Finalists: Malinda L. Beckham for The Pillowman (Dirt Dogs Theatre Co.), Elizabeth Bunch for The Father (4th Wall Theatre Co.), Kim Tobin-Lehl for Sense and Sensibility (4th Wall Theatre Co.) and Jeff Miller for It is Magic (The Catastrophic Theatre).
BEST PLAY/PRODUCTION
Winner: The World is Not Silent (Alley Theatre)

It’s a bit trite, isn’t it, to lament how your parents just don’t understand you?

The idea was quite literally immortalized in song in 1988 by a famous West Philadelphia hip-hop duo. It’s not trite, however, in the hands of Don X. Nguyen. For Nguyen, the conflict is about more than a parent not recognizing the importance of cool back-to-school clothes. In Nguyen’s The World is Not Silent, the lack of understanding is caused quite literally by a father and son speaking different languages.

Inspired by his own life and experiences, Nguyen penned a story about a man from New York, Don, who decides to return home to care for and reconnect with his father, who’s been losing his hearing. And Don’s got a surprise. He's learned American Sign Language. But, when he arrives home in Nebraska, he finds his father, Dau, using Vietnamese Sign Language instead.

Though The World is Not Silent was over in an hour and a half, its effects lingered in our heads far outside the walls of the Alley’s Neuhaus Theatre, where it made its world premiere. Nguyen’s originality, perspective, and heart not only jumped off the page, they soared. And somehow, the cast and the creative team at the Alley found a way to make Nguyen’s play reach all the way up to the stars and galaxies that astrophotographer Don so likes.

There’s a lot of humanity and intimacy in Nguyen’s play, and director Marya Mazor balanced the production between the script’s humor and poignancy. Under her deft hand, the design elements came together seamlessly. Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’s simple set was malleable ground, lit with thought by Jennifer Fok, and embraced lovingly by Victoria Beauray Sagady's gorgeous projections, which were immersive, emotionally engaging, and overwhelmingly beautiful

 A trio of performances brought Nguyen’s words – those said, unsaid, and signed – to life. Long Nguyen hit the right notes portraying a man losing his hearing, while Tony Aidan Vo’s Don was a touch aloof and anxious. But as father and son, their exchanges were weighty and heartfelt. The final member of the cast was Mai Lê, a ball of energy as Linh. She ping-ponged well with her fellow actors and stole the show so undeniably she nabbed our Best Supporting Actress award.

If there’s a more theater-friendly idiom than “firing on all cylinders,” let us know because that’s exactly what the Alley did with The World is Not Silent, making it the best production we saw all season.

Finalists: Heroes of the Fourth Turning (Rec Room Arts), The Piano Lesson (The Ensemble Theatre) and The Pillowman (Dirt Dogs Theatre Co.).
BEST ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Winner: Matt Hune (Rec Room Arts)

When Rec Room Artistic Director Matt Hune first took on the tiny, 60-seat Jackson Street space in 2016, it was out of necessity. One season of producing shows in his living room was enough; the company needed its own space. Sure, the theater was small and had limitations, but it was the only space available, so he’d find a way to work around it.

Fast forward several successful seasons later, Hune has learned not to work around his tiny theater but to instead work with it. No need to limit Rec Room programming to small works, Hune decided to go for it, bringing in innovative shows whose ideas and demands far outweigh the intimate space.

That so many of these productions have been on our awards list over the years is a testament to Hune understanding that well-curated, wonderfully big things can work in small packages. It also doesn’t hurt that Hune is able to attract some of Houston’s most established talents as well as give space to up-and-coming artists, resulting in a thrilling creative mix on stage.

But look deeper and you’ll see that Hune is an AD who relishes cohesion in his programming. There are always themes running through the suite of Rec Room shows even if the productions themselves are wildly different.

This season is a perfect example, even though Rec Room organizes its seasons by calendar year rather than the traditional September to June run. Seems subconsciously Hune can’t help but grab a thread. This time, it was crisis he asked us to consider.

Heroes of the Fourth Turning gave us a crisis of the political right as they strive for a path forward. Peter Pan is the ultimate crisis of inevitable maturation. King James showed us masculinity and male connection in crisis. And Betrayal is marriage crisis with a capital C.

Even if you didn’t catch the connection, you couldn’t help but see the fruits of choice. Both Heroes and Peter Pan extended wildly successful runs, King James brought in new audiences and pushed the company’s already jaw-dropping design abilities, and Betrayal showed us that Rec Room can dip back in the canon in a uniquely Rec Room manner.

None of this happens without an AD willing to take chances on shows that stretch his company’s abilities. This season more than ever, Matt Hune stretched and explored and challenged and brought us some of the best work we saw. A fitting year to award him best Artistic Director.

Finalists: Malinda L. Beckham (Dirt Dogs Theatre Co.), Tamarie Cooper and Jason Nodler (The Catastrophic Theatre), Philip Lehl (4th Wall Theatre Co.), Rob Melrose (Alley Theatre) and Rebecca Greene Udden (Main Street Theater).
BEST SEASON
Winner: Rec Room Arts

Awarding a season is a slippery prospect. How do you compare a company that programs seven or more shows with one that only has four productions? Does every show have to be outstanding for the company to qualify? What even makes a season the best?

For us this year, it came down to which shows wowed us the most. The ones we couldn’t stop thinking about. The thrills. And this year, Rec Room had more of those than anyone else, despite there being strong competition from other companies' individual productions.

By now, there’s been much said about the superlatively electric Heroes of the Fourth Turning, one of Rec Room’s strongest all-around productions perhaps ever. Let’s then focus on the other show that truly knocked our socks off.

Peter Pan, with its multiple locations, flight, physical hijinks, and, of course, the adorable dog Nana, is not an obvious choice for the small Rec Room space. But thanks to an utterly enchanting modern production, stand-out performances, a secretive set that just kept on giving and laugh-inducing movement direction, this Pan was the highlight of the holiday season. Hell, it was a highlight of the entire season.

King James and Betrayal, the other two shows we considered for Rec Room, might not have reached the same heights as Heroes or Pan – but both thrilled in their own way.

Rajiv Joseph's King James uses the framing of basketball to explore the tenuous nature of male friendship. It’s a quick two-hander that brought laughs and a tightly incisive look at friendships between men. And it brought out many first-time audience members and play-goers in general. That alone is worthy of an award.

Harold Pinter’s Betrayal was a left turn for Rec Room, a company known for producing newer work. But you don’t get much edgier than Pinter’s reverse-order drama about adultery and the lies one tells during betrayal. The extraordinarily pared-down production didn’t fire on all cylinders, but it was exciting to see how brightly Pinter’s words and ideas shined when all distractions were stripped away.

Rec Room has always been known as the small but mighty company; this year, we congratulate them on their mighty efforts, resulting in an award-winning season.

Finalists: Alley Theatre, 4th Wall Theatre Co. and Main Street Theater.