Votes are rolling in for the 2009-2010 Cincinnati Entertainment Awards. Already more than 1,000 local theater fans have checked off their favorite local theatrical performances. If you haven't voted yet (Aug. 9 is the deadline), please add your own feedback. Results will be announced during the CEA event at Know Theatre on Aug. 29.  

I know more critics who love theater than who live to spew out negativity. In fact, I've often said it seems nonsensical (if not masochistic) to carve out a career as a critic if you hate the theater and never enjoy the experience. Why subject yourself to night after night of torture if you really find actors or directors incompetent or self-serving?  

There are moments in '110 in the Shade' when genuine theatrical impact shines through the difficulties of staging a Broadway musical of only iffy merit with a cast of 16. It's presented on a set designed by Dennis Murphy that communicates the play's mood as well as its time and place: a drought-scourged, worry-scurried prairie village in the 1930s. Farmers are giving up hope of a rain that will save their crops and cattle, just as thirtysomething Lizzie Curry is close to giving up hope of ever finding a husband and having children.   

David Rambo's 1999 play takes a savage, albeit occasionally comic, look at industrialized Christianity and at mega-churches that operate less on a foundation of faith than on the rock-solid egos of their heaven-hawking pastors.