Man of the Year

James Corden in One Man, Two Guvnors.

It's good to know I have at least one thing in common with Her Majesty the Queen--we both laughed our asses off at One Man, Two Guvnors. I caught the NT Live broadcast last year, and she saw the show with new cast last month.

I'm very glad that the original cast, including the dynamic James Corden (who I interviewed for Time Out New York), Oliver Chris and Tom Edden, are reprising their roles on Broadway.

Incidentally, Richard Bean, the terribly clever playwright who turned Carlo Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters into One Man, Two Guvnors, now set in 1960s Brighton, England, instead of 18th-century Italy, mentioned that some words and jokes that might not make sense to Americans had been tweaked for the Broadway production. Because of where I used to work, I noticed immediately that the reference to Mills & Boon, the U.K. publisher of romance novels, had been switched to Harlequin, what the company is known as in this country, and also a very clever in-joke for those familiar with commedia dell'arte characters. Harlequin is the term for the comic servant character.

Just one historical inaccuracy I caught: The is line is now, "A Harlequin Romance by Danielle Steel," and I'm afraid Danielle Steel didn't publish her first novel until 1973, and wasn't a big-name author until the 1980s. But enough hairsplitting. Just tell Alfie to bring the soup.

Yonkers Redux

Finnerty Steeves, Matthew Gumley and Russell Posner in Lost in Yonkers.

I was a college student when Lost in Yonkers was on Broadway and remember well the outcry when it beat Six Degrees of Separation for the Tony and Pulitzer. The current Actors Company Theatre revival brings out its assets thanks to a strong cast, but it's interesting that Brighton Beach Memoirs, briefly revived in 2009, and a play that wasn't even nominated for a Tony in 1983, looks like the stronger play today.

Son & Daughters

Robert Hogan and David Van Pelt in Rutherford & Son.

When I read that Githa Sowerby hid her gender for the original production of Rutherford & Son, which was attributed to "K.G. Sowerby," I was glad to be living in 2012 and not 1912. Times have certainly changed for the better, I told myself with confidence.

Then I recalled a study released three years ago that showed that overwhelmingly more plays by men than women are produced in New York, and that the same play with a distinctly female author's name attached to it is treated differently than when it's submitted with a male writer's name attached.

It happens in fiction too. When Nora Roberts started writing futuristic thrillers, she took the moniker J.D. Robb, and of course the Harry Potter books aren't attributed to Joanne Rowling but to J.K.

Interstingly, in Rutherford & Son, the two strongest characters aren't the titular industrialist and his eldest male child, but Rutherford's daughter and daughter-in-law, wonderfully played by Sara Surrey and Allison McLemore.

Times Past

Kobi Libii and Gabe McKinley (right) of CQ/CX.

The saga of former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair gets dramatic treatment from one of his former colleagues, Gabe McKinley, whose latest play, CQ/CX, is on the boards courtesy of the Atlantic Theater Company. I got to talk to McKinley, Blair and Kobi Libii, the young actor who plays Blair.

Getting Their Irish On

Anthony Rapp, James Kautz and Dee Roscioli in Dedalus Lounge.

It's becoming a tale as old as time: Friends entering their 30s get trapped between youth and maturity and don't know which way to turn. But even though some dance and song (a few numbers cowritten by Anthony Rapp) have been added to the batter, Gary Duggan's Dedalus Lounge never congeals.

Welcome to Pittsburgh, Miss Julie

D.J. Mendel and Jillian Lauren in Cattywampus.

Writer-director (and Pittsburgh native) Robert Cucuzza plucks August Strindberg's Miss Julie from the "classic" stage and drops it back into the experimental-theater arena, where it began, with Cattywampus, a rambunctious contemporary-Pittsburgh-set adaptation starring Jillian Lauren and the the always engaging D.J. Mendel.

I'm always impressed at how multitalented and generous so many New York stage actors are. Cattywampus has live underscoring by two musicians, one of whom (at the piano, if I recall correctly) was Elevator Repair Service's Mike Iveson, recently seen in the entrancing The Select (The Sun Also Rises).

Brits a-Plenty

Matthew Cottle and Frances Grey in Neighbourhood Watch.

The end of the year also ushers in the end of the annual Brits Off Broadway series, which had me making repeated trips to 59E59 for Neighbourhood Watch (above), an enjoyable new comedy by Alan Ayckbourn, and Farm Boy (below), a gratifying two-character follow-up to War Horse from the same author.

Richard Pryal and John Walters in Farm Boy.