1727 N. Charles St., everymantheatre.org, (410) 752-2208
In January the Everyman Theatre moves into its big new building on Fayette Street, around the corner from the Hippodrome, but the company moved into the big time five years ago with eye-opening, ambitious productions of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean. For the past two years, they've been the best theater in Maryland, eclipsing the better-funded Center Stage with smart, challenging productions of old war-horses such as George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and Noel Coward's Private Lives, as well as contemporary shows such as Donald Margulies' Shipwrecked and Tarell Alvin McCraney's The Brothers Size. They did it by never talking down to Baltimore audiences and by relying on a resident company of actors who became familiar with one another-and with local audiences-rather than a steady stream of strangers from New York.
