From old classics to modern ones, one-person shows to Shakespeare, the Greeks to Kushner, there was something for everybody onstage this year. Here are my 2005 favorites.

La Jolla Playhouse’s triumphant return-from-Broadway engagement of Jefferson Mays’ stunning I am My Own Wife (which began here as a Page-to-Stage workshop) rightly had audiences on their feet.

Steven Fales played twice at Diversionary with his meditation on being gay and Mormon in Confessions of a Mormon Boy.

The dating game was explored hilariously for both genders – by DeAnna Driscoll in Theresa Rebeck’s Bad Dates at the Rep and by Robert Dubac in his The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron? at The Theatre in Old Town.

La Jolla Playhouse’s Page-to-Stage Zhivago was a lovely show that will have a full run next season. At The Theatre in Old Town, Too Old for the Chorus, But Not Too Old to be a Star connected with aging Baby Boomers and others who will soon share the joys of reading glasses, gray hair and glucosamine.

At the Rep, Trey Anthony’s smash hit from Toronto da KINK in My Hair gave us the word (and music) on the importance of hair in black women’s lives.

And the goofy, clever and outrageous Dog Act by the upstart Moxie Theatre kept audiences laughing.

Any “best drama” list has to include Cygnet’s outstanding Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Little Foxes. Both gave us theater at its finest.

Lamb’s Players also had a pair of terrific shows: The Winslow Boy and Metamorphoses (the latter necessitating a deep pool onstage). At 6th @ Penn Theatre, George Flint’s Renaissance Theatre Company brought us a stunning production of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.

Not to be forgotten are these fine shows: 6th @ Penn’s Antigone, Mo’olelo’s Remains and A Piece of My Heart, Fritz’s Vigil and Lamb’s Players’ thought-provoking Thunder at Dawn.

Diversionary’s Valhalla kept the audience in stitches, as did Moxie Theatre’s Dog Act, also presented at Diversionary. Theatergoers d’un certain âge had a wonderful time reminiscing about ’60s political satirist Tom Lehrer in Tomfoolery, directed by George Flint and co-produced by Renaissance and North Coast Repertory theaters. And the return of last year’s smash hit Pageant kept us laughing, this time at Cygnet.

In the Class-By-Itself category were a road show – the visual knockout The Lion King – and the Broadway-bound Chita Rivera: A Dancer’s Life, starring the irrepressible dancing diva.

Heading the list of best actors is Jefferson Mays, whose portrayal of the real-life Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (and 39 other characters) was a wonder to behold. On a more physical level, Richard Baird commanded the stage in his portrayals of Shylock (in Poorplayers’ production of The Merchant of Venice) and Mercutio (in North Coast Rep’s production of Romeo and Juliet).

Daren Scott and Joshua Everett Johnson gave us memorable performances in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, and Ron Choularton and Pat DiMeo were terrific in Vigil.

Francis Gercke and Jessica John gave two of the many terrific performances as Brick and Maggie in Cygnet’s fabulous Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Rosina Reynolds made the most of a role to die for, as the deliciously wicked Regina in Lillian Hellman’s modern classic The Little Foxes, also at Cygnet. And Jennifer Eve Kraus gave us a moving Antigone at 6th @ Penn.

Lots of winners here: Cygnet’s two blockbusters Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Little Foxes, New Village Arts Theatre’s Waverly Gallery, and Lamb’s Players’ Metamorphoses and The Winslow Boy all impressed for overall quality.

My 2005 awards go to Theatre de la Jeune Lune’s spectacular, almost monochromatic production of The Miser at La Jolla Playhouse, UCSD Theatre’s beautiful student production Blood Wedding and Cygnet Theatre’s fabulous The Little Foxes (with a particularly outstanding set designed by Cygnet’s artistic director Sean Murray).

Speaking of Set Design, wizard Marty Burnett also gets a nod for two productions: the stunning glass-and-steel set for North Coast Rep’s The Smell of the Kill and for the homier mountain cabin set of Moonlight’s On Golden Pond.

Ion Theatre gets applause for Most Creative Use of Space in its room-to-room production of Marat/Sade, in which the audience begins outside, walks through a warm-up room which could pass for part of an asylum, and finally ends up in the room where the play takes place.

In the Best Plays (Almost) Nobody Saw division are the Rep’s Fellowship, a hilarious parody of Lord of the Rings, and the Rep’s staged reading of Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Here’s hoping the Fo gets a full production sometime soon.

The Most Unusual Production award goes to UCSD Theatre for its outdoor staging of the Chinese play Bus Stop, in which a bus plays a major role.

And finally, speaking of theaters, a plea to landlords with empty space: Several local theater groups are in need of homes. Three that come to mind offhand are Moxie, Mo’olelo and Sledgehammer (which last just lost St. Cecilia’s Playhouse to the wrecking ball). If you have space or know someone who does, give one of these fine groups a call. We need all the theater we can get.