Here some noteworthy performances of the year just past.

Even if all the world’s a stage, it needs to be said that Gainesville audiences were treated to an especially entertaining and thought-provoking year of theater in 2017.

Before the curtain rises on 2018 let’s look back on some noteworthy performances of the year just past.

A Star Is Born: Leaping lizards! The Gainesville Community Playhouse could have searched forever and not found a better “Annie” to play America’s favorite orphan than Fort Clark Middle School sixth-grader Mia Billingsley. Plucky, precocious and wise beyond her tender years, young Miss Billingsley was born for the role.

The Lady Is A Camp: Jan Cohen never disappoints, but she nailed it as Bette Davis, home invader, in the Actors’ Warehouse production of “Jezebel and Me.” Sarcastic, profane and wickedly funny, Cohen’s rouged-lipped, chain smoking, gossip mongering Bette was inspired.

Dazed And Confused: In the Acrosstown Repertory Theatre’s “Waiting For Godot,” audiences got a two-fer treat. Adam Lishawa and Dean Carvalho deftly played off each other’s quirks and eccentricities as the clueless Estragon and Vlad: Wandering in the wilderness, looking for answers to unasked questions and searching for God knows what. “Nothing is to be done,” Estragon sighs. Maybe, but together they did nothing superbly.

Lady Sang The Blues: Constance Fields was alone onstage in the Actors' Warehouse two-hour, one-woman show about the turbulent life and times of a blues legend in “Ethel Waters: His Eye Is On The Sparrow.” Fields needed no help. She told her stories with biting humor and sweet tenderness. She sang. She danced. She laughed. She cried. She did it all and she did it well.

The War Of The Rats: In the Hippodrome’s “1984,” Niall McGinty brought a raw paranoia to the role of Smith, the timid “Ministry of Truth” bureaucrat who comes to bitterly regret the corrosive lies he spread on behalf of Big Brother. McGinty was chilling as a tortured soul adrift in a Trumpian-style dystopia who is finally made to face his worst fear.

All That Glitters: If McGinty was haunting, Jon Kovach was hellacious as Casey, the failed Elvis impersonator-turned-the-hottest-drag-queen in the Florida Panhandle. In the Hipp’s “The Legend of Georgia McBride” Kovach dons satin, sequins and cowgirl boots to become something else altogether. You go girl! And kudos to Mark Chambers’ divine Miss Tracy Mills, who helps Casey find him ... um, herself.

Haunted Eyes, Blank Stares: It took not one but three actors to well and truly bring Tommy, the deaf, dumb and blind pinball wizard to life in the ART’s impressive rendition of "Tommy," the Who’s classic rock opera. Taige Mills did grown-up Tommy in all his Christ-like martyrdom. Olivia DeWitz and Madeline Elyse Smyth were silent, catatonic and shocking as, respectively, the 4-year-old and 10-year-old versions.

It’s A Crime: What does it take to turn a church-going, cookie-baking mom into a bank robber? Hard times, no hope and a lot of racism. In the Actors' Warehouse  production of “Stealing Away,” L’Tanya Van Hamersveld’s Stella got fed up with all three. “They got a lot of ways to spit in your face,” she says bitterly, as she turns to the gun.

Also Worthy Of Mention: Bryan Mercer, as, respectively, a toad and a nightclub pianist in two different Hipp productions; Shamrock McShane as the goat-confessing, PBR-guzzling Sham Sham in ART’s “Trailer Park Elegy”; Karina Kolb and Jorge DeJesus as two of life’s wretched losers in AW’s “Se Llama Christina”; Cali Newman’s Barbie doll law student all aglow in GCP’s “Legally Blond”; Lola Bond’s other-worldly ice queen in ART’s “UMMU”; Molly Washington’s venomous Daphne in AW’s “Bad Jews”; Ariel Reich’s mother from hell in the Hipp’s “Hand To God”; and Kandyce Goggins’ beauty shop owner and gossipy pack leader in the GCPs “Steel Magnolias.”

What a year in theater it’s been. Now let’s unwrap 2018.