One of the lesser-known side stories in Superman comics concerned “the bottled city” of Kandor, which the evil half-man/half-machine Brainiac kept as a souvenir after taking both the city and its occupants hostage from Krypton via shrinking ray. Much in the same way—without the evil—Village Theatre director Steve Tomkins in November mounted a jewel-box-sized version of Les Miserables which, despite its small scale, never lost the power or epic grace of the original Broadway smash. villagetheatre.org

Read all of our picks for Arts & Culture, and explore the rest of this year’s edition of Best of Seattle.