In a year marked by personal losses as well as national strife, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about time. Strange how hours can feel eternal, days brief and weeks like they are bleeding into each other so that it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
I had all that in mind while compiling my favorite arts and culture picks from this year. Some of these works consider time on a personal level, like when you pick up a book and can’t put it down. Others ask how much time we have as a society considering the impact of climate change on vulnerable communities. A handful think of time more linearly — offering reflections on the past so we might better understand the future.
Here are some works, in alphabetical order, that rearranged time for me:
Alvin Ailey
Two recent works offer a portrait of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s past, an understanding of its present and a vision of its future. Edges of Ailey, a searching exhibition on view at the Whitney Museum until Feb. 9, explores the dance choreographer’s biography and his radical approach to modern dance. An 18-channel video installation by filmmakers Josh Begley and Kya Lou envelops the space, which is populated by photographs of Ailey, his handwritten notes and posters from early productions. For a sense of the company’s present, look to the Ailey company’s holiday season at the New York City Center, which is on until Jan. 5. Dedicated to the late Judith Jamison, artistic director emerita and Ailey’s muse, this stretch of performances includes classics like Revelations, a new production of the mesmerizing Treading, and the world premiere of Are You in Your Feelings, Kyle Abraham’s sobering reflection on contemporary love. And if you can’t catch either show, there’s always Jamila Wignot’s elegant documentary Ailey, which is available to stream on Hulu.
An Enemy of the People
Earlier this year, climate activists from the Extinction Rebellion group interrupted a production of Sam Gold’s electrifying revival of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. Their action testifies to the enduring relevance of this 19th century play, which was adapted by Amy Herzog and ran until June. Jeremy Strong played Dr. Thomas Stockmann, a researcher ostracized by his town after trying to warn residents of dangerous contamination issues in the new spas. The play, which also starred Michael Imperioli, Victoria Pedretti, Caleb Eberhardt and Thomas Jay Ryan, couldn’t be more prescient for our present day, in which residents of Flint still need clean water and scientists have been arrested for trying to protest climate change.
Doechii’s Alligator Bites Never Heal
With Alligator Bites Never Heal, Doechii continues to flex her artistic singularity. The rapper’s fourth mixtape features 19 songs that build on the sonic ambition and lyrical dexterity she has demonstrated since 2019’s Coven Music Session, Vol. 1. On “Nissan Altima” — the ultimate summer song — Doechii boasts about her superiority with ebullient wordplay and fierce bravado. Elsewhere on the mixtape, she channels a more somber disposition while reflecting on the dizzying life changes brought on by fame. An enduring highlight of the project is “Denial Is a River,” a brooding track in which Doechii talks to a therapist-alter ego about creative pressures, money troubles and substance abuse. That track, along with others like mixtape opener “Stankah Pooh” and the mellow “Wait,” prove that Doechii is a once-in-a-generation type of artist.
Eiko Ishibashi’s score for Evil Does Not Exist
It’s fitting that Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist began as an accompanying visual for the composer Eiko Ishibashi, with whom the director worked on Drive My Car, to play during a live performance. As Ishibashi created these deeply haunting tracks — defined by cold, almost silvery tones — Hamaguchi crafted a narrative that wrestled with the relationship between man and nature. Their collaboration results in a sparsely plotted film propelled by subdued and eerie tracks like “Hana V.2” and “Deer Blood.” Although Ishibashi’s score complements Hamaguchi’s film, it can exist on its own as a stirring testimony to the delicate balance between humans and their environment.
Fatima Al Qadiri’s scores for Seeking Mavis Beacon and Skincare
In the years since she has been composing films, the Kuwaiti artist Fatima Al Qadiri has amassed a small but impressive discography. Al Qadiri brings her uncanny ability to conjure the ghostly undercurrents of a cinematic soundscape in feature-length projects including Mati Diop’s mesmerizing debut Atlantiques, Paco Plaza’s The Grandmother and, more recently, Jazmin Jones’ documentary Seeking Mavis Beacon and Austin Peters’ beauty thriller Skincare. Her scores for the latter two share an uncanny vibe that makes them feel completely otherworldly.
Gatz
Next year will mark the 100-year anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s bleak Jazz Age drama The Great Gatsby. Ahead of the novel’s centennial, The Public Theater in New York staged an encore run of Gatz, an enthralling production conjured up by the Elevator Repair Service back in 2004. In the experimental theater group’s rendition, directed by John Collins, a man (an incredible Scott Shepherd) comes across a copy of Fitzgerald’s enduring text and begins reading it out loud. He soon finds himself gripped by Nick, Daisy and Gatsby’s adventures, which transforms his relationship to his surroundings. His coworkers inhabit the characters and the office becomes a site of narrative reenactment. Time collapses for him and the audience as the eight-hour production flies by. Gatz is a thrill, functioning less as a straightforward adaptation and more as a paean to the seductive, time-bending act of reading.
Invasive Species
From Alonso Ruizpalacios’ feverish workplace drama La Cocina to Julio Torres’ absurdist charmer Problemista and Brady Corbet’s ambitious epic The Brutalist, a number of works released this year wrestled with the crushing inhumanity of immigrating to America. Operating in the same surrealist realm as Torres, Maia Novi’s thrilling off-Broadway play Invasive Species renders the quest for citizenship (and by extension the American Dream) as the ultimate role for an aspiring Argentinian actress (played by Novi). The show, produced by Jeremy O. Harris (Slave Play) and directed by Michael Breslin, chronicles Maia’s frenzied adventures at the Yale School of Drama (where she is a student) and a youth psychiatric ward (where she ends up shortly before graduation). With its kinetic performances and genre-pushing structure, Novi’s 75-minute thrill ride lands like a high-stakes fever dream.
Love Island USA Season 6
Would you believe me if I said the most exciting place to be this summer was a villa in Fiji, where a group of young, mostly American singles competed for love and an enticing cash prize? The sixth season of Love Island USA, hosted by Vanderpump Rules’ Arianna Maddox and streaming on Peacock, delivered on the drama that makes legendary reality television: endearing personalities, authentic friendships, exciting couplings and a feast of quotable moments. It caused a frenzy, catapulting the contestants to vertiginous levels of fame and spawning internet obsessions. This particular set of islanders seemed immune from the usual unscripted television fraudulence; their sincere reactions to romantic heartbreak and platonic betrayal accurately reflected the emotional rollercoaster of modern dating. Even though the reunion paled in comparison, I won’t soon forget the rush of watching these islanders yell, “I got a text!”
Oh, Mary!
Cole Escola’s delightful revisionist romp, Oh, Mary!, imagines Mary Todd Lincoln as an alcoholic cabaret artist trying to stage a comeback and her husband, Abraham Lincoln, as a man desperate to stay in the closet while trying to win a war. The show, which premiered at the Lyceum Theater before moving to Broadway this summer, made a splash with its box office records and celebrity endorsements. The titular performance by Escola (Search Party), who also wrote play, is a highlight; as my colleague David Rooney wrote in his review, they deliver “a master class in razor-sharp comic timing, shady double takes and giddy physical comedy.” From its committed performances, high-octane farcical tone and energetic staging by Sam Pinkleton, Oh, Mary! proves its Escola’s world. Thank God we’re living in it.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Nearly 20 years after Wallace & Gromit made history as the first stop-motion animation feature to win an Oscar, Nick Park returns with Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, which premiered at AFI Fest this year and will stream on Netflix on Jan. 5. The film, which Park co-directed with Merlin Crossingham and co-wrote with Mark Burton, follows the disastrous events of the 1993 short The Wrong Trousers, in which Feathers McGraw tries to frame Wallace and Gromit for a high-profile theft. This feature improves on the detailed claymation technique (that has since become more popular) and testifies to the craft’s enduring past. Vengeance Most Fowl maintains the slapstick humor that made the duo beloved, while also offering some prescient commentary on suburban surveillance, the news media and the drawback of artificial intelligence.
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