For the theater year in review, 11 critics describe the most memorable theatrical event of 2006 for them. It might have been a performance, an image, an ad hoc line, or a five-minute bit, but it had to have made a lasting and positive impression.
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Jennifer Mathews improved on Laurie Metcalf’s performance in a role created for her by Alexandra Gersten in 1992’s My Thing of Love, about marital infidelity. Where Metcalf as the beleaguered wife treated her lines as a sitcom audition, Mathews in the Infamous Commonwealth Theatre production in April played the character’s serious side, turning scenes that at Steppenwolf had been mildly funny into some of the evening’s most moving moments.
During the kinetic climax of Redmoon Theater’s The Golden Truffle this spring, athletic Rick Kubes–ridiculously padded out to portray a rotund chef–attempted to vault a banquette and fell into a tableful of innocent audience members. Somehow his energy, spilling over into ineptitude, epitomized all the exuberant missteps of this generous, ludicrously oversize show about consumerism.
Ryan Hubbard
Deborah Hearst’s noble performance in the thankless title role of Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig was one of the year’s highlights. Night after night, at every performance, the Profiles Theatre actress was forced to lose the guy she craves because he’s not bighearted enough to overlook her size. Hearst gave the role a graceful Rubenesque energy. To hell with Kate Moss–more is more!
