The Best of 1992

The Kentucky Cycle

These nine plays spanning seven hours -- and two centuries -- aspire to nothing less than a history of America, mythic in scale yet humbly rooted in the evolving fate of the same few hundred acres of Kentucky. Playwright Robert Schenkkan proves a spectacularly vivid revisionist, underscoring the violence, exploitation, multiracial antagonism and unchecked injustice of our past. Produced at Seattle's Intiman Theater and Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum, this was the first Pulitzer Prize drama not seen in New York City and is thus a triumph for all regional theater.

Conversations with My Father

His pal Bob Fosse gave Herb Gardner the nickname Whimsy. But Gardner, 58, reveals a far deeper writer in this story of a Jewish barkeep in Lower Manhattan who is sure that success will come from assimilation, endless self- reinvention and unstinting faith in the American Dream. The tale, narrated by a once rebellious son who is now himself a rebelled-against father, came from Seattle Repertory Theater to Broadway.

The Destiny of Me

Larry Kramer earned an Oscar nomination for his 1969 screenplay Women in Love, then co-founded Gay Men's Health Crisis and the radical Act Up. Onstage, he retold his life in The Normal Heart (1985) and resumed it in this off-Broadway stunner. Jonathan Hadary gave the performance of the year, balancing titanic rage, puckish mockery and suppressed self-pity.

Angels in America

Towering over Tony Kushner's 7 1/2-hour epic about gay liberation, AIDS and the Reagan era was a wall like the facade of some government colossus, already cracked and waiting to split open. It did -- to reveal an avenging angel that was just one of the acts of theatrical and metaphysical daring in this brilliant if roughhewn jumble of politics, fantasy and farce. The full Angels debuted memorably at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum, starring Ron Leibman as Republican dealmaker Roy Cohn.

Spic-O-Rama

John Leguizamo gave himself an acting tour de force as all six members of a troubled Hispanic family, from nerdy schoolboy Miggy to bone-dumb Desert Storm veteran Crazy Willie to their amiably lowlife mother Gladyz, in hilarious monologues that moved beyond performance art to become a true and deeply moving play. The production by Chicago's Goodman Theater transferred to off- Broadway.

Guys and Dolls

The greatest of Broadway musicals was exuberantly revived there as a color- drenched, clownish yet passionate paean to a big-city zest and vitality that no longer exist, and probably never did. Faith Prince's Miss Adelaide was the year's musical highlight.

Jake's Women

Alan Alda's unsinkable niceness tempered Neil Simon's unyielding self- criticism in a surprisingly funny and engrossing play about a writer who prefers to deal with people as characters inside his head, so he can summon, alter or dismiss them at will.

Oleanna

, Liberals think it's about sexual harassment. Conservatives are sure it's about intellectual terrorism. Even Playbill splits the difference: half the front covers put a bull's-eye on the haughty college professor, the other half on his dim, dogmatic female student. Playwright David Mamet's off-Broadway zinger holds a mirror up to muddled modern life.

Two Shakespearean Actors

Richard Nelson's quasi-historical piece about competing 19th century acting troupes, one led by a Briton and the other by an American, had moody staging by Jack O'Brien, three superb performances (by Brian Bedford, Victor Garber and Zjelko Ivanek) and an unjustly brief life on Broadway.

10

Inspecting Carol

With a plot from Gogol and a play-within-a-play fiasco as funny as in Nicholas Nickleby, artistic director Daniel Sullivan and the actors of Seattle Repertory Theater hilariously send up censorship controversies, the regional- theater movement's fear of the National Endowment for the Arts and the widespread, pathetic dependence on A Christmas Carol as a holiday cash cow.

. . . AND THE WORST

Crazy for You

The Tony winner for Best Musical was a dull disappointment, hitching beloved Gershwin songs and sprightly choreography to a slow narrative, undefined characters and blah performances. It reveled in the adolescence that the American musical outgrew.