And then there are the plays

Though the race for best musical offers little more than a contest in mildly diverting mediocrity between “Jersey Boys” and “The Drowsy Chaperone,” the spectacular quality in the best play category is a real sop to despair. Ah, why not just say it -- a reason to celebrate!

The crop from 2005, you might recall, wasn’t too bad either. John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt” notched the victory over Martin McDonagh’s “The Pillowman,” but the laurels could just as easily have been carried off by August Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean,” which was in some ways the most ambitious playwriting of that season.

Alan Bennett’s “The History Boys” is the clear front-runner among nominees for this year’s Tony Awards, to be handed out June 11. But the other contenders -- McDonagh’s “The Lieutenant of Inishmore,” Conor McPherson’s “Shining City” and David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Rabbit Hole” -- are all, manifestly, award-worthy.

What’s more, there was another play that many feel should have been nominated -- Lisa Kron’s “Well,” which closed early despite a slew of favorable reviews. That may have dampened some optimism, but the presence of such acclaimed revivals as Clifford Odets’ “Awake and Sing” and Brian Friel’s “Faith Healer” reassured that the days of serious drama on Broadway are far from over.

-- Charles McNulty

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‘The History Boys’

The classroom activities of eight super-smart teenage boys preparing for their entrance exams to Oxford and Cambridge may sound a bit too tea-and-crumpet for an American audience. But the playwright turns the occasion into an exploration of the role of education in modern life. Ostensibly a satire of the Thatcher years, the play is, in fact, a reckoning with our ruthlessly exploitative moment. The plot hinges on a stalemate between two teachers, one devoted to the study of literature and history for their own sakes, the other determined to teach his students how to polemically spin the subjects to their upwardly mobile advantage. Mixing comedy and tragedy with musical interludes, Bennett has crafted the most entertaining schooldays yarns since “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.”

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‘The Lieutenant of Inishmore’

A drama about mutilated cats? Well, yes and no: An unfortunate kitty belonging to the lieutenant of a bumbling IRA splinter group instigates the stomach-turning carnage here, but McDonagh’s macabre comedy is confidently stalking bigger game. At issue is the illogic of terrorism, the potholed reasoning that enables violence to reach unprecedented levels of absurdity. Friends of felines needn’t worry too much: McDonagh employs his scrapple-sharp wit to hilariously expose the atrocities committed in the name of love -- a snowballing madness that inevitable takes down more people than animals.

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‘Shining City’

The consummate Irish yarn-spinner McPherson has long been enamored of ghost stories. “The Weir,” one of his earlier plays, which appeared on Broadway in 1999, was practically bursting with them. His latest distills its spooky narrative into a drama involving an ex-priest-turned-therapist whose patient, a businessman with a guilty heart, believes he is being haunted by the ghost of his late wife. Pursuing the rich, thematic line of inquiry he has examined elsewhere, the playwright questions how, with nothing but slippery words to guide us, can we ever distinguish between supernatural specters and those of our own darkening minds?

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‘Rabbit Hole’

The story of a couple attempting to regain their marital footing after the tragic loss of their child, this exquisitely observed drama has all the quiet poignancy of an Ann Beattie short story. Though it may be more conventionally realistic than the playwright’s previous work, the play not only earns its pathos more honestly, but it is far more expansive than the kooky farces that launched his career. Resonating beyond its immediate situation to reflect on the pockets of grief each of us conceals within, “Rabbit Hole” opens a private doorway to a less innocent, though possibly more compassionate, realm of living.