The Year's Ten Best

LIFE CLASS. In the drab, chilly setting of a mingy government-sponsored art class, British Playwright David Storey sounds a muted dirge for a dying civilization.

WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? An admirable revival, with Colleen Dewhurst and Ben Gazzara, verifies that after 14 years this marital Walpurgisnacht has become part of the permanent canon of U.S. drama.

STREAMERS. Playwright David Rabe casts a compassionate eye on the combat zone of the psyche in this powerful finale to his Viet Nam trilogy.

THREEPENNY OPERA. A stylistically sardonic revival of the Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill masterpiece.

FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE/WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF. Nobody knows the trouble black girls have seen, but everyone can learn something about it from this poignant, gripping, irate and beautiful theater work.

CALIFORNIA SUITE. Neil Simon in top comic form, and who, pray who, can top that?

DUCK VARIATIONS and SEXUAL PERVERSITY IN CHICAGO. This double bill of one-acters by a fresh young playwright, David Mamet, 28, bubbles with absurdist humor and shows how people use word masks to shield their true feelings.

NO MAN'S LAND. Harold Pinter, the sphinx of modern drama, will not yield up his mystery, but Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud bountifully divulge a half-century apiece of the secrets of great acting.

COMEDIANS. This funny and caustic play about six British workingmen striving to become stand-up comics marks an auspicious Broadway debut for Playwright Trevor Griffiths.

SLY FOX. An irrepressible romp filtered through Ben Jonson's Volpone with hilarious contemporary precision. George C. Scott, Bob Dishy and Jack Gilford are three roguish musketeers of avarice and mirth.

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