No other theater in the Bay area offered more winning productions last season than did Tampa’s Stageworks. To start things off, there was the wonderful Raisin in the Sun, a stirring version of a great American classic. Next came Venus in Fur, David Ives’ mind-warping meditation on sex, gender, power, S&M, and theater itself, followed by the hilarious, beautifully designed The Divine Sister, and then by the surrealist Ten Percent of Marta Solano, a rare departure (for local stages) from fourth-wall realism. The suspense in A Few Good Men was delicious, and The Sugar Bean Sisters (above) brought us a funhouse ride of Florida Cracker slapstick mixed with moral quandaries and supernatural hijinks. So many peaks and so few valleys: it was a very good year. stageworkstheatre.org
This article appears in Sep 18-24, 2014.