THE BEST THEATER OF 1993

1 Kiss of the Spider Woman. Better than the movie, bolder than the book, this brassy musical centers on a homosexual flirtation in an Argentine prison. Scenes of torture crosscut to film fantasies with hunks and feathers. Comebacks for star Chita Rivera, director Harold Prince, composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb, plus a stellar debut for Brent Carver in a show asserting there can be no freedom without sexual freedom.

2 Sunset Boulevard. Disappointing in London, where it played as a tragedy, Andrew Lloyd Webber's latest has been reborn in Los Angeles as a gothic comedy. Glenn Close dispels her chilly screen persona as a manipulative and shamelessly camp-melodramatic bygone movie queen, a legend in her own mind. John Napier's parvenu palazzo set is the grandest and wittiest of the British megamusical era.

3 Two Rooms. Lee Blessing's meditation on a Beirut hostage and his grieving spouse was the play of the year, its poetic pain matched by Laura Esterman's gutsy portrait of the wife and James Houghton's brilliantly imaginative staging at off-off- Broadway's tiny Signature Theater. The couple was separated in reality yet entwined in fantasy, often at the same moment.

4 Keely and Du. No play was more topical than pseudonymous Jane Martin's what-if about right- to-life extremists kidnapping a pregnant woman and holding her until it is too late to abort. The Actors Theatre of Louisville production, also seen at Hartford Stage, subtly traced the evolving bond between the streetwise captive (Julie Boyd) and a captor (a superb Anne Pitoniak).

5 Three Hotels. No longer merely promising, Jon Robin Baitz is now a major playwright. Off- Broadway, three wry, elegant and searing monologues by a husband and wife unveiled a sardonic saga of international corporate greed and the resulting wreckage of one executive's career, family and beliefs.

6 Antigone in New York. , Polish emigre Janusz Glowacki has carved a niche as the U.S. stage's foremost writer on the East European immigrant experience, and he may be the most incisive satirist as well. Washington's Arena Stage impeccably mounted this odd lark, derived from Greek myth, about two derelicts' attempt to bury a fallen comrade -- interspersed with caustic remarks about two soulless worlds: the KGB's Russia and Manhattan.

7 The Song of Jacob Zulu. Tug Yourgrau's play about the making of a black South African terrorist was raw but unforgettable in Eric Simonson's epic staging, brought to Broadway by Chicago's Steppenwolf troupe. K.Todd Freeman glowed in the title role, Zakes Mokae excelled as several elders, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the a cappella singing group, served gloriously as a modern Greek chorus.

8 Tommy. There's not much emotional depth or adolescent rebellion left in the granddaddy of rock operas as reworked by California's La Jolla Playhouse. But this Broadway hit has an arresting light show, superb storytelling by director-adaptor Des McAnuff and that great Pete Townshend score. Maybe it will finally win a place on Broadway for the propulsive sound of rock.

9 A Perfect Ganesh. Two aging matrons take a vacation in India that turns into a needed spiritual quest. Terrence McNally's surreal off-Broadway tragicomedy co-starred the Indian god of the title appearing in many guises and taking the audience on a similar journey of the soul.