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Whether it was watching Obama pummel Clinton and McCain south of the 49th parallel, or Stephen and Stéphane stare each other down to the north, 2008 was a year filled with dramatic displays of politics.

Fully tapped into the zeitgeist for once, Canadian theatre was chock full of political displays of drama this year, grappling with hot-button issues like the war on terror, wrongful imprisonment and, of course, the Conservative government's arts cuts; meanwhile, the theatre community's behind-the-scenes power struggles rivalled those of Parliament when it came to attempted coups, shaky coalitions and lame-duck leaders.

FESTIVAL DRAMA

Undeniably, the biggest story of the year took place at Ontario's Stratford Shakespeare Festival. A triumvirate of shiny new artistic directors — Marti Maraden, Des McAnuff and Don Shipley — programmed an ambitious season, but then, eerily foreshadowing what was to come in Ottawa, fell acrimoniously apart before having much of a chance to govern. McAnuff was the last man standing and found himself with the keys to a festival whose long string of surpluses had suddenly melted into a $3-million deficit.

But the Stratford season was one for the books artistically, too: Ben Carlson's smug and smouldering Hamlet and Christopher Plummer's masterfully mischievous Caesar (of the Bernard Shaw variety) wiped away memories of the three other lesser productions that graced the Festival stage, while Laurence Boswell's intriguing production of Fuente Ovejuna, visits from Tony winner Brian Dennehy and the Deutsches Theatre Berlin, and even the honourable misfire of Morris Panych's wordless adaptation of Moby Dick made a visit to Stratford, Ont., more essential than it has been for years.

While the Stratford Festival cited the U.S. dollar, gas prices and border lineups for its financial troubles, the less starry, but stable Shaw Festival quietly increased attendance by 6 per cent, rescuing worthy obscurities like Terence Rattigan's After the Dance and Githa Sowerby's The Stepmother along the way. And little sister Blyth Festival, producing a summer season of four original Canadian plays in Blyth, Ont., actually recorded a $175,633 surplus.

UPS AND DOWNS IN TORONTO

In Toronto, Canadian Stage Company, the country's largest contemporary theatre, was less fortunate, hitting bump after bump in 2008: Artistic director David Storch resigned after six months on the job, a dozen staff were laid off, and the cash-strapped company begged the city of Toronto to guarantee its line of credit. Meanwhile, top playwrights Joanna McClelland Glass, Colleen Murphy and Brad Fraser vented their frustration with the lack of Cancon in letters to newspapers and city council.

Artistic producer Marty Bragg wisely announced he was headed for the exit; but the trouble at CanStage runs deeper in the form of an unclear mandate and misguided power structure. The story, as they say, is developing.

While CanStage seeks a saviour, Theatre Passe Muraille may have found its Obama in new artistic director Andy McKim. The venerable alternative theatre teetered on the brink of artistic and financial bankruptcy in its final whimpers under Layne Coleman, but McKim's fine four-play festival this fall reinvigorated the Queen West institution. Two were bull's eyes: Pyaasa, Anusree Roy's solo journey deep into India's caste system; and Jacob Richmond's scabrous satire Legoland, from Victoria's Atomic Vaudeville.

The Vancouver Playhouse appointed a new leader dedicated to change, too, in Max Reimer, who tossed out his predecessor's mandate as he assumed the newly created position of artistic managing director. His honeymoon period with the critics has just begun after a well-received new production of the Canadian Broadway hit The Drowsy Chaperone.

Meanwhile back in Hogtown, big-budget commercial theatre has unexpectedly prospered despite the country teetering on the brink of a recession, pumped up by some old-fashioned competition between Mirvish and Dancap.

Mirvish has three musicals running concurrently for the first time since 2004, all in open-ended runs — the newest, The Sound of Music, starring reality-TV winner Elicia Mackenzie, even lived up to the hype. Though upstart Aubrey Dan may have lost his legal battles with Mirvish for control of two downtown theatres, the Dancap chief can take solace in having brought crowds back to the magnificent Toronto Centre for the Arts with a strong production of Jersey Boys, recently replenished with an all-Canadian cast.

A MESSAGE TO DELIVER

Politics stepped from the wings into the spotlight, most notably at October's Wrecking Ball, surely the most electric theatrical event of the year. On the eve of the federal election, Toronto's long-running one-night-only political cabaret spread its tentacles to nine other Canadian cities from Corner Brook to Victoria. The common denominators were an audience and artists angry at Prime Minister Stephen Harper's arts cuts and Nail Biter, a ripped-from-the-headlines monologue from playwright Judith Thompson about one of the CSIS agents who interviewed imprisoned Canadian teenager Omar Khadr at Guantanamo Bay.

Thompson had first demonstrated she may be becoming Canada's answer to David Hare (our Hare apparent?) when her new play Palace of the End had its national premiere at Canadian Stage earlier in the year. These three incendiary monologues, crackling with rage about the Iraq war, won Thompson the $20,000 Susan Blackburn Prize in March, then opened off-Broadway.

Speaking of Hare, Stuff Happens, the British playwright's semi-documentary look at the roots of the Iraq war, finally made it to Toronto and Vancouver, as did the controversial My Name Is Rachel Corrie. (Studio 180's production of Stuff Happens in Toronto featured one of the finest-tuned ensembles of the year portraying Bush, Blair, Cheney and the rest; they were matched only by the ensembles of The President at the Shaw Festival and the Chichester Festival's production of Nicholas Nickleby that visited Toronto.)

Following right on the heels of the federal government's apology for the residential-school system, playwright Kevin Loring's Where the Blood Mixes, which played the Magnetic North festival in Vancouver, was the best of a stream of plays tackling their disastrous legacy, including Tara Beagan's take on a Strindberg classic, Miss Julie: Sheh'mah, and Melanie J. Murray's A Very Polite Genocide., both in Toronto.

The Blyth Festival put Huron County on trial with its smash hit, Innocence Lost: A Play About Stephen Truscott, while environmental issues were tackled elegiacally in Daniel Brooks's The Eco Show and preposterously in the Rumoli Brothers' An Inconvenient Musical (with hysterical performances from Matt Baram and Chris Gibbs as General Mohtors and David Suzuki).

The Wrecking Ball had to turn people away at the door, Stuff Happens sold out its run in Toronto, and Innocence Lost is being remounted next September; obviously, there is a hunger in Canada for plays that grapple with the world we are living in rather than anodyne adaptations of Shakespeare.

With the Banff Centre commissioning new work about Canada's involvement in Afghanistan from playwrights Hannah Moscovitch and Colleen Wagner this fall, one hopes 2008 wasn't a flash in the plan but the beginning of a shift away from what Alec Scott derided in Toronto Life in March as a theatrical culture where the dominant mode is "quirky self-indulgence."

The model for a true " artiste engagée" can be found in Wajdi Mouawad, the new artistic director at the National Arts Centre's French-language theatre in Ottawa. He had triumphs in both official languages this year: Director Richard Rose's brilliant production of Mouawad's translated play Scorched sold out again in Toronto then travelled to Winnipeg and Montreal, while his unforgettable new solo Seuls was extended at the Théâtre d'Aujourd'hui in Montreal and visited Ottawa. Offstage, he challenged the linguistic politics at the NAC by programming a play in Polish, then protested the Conservative government's arts cuts directly in an open letter to the Prime Minister that rallied artists everywhere in the country. Add to that a Governor-General's Award nomination and premieres everywhere from France to Lebanon, and there's no doubt who is the theatre artist of the year.

FIVE SHOWS I REALLY LIKED

Festen — the Company Theatre in Toronto

Muscular theatre smashed back into town with this unsettling and darkly funny production of David Eldridge's Festen, featuring a terrific ensemble starring Allan Hawco and Eric Peterson. Director Jason Byrne's stripped-down production of the family drama was like watching an earthquake hit a building in slow motion.

Hamlet — Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ont.

Ben Carlson's terrific performance as the melancholy Dane has been rightly lauded, but the secret strength of Adrian Noble's production lay in great and unorthodox supporting performances from Adrienne Gould as Ophelia and Geraint Wyn Davies as Polonius.

Seuls — Montreal's Théâtre d'Aujourd'hui and Ottawa's National Arts Centre

Wajdi Mouawad's new French-language solo show follows doctoral student Harwan's search for identity — no, not back to his birthplace of Lebanon, but deep into his subconscious mind. The play culminated in the most daring, disturbing, delirious theatrical sequence of the year. And messiest, too — how did they get all that paint off the stage and set each night?

Stuff Happens — Studio 180 in Toronto

A killer Canadian premiere of David Hare's look at the origins of the Iraq war. Director Joel Greenberg staged the events leading from George W. Bush's first inauguration to the 2003 Iraq invasion with such velocity that you had to dig your fingernails into your armrest to hold on. Armed only with power suits and desk chairs on casters, the 15 stellar actors rolled and swiveled back and forth to create 65 characters, including Bush, Cheney and poor old Hans Blix.

Sylvia Plath Must Not Die — One Yellow Rabbit in Calgary and Toronto

After taking on Leonard Cohen and the Beat poets, Calgary's One Yellow Rabbit completed their "typewriter trilogy" by comparing the mythologies of confessional poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. Premiering at last January's High Performance Rodeo, Blake Brooker's dreamy production was raised to superlative level thanks to Denise Clarke's intoxicating performance as Sexton.

And the character walk of the year goes to ... Michael Scholar as Peg Leg in November Theatre's acclaimed production of the Tom Waits musical, The Black Rider. I was absolutely mesmerized by this Gothic emcee's careful, halting hobble, which just barely beat out Denise Clarke's staggering, swaggering Sexton for this coveted award. J.K.N.