It takes a certain kind of madness to even attempt to stage a play like A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney and a certain kind of genius to pull it off. Lucas Hnath's offbeat character study of the impresario seems designed in part to exasperate: It's written like an ADHD screenplay, with the actor playing Uncle Walt — in this case, an extraordinary Peter Galman — restlessly shuffling through moods and scenes with the clipped command, "Cut to... cut to... cut to." Thinking Cap's spellbinding production last fall wasn't for everybody, but then again, few of its masterpieces are. Artistic director Nicole Stodard followed Walt Disney with another polarizing work, Mud, a modernist classic of urban decay in which three tortured characters envelop themselves in a cocoon of codependence. Ever one to find beauty in darkness, Stodard employed impeccable lighting and sound choices that created a multisensory experience drenched in dread. This year's TCT productions continued to express the company's mastery of both the technical and narrative aspects of theater while tackling relevant themes: Grounded analyzed the emotional shrapnel of drone strikes, and Collective Rage: A Play in Five Betties addressed feminism in the Trump era.
Readers' choice: Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts