History-changing events give everything in their shadow a new and often unexpected shading. After Sept. 11, many plays and musicals were vested with a poignancy and urgency that they would otherwise not have possessed. A recent production of "Copenhagen," a mystery about two World War II physicists on opposite sides racing to create the first atomic bomb, seemed newly chilling. The Laguna Playhouse production of "Moving On," a revue of Stephen Sondheim's music, assumed a wistful air, especially the songs with New York references, as if the world the characters sang about was impossibly distant.

But that kind of heaviness was relatively rare. Ironically, 2001 was a great year for comedy and lightweight fun in Southern California theater: "The Beard of Avon," Amy Freed's brilliantly literate examination of Shake speare's salad days; David Henry Hwang's sly updating of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Flower Drum Song"; "Straight Up With a Twist," a look at gender roles and other hot pop-culture topics.

Not everything that shined was a comedy, however. Popular '60s absurdists found a respectful home at South Coast Repertory, where Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance" and Harold Pinter's "The Homecoming" received terrific productions. In Laguna Beach, a fine staging of "American Buffalo" featured a pitch-perfect cast that made David Mamet's abstruse language sing like gritty Chicago folk opera. And at the La Jolla Playhouse, Moises Kaufman's painful examination of a hate crime in the heartland, "The Laramie Project," moved audiences to tears.

Here's a list of the year's Top 10 plays and musicals, in chronological order:

"A Delicate Balance" (South Coast Repertory Mainstage, January): Director Martin Benson created the perfect Albee world, an icy, airless place where upper-class civility is used as camouflage in a bloody battle whose principal weapons are hypocrisy, denial, alcoholism and hatred. Nicholas Hormann and Linda Gehringer were standouts as the outwardly polite but hate-filled Agnes and Tobias.

"Straight Up With a Twist" (Grove Theater Center, April): Writer-performer Paul Stroili introduced us to the demimonde of the Renaissance Geek - the kind of guy who can tell you how to make Hollandaise sauce while rewiring your cappuccino machine and choosing the perfect shade of mauve for your living room walls. And he's not gay. Really, he's not! A charming, innovative work of social observation.

"The Beard of Avon" (South Coast Repertory Mainstage, June): Amy Freed's breakthrough play is being staged all over the country, but it's hard to imagine a better production than the world premiere on SCR's Mainstage. Her tale concerns the education of an ambitious country bumpkin named Will Shakespeare, but it's the bit players that stole the show, especially Mark Harelik as a lusty lord with literary pretensions.

"American Buffalo" (Laguna Playhouse, June): Director Andrew Barnicle is a Chicago boy, and it certainly showed in this note-perfect production of Mamet's breakthrough play about a trio of hapless Windy City smalltime crooks, starring a terrific Mike Hagerty as Donny, the dimwitted mastermind.

"Contact" (Ahmanson Theatre, July): Choreographer Susan Stroman is the flavor of the month on Broadway, but this show proved she's no flash in the pan. Three almost wordless playlets told a trio of stories, mainly through dance. Two were clever, and the third - about a despondent man's attempted suicide and the mysterious woman who saves him - was unforgettable.

"The Laramie Project" (La Jolla Playhouse, August): Moises Kaufman used his documentary-style research techniques to brilliant effect in this play about the brutal murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard. Kaufman's characters, based on people who were involved with Shepard or the murder investigation, reveal the gamut of human good and evil. A harrowing, cathartic and ultimately uplifting work.

"MacHomer: The Simpsons Do Macbeth" (Irvine Barclay Theatre, April and August): Canadian Rick Miller is a trained Shakespearean actor and a huge fan of "The Simpsons." Somehow he mashes the two worlds into one unlikely smorgasbord in this dangerously funny show, which uses slides, music and, of course, every character from the long-running animated comedy series to tell the story of Shakespeare's ill-fated king. Who can forget lines such as, "Is this a dagger I see before me ... or a pizza?"

"Flower Drum Song" (Mark Taper Forum, October): David Henry Hwang has managed to completely reinvent Rodgers and Hammerstein's problematic 1958 musical without disrespecting or ignoring the source. His characters crackle with the kind of cross-cultural savvy and acerbic bite that Hwang alone knows how to create.

"The Homecoming" (South Coast Repertory Mainstage, October): Harold Pinter has never been darker than in this 1965 classic, and director Martin Benson didn't shy away from the play's more perverse elements in this unflinchingly harsh and effective production. A difficult but ultimately rewarding masterpiece about a family of fierce, bickering men who are undone with surprising ease by a woman with hidden malevolent powers.

"Copenhagen" (Wilshire Theatre, November): Playwright Michael Frayn turned his curiosity about a mysterious wartime meeting between physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg into a sort of brainy mystery. This production was a shade below the quality of the Tony-winning Broadway staging, but Len Cariou and Mariette Hartley offer multifaceted and fascinating portrayals nonetheless.

A few notable mentions: Allan Arbus' unforgettable acting in "The Price" at the Laguna Playhouse; SCR's rollicking '30s staging of "Much Ado," featuring national treasure Douglas Sills; fabulous performances by Mare Winningham in "Side Man" and Hal Holbrook in "A Life in the Theatre," both at the Pasadena Playhouse; a Cadillac cast performing Sondheim's best songs in "Moving On" at the Laguna Playhouse.