Entertainment

The best rule of thumb for deciding what Dallas theatrical productions to see in 2006 was simple enough: Hit the larger theaters for musicals and check out the smaller companies for plays.

Venues such as the Bath House Cultural Center and tiny spaces on the Texas Christian University campus hosted amazingly polished dramas and comedies. You rarely find work that good in spaces that small in New York, frankly.

The intimate musicals that had been such strong components of recent seasons, on the other hand, gave way to extravaganzas that often looked as good as they sounded. Great designs have become standard in area productions, and we're the better for it.

Second Thought Theatre has been a comer on the local scene for a couple of years. With Rebecca Gilman's harrowing, and ultimately touching, play about a married pair of serial killers, the company has definitely arrived. Great acting under director Tom Parr IV, and a whole room swung around on a turntable in the tiny performance space.

Cheryl Diaz Meyer / DMN

WingSpan Theatre Company's The Gnadiges Fraulein

An impromptu festival of Tennessee Williams plays mounted by four different theaters ended with a bang when WingSpan Theatre Company opened this absurdist tragedy. Susan Sargeant and Beverly Jacob Daniel cavorted grotesquely on a fabulous set that Randal Wright constructed out of pages from the script.

Theatre Three scored a major hit with the first local production of the under-appreciated musical about men who have lost their jobs and stage a striptease act to recover their self-esteem. Gary Floyd led a strong cast, including a lot of faces new to the company.

This year's Festival of Independent Theatres was the strongest in a long while. Two dramas by John Patrick Shanley, especially Theatre Fusion's The Dreamer Examines His Pillow, dug deep. Matt Lyle's Sunny & Eddie Sitting in a Tree was the year's best original script.

John Venable

WaterTower Theatre's Urinetown

I keep expecting this satire on overly serious musicals to fade from favor, but it certainly won't do so as long as it has productions as insightful and invigorating as WaterTower Theatre's. WaterTower also had a good year in drama with The Crucible and Take Me Out.

Amphibian Productions' version of this popular comedy about anxiety in the workplace was the year's best show in Fort Worth. The company's Icarus was pretty swell, too.

Classical Acting Company co-founder Matthew Gray turned in an astounding performance as a lowly employee backstage at the Globe Theatre in the Bard's own day. He returns next month in this show written especially for him. Don't miss it.

Paul Gray

Classical Acting Company's Shakespeare's Keeper

It's too bad we won't be seeing a tour of John Doyle's innovative interpretation of Stephen Sondheim's dark masterpiece, but Lyric Stage's concert version at the Meyerson Symphony Center amply compensated. If only its Mrs. Lovett, Julie Johnson, got out onstage more often ...

Theaters are often blasé about their moneymaking holiday adaptations of the Dickens story, but the Dallas Theater Center takes lavish pains with it. Director Joel Ferrell's new version is even better this time than when it premiered last year, largely thanks to Royal Shakespeare Company veteran Robert Langdon Lloyd as Scrooge.

The roster of tours available to the Dallas Summer Musicals has been scrappy the last few years, but it took full advantage of this gloriously raunchy piece. 2005 Tony Award winner Norbert Leo Butz only reprised his original role in a handful of cities. Fortunately, Dallas was one of them.

Milton Hinnant / DMN

Tom Parr IV

One of five founders of Second Thought Theatre three years ago, Tom Parr IV made a big impression directing the company's first show, Anton in Show Business. This year he resigned his Second Thought producer's duties to become the troupe's resident director, and there's no more dependable young director in Dallas.

Mr. Parr can do comedy and drama – both with an edge that can make them appeal to hip younger audiences. His The Glory of Living at Second Thought this fall was terrifying.

But you can bet his version of Moliere's Scapino, coming up in mid-January, will be a lark.

Other companies are starting to hire Mr. Parr, so Second Thought needs to go on offering him plum assignments to keep him interested in the folks at home.