Every season it seems has its highs and lows, strengths and weaknesses. Each year the balance can shift in favor of plays or musicals. The one absolute for the now concluded 2007-2008 season is that this was definitely the year of the play both new and revisited.

Of course there were missteps. Mike Nichols’ starry The Country Girl revival disappointed. Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘N’ Roll, one of the most indecipherable Stoppard works yet, left audiences either fleeing the theatre at intermission or sound asleep in spite of the rave reviews. And David Leveaux’s wildly misguided and wrong-headed Cyrano de Bergerac robbed that romantic classic of both its poetry and panache.

But overall, the season was blessed with strong new work including Mauritius, The Seafarer, The Farnsworth Invention and especially August: Osage County as well as exceptional work on revivals like Come Back, Little Sheba, Les Liaisons Dangereuses and most unexpectedly Boeing-Boeing. There was quality Shakespeare (Cymbeline) and baffling Shakespeare (Macbeth). But even challenging plays like Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming or from 1982 Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, which do not engage me, have delivered a number of distinguished performances and inspired work to admire.

There was a total of eight new musicals produced this season, but compared to the three extraordinary musical revivals (South Pacific, Gypsy and Sunday in the Park with George), none of the new offerings stood out. The typical comment about Xanadu, which was first to open last summer, is that “It’s perfectly terrible and I remember that I had a wonderful time.” I only hope that it’s the last time I see audience members sitting on stage. That gimmick, like a miniature train running across the lip of the stage, has been done to death. The last original musical of the season, Glory Days, crashed and burned opening night.

In between was a mixed bag of mostly mediocre with the big budget, highly anticipated productions in particular faltering. The only thing that Young Frankenstein will be remembered for, aside from two or three performances, is their arrogant top ticket price of $450.00. And Disney’s The Little Mermaid was simply atrocious. One Tony voter I know chose to abstain deeming none of the nominees for musical worthy of the award.

That isn’t to say that Cry-Baby for example is God awful. It’s just not very good. Based on the uncharacteristically restrained 1990 John Waters cult classic, the authors seem to have lost track along the way of what made their source material distinctive and enjoyable so the result is homogenized, bland and adrift in search of a cohesive style.

The book writers Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan, who had far more success with their previous John Waters adaptation Hairspray, have opted for mild parody and meek satire with their follow-up. The show is very self-aware. There’s lots of wink-wink and nudge-nudge. The problem is that John Waters doesn’t do parody or satire. He writes and directs subversive comedies with a social conscience and a rebellious attitude but not lacking in sentiment.

The story set in Waters’ preferred turf Baltimore in 1954, concerns Wade “Cry-Baby” Walker (James Snyder), the motorcycle-riding, bad boy outcast from the wrong side of the tracks with a sensitive side and a thing for fellow orphan good girl Allison Vernon-Williams (Elizabeth Stanley) from manicured lawns and country club teas. His nickname comes from the fact that he hasn’t cried since his parents were executed as Commie spies. Her parents died in a freak croquet accident.

He wants to take her away from upper-crust formals, fundraisers, bobby sox and barbershop quartets and she, intrigued by the forbidden, offers up almost nothing in the way of resistance. But the letter jacket squares are intent on keeping them apart (and the delinquents in their place) which leads to arson, prison and a carnival confrontation.

Even at two hours (with an additional 15 minute intermission) the slight material is stretched paper-thin. Rob Ashford has contributed muscular, award winning choreography explosively danced by the best male chorus on Broadway. So the show never stops moving and yet it’s inert and does not for one minute feel authentic under Mark Brokaw’s pedestrian direction.

The score by Broadway newbies David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger is a decent score to a certain extent. It’s energetic, which certainly reflects the exuberance of the kids, and it credibly recreates the rockabilly sound of the period among others. But it’s telling that their expertise is parody and pastiche. Songs like “Girl, Can I Kiss You” really miss the mark of what the moment requires (straight forward romance, not tongue-in-cheek) and the songs ultimately start to blur together because of a derivative feel and sameness in tone.

On film, the camera could make love to a dewy young Johnny Depp who exemplified the pretty boy on the cusp of manhood, not to mention the swiveling hips and a lower lip with a perpetual pout that made it clear why everyone idolized him. Here Mr. Snyder has to put that over the footlights and sadly neither he nor Ms. Stanley really register an impression. He has bravado but without the vulnerability. And she feels too worldly to convincingly play the purity and naiveté Allison’s breeding would dictate at her youthful age. There is also no credible sexual chemistry between the two of them.

The fabulous Harriet Harris is underutilized as Allison’s empathetic grandmother. So the show is all but stolen by Christopher J. Hanke as Allison’s buttoned-down uptight white bread fiancée Baldwin and Alli Mauzey as Lenora, Cry-Baby’s wacko stalker who may not be exactly crazy but certainly lacks boundaries. Their inspired comic turns brighten an otherwise formulaic exercise.

A Catered Affair is an anomaly. An intimate musical with no chorus numbers about real people and real emotions is about as rare as rare can be on Broadway. And it may be the gutsiest move made by any producer this season.

This is not to say that A Catered Affair is not without flaws. Based on the 1956 film adapted by Gore Vidal from the 1955 Paddy Chayefsky teleplay, Harvey Fierstein’s book, set in the Bronx in 1953, remains quite faithful to the tone and style that were synonymous with Chayefsky and the classic kitchen sink dramas he wrote for television.

Chayefsky’s teleplays took place in cramped interior settings, they were advanced by dialogue, not action, and the protagonists were generally middle-class tradesmen struggling with personal problems. And unlike comparable writers Arthur Miller or Clifford Odets, positive endings and celebrations of love tended to emerge from his naturalistic framework.

Fierstein’s generally somber version sticks to the main plot. Shortly after her parents return from a memorial for war dead which includes her brother the perfect son, Janey (Leslie Kritzer) announces she is going to marry her fiancé Ralph (Matt Cavenaugh) in a civil ceremony for immediate family only and drive across country in a friend’s car for their honeymoon. But after having Ralph’s well-to-do family over for dinner, Janey’s mother Aggie (Faith Prince) is determined to give her daughter the proper wedding she never had. However, to pay for it Janey’s father Tom (Tom Wopat) will have to use the money he saved to buy a taxi medallion (license). For a family accustomed to sacrifice and compromise, Aggie’s fervent, selfish demands nearly tear apart her loveless marriage.

It is a unique challenge to create songs for characters whose tenement lives and hard times have rendered them incapable of feeling the big emotions like joy, excitement or contentment. But John Bucchino has written a perfectly lovely emotionally resonant score (beautifully orchestrated by the brilliant Jonathan Tunick) that dovetails in and out of dialogue organically. It’s almost sung dialogue, but with a structure and a sound identifiable as Bucchino’s. It’s also restrained in the way these characters repress their feelings. The only frustration is that he never in his score gives us that moment of release that the audience craves.

Tony nominee Faith Prince is absolutely luminous as Aggie. Her expectedly gentle initial acquiescence to her daughter’s plans (with resignation and disappointment in her eyes) is in sharp contrast to first, her excitedly wanting the wedding for her daughter then, more truthfully needing it for herself no matter what the cost. And then the intensity of her bitterness with recriminations hurled at her husband is a complex and riveting thing to watch. Tony nominee Tom Wopat’s big moment “I Stayed” is undercut by the odd choice of having him circling the kitchen like a confined animal hunched over like a ninety-year-old man. Whether made by either himself or the director John Doyle whose work here is a significant detriment, it minimizes not the emotion but the size and theatricality of a nonverbal man standing up and having his say.

Mr. Fierstein has also written a nice role for himself; that of the bachelor uncle who sleeps on his sister’s sofa bed. But in this version the uncle is gay instead of Irish and Fierstein’s performance is characteristic but subdued. This liberty could be perceived as an anachronism because Paddy Chayefsky was known for staying clear of social issues. And as thoughtfully written and performed as the confrontation over his exclusion from the civil ceremony is, his presuming it’s because he is gay and confronting his sister about it in front of company in her own home seems like a line that, even given that he’s drunk, he wouldn’t cross. But it certainly is provocative.

Perfect it’s not. But I admire A Catered Affair for its integrity and for having the courage of its convictions.

Rarely if ever has a play combined the luscious language and delicious depravity of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Christopher Hampton’s remarkable adaptation of the 1782 epistolary novel by Choderlos de Laclos opened on Broadway in 1987 and the following year became the seven-time Oscar nominated film Dangerous Liaisons. The source material was also the basis for the film Valmont (1989) and the contemporary variation Cruel Intentions (1999).

Now the Roundabout Theatre Company has mounted a handsome new production that, though subtly reinterpreted, has lost none of its juice. Rufus Norris robustly directs three-time Oscar nominee Laura Linney and Olivier Award winner Ben Daniels as the manipulative La Marquise de Merteuil and the libertine Le Vicomte de Valmont, ex-lovers and co-conspirators in complex games of sexual sports in the salons and boudoirs in and around 1780’s Paris.

Les Liaisons is really about all of the basics of life: love, hate, jealousy, greed, desire, power and, oh yes, sex. Merteuil is a virtuoso at psychological games of manipulation and deceit. Her satisfaction comes from outmaneuvering her adversary, not from the seduction. Her pleasure in the conquest is control. Valmont is a rake of the first order; ready to mount anything that happens by. His pleasure in the conquest is absolutely the sex. They are charming, fun and witty aristocrats as warm and open and inviting on the surface as they are cold and calculating beneath which is why they excel at their choice of parlor game.

Valmont still has feelings for Merteuil which she uses to her advantage, offering him a night of frolic if he can accomplish the seemingly impossible; bed the virtuous Madame de Tourvel (the extremely touching Jessica Collins) and provide irrefutable proof. Valmont accepts her challenge, implements a grand elaborate plan and, along the way, deflowers an underage convent girl (the deliriously giddy Mamie Gummer), gets a little on the side with a courtesan and blackmails a male servant while Merteuil occupies herself with her own unlikely distractions. Valmont does in fact rise to the occasion and accomplish his goal. But, much to his chagrin and his ultimate undoing he also falls in love. It is both joyous to see the heart of this sensualist awaken and painful to watch him struggle with feelings unknown and unwanted that nevertheless make him human and moral.

With his dashing stance and disarming smile, Ben Daniels is almost hypnotically engaging as Valmont. He may behave terribly, but he’s so enthusiastic about his activities you want to join his cheering section. And his “It’s beyond my control” speech, in which he relinquishes all free will to the Marquise, is devastating. Laura Linney approaches Merteuil from a less conventional, debatably valid direction. She plays her as if she derives no pleasure from her escapades and is not at all invested in them or concerned about their consequences. She is steely and emotionally detached except on the most superficial of levels. So it never seems even possible for her to end up in a state of happiness. The great veteran Sian Phillips is featured in the small but pivotal role of Madame de Rosemonde who holds all the cards in the aftermath of the Valmont tragedy. It’s so great to hear how an old pro can mold and sculpt a handful of lines to make a lasting impression.

Rufus Norris has done an elegant job with the ultimate dichotomy of the play; classically period with a modern sensibility. This may be a drawing-room play, but it’s a full-blooded one that exemplifies the era’s façade of social decorum and the decay of a society on the brink of revolution. And he has upped the sexually explicit ante without making it feel lascivious. The costumes are luxurious. And the glossy black unit set with its glass corridor walls and Versailles inspired French windows as well as metaphorical, multi-purpose draped fabrics is evocative of the luxuriant environments these people inhabited.

The biggest surprise of the season, of the decade really is the rehabilitation of the 60’s comedy Boeing-Boeing. This British sex farce has been a joke for five decades since it closed on Broadway after 23 performances in 1965. Up until now it’s been known as the quintessence of the kind of mindless junk that has been perpetrated on the public by every third-rate dinner and community theatre across the country. And it was inevitably done badly to boot. Well, this production of Boeing-Boeing obliterates that former now obsolete reputation.

The play, translated from the original French by Beverley Cross and freshened up by Francis Evans, is classic, meaning predictable farce. The simplest of plots revolves around the self-satisfied Bernard (Bradley Whitford), an American businessman living in Paris, his three fiancées and the arrival from Wisconsin of Bernard’s meek rather rumpled high school friend Robert (Mark Rylance) who’s in awe of Bernard’s “sophisticated” lifestyle. The three mistresses, each an airline hostess for a rival airline, know nothing of the others’ existence thanks to carefully tracked flight schedules and the Gallic menial’s ability to restage the apartment with clockwork precision. But the minute Bernard verbalizes his foolproof method of juggling the three without any risk of overlapping to a flummoxed Robert, you know what’s coming; the unforeseen will occur, intricately constructed complications will ensue and escalate and door slamming will commence.

This insanely inspired production elevates what could be unendurable burlesque to blissful high comedy with brilliant direction and even more brilliant performances. Matthew Warchus uses every comic bit ever known to squeeze every possible laugh out of every possible moment. His sense of comic rhythm and pacing is impeccable. And his flare for broad physical comedy is undeniable and begs admiration.

But Warchus’ supreme accomplishment is what he elicits from the cast. There’s nothing on paper that could explain the depth of detail created by Gina Gershon (the Italian, Gabriella), Kathryn Hahn (the American, Gloria) and especially Mary McCormack (the German, Gretchen). Even dressed in their color coded uniforms with matching flight bags, they are anything but cookie-cutter clichés. Whether earned from a perfectly delivered line or an unexpected bit of physical comedy that explodes off the stage, they own their laughs.

You would think that Christine Baranski would be the one to walk away with the big laughs as Bernard’s disgruntled yet ever-obliging housekeeper. But the part is not a perfect fit and although she uses all her formidable skills as a comedienne, even her look is straining for a laugh and her excessively thick accent renders lines inaudible and steps on laughs. Whitford, on the other hand, is very funny in an unforced way. He’s so darned likable that Bernard, who could come off as a louse, is in the end rather sympathetic.

The newly anointed comic genius here is British Shakespearian actor Mark Rylance as the hapless Robert. Timid and a little on edge from the start, as Bernard’s world collapses in increments less and less likely to be managed, he becomes more so building to a fever pitch of comic hysteria. Terrified of the women, he first becomes the target for their frustrations and then the subject of their curiosity. The deadpan expression on his face after one of the ladies opens her towel in an ongoing attempt to entice him with the distracted Bernard in the same room is priceless. His rubber body flailing on the back of the sofa in opposition to the assault of Gloria’s tongue is a shameless display of masterful technique. Robert gamely trying to maintain his equilibrium on top of a beanbag chair is a study in calculated spontaneity. In other words, his comic instincts are beyond reproach, his energy seemingly boundless and his star turn as Robert, who ends up with more than his wildest dreams, unforgettable.

Even the music, foreign language covers of sixties hits, is funny. Boeing-Boeing is a side-splitting, laugh-out-loud throwback to the days when light comedies on Broadway were not a thing of the past.

Questions or comments? Write me: brianbradleynyc@hotmail.com.