the craptacular

We’re about to get Crif Dogs and see Once. Can you say Perfect Saturday? Here’s what we’ll be talking the whole time. Well, not during Once. At intermission.

• In what has got to be the best piece of Broadway PR-related fuckery we’ve seen in a while, Jeff Calhoun accidentally spilled to BroadwayWorld — on camera — that Jeremy Jordan will star in Newsies. I mean, everybody knew. But Calhoun’s guilelessness, in an era when artists are usually media trained into zombiedom, was pretty delightful. Jeremy Jordan’s response was just as great. He smiled, winked at the camera, and then copped to the whole thing on Twitter. And then the official @Newsies Twitter re-tweeted it. Well played, everyone. Well played.

• And let’s belabor a second notable point concerning this whole affair: You think social media’s not important to the business we call show? @Newsies just unofficially confirmed casting for its big new show of the season. On Twitter. No hasty press release. No quote to the New York Times. (In fact, the Times contacted Disney for a reaction and got shot down.) Power to the people, man. And to their social networks.

• Jonathan Groff will star in “The Good Wife” in February. In an episode that’s undoubtedly about how the internet is killing us all, The Groffinator will play a guy who sues a software company (wild guess: It will be called Smitter) after his sister disappears while protesting in Syria.

• We shed a tear or two when heard of Lysistrata Jones‘s untimely closing this week. Clearly Ben Brantley is not the all-powerful tastemaker that certain Bonnie & Clyde fans seem to think he is.

• Fuck you, Hollywood, for stealing everyone handsome and important. We called this one like a year ago, but director Alex Timbers will direct the film version of the kids book Heck for MGM. We’re wicked happy for him, but if this deprives us of seeing Mr. Timbers meandering around the theater district with his beautiful hair blowing in the breeze, we’re going to stop seeing movies altogether. Along with the rest of America.

• Oh, chinhands! Audra and Will are engaged, you guys! Puppies and kittens and rainbows and stuff.

• Michael Riedel reported this week that Leap of Faith and/or Little Miss Sunshine could make a go of it this season, given that other stuff is closing left and right. Thumbs up: Raul Esparza, William Finn, the very insinuation that Sherie Rene Scott will have something to do onstage this year, and new musicals. Thumbs down: Rushing stuff that potentially isn’t ready, rushing stuff that got bad reviews out of town, and more (and more, and more) musicals about movies.

• The in-development Houdini musical wherein Hugh Jackman will play a creepy/handsome magician for the second time got one step closer to reality this week. Stephen Schwartz, it seems, is writing the score, and Jack O’Brien is on board to direct. Hugh always gets our attention, but now this project seems like the real deal, and not just something Aaron Sorkin dreamed up by his pool one afternoon. Bring it, and hopefully soon.

• In a move that ensures that the Les Miserables movie will live up to its name, Taylor Swift and Amanda Seyfried were offered the roles of Eponine and Cosette this week. Who knew a girl could have so much longing for Lea Michele?

You guys! In the holiday haze, Lucky and I almost forgot to tell you all about an important discovery we made.

Right before Christmas we were invited to try Two Boots’ new Mamma Mia inspired pizza and see the show. It was so cold and rainy we almost bailed, but thank god we didn’t because:

a) the pizza delicious

b) we made an even more delicious discovery at the Winter Garden Theater.

His name is Jordan Dean, but we’ve taken to calling him The Singing (Ginger) Chest.  Why, you ask? Well, because he’s a redhead. And he plays Sky, so he sings a song. And most importantly, because he’s so gosh-darn handsome/ripped that the audience actually burst into applause when he took his shirt off.

YOU GUYS! You guys. That is an actual thing that happened in real life and not just in the confines of my own twisted, filthy imagination. I was flabbergasted. And proud of the audience for having really good taste. And relieved that I was mature enough not to give into my baser instincts and wolf-whistle at Mr. Dean. That’s how fantastically attractive he is, Mr. Singing (Ginger) Chest.

But you don’t have to take our word for it. You can check him out here and here and more importantly, at the Winter Garden 8 times a week.

PS. We don’t suggest doing a Google image-search for Mr. Dean when you’re at work. Because apparently if you’re a hot young Broadway star—read: Jeremy Jordan, Jordan Dean—you’re contractually obligated to have the same name as a porn star and that makes for some… graphic search results. In fact, in this case, they’re extremely graphic.  Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Photo: IMDB.com

So, here’s a cool thing. You now have a whole new way to read our web site. Check out The Craptacular on your iPhone using an app called iBroadway.

Here’s why this generally rocks:

• The app looks all nice and shiny
• The app contains show, ticket, and theater information, which is exceptionally helpful when you’re standing on 44th Street and you can’t remember where the hell The Cort is. Not that that’s ever happened to you.
• We’re in amazing company. Along with The Craptacular, you can also read some splendid theater blogs by some great writers, including our buds Chris Caggiano, and Jan Simpson.

So how does this work? Check it out:

• First, download the app right here.
• Read about some shows on the first tab. (Or, if you’re still looking for The Cort, click on “Stick Fly” and then click “Map It.” All your problems will be instantly solved.)
• Select the second tab, which is called “News.”
• Scroll over et voila, there we are. Now you can read us on your lunch hour, and while you’re on the LIRR, and at intermission (not during the show, damnit!), and in lots of other places. Ain’t that neat? We thought so.

Stop whatever the fuck it is you are doing. If you are a girl between the ages of 25 and 35, you might want to have a paper bag/clean panties handy. Or sit down. Or all of the above.

Because Jeff Calhoun lost his damn mind. On video. And Broadway World posted it. And then Jeremy confirmed it on the Twitter. And Newsies Retweeted it. And fuck it all, we’re just going to stay it…

JEREMY JORDAN IS UNOFFICIALLY JACK KELLY. ON THE BROADWAY.

Okay, so we have like… ten weeks to survive between now and first preview.

But if this isn’t the kind of New Years Miracle that makes your childhood heart soar then we just don’t know what is.

Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re on the hunt for newspaper print panties to bedazzle in time for opening night. You know, in case a certain beautiful, lush-lipped someone wants to see them.

Photo: Walter McBride

OK, kids. This is the whole enchilada. The good, the bad and the ugly of 2011. From Baby It’s You to The Book of Mormon, relive it one last time before it goes.

BEST

Rory O’Malley Cries at the Tonys
The Book of Mormon won a truckload of Tony Awards—and deservedly so. But the most memorable moment at this year’s ceremony wasn’t an acceptance speech by the show’s producers. It was Rory O’Malley, who didn’t even win in his own category, with tears in his eyes as castmate Nikki M. James accepted her award. We swooned at the cuteness—and that’s to say nothing of Rory’s actual performance in Mormon. As the stranded, closeted, tap-dancing Elder McKinley, he gave one of our favorite performances of the year. And dude, you know you’re doing something right when Jon Stewart is singing your song on the air.

Benjamin Walker Is Famous
So he wasn’t nominated for a Tony Award for last year’s Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, but we doubt he’s giving much of a fuck right now. Even while Bloody Bloody was on Broadway, Benjamin Walker’s career was on the verge of exploding into rainbow-colored piles of awesomeness. And then it actually did. In 2011, he was cast in not one, but two crazy-huge Hollywood movies—Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter and Paradise Lost. The latter is on hold, but the Honest Abe movie is slated for a June release. Oh and P.S. He also married Meryl Streep’s daughter this year. Think we’ll have Ben back on Broadway anytime soon? We’re thinking no, but at the very least, we hope he’ll occasionally turn up downtown at his wonderful live comedy show, Find the Funny.

Saint Steve Jobs? Yeah, No. Well, Maybe.
Some were quick to canonize Steve Jobs following his death in October, but performer Mike Daisey told a different story. In his incredible solo piece, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, Daisey examined both the rise of Steve Jobs at Apple, and the lives of the Chinese assembly line workers who build iPhones and iPads. Staged with nothing but a table, a chair, and a glass of water, it was both a love letter to Jobs and a damning indictment of Apple’s overseas labor practices. Theater in 2011 never got more relevant, or more riveting, than this show.

Nina Arianda Owns Everything
You want to know what a star looks like? Behold Nina Arianda, star of Venus in Fur, who held court so soundly through the show’s off-Broadway and Manhattan Theatre Club runs that she’ll do it again at the Lyceum in a few weeks. And we will eat our damn hats if she doesn’t win the Tony in the spring. Her performance as both a scatterbrained actress and a commanding dominatrix (sort of…) in David Ives’s play is easily the best of the year.

Newsies Wrecks Our Heads With Its Unlikely Awesomeness
Why was Newsies at the Paper Mill Playhouse so good? It wasn’t supposed to be good. After all, it was based on a nostalgically-sweet-but-hugely-problematic film. It contained almost no notable stars, and it required a train ride to New Jersey. This is not a typical setup for a good night of theater. Except that it was totally great. Re-written nearly top-to-bottom by Harvey Fierstein, Alan Menken and Jack Feldman, it boasted smarter lyrics, a love interest who’s more than just window dressing, and a social conscience that feels totally relevant. Throw Jeremy Jordan singing “Santa Fe” on top and you have yourself a delightful show—and one that’s now slated for a Broadway run.

And Now Performing His Heartfelt Rendition of “I’m Still Here,” Spider-Man…
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark had a turbulent year. Cast members broke their entire selves. The director was fired. They shut the whole thing down for ages to reboot and still got bad reviews. Then the drama quieted and life at Spider-Man became… well, business as usual. But despite everything, a full year later, Spider-Man is still swinging, and doing some pretty damn good business, too, pulling down over a million smackeroos each week. Whether or not Spidey is our kind of theater, we have to admit, its soldier-on survival is pretty impressive.

Mark Rylance Gives a Master Class
There’s acting, and then there’s what Mark Rylance was doing on stage in the Music Box this spring. His work as Rooster Byron in Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem was more transformation than performance. Eight times a week Rylance transported audiences to the English countryside, as though the theater around him, and basic rules of physics, didn’t even exist. Everyone’s saying it, we know. But it would be completely blasphemous not to include Rylance’s masterful masterclass of a performance on this list.

Dustin Lance Black Writes a Play
Famous for his screenplays—like the Academy Award Winning Milk—Mr. Black took a break from the glitz and glam of Hollywood this year to bring his play about California’s Proposition 8 trials to Broadway for a star-studded, one-night-only reading. As a lightly dramatized presentation of verbatim trial transcripts, 8 may not have been the strongest play we’ve ever witnessed. But it was an amazing (and amazingly emotional) Broadway moment, and one that we hope is only the first of many to come.

Jeremy Jordan Is Here and Nothing Else Matters
He’s been kickin’ around the Great White Way for a while now, understudying Constantine Maroulis in Rock of Ages, alternating as Tony in West Side Story, and popping up in readings here and there. But 2011 was, unquestionably, the year of Jeremy Jordan. With rave reviews for his turn as Jack Kelly in Newsies at the Paper Mill Playhouse and a starring role in Bonnie & Clyde—from which he appears to have escaped unscathed, despite the show’s critical takedown—Jeremy Jordan became the most talked about actor in New York City. And deservedly so. He’s ridiculously handsome, sings like a very belt-y angel, and deftly walks the tough/sensitive line that makes a true leading man so attractive. It’s been a decade since we’ve seen a Broadway star seem so utterly, immeasurably special—Patrick Wilson, anyone?—and now we’re terrified we’ll lose him forever. Because honestly, the world just isn’t as bright and beautiful without possibility of seeing Mr. Jordan’s beautiful mug on stage somewhere in New York at least six nights a week.

WORST

Spider-Man Happened… and It Sucked
God, how we wanted Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark to be great. We wanted it to be fun, and loud, and chock-full of breathtaking stunts. We wanted Julie Taymor to give the finger to all of the nay-sayers, because she’s a smart, talented woman with vision for miles. We trusted her. And she kind of fucked us over. In its original incarnation—before it closed and was radically sanitized/revised—Spider-Man was a crazy, hellish mess of a show. Clocking in at more than three hours long and filled with all flavors of mythological and self-referential zaniness, it just came off like a big, stupid wank. A big, stupid wank starring a pissed-off lady spider who sang atonal songs about all eight of her shoes. It’s a huge hit now, so no one cares. But we will never erase that trainwreck from our memories.

Spider-Man Bonus Track: Julie Taymor (Quietly and Subtly) Prepares to Take You Down
It took her a while to do it. But right after the Tony Awards nominating committee declared that she’d be eligible at this year’s awards—despite being stripped of credit for Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark—she decided to do what everyone knew she would do: She filed a huge-ass lawsuit. How huge-ass? She wants royalties, sure. But she also wants signoff on every single future production of the show, and she wants the current Broadway production to stop using its current book—which she says she wrote. Holy shit. If we can’t see your work onstage in 2012, Julie, we’re super interested in watching it in court.

Get Over Yourself, Woody Allen
Remember that time that Woody Allen tried to justify his unsavory life choices by writing a totally hackneyed one-act play about a young bride who runs off with her icky father-in-law on her wedding day? We unfortunately do. Honeymoon Motel was the anchor play in Relatively Speaking, and we’re still resentful about the brain cells we lost while sitting through it. While we wait for everyone to figure out how poorly Woody Allen’s work fits into this millennium, we invite you instead to enjoy that other amazing play in Relatively Speaking. Oh, wait…

Bernadette Peters Actually Sucks at Something
How could it happen? That the woman who gave one of the most splendid, regal performances of 2010, as Desiree in A Little Night Music, is suddenly so very bad in Follies? Sally is a no-win ninny to begin with. But Bernadette plays her like a mentally challenged nine-year-old. Left to do her own thing, with as many penetrating dramatic pauses as she’d like, she’s lost in Follies. Even more disconcerting: On the night we went, she struggled mightily with some of her high notes. Needless to say, we don’t want to think of our beloved Bernadette this way—or see her so badly taken care of in such a high-profile gig.

War Horse Proves the Best Play Tony Totally Fails at Rewarding Good Plays
In a year chock-full of wonderful plays—Pulitzer Prize nominees, epic British imports and brand-new American dramas among them—the Tony went to… a really beautifully staged production of a children’s book. No one will argue that War Horse looked beautiful up on that stage. But what about the quality of the material itself? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be awarding? The War Horse win proved that the Tony for Best Play is less about the actual play itself, and more about what it looks like on stage. Perhaps the plays could benefit from the same treatment as musicals, with Authors having a separate category from the overall productions. It seems a shame for such quality writing to go so often unrewarded.

All These Musicals Freaking Suck (Okay, Except That One About Mormons)
This year saw the rebirth of the blockbuster musical with The Book of Mormon and the touching, funny, joyful musical was worthy of all the praise it received. Things seemed pretty exciting for the Broadway Musical for a hot minute. But Mormon is such a hot ticket mere mortals can scarcely get through the doors, and basically all our other choices… well… sucked. Catch Me If You Can was boring, Wonderland was atrocious, Priscilla was a quasi-fun, sparkly mess, and don’t even get us started on Baby It’s You. It took until Lysistrata Jones in December for us to even enjoy another musical. Frankly, it was depressing. 2012 better bring us something better.

Stephen Sondheim Loses His Goddamn Mind
We understand that he’s getting older—who could forget all those 80th birthday celebrations—and that may be making him a bit more crotchety, or something. But at what point did it suddenly seem like a good idea for Mr. Sondheim to publicly attack one of his peers in the pages of the New York Times, over work on a show that a) he had never seen and b) had not even played a single performance? Lots of people praised Mr. Sondheim’s attack on the cast and creative team behind The Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess, but it just made us really sad. He chose a piss-poor way to express his feelings—was a personal call or note to Ms. Paulus out of the question?—and ultimately, was incredibly unfair to a hard-working team who, by all accounts, were just endeavoring to do what the Gershwin and Heyward estates were asking of them and bring Porgy & Bess to a new audience.

The Producers of Bonnie & Clyde are Unintentionally Hilarious
Much has been said about the quality—or lack thereof, depending—of Frank Wildhorn’s Bonnie & Clyde but one of the most fascinating/upsetting parts of the whole spectacle was watching the producers completely mishandle the PR for their floundering show. First they stopped selling tickets beyond 12/30 and starting refunding people who had purchased tickets in advance for shows after that date. Then, when Telecharge sent an email saying the show was closing some producers claimed that was, like, totes untrue, and that they were just drumming up sales and enthusiasm for the show. Because typically, you stop selling tickets when you want to sell more tickets, right? We’re not sure if they just didn’t know what they were doing, or if they thought the suspense of imminent show-closure really would get clueless, Broadway-uneducated tourists in the door. Either way, it was entertaining to watch. Or maybe it would have been, you know, if we hadn’t felt so much sympathy for the poor cast as their jobs and immediate futures hung in the balance.

Baby Its You Poo
I know, guys, let’s write a jukebox musical about the creator/creation of the Shirelles, and then totally make all the musicians nameless and faceless. That should be fun, right? And then, let’s just throw together a whole bunch of songs and let the cast wander on and off the stage aimlessly in the middle of numbers. And leave everyone in the audience wondering why exactly things are even happening on stage, and if there is any rhyme or reason to the scenes. This is the best idea we’ve ever had. …Or the recipe for a critical drubbing and early closure. I mean. You just never know, right?

The best and worst of 2011? Well, not really. But here are the moments we wish we could pack up and put in our pockets and save forever.

Lucky

Favorite Act I Surprise: The First 10 Minutes of Godspell
The opening is totally strange—actors wander the stage dressed in contemporary dress, spouting the words of history’s great philosophers. It is disorganized cacophony and then a horn blows, and then Jesus arrives. Seriously, what? But there was something about those moments that took my breath away. Yes, the water set is cool, and yes, Hunter Parrish turns up in his underwear. But my awe was more about the show itself—that its creators were content to let all that abstraction stay abstract in a world where many musicals, new and revived, are painfully plodding and literal. It even made me a little jealous of those audiences in the early 1970s who would have seen Godspell with new eyes, and without knowing all the songs. I was happy for that backward glance, and to see an old show in a new way.

Favorite Audience: The Insane People Who Love Newsies
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show where the audience broke into applause in the middle of a song—not because a dancer did some fantastic leap or because a character had a riveting moment of truth, but because the songs were fucking awesome. That happened at Newsies, during its pre-Broadway run at the Paper Mill Playhouse. It happened like six times. In a single show. Fueled by nostalgia and hormones and the loveliness of Jeremy Jordan’s belt-y high notes, the crowd lost their minds every time the music started. It was ridiculous, and completely fun, and… weirdly moving. If the crowds on Broadway are even half as nuts as those kids in New Jersey, we’re going to be spending a lot of time at the Nederlander this spring, not just to see the show, but to be a part of the best peanut gallery ever.

Favorite Moment of Greatness in a Bad Show: Don’t Break the Rules
So, Catch Me If You Can was totally, disappointingly lackluster. Aaron Tveit was a beautiful, golden zombie. The set looked like someone spray-painted a big stack of popsicle sticks. Even the chorus girls’ wigs were snaggly tangles of extreme failure. And then for a few beautiful moments, Norbert Leo Butz came on stage and fixed everything. In what has got to be the most singularly odd song-and-dance number of the season, Norbert flailed himself through a number called “Don’t Break the Rules.” Wearing a fat suit and surrounded by scads of jaunty chorus boys and girls, the impression was so awesomely incongruous, and chock-full of two things that the rest of the show could not muster—energy and courage. How good was that number? Hand Norbert his second Tony Award, because he gave Catch Me If You Can an instant of transcendent, wondrous greatness, and the best dance number of the year.

Favorite Moment of Theater-y Perfection: Rooster Byron and His Friends, the Giants
Jerusalem was all about the power of the story—how words can evoke something stronger and bigger than truth. As played by Mark Rylance, lead character Rooster Byron was the king of the storytellers. He hooked up with the Spice Girls and conversed with giants—if you believed him, that is. Late in the show, the giants make their second “appearance.” There is no gimmick, no amazing stage trickery, but you feel their presence. Maybe because the biggest giant of them all, Mark Rylance, is tasked with conjuring them.

The Mick

Favorite Production I Think I Dreamed Into Life: Misterman
I’m not entirely certain it’s possible to create theater that pushes more of my nerd buttons—experimental, cerebral, Irish drama exploring a character imprisoned by his very Irishness, starring a disgustingly talented, disgustingly handsome Irish actor. I mean, it’s almost like Misterman—written and directed by Enda Walsh—was created for me. In a way, I was probably destined to love it. But the exquisite quality of the material and Cillian Murphy’s steamroller of a performance elevated Misterman beyond mere nerd-love material. I have never seen one man so completely fill such a cavernous space, or so embody so many characters—honestly, it was like he was possessed by them. Misterman was more force-of-nature than monologue and I feel blessed to have witnessed it.  I know I’ll be talking about it—ad nauseum—for the rest of my life so my theoretical grandchildren better start preparing themselves for repeated retellings right about… now.

Favorite Brit on Broadway: Tom Riley
There’s been a lot of buzz about Brits on Broadway these days. They’re acting, they’re sending their productions, they’re trying to take credit for the Great White Way’s general existence and success wherever possible.  But the only Brit on Broadway who really had my heart this year was Tom Riley who knocked me sideways with his deft turn as Septimus Hodge in this spring’s revival of Arcadia. (Sexiest character in all of drama? I think so. Especially as played by Riley.) One scene into the play and I was already smitten. There was no turning back when I discovered Riley is also intelligent, witty, and stupid handsome even when he’s not wearing a frock coat and high-waisted trousers. With a literature degree, some really sexy freckles, a deadly accent, and a potential ginger beard, he ticks basically every box on this girl’s wish list.  And incidentally, he owns the best interview in Craptacular history—y’all, he was so game to talk about his underwear it’s amazing—for which he will always own a place in the Mick’s heart, even if he never comes to Broadway again.

Favorite Downtown Discovery: ShakesBEER
Two of my favorite things on this earth are theater and alcohol. And one of my favorite playwrights—this will shock you—is William Shakespeare. So when I discovered there was such a thing as a Shakespearean Pub Crawl, it seemed like a sure sign that god does exist I immediately snapped up some tickets.  For $30 I got three drinks in three bars, a beer cozy, and four scenes from Shakespeare’s canon imaginatively interpreted by The New York Shakespeare Exchange and their talented actors. In a bar. I cannot recall a better Saturday afternoon in my life. There’s something incredibly original about this idea, but also, incredibly authentic to Shakespeare’s origins. We audience members, and a handful of unsuspecting bar patrons, were like groundlings—intoxicated and right up in the action—and there’s nothing like seeing Shakespeare in a totally new, totally unconventional setting to give you new perspective. Plus. Like I said, we were intoxicated, and that offers whole new kind of perspective in and of itself.

Favorite Theatrical Comfort Food: Arcadia
Sometimes, when you’ve had a really bad day, or week, or month, you just need to see a show. For me, that show is usually a musical (read: Rent, Hair) but this year, with so many lackluster musical options—Mormon doesn’t count because you can’t get in the doors more than once without being a very famous billionaire—it was a play. Arcadia, to be exact. Which I saw approximately ten times during its limited run this spring. David Leveaux’s beautiful, subtle revival allowed both Stoppard’s play, and the actors’ fine performances to shine. Sitting in that dark theater, my brain and heart had the chance to escape a bad day at work or some other such personal drama, and ponder the world’s biggest questions. It was amazingly healing, even when I was pondering the ultimate heat death of the universe. Plus, any play that can make me weep about the beauty and joy in mathematics, and not just literature, is doing something remarkable.

Favorite Quiet-but-Powerful Performance: Steven Pasquale
Steven Pasquale broke my heart this spring in Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism & Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures at the Public Theater. Playing Gus Marcantonio’s youngest son V, the family’s black sheep of sorts, Pasquale didn’t have the biggest part in the play, but his expressive blue eyes and vulnerable take on the Marcantonio family’s everyman was powerful through and through. He made the most of every minute on that stage, and in his final, climactic scene with his father—played by Michael Cristofer—Pasquale moved me to tears sobbing. I actually had to hold my mouth closed so I wouldn’t make noise in the theater.

Broadway survived another year and so did we. God bless us, everyone. But before that, here’s a look back at some of the biggest trends in the year that just passed.

Welcome Back, Intermission
In 2010 it was so cool to nix intermission. No breaks. No opportunity to go to the bathroom. No spare moment to look at the person next to you and go, “Is this bad? This is pretty bad, right?” Early rumors even indicated that Follies might forgo the interval and take you straight to Loveland without a chance to buy some peanut M&Ms. But no dice. Follies – and almost every other show this season – took a good old fashioned breather halfway through.

The Year of the Play
The last time anyone we know got obsessed with a straight play and saw it ten or more times was… never. Well, that is, until 2011, when here at The Craptacular we saw David Leveaux’s revival of Arcadia at least twenty times between us. In a year of generally lackluster musicals, the plays were where it was at in 2011. From the mind-melting performances by Mark Rylance in Jerusalem and Cillian Murphy in Misterman, to the heart breaking revival of The Normal Heart, to the beautifully staged War Horse, to every Pulitzer nominee and celeb-studded new play in between, the play was inescapably the star of Broadway. Shit, Charles Isherwood couldn’t even manage to find a single musical to include on his play-centric year end list, so that’s saying something, right? Right?

Holy Shit We’re Totally Out of Theaters
Got a show you want to produce on the Broadway? Good. Sit tight. We’re a little low on real estate right now. Because as 2011 draws to a close, every single Broadway theater is booked solid. Pretty amazing, right? Might be a tough time if you need to get your show mounted, but as a theater fan, that means we’ve got a lot of choices. The business we love seems to be a-booming, and that’s pretty damn exciting no matter how you slice it.

Let’s Make It a Limited Run, Shall We?
In precarious financial times for Broadway, 2011 was the year of the limited run. From Follies to Arcadia, producers hedged their bets by signing up for only a few months of performances. The logic here is a little fuzzy – the initial costs are the same whether you play one performance or a hundred – but maybe they hoped that the limits would help generate buzz and a super-hot ticket. Because the recipe for creating a smash is just that simple, said The Book of Mormon.

I Know, Let’s Stage Our Show in A Hotel (Or Bar, or Old Nightclub)
Once upon a time, when you went to the theater, you went to… well, a theater. But not this year. No. This year you probably also went to a hotel, a gymnasium, or an old church. Because apparently all the cool kids are creating shows that cannot be contained by mere theaters. They are all-encompassing sensory experiences that require you to wear a mask, or sit on some bleachers, or get stuck alone in a hotel room with strangers listening to someone else vacuum the room next door. Or something. Sleep No More, of course, was the king, err, Thane of all the site-specific stagings, largely because, well…the set kind of was the show. Lighting, sound, scent… everything on every surface around you was there to tell the story any way you wanted it to be told (and create one of the coolest, most boundary breaking theater experiences you’ll ever have).

You’re Famous, and Your Show Is Not a Blockbuster
TV’s Kim Cattrall couldn’t keep Private Lives from closing early. Lauren Ambrose apparently wasn’t a big enough name – despite a thriving career on screen – to nudge a much-heralded revival of Funny Girl to Broadway. Bernadette Peters can’t guarantee fully sold-out houses, and neither can names like Alan Rickman, Harry Connick, Jr., Woody Allen, or Samuel L. Jackson. In light of that, you might as well make a play about a horse.

Off-Broadway Is for Losers
What’s so bad about off-Broadway? Damned if we know, but clearly no one wants to be there. With the incredible and immediate floppage of Lucky Guy in 2011, and the hasty transfer of pint-sized shows like Lysistrata Jones, you have to wonder what the deal is with off-Broadway. Is it a total financial nightmare? Is the whole model just outmoded and dead? We hope it’s not true, because we kinda like small shows and the small theaters that house them. In 2012, we just hope that someone can figure out how to viably produce them.

Frank Wildhorn Is… A Victim?
Frank Wildhorn managed to get two shows mounted, critically reviled, and shuttered, all within one year. What’s interesting/curious here isn’t that these shows were bad, or that the critics hated them, but that there is a groundswell of support for Wildhorn, asserting that he is a victim of the Big Bad Theater Critics.  Because apparently, every critic in all of theater criticism on Broadway has a collective personal vendetta against Mr. Wildhorn and they are out to destroy his work regardless of quality, just because they can. Because critics do that all the time! Those bastards rove in packs and aim to destroy good theater like it’s their job. Oh. Wait… maybe Wonderland is just one of the worst shows Broadway has ever seen, and Bonnie & Clyde is marginally better than the worst show ever, so that makes it… boring as fuck but almost tolerable? Wow. That’s an achievement! We’d say “Sucks to be you, Frank Wildhorn,” but a) we had to sit through both of those terrible shows and b) we’re sure you’ll be back again in a few minutes, because there are apparently a lot of people in Florida with more money than taste.

The Blockbuster Musical Is Born Again
Hallelujah! You know a show’s a massive hit when your boss, your random friend who doesn’t even like musicals, and your nail girl are all asking you the same dumb question: So, can I get cheap tickets to The Book of Mormon this weekend? Dude. No, you can’t. You can never get tickets to The Book of Mormon and The Book of Mormon doesn’t care, so go look on StubHub or see if your company will shell out for premium seats and call it a “business meeting,” or do the ticket lottery and chant lucky mantras beforehand. There are no available tickets to this show. Zero tickets. Pas de tickets. And wow, it’s great for Broadway. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a show that’s sold out for literally months at a time. Now if only someone could communicate that clearly to your second cousin.

Oh, well you knew this was coming. He are our favorite-est, hunkiest, dreamiest. You get the picture. Clearly, 2011 was a… good looking… year.

1. Jeremy Jordan
If you forced us to choose only one Hottie of 2011, we’d immediately tell everyone else to pack up their dance belts and go home because Jeremy Jordan is it. Sweet enough to play a champion good guy (Jack Kelly in Newsies), and dark enough to be a vicious killer (Clyde Barrow in Bonnie & Clyde), Jeremy is this season’s special sauce. No actor in years has walked the dirty/pretty line as carefully or elegantly as he does — or with half as much swagger. We’re obsessed. And in case you hadn’t heard, we can’t wait to see whether he reprises the role of Jack Kelly on Broadway.

2. Andrew Rannells
He looks kind of like a real-life Ken Doll, but please don’t misconstrue that as a complaint. We love his cornfed, Nebraska-bred good looks. Our favorite thing about this The Book of Mormon star/hottie, though, besides his beautiful voice, might well be his sense of humor, which he shares daily in this Twitter feed. We dream of him ringing our doorbell every single day.

3. Reeve Carney
Those aren’t really his muscles in the Spidey suit… and we don’t even care. Such is the power of Reeve Carney, the rocker-turned-Broadway-baby who’s currently playing Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. His angel eyes and smoky tenor voice made us swoon, but we were also impressed with his classy reserve amidst the show’s many controversies. And go figure, he’s now starring in a bona fide hit. Score one for resilience — and one more for being adorable.

4. Mark Rylance
Rooster Byron, the main character in Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, wasn’t exactly up on things like hygiene and sobriety and tasteful fashion. So why was he so sexy? Oh yeah, because he was played by Mark Rylance, whose brains and blistering talent left us all feeling a little breathless. He writes, he directs, he recites poetry instead of giving boring acceptance speeches. Mark had us at hello… or after the first few pages of Shakespeare, whichever came first.

5. Billie Joe Armstrong
It takes a cool kind of person to step away from sold-out stadium gigs to play a Saturday matinee at the St. James Theatre. Sure, his baby face and his riot of tattoos have always had delicious appeal, but Billie Joe Armstrong’s true hotness derives mostly from his I-don’t-give-a-fuck audacity, and his genuine passion for his Broadway show. And his St. Jimmy in American Idiot was a complete smash. After test-driving the role in 2010, he returned for a two-month block of performances in early 2011 and came back to close the show. Now that’s going out like a rockstar.

6. Aaron Tveit
With a body of steel and a voice of gold, the man is so handsome that he will soon be immortalized on film as Enjolras in Les Miserables — the sexiest virgin this side of 1802. Need we say more?

7. Hunter Parrish
Sexual fantasies about Jesus are usually the territory of certified crazypeople. Except, you know, when Hunter Parrish is playing Jesus H. himself, because then it is your duty to think dirty thoughts about the son of god. We think them at least nine times a day, like our own personal novena, alternating fantasizing about his crystal blue eyes, sculpted cheeks, perfectly shaped lips, eight gazillion teeth, beautiful bod, soothing speaking voice and emotive singing. Amen.

8. Hugh Jackman
He sings. He dances. He’s impossibly earnest. He’s comfortable with his feminine side. He’s fearless when faced with medleys or spangled costumes or 8-minute-long Rodgers and Hammerstein mini-arias. If he looked like Mr. Magoo, he might be the perfect man. But that’s just the thing. Even when he’s not bulked up like a water buffalo for an action role –- he’s not at the moment -– he’s a physical specimen. In his eponymous Broadway show, even his chest hair looks perfect. We’re awestruck in the face of such perfection. And so is the rest of New York.

9. Nick Adams
We’re still not entirely certain Nick Adams is a real human being and not, say, a Greek statue brought to life. But we’re not mad, because either way, he’s real nice to look at. And daydream about.

10. Lee Pace
Described by one friend as “so hot he makes me itchy,” Lee Pace made his Broadway debut in last season’s Tony-winning revival of The Normal Heart in which he became the first (read: only) person to make the Magnum P.I. mustache look good since, well… Tom Selleck.

11. Jay Johnson
Oh, how we love Jay. Jay, who understudied Aaron Tveit for the entirety of Catch Me If You Can and never went on for him once, much to the chagrin of his devoted fangirls. Jay, who got nearly-naked in the mostly-abominable Wild Animals You Should Know, therefore forcing us to buy tickets against our better judgement –- and we didn’t even mind! Jay, who has fully spectacular curly hair. We can’t wait to see what 2012 holds for him.

You think we only slobber over cute boys here at The Craptacular? Not so. Behold our tribute to the loveliest ladies of the stage in 2011. It should be noted that these ladies are far more than just beautiful. Outrageous talent, general badassery, having fabulous clothes, and winning truckloads of awards all contributed to their selection. Here are our favorite girl crushes from this past season…

1. Nina Arianda
If you’ve seen Venus in Fur, you won’t need to read on; the rest is just here for the n00bs. Fur star Nina Arianda, with her luscious locks, perfect pout and six miles of lanky limbs, also happens to have enough sexual energy to light the city of New York for a week or two. Basically, Ms. Arianda is so hot even we’d hit it.

2. Sutton Foster

At what point does one transcend simple Broadway stardom and enter a whole new realm – Broadway superstardom? Maybe it’s when you win your second Tony Award. Maybe it’s when you costar on Flight of the Conchords. At any rate, Sutton Foster is so there. It hurts nothing that she has legs longer than many full-grown human beings, and possesses the magical secret that allows her to look hot as both a blonde and a brunette. But what we love most about Sutton is that she kinda seems like a normal gal. Now that’s an attractive quality in a superstar.

3. Laura Osnes

Don’t lie. You nearly lost it during Bonnie & Clyde when Laura Osnes pulled off her dress to reveal a six pack that’s more highly defined than Jeremy Jordan’s. The show was bad, but it’s hard to deny how good Laura looked up there in all those sleek period costumes. Much is made in the show of how Bonnie yearns to be an “It” girl, but the real-life Laura is the genuine item. With high-profile roles in back-to-back seasons, and a singing voice that can more than handle Cole Porter or Frank Wildhorn, we’re guessing that we’ll be seeing a lot more of Laura — and we don’t just mean in a pretty peach slip.

4. Condola Rashad

Even amidst all the family dramz happening onstage at Stick Fly, it’s hard to take your eyes off of Condola Rashad — and not just because she’s beautiful. The entire show is anchored by her smart, assured performance as the daughter of the family maid. She’s already won a Theatre World Award (in 2009, for Ruined), and she’s Phylicia Rashad’s daughter, so we can’t take any credit for discovering her. But we’re excited to see what comes next for this lovely actress.

5. Jan Maxwell

If there was a Tony for Best Bod Rockin a Bangin Dress, Follies star Jan Maxwell would for sure have it on lockdown. She’s our inspiration at the gym every morning, and her name is our mantra on really tough runs. Translation: We dream of being as hot as Ms. Maxwell one day.

6. Audra McDonald

Four-time Tony winner, star of the controversial upcoming Porgy & Bess, mom, girlfriend of uber-hottie-Broadway star Will Swenson, and a beautiful, buff-bodied hottie in her own right… Is there anything Audra McDonald can’t be? We’re pretty sure the answer is no.

7. Nikki M. James

OMG. All the boys from The Book of Mormon got nominated for Tony Awards in the acting categories, and it was the luminous girl who took home the trophy. Her breathless acceptance speech was a highlight of the ceremony—and a nice change from all the testosterone in Mormon’s creative team. And that’s without even mentioning that amazing red dress.

8. Lily Rabe

We’d call her the thinking man’s hottie, only… with all that blonde hair and her lithe bod, Ms. Rabe is really just a hottie for every man. Plus, she can rock a red lip with the best of them, which we think makes you the baddest chick on the block.

9. Jennifer Lim

In Chinglish, Jennifer Lim has to do it all. She has to be both romantic and a badass, a comedienne and a credible dramatic lead. Over the course of the play, she goes from the boardroom to the bedroom and back again — and she does it all in two languages, and in heels and a suit. Alas, such is the interesting — and complicated — plight of the modern woman. If only all of us pulled it off with such grace.

10. Sierra Boggess

Everyone’s favorite former mermaid had a big year. She closed Love Never Dies on the West End, starred in Master Class on Broadway, and scored the leading role in Rebecca. Then she starred as Christine in the 25th Anniversary Concert of The Phantom of the Opera in London. We’re pretty sure she’s the busiest chick on our 2011 list. She also happens to be the first girl we ever interviewed, and the hottest former redhead we can even think of.

11. Lindsay Mendez

As if belting her face off in Godspell eight times a week wasn’t enough, Lindsay Mendez has been all over the concert circuit these days, and girlfriend always shows up in in a hell of a dress. She’s so beautiful we kind of want to be her. Or at least steal her wardrobe.