YEAR'S BEST

Ain't Misbehavin'. Fats Waller was a man of foxily mischievous humor, a rollicking hand on the keyboard, and a ravenous appetite for Bach, booze and broads. Old soldiers may fade away, but this jubilant musical tribute proves that the manner and the music of a master jazzman do not.

Deathtrap. A dandy scalp tingler--literate, amusing, land-mined with scarifying surprises. John Wood is the chief perpetrator, and he juggles mirth and mayhem with superb adroitness.

"Da." As Eugene O'Neill knew so well, the dark jesting soul of the Irish is stalked by the ghosts of the past. "Da," which won the New York Drama Critics' and Tony awards, is about a capricious old party, saltily portrayed by Barnard Hughes, who refuses to be buried with his effects.

Galileo. Out of the confrontation between Galileo's celestial findings and the inflexible cosmology of the Inquisition, Bertolt Brecht fashioned a drama of high moral intelligence that probes the uneasy relation between science and power. Laurence Luckinbill's New York Actors-Theater gave the play a luminous revival.

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. For cleverness, tunefulness, choreographic ingenuity and the infectious appeal of its cast (especially Henderson Forsythe's tart-tongued sheriff), Whorehouse is the standout musical of '78.

Wings. In one of her rare American appearances, Constance Cummings gave one of the best performances of the year as the victim of a stroke, imprisoned in the Gulag of her own fragile body. Those who missed her in the play's too-short run at the Public Theater will have a second chance early next year, when Wings alights on Broadway.

Spring Awakening. In 1891 German Playwright Frank Wedekind psychographed an adolescent torn by the conflicting demands of natural desire and social propriety. In this revival, the Juilliard Theater Center revealed anew that April is still the cruelest month.

St. Mark's Gospel. Gospel means good news, and rarely has the word more compellingly been made flesh than in Alec McCowen's incomparable rendering of the King James text. The actor will play a return engagement in 1979. Mark it well.

Buried Child. Sam Shepard's saga of primal fears and lusts is shot through with sunbursts of surreal humor. As the dying patriarch, Richard Hamilton casts the blistered shadow of Lear on a blasted prairie heath.

Ballroom. While it beats, the heart defies time. Dappled by the shimmering lights of the Stardust Ballroom, the couples whom Director-Choreographer Michael Bennett sends swirling across its floor are cradled in hopes and dreams unmocked by middle age. An entrancing musical with a rare grace note of affection.

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