Libretto’s Best of 2019

Neal

Fleabag
One of my favorite go-to images is the cutaway view of a cartoon animal falling through floor after floor after floor of a building. Watching Fleabag is an analogous experience: the moments of pathos, hilarity, cringiness, evasion, honesty, and flat-out brilliant writing just keep on a-coming. Episode 1 of Season 2—set almost entirely in a restaurant—immediately secured a place on my BEE* list.

*Best Episodes Ever

The Lehman Trilogy
While it took almost three years, the “Yes, But It’s Not Hamilton” phase of my theatergoing life has officially concluded, courtesy of this epic adventure, which weighs in at three hours plus. The Lehman Trilogy traces the spectacular rise and precipitous fall of its eponymous family over more than a century and half, and features a triad of brilliant actors, an impressionistic piano score, haunting video projections, a breathtaking glass box of a set, and not a single costume change.

The Visitors
Part of the permanent collection at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Ragnar Kjartansson’s video installation centers on a mellifluous, hour-long composition performed in the various rooms and on the grounds of a Victorian-era mansion in upstate New York. Footage of the distributed participants is presented on multiple screens; over time, the performers wander from room to room (and screen to screen). The firing of an actual cannon midway through the piece is just one of the highlights of this sublime and truly immersive experience.

Nancy

Jane The Virgin
Say what you will about the CW, but Jane the Virgin has been the gift that keeps on giving over the last few years. A perfect send-up of telenovelas, the show is also a loving ode to the genre—and its relentlessly smart commentary on the ways that the stories we’re told frame our understanding of our own lives is far more profound than most people give it credit for. (Emily Nussbaum excepted; thank you, Emily Nussbaum, call me.) There are evil twins! False identities! True love! What are you waiting for?

Conversations with Friends, by Sally Rooney
There’s been so much hoopla about Sally Rooney lately that I’m almost embarrassed at this point to mention how much I loved this book. That said, I did. The spare prose, the whip-smart observations that manage to be simultaneously innocent and sardonic, the truth of the ways that people grow up, together, in small shared moments. For me, her follow-up, Normal People, didn’t quite live up to the hype, but this one far surpassed it.

The Farewell
For anyone who (like me!) loved Akwafina in Crazy Rich Asians, her understated performance in The Farewell is a real treat. This low-key film is as much a story about the big and little differences between cultures as it is about the many things that are universal to families. The premise—which sees a large family visiting their matriarch but hiding from her that she’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer—provides plenty of fodder for family interactions that are by turns cringe-worthy, touching, hilarious, and heartbreaking. Not a single emotion is forced on the audience, and yet a whole wide range of them are there, deeply felt and beautifully portrayed.

Jason

The Irishman
Call it the recency effect, or the fact that it features my favorite actors (Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro) and favorite director (Martin Scorsese), but the best movie I saw in 2019 was The Irishman. I saw it on the big screen before it went to Netflix, and this epic film was truly larger than life. DeNiro plays the titular character with note-perfect understatement while Pacino hams it up as the eccentric and arrogant Jimmy Hoffa, but the two—in the most direct and scintillating on-screen interplay they’ve had with each other in their careers—ultimately are upstaged by Joe Pesci in a lock for an Oscar-winning performance as a mob boss. The film is three-and-a-half hours long, and while some reviews have suggested it could lose an hour, I found the pacing to be patient rather than plodding. This is an intense character study covering several decades, and it shows all the key figures involved in making this movie are still at the peak of their powers after all these years.

Norman Greenbaum
I went to a lot of great concerts this year, but my singular musical moment involved one-hit wonder Norman (“Spirit in the Sky”) Greenbaum. Turns out Norman is from Malden, Massachusetts, where I live, and the city has lately been installing murals based on Malden history. One such mural honors his 1969 classic rock anthem, and the man himself flew in from California for the October ribbon-cutting. I interviewed Norman by phone for an article and got to meet him in person and get an autographed picture and CD at the event. He was a very nice and humble guy, an old hippie who is proud to be known as a one-hit wonder (after all, that’s one more than most musicians have).

Barry
Typically, when a comedian gets a series, the premise becomes an extension of their stand-up act, but Barry is very different. Bill Hader is known for his impressions and his inability to not break during a sketch. In Barry, he plays a hitman trying desperately to extricate himself from his line of work, and he ends up getting involved in an acting class taught by Henry Winkler. While there are laughs in Barry, there’s also a lot of suspenseful drama, and Hader’s acting ability—recognized with two Best Actor Emmys, one for each season so far—has been a revelation. The stories are complex and even heartbreaking, and the supporting cast is great: Stephen Root as Barry’s sleazy, selfish hitman agent; Sarah Goldberg as his narcissistic love interest from acting class; and Anthony Carrigan as the affable leader of the Chechen mafia. I can’t wait for season three.

Adrian

The Bon Appetit YouTube Channel
The greatest recipe Bon Appetit ever discovered: Start with a cooking show, add a dash of reality television, season with an unexpectedly charming cast of test kitchen chefs, and serve well-edited (replete with snarky on-screen commentary). For us at Libretto and for many across the country, 2019 was the year that Bon Appetit took over YouTube. Traditional cooking shows pit chefs against one another in competition, or ask chefs to teach the audience their favorite recipes, or explore the cuisine of diverse countries, or taste the best dishes at various restaurants. Bon Appetit once played in that sandbox, using their YouTube channel to teach home cooks how to prepare featured foodstuffs in the comfort of their homes. But they struck gold when they unleashed the talent of their test kitchen staff in shows like It’s Alive and Gourmet Makes, where the entertainment derives from moments of unplanned, kitchen-based anarchy as much as from carefully prepared dishes. It’s educational, it’s hilarious, and it’s eminently human—even the pros mess up when tempering chocolate or occasionally forget to take the pie out of the oven on time.

Over the past two years, they’ve leveraged this formula to create a web of intersecting and mutually reinforcing shows featuring the diverse (but somehow uniformly lovely) individuals who toil in the test kitchen. Brad Leone ferments things; Chris Morocco recreates recipes while blindfolded; Carla Lalli Music goes back-to-back with celebrities to teach them a new recipe; Alex Delany tastes every item on the menu—or every form of a dish in the city. But the undisputed leading lady is Claire Saffitz, whose painstaking efforts at recreating mass-produced snack foods and candy products by hand first put the Bon Appetit channel on the millennial map. Here’s a great place to start. Bet you can’t watch just one.

In the Dark
I know there’s no shortage of true crime podcasts, which makes me loath to recommend yet another. But In the Dark deserves its place on this list because it just may be the best of the bunch. Plus, it was my dad’s favorite podcast. As a long-form narrative that devotes an entire season to each story, it certainly owes a lot to Serial. But where Serial interrogates the facts of the case, the suspects in play, and the ultimate question of whodunnit, In the Dark has a different query in mind: Who investigated it?

Madeleine Baran and her team turn the microscope around to focus on those who responded to the scene, the evidence gathered, the witnesses questioned, all to better understand the way that law enforcement approaches crime-solving. And a lot of what they discover is deeply troubling. The case that’s chronicled in season two—and the potentially underhanded tactics of the district attorney involved—even resulted in a Supreme Court ruling in 2019 (spoiler warning). Through it all, the storytelling is impeccable, the research comprehensive, and the ethical issues far-ranging—and perplexing. When faced with complex criminal investigations, we like to believe that we have robust systems in place to ensure we get to the bottom of things as objectively and effectively as possible. National events this past year have shown that’s not always a guarantee. In the Dark proves it never has been.

Connor

Ducks, Newburyport, by Lucy Ellman
Is Ducks, Newburyport an essential novel? Will it be read and studied for generations to come? I can’t promise that the answer to either of these questions is yes. But Ducks, Newburyport is an undeniably unique novel that approaches the narrative form in a way no work of literature has ever done before. Just so it’s perfectly clear what you’re potentially getting into should you decide to read it: Ducks, Newburyport is a more-than-1,000-page inner monologue of a Cincinnati housewife as she bakes tartes tatin. It consists of one long “sentence” made up of comma-separated phrases and words, most of which begin with “the fact that…” But while its length and experimental style have drawn comparisons to Joyce, I would argue that Ducks, Newburyport is surprisingly easy to read—because it sounds like something we’re all quite familiar with. Lucy Ellman has perfectly captured what the inside of a brain sounds like, free-associating uncontrollably and bouncing between to-do lists, occasional dread at the state of the world, and scraps of misremembered song lyrics. Shockingly, it has what could be deemed a plot that resembles common (but still enjoyable, IMHO) multi-generational family sagas. And lest you feel the urge to say, “Okay, I get the idea,” on page 500: the end is more rewarding than I had even thought possible.

On the Line, by Jenny Lewis
I would argue that Jenny Lewis is one of the most literary songwriters active today. The characters in her songs—a narcoleptic poet from Duluth, a Fuji-apple-proffering Devil in Austin, a party clown—come to life out of nothing more than a passing reference with a well-placed, enigmatic detail. There are worlds contained in every line of her most recent solo effort and an emotional intensity underlying the catchy, pop-influenced tunes and arrangements. The album has an expansiveness, both musically and lyrically, that is a stark contrast from her indie background as the lead singer of Rilo Kiley. I had the pleasure of seeing her live at the House of Blues in October, an experience that felt both arrestingly intimate and like an ecstatic, technicolor arena event.

Lingthusiasm
I think most people need another podcast recommendation like a hole in the head, but I can’t help myself when it comes to Lingthusiasm. It’s not about murder, and it’s not about politics. It’s just two linguists, Gretchen McCulloch (who also published an incredible book this year) and Lauren Gawne, nerding out about specific topics within linguistics—from how languages around the world form plurals (and duals and trials) to various ways of talking about smells to the rules for assembling syllables. It’s also independent and ad-free—and for just $5 a month on Patreon, you get access to a slew of full-length bonus episodes on other topics.

Ian

Norman Fcking Rockwell!, by Lana Del Rey
Lana Del Rey’s sixth album tackles some heavy fare, with lyrics referencing serial killers, nuclear missile alerts, and Los Angeles succumbing to flames. Yet despite its gloomy subject matter and languid tempos, Norman Fcking Rockwell! provides a surprisingly humorous perspective on the state of the world in 2019—with an emphasis on hope. On the record’s opening song, Del Rey expresses exasperation with a “man child,” a dig that sounds both deeply funny and painfully familiar to those gravely concerned by the behavior of contemporary political figures. And “Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have—but I have it” is a fitting, defiant closer to the album—a powerful high mark in a career that roared to life with Born to Die.

The Power Broker, by Robert Caro
If you prefer physical copies over digital books and don’t mind building upper body strength while completing your bedtime reading, keep Robert Caro’s 1,336-page biography of Robert Moses on your nightstand. Moses, America’s most controversial urban planner, has a complex and fascinating legacy that Caro explores in vivid and often extreme detail (watch out for the footnotes). It’s fascinating to read how Moses conceived of New York’s most impressive landmarks, from Jones Beach to the Triborough Bridge to Lincoln Center, and devastating to explore the consequences of his uncompromising vision: he displaced an estimated 250,000 people for his public works and ensured the supremacy of the automobile over public transit in New York City for generations. An epic in both scope and subject, The Power Broker is particularly revelatory in illustrating how one man amassed enormous political power without ever holding elected office.