Today’s Wall Street Journal drama column is devoted to my best-of-2012 list. Here are some of the items on it:
• Best performance in a play. Greta Wohlrabe was luminous as Kyra, the troubled lover of David Hare’s “Skylight,” which was revived with piercing sensitivity by Wisconsin’s American Players Theatre.
• Best performance in a musical. The slight, huge-eyed Cristin Milioti vaulted into the spotlight in the Broadway transfer of “Once.” She’s here to stay.
• Best revival of a play. The competition was stiff, but Bedlam took the prize with its Off-Off-Broadway version of George Bernard Shaw’s “Saint Joan,” directed with uncanny ingenuity by Eric Tucker. All 24 roles were divvied up among a crack cast of four led by Andrus Nichols, and the result was the most exciting Shaw revival I’ve ever seen.
• Best revival of a musical. Another small-scale production, this one in Glencoe, Ill., rang the bell: William Brown staged “A Little Night Music” to emotionally overwhelming effect in Writers’ Theatre’s 108-seat house, accompanied by a five-piece pit band and graced by the perfect performance of Shannon Cochran as Desirée Armfeldt….
To see the rest of the list, including my picks for best musical, playwright, and company of the year, go here.