‪The Year in Theatre and Farewell to a Friend

‪The New Yorker: As is my usual habit with year-end lists, I wait until the actual end of the year to write to you, dear friends and readers, because it takes that long, usually, for me to reflect on, and to synthesize, all the actors, directors, production designers, playwrights, scripts, and so on, that make up the past theatre season. Sadly, the fall season offered such a catch-as-catch-can pu-pu platter of sometimes great but mostly sort of O.K., or just plain bad, theatre-related morsels that aesthetic sustenance took a back seat to just making do—when that was even possible.