Looking back on a year of theater, a few moments spring to mind, more than a view of the whole of what took place ... The last scene, especially, in Central Works' Penelope's Odyssey, with Terry Lamb's outrageous portrait of the wily Odysseus as a raucous drunk, retailing war stories, capper to a collaborative show that displayed, once again, what makes that little company unique—and plucky. Jan Zvaifler, Leontyne Mbele-Mbong, Matt Lai all played at the top of their game—as did director John Patrick Moore, playwright-lighting designer Gary Graves, soundman Greg Scharpen and costumer Tammy Berlin. In the same room at the City Club, Just Theater produced a very contemporary rendering of the Arabian Nights, Jason Grote's '1001', which also showed the theatricality a small company could create onstage with limited means, in many ways more artistically successful than more lavish stagings locally of the same material.
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