A few caveats:

        This annual round of applause is for locally produced shows and doesn't include the Fifth Third Bank Broadway Series (which had a name change over the summer to Fifth Third Broadway in Cincinnati).

        My list of best productions is a collection of different breeds of theater. They're not in competition; they couldn't be because their budgets range from $500 to $100,000. For me, every one of them had that rare quality — vision — and carried it through. They also packed an emotional wallop that's the mark of a terrific theater experience.

        This isn't about picking winners, it's about celebrating the season's finest. My applause goes to all the outstanding talents who make going to theater in Cincinnati a joy. In 2000-01, that included more than 100 productions by more than a dozen companies.

        Outstanding production/directing (can't have one without the other): Bluebeard's Castle/Ewartung, Robert LePage, Cincinnati Opera; Burn This, Benjamin Mosse, IF Theatre Collective; Closer, Charles Towers, Playhouse; Inherit the Wind, Ed Stern, Playhouse; Lovers and Executioners, Jasson Minadakis, Cincinnati Shakespeare; Marisol, Jeff Griffin, CCM; The Merchant of Venice, Jasson Minadakis, Cincinnati Shakespeare

        Honorable mention: Grand Hotel, Paul Daigneault, CCM.

        Outstanding ensemble: Playhouse. This is what separates the Playhouse from everybody else. No weak links. Best of the best: epic-sized Inherit the Wind. Best of the rest: (in alphabetical order because there's no other way): Avenue X; Closer; Everything's Ducky; I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change

        Honorable mention: Lovers and Executioners, Cincinnati Shakespeare

        Outstanding efforts: The Lanford Wilson mini-festival that turned April and May into a celebration of a terrific American playwright. (Although the lack of marketing was a lost opportunity.);

        University of Cincinnati's Norma Jenckes brought world theater standouts Athol Fugard and Wole Soyinka to Cincinnati last fall to celebrate the 10th anniversary of U.C.'s Helen Weinberger Center for the Study of Drama and Playwriting. She made us feel like we were on the international theater map.

        Outstanding local script: No pick this year.

        Most welcome regional premieres: Closer, Playhouse; Lovers and Executioners, Cincinnati Shakespeare; Marisol, CCM; One Flea Spare, Women's Theatre Initiative; Saturday Night, CCM; Albertine in Five Times, Theatre of the Mind (playreading series), Ensemble; it is no desert by Loveland's Dan Stroeh, Cincinnati Arts Association

        (The haunting Three Days of Rain isn't on the list because it played at Human Race in Dayton last year.)

        Best New Ventures: alter-active, Playhouse's swell answer to winter Monday nights; the debut ofthe Women's Theatre Initiative this summer. I hope more of the region's female artists take a supportive role in the future. Congratulations to Kristin Dietsche and Rebecca Bowman and a big thank you to Cincinnati Shakespeare for taking the project on.

        Outstanding performance, guest actor: David Cale, alter-active, Playhouse; Rocky Carroll, The Piano Lesson, Children's Theater; Jeffrey Hutchinson, Three Days of Rain, Ensemble; Joneal Joplin, Inherit the Wind, Playhouse; Philip Pleasants, Inherit the Wind, Playhouse.

        Outstanding performance, guest actress: Kelly McAndrew, Talley's Folly, Playhouse; Marni Penning, Lovers and Executioners, Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival; Natalie Toro, Everything's Ducky, Playhouse.

        Outstanding guest performer in a featured role: Caitlin Muelder, Closer, Playhouse; Liam Christopher O'Brien, Shakespeare's R&J, Playhouse; Jeffery Thompson, Avenue X, Playhouse.

        Outstanding performance, local actor: Jay Apking, Hamlet, Stage First; Jeremy Dubin, Merchant of Venice, Cincinnati Shakespeare; Giles Davies, Lovers and Executioners, Cincinnati Shakespeare; Robert Rais, Dinner with Friends, ETC; Brian Isaac Phillips, Henry IV: Heart of a Man; Matthew Pyle, Burn This, IF Theatre Collective; Nick Rose, Henry IV: Heart of a Man, CSF.

        Outstanding performance, local actress: Sherman Fracher, Three Days of Rain, Ensemble; Maria Kelly, Marisol, CCM; Deborah Ludwig, An Evening with Lanford Wilson, Ovation; Judy Malone, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Ovation; Corinne Mohlenhoff, Burn This, IF; Jessica Morgan, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, IF.

        Outstanding featured performance, local actor: Brian Anderson, Burn This, IF Theatre Collective; Michael Frieman, Our Country's Good, CCM; Tyler Maynard, Grand Hotel, CCM; Deondra Means, The Piano Lesson, Children's Theatre; Brian Isaac Phillips, Lovers and Executioners, CSF; Nathan Roderick, Marisol, CCM

        Best of the best: Nick Rose, The Weir, CSF.

        Outstanding featured performance, local actress: Christine Brunner, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Ovation; Annie Fitzpatrick, The Countess, Ensemble; Angela Gaylor, Grand Hotel, CCM; Dale Hodges, Merchant of Venice, CSF; Lindsay Marlin, Our Country's Good, CCM; Anne E. Schilling, Lovers and Executioners, Cincinnati Shakespeare.

        My favorite musical performance of the year: Shy and cowering embezzling accountant Tyler Maynard, Grand Hotel, CCM.

        Bravest non-musical performance in a musical: Danny Davies as a gay Hispanic florist, Little Shop of Horrors, Downtown Theatre Classics.

        Best Rock Band: Hedwig's Angry Inch, Ensemble.

        Best Cabaret: Forbidden Broadway, Downtown Theatre Classics.

        Best fight choreography: Matthew Pyle, Hamlet, Stage First. Pilates instructor Jay Apking and CCM-trained David Zelina, Hamlet and Laertes, performed a sword fight worthy of Captain Blood.

        Outstanding achievement in coaching dialect: Rocco Dal Vera, Our Country's Good, CCM.

        Favorite twosomes: Gregory Lofts and Tyler Maynard, true show-stoppers in a Broadway-here-we-come tap routine to the title tune of My One and Only, CCM; passionate pros Philip Pleasants and Joneal Joplin, as courtroom titans in a trial of the century in Inherit the Wind at the Playhouse; electrifying Sarah Mann and Jessica Morgan as a lesbian couple in Blue Window, IF Theatre Collective; James Horan and Gary Sloan as gunslingers Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, Dark Paradise, Playhouse; Diane Danzi and Sarah Mann,a haunted woman and child in One Flea Spare, Women's Theatre Initiative; Michael Frieman and Katie Stuckey as unlikely lovers in an Australian penal colony in Our Country's Good, CCM.

        Favorite threesomes: Jeremy Dubin, Brian Isaac Phillips and Anne E. Schilling, Betrayal, Cincinnati Shakespeare; Alicia Irving, Angela Pupello and J.B. Wing as the Mallard gals, Everything's Ducky, Playhouse.

        Favorite foursomes: heartbreakers Judith Lightfoot Clarke, Kyle Fabel, Caitlin Muelder and T. Ryder Smith, Closer, Playhouse; the perfectly delightful Heather Ayers, Brad Little, Ginette Rhodes and Jamison Stern, I Love You, You're Perfect..., Playhouse; the Cincinnati Shakespeare guys making memorable moments — comic and tragic — in Henry IV.

        Favorite Fivesome: Jeremy Dubin as a one-man motley crew in Henry IV, Cincinnati Shakespeare.

        Most Valuable Players: You'll recognize the names from last year: ETC's versatile actor-director-intern director Bob Rais. He's a utility player who provided an anchor to several shows; and Cincinnati Shakespeare's all-stars Brian Isaac Phillips, Giles Davies, Jeremy Dubin and Nick Rose.

        Thanks for being consistent, guys.

        Design awards: These aren't broken down by set/costume/lighting/sound. They're for the whole package. One weak element knocks it off the list.

        Outstanding design, big budget: Everything's Ducky, Robert Bissinger, Beaver Bauer, Jeff Croiter, David B. Smith; Grand Hotel, Paul Shortt, Dean Mogle, and student James Milkey, CCM; Inherit the Wind, Karen TenEyck, Kristine Kearney, Peter Sargent, Playhouse; Six Degrees of Separation, Paul Shortt, Amethyst Tynoch, Jim Gage, Chuck Hatcher, CCM; Talley's Folly, John Lee Beatty, Laura Crow, Dennis Parichy, Chuck London.

        Too good to leave out even though the sound didn't work: dazzling Dark Paradise, David Gallo, Ann Would-Ward, Thomas Hase.

        A Big Wow for a pair of student-designed shows at CCM: Marisol: Cameron Anderson, Tracey Dunne, Brian Barnett, Matt Kraus and Kate Mittendorf; Our Country's Good: Geoffrey Ahlers, Brian Bjorgum, Robert Hahn, Alexis Rodriguez-Carlson.

        Outstanding design, medium budget: Sleeping Beauty, Brian Mehring, Reba Senske, Shannon Rae Lutz, Ensemble; The Weir, Todd Edwards, Heidi Schiemer, David Levy, Cincinnati Shakespeare; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Cindy Brauer and Eric Bardes, Ovation.

        Outstanding design, barely a budget: Redwood Curtain, Terry Brueneman, set/lighting designer, Know Theatre Tribe; Songs for a New World, Rachel Fenner, production design, IF.

        Honorable mention: The Yellow Wallpaper, Rachel Fenner,production designer, who did amazing things with a ball of string.

        Special mention: It was a great season for headgear. Hats off to David Warda for his wigs in Sleeping Beauty, Ensemble. Evil fairy Wisteria's headdress was to die for (and her nails weren't bad, either). And to Reba Senske and her fishy chorines in My One and Only, CCM.

        Most breathtaking opening segment: A puppet Everyman at sea in an ocean of pin-points of light, Account Me Puppet, Mark Fox and Tony Luensman, Saw Theater.

        I Wish It Had Worked:Downtown Theatre Classics, which closed early in the season; Dark Paradise: Legend of the Five-Pointed Star, Playhouse in the Park

        And finally, fond farewells to:

        Charles Towers, who resigned as associate artistic director of Playhouse in the Park early last season to become artistic director of Merrimack Rep in Lowell, Mass. Among his memorable work for the better part of a decade: To Kill a Mockingbird, The Homecoming, Valley Song, Nixon's Nixon, The Woman in Black, Closer.

        Benjamin Mosse, founding artistic director of IF Theatre Collective which has spent the last year demonstrating just how good a tiny, low-budget company can be when it has an unerring sense of theatricality. Happily, IF will live on.

        Contact Jackie Demaline at 768-8530; fax: 768-8330; e-mail jdemaline@enquirer.com.
       

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