I was just as thrilled to hear that two Cincinnati premieres, The Dead-Eye Boy at Playhouse and Glimmer, Glimmer and Shine at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, were among 14 national nominees for a best new play award, raising awareness of our theater scene across the country. (The winner will be announced in March.)

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        Other memorable evenings in theater in 2000 were the privilege of hearing Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka and South Africa's Athol Fugard. These men helped change the world, or at least their nation's politics, through the persuasive power of playwriting. Both men read from their work and spoke movingly about art and humanity.

        That we are not limited to discussing individual productions is a sign of how our theater scene is maturing.

        My Top 10 for 2000 are 10 categories. The first three — best productions, best news and best guests — are listed above.

        4. Newly discovered talent: One of my favorite things was seeing terrific actors for the first time. Gary McGurk (ETC's Cripple of Inishmaan) and Lynn Milgrim (The Last Night of Ballyhoo, Playhouse) are veterans of Cincinnati stages, but not in the last 10 years or so. They were delightful introductions for me. Diane Kvapil rarely performs anymore. Together with Sarah Mann (also new to me), they raised a reading of One Flea Spare into something mesmerizing.

Gary McGurk and Dale Hodges in The Cripple of Inishman | ZOOM |

        Ms. Mann partnered with local stage newcomer Jessica Morgan in IF Collaborative's Blue Window to electric effect. Blake Bowden made a powerful showing in Ovation's The Scarlet Letter. New Edgecliff's Michael Shooner showed his range for the first time in a delicate, shattering performance in The Woolgatherer.

        New and most welcome on the Playhouse stage were Kyle Fabel in Dead-Eye Boy (he returns next week in Closer), Heather Alicia Simms in Spunk and Liam Christopher O'Brien, who evolved into as good a Juliet as I've ever seen in Shakespeare's R&J.

        Aaron Lazar looked like a break-out star as The Man of LaMancha at CCM before his spring graduation and move to New York. (He returns in two weeks, understudying the lead in the touring The Scarlet Pimpernel.)

        5. Outstanding ensembles — Playhouse producing artistic director Ed Stern had us swooning to A Little Night Music, then orchestrated the 40-plus cast members of Inherit the Wind into an epic whole.

        Charles Towers did masterful work with Mr. Fabel and the astounding Raye Lankford in The Dead-Eye Boy. Check out I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change for another example of great stage cohesion.

        Cincinnati Shakespeare's company came together in a delirious The Taming of the Shrew,led by Jeremy Dubin and Lesley Bevan (much missed this season, as is Marni Penning). Ensemble Theatre was a true ensemble in Private Eyes; Sleeping Beauty, too.

        6. Best trend: Readings — Do you long for the new and different? Cincinnati had a play-reading series for you. (I'm a fan of every one.)

        In September and October, there were readings every week, thanks to Theatre of the Mind; the Janus Project's friendly competition looking for a likely women's project for May (the winner was the offbeat musical feminist fantasy The Butcher's Daughter); and CCM drama preparing for the arrival of Jose Rivera with a number of his works.

        The readings that most affected me were: local playwright Joe McDonough's frantic comedy The Age of Discovery, read at Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative (a semi-finalist or finalist in several playwriting contests); One Flea Spare, directed by Mary Tensing; Michael Tremblay's profound Albertine in Five Times and Athol Fugard's Playland, both for Theatre of the Mind, directed by Regina Pugh and Luther Gibson, respectively.

        7. Most memorable crash and burn — Downtown Theatre Classics. Anton Shilov spent 2000 promoting himself from scenic designer to impressario. The work onstage was worth seeing, even bringing Cincinnati a brief visit from cabaret act par excellence Forbidden Broadway.But off-stage it was drama, drama, drama with big egos and a trail of broken contracts and broken promises. Too bad.

        8. The year of the playwright: On a cold night in January, the Cincinnati theater community filled Ensemble Theatre where playwright Lee Blessing offered a one-night only performance of his one-man show Chesapeake. It was a grand evening, as much for its ambience as for Mr. Blessing's heartfelt, shaggy dog diatribe on right wing politicians and the National Endowment for the Arts.

        Some impressive efforts from local playwrights followed, with personal bests from Cincinnati's two most-produced playwrights. Joe McDonough's The Age of Discovery, an absurdist comedy about the search for happiness, understanding and a missing rock, was smart and sophisticated. Kevin Barry married his passion for movies to a buddies-on-the-road adventure with In Rebel Country, a search for self and James Dean.

        Mr. McDonough returned with composer/lyricist David Kisor for Ensemble's Sleeping Beauty, which has some musical moments that would hold their own on a larger stage.

        The year ended with an announcement from the Humana Festival of New American Plays (Louisville) that one of its six full-length entries, Quake, is a romantic comedy by Melanie Marnich, who spent much of the '90s in Cincinnati and studied with UC's Norma Jenckes. Local playwrights, keep writing!

        9. Welcome to the neighborhood — Actor's Repertory Theatre rang up the curtain in Middletown this fall as the region's latest professional company. It has big ambitions (William Shakespeare, Tom Stoppard and Stephen Sondheim), a long way to go, and hopefully the will to get there.

        10. Most memorable theater, out-of-town — It was a year of finding great theater off-the-beaten track.

        Like the rest of America's critics, I was dazzled by Big Love, Charles Mee's outrageous update of an ancient Greek slaughter-fest that was the hit of the Humana Festival.

        But at another new play festival, at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, Calif., I was completely charmed by Amy Freed's so-smart comedy The Beard of Avon, which puts forth some hilarious theories about who really wrote Shakespeare's plays.

        In Toronto, the biennial duMaurier World Stage Festival went after some of the world's best, including Peter Brook, Robert LePage and puppetry art's enfant terrible Ronnie Burkett.

        The work that stood above the rest were Gaudeamus, by the Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg and — Nixon's Nixon, withstanding the test of time, still a marvel years after this production first came together at Playhouse in the Park under Charles Towers' direction.

        I'll defend myself against any accusations of hometown boosterism by pointing out that the Canadian critics proclaimed Nixon, a potent political fantasy about the president's last evening in the White House with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a festival hit.

        Finally, Cirque de Soleil's O, a water spectacular playing to sellout crowds in Las Vegas, is a visual jaw-dropper. (Although I did keep wishing that its bold, endlessly inventive imagery had been imagined in support of a story that had to be told.)

The Year In Review: TV & Radio
The Year In Review: Theater
The Year In Review: Popular Music
The Year In Review: Film
The Year In Review: Dance
The Year In Review: Classical Music
The Year In Review: Visual Art
Leaves of class
DEMALINE: 13 weeks of theater sets stage for fine winter
An appreciation
Disabled Tristaters moved forward in 2000
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