Favorite Performances of 2007

I have always been suspicious of Best Lists. For one thing, it's so easy to forget even something very good, and then have to keep kicking yourself afterward. For another, how does one limit oneself to 20, 10, or, as in the present mandate, five? And, most importantly, how does one know that a current or recent enthusiasm will stay with one—dare I say it—forever?

There are such forevers: Lindsay Duncan's Amanda in Private Lives is surely one. How often do you feel like jumping onto the stage to hug someone? Many years ago, at the Comedie Francaise, Aime Clariond's Othello and Jean Debucourt's Iago—a case were recollecting even surpassed experiencing. Zero Mostel's Pseudolus, in you know what. Laurence Olivier in The Entertainer. George C. Scott in Inherit the Wind, and, most likely, Christopher Plummer in its revival. Rebecca Luker in Show Boat, Elaine Stritch in Sail Away.

Such performances are not just abstract memories; one replays an intonation, a gesture, a look from the DVD of the mind. Has anyone ever gotten off a couch as sexily as Ms. Duncan's Amanda? Anyone ever paced a stage as imperiously as George C. Scott's defense attorney? Possibly, but not better, and those are the ones that stick.

There are, come to think, other problems. In a bad play, you are apt to forget even an outstanding performance; in an exceptional production, how do you pick one member of a superlative ensemble? And if an actor has been superb over the years, how do you settle on a specific performance? Damnable thing, lists. But how do you say no to your editor?

Here goes, then, what may be favoring current work, because it is hard to resist the lure of the new, so there is yet another quandary. Still, herewith, five favorite performances of 2007, in (that boon to list-makers) alphabetical order.

Bianca Amato in Trumpery
In a fine play with a winning cast, here was an actress in a relatively short part, and in a distinctly non-sexy Emily Dickinsonish wig and attire. She plays the wife of Charles Darwin in a sympathetic role, but one without any obvious crowd-pleasing aspects. Yet Ms. Amato manages to project firmness, spousalness and strong interiority with the greatest possible straightforwardness and economy.

Norbert Leo Butz in Is He Dead?
Butz portrays both the painter Millet and, after his alleged demise, his fictional sister, Widow Tillou, who collects the now soaring prices that everyone begrudged a living artist. Also a couple of bothersome marriage proposals. Butz's face, body, limbs are, in best farce tradition, a perpetuum mobile, yet it never seems too much. He is both the eternal feminine and its amiable travesty, not to mention occasional lapses into masculinity—a lovable nonstop joke.

Anthony Chisholm in Radio Golf
I single out this performance, though I cannot, and do not wish to, exclude other outings of his in August Wilson works, yielding a palimpsest. Chisholm can actually convey the taste of a character, by which I mean soul food for both the player and the spectator. He somehow bites into a part, and we, savoringly, along with him. The man is a four-star restaurant.

Brian Cox, Sinead Cusack and Rufus Sewell in Rock 'n' Roll
I realize that this is three actors, but the way their performances mesh is triune as can be. Ms. Cusack even plays, successively, a mother and a daughter—and differentiates them. Surrounded by a topnotch cast, they nevertheless manage to be first among equals. Let at least one of them not be onstage, and the temperature noticeably cools—or it would, if one of them happily weren't promptly back.

Jayne Houdyshell in The Receptionist
Houdyshell's performance turns a worthwhile play into something greater than itself. As the title character, and hardly ever off the stage, she manages to transform an incoming or outgoing call into high drama. The ordinary becomes extraordinary through a colorful array of idiosyncrasies that give shape nor only to sympathy and antipathy, but even, pungently, to indifference itself.