The Best Live Performances I Saw in 2023: Musicals, Theater, Sports and Unforgettable Nights

There is a version of the holidays that happens on a screen, and a version that happens in a room with other people. I resolved in 2023 to spend more time in the second version. What followed was one of the richest years of live performance I have experienced — from the most beloved musical ever written to a melodrama featuring the Easter Bunny saving Christmas, with an orca pod sighting and a painting class somewhere in between.

Les Misérables

I will launch this post with Les Misérables, my favorite musical of all time. It is the only musical I have seen multiple times and would still see again. Les Misérables is a musical based on the 1862 book by poet and author, Victor Hugo. This French, historical novel, considered to be one of the greatest of the 19th century, tells a moving story about love, loss, struggle, perseverance, vengeance, forgiveness and redemption.

The musical adaptation incorporates songs that enhance the story, and a score that works synergistically with all of the other elements of the show, to draw the viewer into every theme and emotion, the most dominant being the value of love. That theme is captured poetically and eloquently in the lyrics to one of the musical's songs which states, "To love another person is to see the face of God."

It is no surprise that Les Misérables has been captivating audiences for over 35 years and has won eight Tony awards. It is also no surprise, that due to its popularity, 2012 saw the film adaptation of the musical starring Anne Hathaway, Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman and Amanda Seyfried, among others. The movie was nominated for eight Academy Awards, of which is took home three, including Best Supporting Actress for Anne Hathaway.

While I really enjoyed the film, it doesn't compare to the live, musical performance, in my opinion. The musical will be on tour through most of 2024 in various U.S. cities. Catch it if you can.

Pageant of the Masters

The Pageant of the Masters takes place every summer in Laguna Beach, California during the annual Festival of the Arts, which is the longest running, outdoor, fine art exhibition in California. When the Pageant of the Masters first began in 1933, it debuted with only eight shows.

Today, the show runs over 50 times throughout the summer months.

It is easily the most unique production I have ever seen. Growing up, my mom would take me to see the show almost every summer, and though I have seen it many, many times, it has never gotten stale.

So, what is the Pageant of the Masters? It is tableaux vivants at their best. The 90 minute production features famous, classical and contemporary masterpieces, with a catch. Embedded within each flawless, re-creation are actors, that through the use of make up and costume, blend seamlessly into each piece. For example, in the statue above, the horse is manufactured, but the rider is an actor.

The Last Supper

Each year the show has a different theme. I was fortunate to attend the 2023 production themed, "Art Colony: In the Company of Artists," which celebrated the Pageant's 90th anniversary. This year's theme will be "À La Mode: The Art of Fashion."

Regardless of the annual theme chosen, the production's traditional finale has been Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, all but three years of the show's nine-decade history. Can you distinguish between the painted humans and the live actors in the piece above?

Despite my best efforts to describe the Pageant, I won't do it justice. There is something spectacularly surreal about seeing these pieces live, in the gorgeous, outdoor amphitheater, while hearing the narrator's description of each masterpiece and listening to the live orchestra play. Carve out a day this summer to enjoy the Festival of the Arts and complete the adventure with the 2024 Pageant of the Masters performance.

Wuthering Heights

The Berkeley Repertory Theater (Berkeley Rep) is located in Berkeley, California. Since 1968, the Berkeley Rep has been hosting truly dazzling performances and New York is watching. In fact, in recent years, 14 Berkeley Rep productions have made it to New York and at least five have landed on Broadway.

I recently saw the stunning musical, Wuthering Heights directed by Emily Rice, and I believe it will make its way from the Berkeley Rep to the Big Apple as well. This musical was an adaption of Emily Brontë's gothic, fiction novel, Wuthering Heights, written in 1847.

It is the tale of the turbulent relationship between two families living in the West Yorkshire Moors, in England. The book is usually most remembered for the tragic, love story between the characters Heathcliff and Catherine. I have not read the book since high school, but this play has inspired me to revisit it.

Cirque du Soleil: Mystère

Mystère earns its name. The show has no narrative in the conventional sense — it is a sequence of extraordinary physical acts framed by surrealist imagery, performers in elaborate costumes that suggest birds, insects, and creatures that don't quite belong to any known taxonomy. The acrobatics reach a level of physical impossibility that the mind keeps resisting and the body keeps confirming: that cannot be real, and it is, and there it goes again. The custom theater at Treasure Island was built specifically for this show, and being inside it — circular, intimate, every seat close to the stage — makes the experience feel less like watching a performance and more like being inside one.

Mystère took up residency in Las Vegas, Nevada where a custom-built theater was erected at the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino. The show has been running there since its opening on Christmas Day in 1993. Today, Mystère is Cirque's longest running show world-wide. Mystère has made its impact on Cirque du Soleil fans of course, but it also paved the way for other Vegas based residencies including Celine Dion's "A New Day."

Matilda

Julia Morgan is a renowned architect and one of the first, female, engineering majors from U.C. Berkeley. Morgan has designed more than 700 buildings, mostly in California. She is perhaps best known as the architect behind the Hearst Castle, in San Simeon, California.

One of the buildings Morgan designed in Berkeley is the eponymous Julia Morgan Theater — an intimate Arts and Crafts space that feels designed for exactly this kind of production. I visited to see the musical Matilda, based on Roald Dahl's 1988 children's book about a girl with extraordinary gifts and parents who are magnificently undeserving of her. The show is deceptively simple in premise and genuinely sophisticated in execution — the kind of children's story that works better for adults because adults understand more fully what it means to be underestimated. The Julia Morgan Theater's scale makes the performances feel close and immediate in a way that larger venues cannot replicate. The child performers were extraordinary. I left wanting to reread the book.

Football

I love football, but I especially love college football because there's so much heart in it. I watch college ball on T.V. pretty religiously, but whenever I can, I attend a live game. In 2023, I was fortunate to attend three. The game above was held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which opened in 1923 and has since been home to the USC Trojans and so much more.

This National and California Historic Landmark has hosted a World Series, NASCAR, two Super Bowls, U.S. Presidents including Roosevelt and Kennedy, dignitaries including Martin Luther King Jr., the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Cesar Chavez and evangelist Billy Graham, whose visit set the attendance record for the Coliseum at 134,254. The L.A. Coliseum is also the only venue to host two Summer Olympics, and soon, a third in 2028. The majestic, Olympic Cauldron that sits at the east end of the stadium, is lit during special occasions, as well as during the fourth quarter of every USC football home game, as above.

Melodrama

The Oxford dictionary defines a melodrama as "a sensational dramatic piece with exaggerated characters and exciting events intended to appeal to the emotions."

That is exactly what I got at the Holiday Extravaganza performance of "Santa's Angels" at the Gaslight Melodrama Theater and Music Hall.

The production featured some very famous individuals including Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and Cupid, who all came together to usurp Father Time's scheme to destroy Christmas. Their ingenious plan prevailed with the help of audience participation (apparently, that is expected at a melodrama). In the end, Christmas was saved, and all was right once again.

Painting

This one isn't really a performance, unless I count myself the performer. It was however, a 2023 adventure that took me right out of my comfort zone and into a painting smock. To wrap up the year, I decided to take a painting class, which is very out of character for me and something I haven't done in about a decade. The instructor supplied the paint, brushes, canvas and wine, which we sipped on while following her step-by-step instructions that resulted in my creation above. This turned out to be a very fun activity, filled with a lot of laughter.

In addition to the shows and experiences above, I posted in 2023 about a moving fado performance I saw in Lisbon, Portugal, and an acrobatic performance I went to in Alaska. I also attended a gorgeous candlelight concert, featuring the music of Aretha Franklin, in Minneapolis, Minnesota and a beautiful flamenco show in Barcelona, Spain, both of which I intend to post about this year.

Live performance is, in my experience, one of the most underrated forms of travel — an evening at the Berkeley Rep or the Paramount Theater can transport you as completely as a flight to another country, and it does so with considerably less jet lag.

Beyond the amazing experiences I wrote about in 2023 including these, it was an incredible year with many unexpected blessings and so much peace. I am grateful beyond words and excited for what this new year will hold. Thank you for journeying with me on my 2023 adventures and many blessings to you and yours in 2024.