This year really did bring a new theater to the New Theatre, as the longtime Miami company completed its first full season in the breathtaking South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center. The modern, multivenue structure, with its topnotch lighting and sound grid, has been a veritable godsend for a company that had been gypsying around lesser, temporary venues for years. Moreover, for the first time in many seasons, artistic director Ricky J. Martinez selected a group of plays that was powerful and cohesive, which included familiar classics and world premieres that nonetheless seemed to converse with one another. A theme of intolerance connected powerful works such as The Cuban Spring, Vanessa Garcia's exploration of the generational divide of Cubans and Cuban-Americans; The Gospel According to Jerry, a two-hander about the unlikely relationship between a rabbi and a gospel singer; Twelve Angry Men, a production that still found new avenues to explore in this vintage drama; and Women Playing Hamlet, which took a comic look at gender bias through the prism of classical acting. There wasn't a clunker among them, with Martinez's directorial work never seeming so consistently accomplished.
Readers' choice: Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts