Top 10 theater productions of 2009

Chris Pine, straight from his “Star Trek” launch into the celebrity stratosphere, added a crackling believability to Beau Willimon’s drama about the thankless dirty tricks and ruthless back stabbing of those conducting the spin war for aspiring presidents.  (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)

The Donmar Warehouse’s scaled-down version of Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry’s 1998 musical about the execution of injustice done to Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager dubiously convicted of the rape and murder of a teenage employee, featured a top-notch cast led by T.R. Knight and Lara Pulver. The material is admittedly very stark for a musical, but Brown’s Tony-winning score lent an astonishing degree of moral nuance and color.   (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

One of two superlatively staged Enda Walsh plays imported by UCLA Live from the Galway-based theater company Druid Ireland, and the one that most impressed me with the author’s uncompromising neo-Beckettian ingenuity.  (Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times)