• Best new venue: The Earl Smith Strand Theatre lit up the Marietta Square, following a $4.2 million renovation. An ambitious Atlanta Lyric Theatre production of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” was the inaugural show.

• Best all-round theater destination: Alliance’s Hertz Stage boasted a clutch of the year’s most memorable shows: “Eurydice,” “In the Red and Brown Water” and “The Second City: Too Busy to Hate … Too Hard to Commute.”

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Carol Rosegg

‘Avenue Q,’ with Robert McClure and Kelli Sawyer, was the year’s best musical.

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Greg Mooney/Alliance Theatre

Eurydice (Melinda Helfrich, foreground) mourns her father (Chris Kayser) in a contemporary take of the classic myth ‘Eurydice,’ Atlanta’s best show in 2008.

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• Most troubling stress signal: Theater of the Stars blamed the economy for its cancellation of an all-new production of the Disney musical “Tarzan.” Before that, the local Broadway producer scratched the return of Disney’s “High School Musical.” Meanwhile, the American Musical Theatre of San Jose (California) filed for bankruptcy — citing the collapse of its Theater of the Stars co-production of “Tarzan” as the reason.

• Saddest but sweetest moment: Gene-Gabriel Moore — the wily, beloved and omnipresent senior denizen of the Atlanta theater community — died at 72. His greatest legacy: establishing the 3-year-old Suzi Bass Awards, which honored him with a lovely video tribute in November.

• Most promising new venture: The Cobb Energy Centre scheduled its new Atlanta Broadway Series and established the Shuler Hensley Awards for excellence in high school musicals.

• Best musical: “Avenue Q.” This Broadway Across America-Atlanta presentation proved why the edgy little puppet show is one of the top musical theater confections of the past decade. It never sucks to see Kate Monster, Rod and Princeton strut their fuzzy stuff.

• Best design: Leslie Taylor’s darkly opulent Old World look for director Sabine Epstein’s “The Merchant of Venice” at Georgia Shakespeare. The chair of Emory University’s theater department is a rare and genuine talent.

• Three comedic geniuses, two shows, one director: First, LaLa Cochran blowtorched the scenery of Theatre in the Square’s “The Little Dog Laughed.” Then Our Lady of Camp joined the misty-eyed Shelley McCook and the flamboyantly fabulous Don Finney in Actor’s Express’ “The New Century.” Alan Kilpatrick directed both. We all shrieked like banshees.

• Best drama: Director Susan V. Booth’s sensitive treatment of John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt” at the Alliance Theatre. The play, like the newly released motion picture, packs questions about race, power, religion, sexuality, parenting and politics into a precisely structured, morally ambiguous universe.

• And the No. 1 show of 2008: Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice,” directed by Georgia Shakespeare’s Richard Garner on the Alliance’s Hertz Stage. A dreamy team of actors and designers treated this study of meeting and parting, remembering and forgetting, sleeping and waking with masterful tenderness. An achingly beautiful 90-minute glimpse of eternity.