The Big Idea: War
War seemed to inspire companies to create the best works of 2007, with the unfortunate side effect of turning stages into men-only clubs.

The strongest of these, and the best show of the season, was “Black Watch,” a Scottish import that played at St. Ann’s Warehouse. In the play, based on Gregory Burke’s interviews with a legendary Highland regiment, Burke and director John Tiffany accepted the necessity of a national military, leaving them free to look at just how a triumphant invasion turned into a disastrous occupation. But rather than address the audience directly (a too-common device that sucks drama out of a theater, as Aaron Sorkin demonstrated in “The Farnsworth Invention”), “Black Watch” told its story with imagination, beginning with a soldier emerging from the green felt of a pool table. The surreal visions and technical marvels of “Black Watch” acknowledged how political betrayals have put men in a war zone while respecting their sense of camaraderie and hunger for survival.

“Journey’s End,” written in 1928, did the same for the Lost Generation, and provided Broadway with its most moving revival. World War I vet RC Sherriff refused to exploit the feelings he inspired for a platoon of Stiff Upper Lips on their last day in the trenches. Director David Grindley and his sharp ensemble (which included Boyd Gaines and Jefferson Mayes) showed audiences—in full, lived-in detail—how to support the troops without backing the war. The final coup came at curtain call, with the cast standing at attention before a list of war dead that included the characters.

Representing Off-Off-Broadway, the Living Theater restaged their once-censored drama “The Brig,” directed by Judith Malina. In the traditional sense, “The Brig” wasn’t quite a play. Instead, from reveille to bed-down, 10 court-martialed Marines were drilled through their day, their every move ordered with balletic precision by the four MPs on duty. The men marched in place, did 20 push-ups, and performed a marvelous set piece that had them mop and dry the entire stage in 15 minutes. It was mesmerizing to watch, bringing to mind not just Guantanamo but also America’s dysfunctional prison system.

Bucking the men-only trend, the Signature Theater came off their 2006-07 season of August Wilson drama with a more holistic vision of how war affects a nation. Like the other three war-plays, “Iphigenia 2.0” (by writer Charles Mee and director Tina Landau) was set in a military barracks, but it allowed civilians—especially women—onstage. It took audiences back to the Trojan War, when the Greek commander sacrificed a princess, his daughter, and commented on the human costs and doubtful pretexts of today’s war.

You Missed It Award
Everyone who saw British import “Coram Boy” seemed to like it, but the epic Dickensian melodrama closed after fewer than 50 Broadway performances last spring. We lucky few still recall fondly its pungent plot twists, nimble onstage orchestra and the terrible infant graveyard that closed act one.

I Missed It Award
The mixture of petty insecurity and indiscriminate power makes Richard Nixon endlessly fascinating. Having read the script over a year ago, I couldn’t wait to see “Frost/Nixon” and watch Frank Langella’s Tricky Dick sweat, squirm and finally break down on Broadway. But there’s never enough time to see everything in a season. Is it too soon for a revival?

The Emperor’s New Clothes Award
Tom Stoppard’s latest play, “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” was the stage equivalent of another album by his idols, the Rolling Stones: tired, self-indulgent baby-boomer posturing. But at least Mick and the boys still know how to put on a show. Sir Tom’s treatise may have lectured us on how rock inspired Czech dissidents, but it conveyed nothing of the music’s sense of freedom, danger and anarchy. There was more thrill in a single scene of “Doris to Darlene”—Playwrights Horizons' charming fluff about a gay teen’s obsession with Phil Spector and Richard Wagner—than in three hours of Stoppard’s talky “drama.”

Honorable mentions
In MTC’s Off-Broadway “Blackbird,” Jeff Daniels and Alison Pill chased each other through a labyrinth of forbidden desire without an exit. Human behavior at its ugliest.

In “The Brothers Size,” yet another all-male cast provided Tarell Alvin McCraney with moving perfs for his relocation of African myth to Gulf-region Mississippi.

Like a Marx Brother let loose in feudal Japan, Nakamura Nanzaburo XVIII tore through “Hokaibo” at Lincoln Center and made the kabuki classic into the summer’s freshest show.

Jason Grote and Page 73 Productions gave audiences vertigo with the Scheherazade-like tales of “1001,” mingling The Arabian Nights with the War on Terror.

It turned out that “The Taming of the Shrew” needed more testosterone, not less. The all-male (again?!) Propeller Company showed BAM audiences just how violent Shakespeare’s battle of the sexes could get.

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