Whatever we call the decade that comes to an end Thursday, the duty it poses is clear: picking 10 memorable stage productions. It's hard enough to do the yearly lists, but the difficulty ratchets up at the end of a decade. Definition is all, so I'll say what I have before: This is frankly a personal list of what's most memorable, the shows that have stayed with me most vividly out of the more than 1,700 reviewed in Western Pennsylvania in the decade.

Unsurprisingly, it isn't just a collection of annual No. 1's. Some years are stronger than others. The list is chronological -- picking 10 was hard enough, ranking them would be impossible.

Euripides, "Medea," Pittsburgh Public Theater (2001). The Public had never before done one of the great Greek classics, but Ted Pappas did it right, anchoring it with Lisa Harrow and assembling a well-drilled supporting cast.

Tom Stoppard, "Indian Ink," Quantum Theatre (2002). This layered comedy is about literature and painting, race and empire, myth and politics, but mainly love and loss. Quantum's Karla Boos set it hauntingly on a tomb-dusted Allegheny Cemetery hillside, and director Rodger Henderson surrounded Robin Walsh with strong support.

Rob Zellers and Gene Collier, "The Chief," Public Theater (2003). This feel-good hometown ride has been revived six times, counting what's advertised as its final appearance next month. Tom Atkins has deepened his iconic one-man performance as Art Rooney Sr. from very good to superlative, making up for the lack of conflict in Rob Zellers' and Gene Collier's knowing script. It might be the Pittsburgh play of the decade, if you didn't have August Wilson to contend with. And there's a DVD in the works.

Shakespeare, "Twelfth Night," Cultural Trust/Shakespeare's Globe, London (2003). Artistic director and star Mark Rylance came back two years later with "Measure for Measure," but "Twelfth Night" was the eye-opener: Shakespearean comedy made clear, natural and heartfelt. "Original practices" (1602 costumes, all-male cast) was an intriguing plus, as was the intimacy of the 450-seat temporary space in what would become the new cabaret theater.

Richard Nelson and Shaun Davy, "James Joyce's The Dead," Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre (2004). Joyce's famous comi-tragic story about seasonal ritual and personal desolation seems unlikely material for a musical, but director Scott Wise and a big cast triumphed with festivity and feeling, dramatizing life, death and everything else in a very small room.

Middleton and Rowley, "Dog Face," Quantum (2005). Cheating hearts, wayward bodies, jealous fits and dark revenge -- those are the stuff of Jacobean revenge tragedy, but you can see why they turned Dan Jemmett's mind to country-western music. The result was his streamlined version of this bloody 1622 tragi-comedy of lust, set to an insinuating old-time jukebox in the Heppenstall Plant in Lawrenceville.

Samuel Beckett, "Endgame" and BeckettFest, PICT (2006). The dark and bracing parable of mankind at the end of its rope starred Larry John Meyers and Simon Bradbury, old tyrant and wise fool, in intellectual vaudeville with comic surfaces and tragic depths. It was just one part of PICT's huge undertaking, in full stagings or readings, of all 19 Beckett plays except "Waiting for Godot."

Aeschylus, "The Oresteia Project," CMU (2007). Under the leadership of Jed Harris, Aeschylus' famous trilogy of 458 B.C. turned into a witty four-hour interrogation of the ascent from blood revenge through expiation to the establishment of law. It also became an artful history of 20th- century theatrical avant garde -- Living Theater to Robert Wilson to Wooster Group, with forays into Grotowskian ritual and styles from Japan.

Teatro de los Sentidos, "El Eco de la Sombra," Cultural Trust's Pittsburgh Festival of Firsts (2008). Set up in the empty armory beside Ellis School, "El Eco" invited a fortunate 52 people per night to enter, one by one, a dusty used book shop and proceed through a 75-minute dark maze of adventure, guided by a multi-national company of 20.

August Wilson, "Two Trains Running," Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre (2008). For Wilson's 1960s play, a drama of rueful comedy set in a small Hill District diner, artistic director Mark Clayton Southers enlisted a cast led by Broadway veterans Anthony Chisholm and Eugene Lee, with Wilsonian veteran Sala Udin leading the support.

And a half-dozen I wish were also on the list (also chronological): "Wit" (Public), "Quills" (Playhouse Rep), "Copenhagen" (PICT), "The Argument, a Family Portrait" (Theatre O/Cultural Trust), "King Lear" (PICT).

In the year-by-year top 10 lists, the Cultural Trust tours led with four No. 1's. Six other companies had one each.

Among the decade's 100 top 10 shows, the Public (15) edged out City and PICT (tied with 14). Following were Quantum and Pittsburgh CLO (nine each); the Cultural Trust (eight, including those four firsts); Playhouse Rep (six); Broadway tours (five); CMU (four); barebones and Point Park (three each); and Pittsburgh Musical Theater, Unseam'd Shakespeare and Pittsburgh Playwrights (two each). Four other companies showed up once.

That's 19 companies, compared to the 23 companies that shared the 103 bests in the '90s, when there were some ties.

And now on to the teens!

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