Seat Filler: Best NYC Theater of 2009

10. Blanche Survives Katrina in a FEMA Trailer Named Desire
I do declare that I swooned for this clever solo comedy, which was written and performed by Mark Sam Rosenthal at off-Broadway’s Soho Playhouse after earning Audience Choice and Excellence Awards at FringeNYC 2008. The out Louisiana native portrayed a gay cleanup worker who uses an abandoned valise full of bad blond wigs to channel Blanche DuBois, Tennessee Williams’s tragic figure, reimagined as a boozy anachronism displaced by the storm to the Superdome and subsequent job placement as a Popeye’s cashier. In what may be the funniest thing to sprout out of Katrina’s mildewed aftermath, Rosenthal recovered delicious one-liners and surprising pathos from the debris.