Comments (0) Best Theater Company - 2010
Main Street Theater
Any theater group that can produce such a robust mounting of Tom Stoppard's dense and rich Arcadia is number one in our view. That it also imbues such a magical play with clarity, intelligence and a bit of self-serving charm is pure icing. Throughout the season, Main Street has produced all its shows with a lustrous dexterity that belies its pint-size venue, keeping us close and thoroughly enthralled. What a joy to experience (probably for the only time) Sophie Treadwell's rarely performed Machinal (1928), a chilling — and classic — indictment of faceless 1920s society. Alfred Uhry's The Last Night of Ballyhoo, a heartfelt comic tale of upwardly mobile Jews in pre-WW II Atlanta, was brilliantly detailed. Magical realism was laid on hot and heavy for Caridad Svich's world-premiere English adaptation of Isabel Allende's sprawling South American family saga The House of the Spirits, while the diva of all divas, Maria Callas, was conjured up for us, warts and all, in Terrence McNally's Master Class. Even Lans Traverse's clunker of an American premiere, Driftwood (whose fragrant title promised so much more), couldn't dampen the season. Main Street's abiding professionalism — its ability to do so much within a space that's so little — is the essence of great theater. It creates worlds where none exist.
