The Best Of 1995: THEATER

1 ARCADIA Tom Stoppard’s complex, lucid drama–brought to Broadway under Trevor Nunn’s direction after a lengthy London run–shuttles adroitly between the present and the 19th century, the allure of mathematics and the promptings of lust, broad comedy and large-scale tragedy. Stoppard’s masterpiece demands comparison not just with other Broadway arrivals this year but also with the best in postwar English and American theater.

2 THE HEIRESS This Broadway revival of Ruth and Augustus Goetz’s 1947 melodrama, itself adapted from Henry James’ 1880 novel Washington Square, speaks with the confident simplicity of all-around excellence: skillful direction by Gerald Gutierrez, inventive sets and lighting, and an icy, crystalline performance by Cherry Jones as the triumphantly loveless spinster.

3 HAMLET Out on the edges, in the supporting cast, one could quibble with this Broadway import from London. But who wanted to carp when Ralph Fiennes stood so commandingly at center stage, embodying a “sweet prince” of roiling depths and racing intelligence?

4 MRS. KLEIN Nicholas Wright’s off-Broadway drama apprehends the pioneering child psychologist Melanie Klein at a moment when her life perches above an abyss. It’s an exacting role, and famed acting teacher Uta Hagen, at 76, executes a performance that is instructive at every step, advancing through arrogance, rage, bravado, fear.

5 TWELVE DREAMS James Lapine’s sly, skewed play draws its inspiration from a case study of Carl Jung’s in which a young girl’s dreams apparently foretold her death. In a Lincoln Center revival, the haunting logic of dreams, fusing the seemingly arbitrary and the seemingly inevitable, wove an ever tightening web of enchantment.

6 MASTER CLASS The role is larger than life: the century’s most famous diva, Maria Callas, captured at an age when her voice has left but her ego remains as outsized as ever. The performance is commensurately grand: Zoe Caldwell, by turns imperious and humbled, cruel and sympathetic. Terrence McNally’s Broadway play may have its structural shortcomings, but it is cheering to watch so much talent hurled at so much ambition.

7 THE MOLIERE COMEDIES Hard to imagine a better actor of the great French dramatist’s work than Brian Bedford or a better translator than Richard Wilbur. This Broadway revival was a tonic reminder of how compatibly elegance and buffoonery can be married.

8 SEVEN GUITARS August Wilson sets his latest play in the backyard of a ramshackle tenement in 1948 Pittsburgh, where a gifted young blues singer schemes and dreams through his last desperate days. The Pulitzer prizewinner’s new work, which has played in Chicago, Boston and San Francisco, is a rich ragout of melodrama and mysticism that should be cooking by the time it reaches Broadway this spring.

9 HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING Winsome Matthew Broderick could have used a little more edge in this tale of maneuvering through the corporate jungle. But bright, innovative sets and a strong supporting cast fashioned a jubilant Broadway revival of Frank Loesser’s 1961 musical.

10 JOURNEY TO THE WEST Mary Zimmerman’s adaptation of a 16th century Chinese novel, in which a man and a monkey spirit embark on a pilgrimage across Asia, made for an appealingly uncategorizable sortie–part farce, part children’s spectacle, part allegory. A keen eye for visual metaphor united the parts and set the stage aglow in a world premiere at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre.

…AND THE WORST

POMP DUCK AND CIRCUMSTANCE With the squeaky cleanup of 42nd Street, Broadway is about to be Disneyized. But should it be Vegasized? This dinner-theater circus, imported from Berlin, charges $150 (plus the drinks tab) for a lavish if mediocre meal amid four hours of shenanigans–spilled soup, humiliated performers, crude insults–that the most ravenous visitor will find indigestible. The show may be ideal for Las Vegas, where it opens in 1996, but in New York it’s the ultimate show-biz debacle.