The Top 10 Everything of 2011

In 54 wide-ranging lists, TIME surveys the highs and lows, the good and the bad, of the past 12 months

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6. Silence! The Musical

Top 10 Theater

Carol Rosegg

They can make a musical out of anything these days — even Hannibal the Cannibal. This off-Broadway spoof of the grisly 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs is best appreciated by buffs — you have to have the movie nearly committed to memory to get all the parody. But even for a layman, it's a clever send-up of shock-movie clichés, and even of theater itself, as it tries to reproduce the film's most outré action sequences with tacky effects on a pint-sized stage. Jenn Harris, as agent Clarice Starling, can impersonate even Jodie Foster's jogging style, and Brent Barrett, as Hannibal Lector, has a voice worth feasting on. Light on calories, but a lot of fun.