NORWELL (CBS) – If the names “Kooky Castle” or “Congo Cruise” mean anything to you, then you probably have fond memories of taking a trip to Paragon Park to ride the carousel at Nantasket Beach many years ago.

Now, you can relive those moments in musical form.

“Paragon Park The Musical” is being staged by the Company Theatre in Norwell.

Using multiple sets and costume changes, it takes the audience through different periods in time; from 1905 when the park first opened to the selling of the Paragon Carousel in 1985.

Organizers put in hours of research going though old photos, newspaper articles, and dozens of interviews.

The show features a volunteer cast of 50 and includes 18 original songs played by a 20 piece live orchestra.

The Aussie one: Andrew Bovell’s When the Rain Stops Falling, the one from Down Under and the unexpected crown of an exceptional Shaw Festival, ranged boldly free in time and space while keeping tight control of story and theme, and examining its characters with what I can best describe as ruthless compassion. The same discipline and imagination distinguished Peter Hinton’s production; from a fine cast, I’m most haunted by Ric Reid, whose long opening speech had me in his and the play’s corner from its first line, and Graeme Somerville, as an apparently nice man destroyed by shame. The Shaw also gave us a monumental Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; Eda Holmes’ production had a dream cast, with Jim Mezon as, vocally and emotionally, the biggest of Big Daddies and Gray Powell craftily counter-punching as Brick. Their long second-act confrontation was the duet of the year.

The rediscovered Drama at Inish proved another actors’ delight, with Thom Marriott melodramatically announcing that he wasn’t at his best in melodrama, and Corinne Koslo as his devoted co-star and spouse. Marriott also shone as the police chief in On the Rocks, a lesser-known play by Shaw himself, “adapted” by Michael Healey — a new policy, apparently, and not a good one. It makes a production look like an apology. I’m not, though, as bothered as perhaps I should be by the festival’s decision to confine its patron’s plays to its smaller stages next year; if they dropped them altogether, that would be a problem. Of this year’s Shavian shows, the best was the small-house Candida, with Somerville again exceptional, this time in a minor role. Of course, My Fair Lady might well count as Shaw, and was a delight anyway.

The German one: The Test by Lukas Barfuss, a Company Theatre production by Jason Byrne whose direction, though by all accounts allowing the actors a lot of freedom, always comes off as exceptionally rigorous. In this study of inheritance, dynastic and political, Philip Riccio as a modern Iago struck chillingly to the soul of soullessness: a remarkable performance. Company Theatre, who have a spare but virtually unblemished record, here inagurated a new relationship with Canadian Stage. Which brings me to …

The British one: David Greig’s The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union, a brilliant play though the production didn’t do justice to its playfulness or the interlocking of its themes. Matthew Jocelyn’s brave — and necessary — cosmopolitan policy at CanStage also brought us I Send You This Cadmium Red, a wonderfully casual meditation on art in which Julian Richings as John Berger gave one of the year’s tenderest performances (it certainly showed up the similarly titled but artistically regressive Red) and brought back Another Africa, formerly The Africa Trilogy.

The Polish one: Our Class, Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s remarkably even-handed examination of the Jedwabne massacre and its prolonged aftermath. Technically, this set of counterpointed reminiscences was unpretentiously daring; and it never once cheated. It showed Studio 180 at its semi-documentary best; as opposed to its revival of The Normal Heart, the seminal AIDS play, which mainly seemed worthy.

Most surprising actor of the year: Stuart Hughes, who in Tarragon’s modernish-dress The Misanthrope showed a new talent for sustained bravura, reinforced in at least one marvellous tirade in Soulepper’s The Glass Menagerie, a moving production (Tennessee Williams had a good centenary) with a gloriously mercurial Nancy Palk. Hughes transformed himself again in The Price, also a Soulpepper peak. Otherwise their best were The Fantasticks, with Oliver Dennis’ down-at-heel show stealer, and a slew of remounts, a policy that I wish could be continued: shows like The Time of Your Life, Window on Toronto and Parfumerie should always be available.

Stratford’s Broadway-bound Jesus Christ Superstar was as good as that show is ever going to get. Still, its best musicals were Camelot, in which a flawed but beautiful show finally worked, and Twelfth Night, in which the songs — unlike those in the Shaw’s The Admirable Crichton — are actually part of the text and which also happened to be a splendidly acted version of the play. Titus Andronicus was an exciting production; Seana McKenna’s impish Richard III an insolently persuasive performance; The Grapes of Wrath an impressively unsparing staging; and The Little Years a decent newish play.

Most perplexing theatre: Buddies in Bad Times, which hosted some dismal guest productions but whose own flagship show, The Maids, was superb (and I don’t even like the play). Diane D’Aquila was transfixing, as she’d already been in CanStage’s Saint Carmen of the Main.

Best Canadian script: That may well have been Michael Healey’s Are You Okay, if only for its resonant line about the remote chance of doing something “slightly better than awful”; he meant morally, but it works for art as well. I feel mean enough to mention Hallaj, an evening of melodramatic earnestness that — in writing, acting and direction — was one cliché after another. Some people liked it. Ride the Cyclone was terrifically staged and performed (especially by Kelly Hudson) but its numbers went on long after they’d made their points.

Commercial managements persisted in their belief that anything with a Broadway sticker on it is automatically doing us a favour. Conversely, some of the best things happened in holes and corners: David Yee’s imaginative Paper Series, Brett Christopher’s Barrie production of The Tempest, Dying City, which suggested that, despite all evidence to the contrary, good plays can still come out of America. There were some welcome returns: Assassins, Montparnasse and Two Pianos, Four Hands, which I hadn’t remembered as being so funny.

robert.cushman@hotmail.com