Seat Filler: Best NYC Theater of 2009

2. The Temperamentals
Selling out its initial engagement at the 40-seat Barrow Group Studio, gay playwright Jon Marans’s engrossing, inspiring drama about Harry Hay’s 1950 founding of the Mattachine Society schooled those who thought gay activism began with the Stonewall riots. Lesson one: “Temperamental” was code for “homosexual.” Lesson two: Michael Urie, who starred as Austrian fashion designer and conflicted Mattachine cofounder Rudi Gernreich, isn’t the one-trick pony his Ugly Betty role may suggest. With out director Jonathan Silverstein and the terrific Thomas Jay Ryan as Hay, the show reopens at off-Broadway’s New World Stages on February 28, hopefully with Tom Beckett’s memorable Vincente Minnelli.