Who would have imagined Pittsburgh would have a year when the two most remarkable stage productions were by Samuel Beckett? But first, a few thoughts on the growth in breadth and depth that has been under way in Pittsburgh theater for more than a decade.

In 2006, we gained the carefully restored New Hazlett Theater and broke symbolic ground for the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, while the Cultural Trust's Cabaret Theater and East Liberty's Kelly-Strayhorn Theater continued to increase their impact. And now, there's the prospect of new entertainment venues in the projected North Shore slots parlor.

Even so, Pittsburgh theater continued to ebb and swirl into new neighborhoods and colonize unexpected venues. It's no longer just Quantum Theatre that seeks out such places: so do barebones productions, Thank You Felix, Pittsburgh Shakespeare in the Park and Steve Pellegrino's Drywall adventures. CMU even took over an Uptown storefront for Brecht -- you just can't keep theater people in a regular theater after they've seen the big city.

Every year a few new companies appear, some to persist, some not. The 2006 batch includes Klasikos, Pandora's Box, Poet's Corner and Words Words Words. And cabaret continued to grow, with Stephanie Riso's Cabaret Pittsburgh bringing in names like Mary Cleere Haran and the Callaway sisters.

Now, among resident professional companies, the pecking order goes something like this: Pittsburgh Public, Pittsburgh CLO, City, Pittsburgh Irish & Classical, Quantum, Playhouse Rep, Pittsburgh Musical Theater and Jewish Theater of Pittsburgh, with St. Vincent and Mountain Playhouse out on the periphery. But Open Stage, Unseam'd Shakespeare, Prime Stage, barebones productions, Pittsburgh Playwrights, Bricolage, Kuntu Rep, Thank You Felix, New Horizon, Little Lake and Saints & Poets also have professional ambitions, and there are doubtless others.

It's clear that the theater of the year is PICT. Of its six productions (counting "Endgame" and BeckettFest as separate), three rank in our top 25, and the other three ("School for Scandal," "Boston Marriage" and "The Shaughraun") could well have, too.

In addition, PNC Broadway Across America, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, Pittsburgh International Children's Theatre and the Warhol Museum regularly import theater from out of town.

From all these plus many semi-pro, amateur, community and university productions, the Post-Gazette last year reviewed about 170 shows. Today's business is to survey all this to choose the top 10 theater events of 2006, plus a few runners-up.

For these lists, everything that played here is eligible, whether touring or local. Sunday, we'll announce the PG Performer of the Year and celebrate other individual achievements -- for those lists, only Pittsburgh productions are considered.

Now back to Beckett.

1. 'ENDGAME' AND BECKETTFEST
Samuel Beckett, Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre
This dark but bracing parable of mankind at the end of its rope starred Larry John Meyers as Hamm, a magnificent old tyrant, rumbling and querulous, tended to by Simon Bradbury's Clov, a pugnacious wise fool. It was absorbing intellectual vaudeville with comic surfaces and tragic depths. And it was just one part of BeckettFest, PICT's huge undertaking marking the master's 100th birthday with full stagings or readings of all 19 of his plays except "Waiting for Godot." The result demonstrated Beckett's pursuit of both comedy and tragedy to the point where you can't tell them apart.

2. 'WAITING FOR GODOT'
Samuel Beckett, Gate Theatre of Dublin and Pittsburgh Cultural Trust
Once again, the Cultural Trust gave us an international treat. Beckett's better-known, seminal comedy of hopefulness surviving amid entropy and despair received a nuanced and natural performance from a company that has had it in repertory for years, returning the text to its robust and idiosyncratic Irish roots.

3. 'GEM OF THE OCEAN'
August Wilson, Pittsburgh Public Theater
The 20th century arrives with a thundering knock on the door of 1839 Wylie Ave., home of Aunt Ester, the presiding spirit of Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle of 10 plays set in each decade of the 20th century. The struggle for the human rights of black Americans has moved from the agricultural south to the industrial north, and the surviving elders must find younger successors to carry it on.

4. 'RAGTIME'
Stephen Flaherty, Lynn Ahrens And Terrence McNally, Point Park University
A flood of melody drenches an epic musical interweaving stories about WASPS, blacks and Jews in the first decade of 20th century America, directed by Michael Rupert and his Point Park team and told with solid acting and soaring voices by a cast of more than 40.

5. 'THE GREY ZONE'
Tim Blake Nelson, barebones productions
In the belly of the century's most horrific beast, the Nazi death machine, a cadre of determined Hungarian Jews must decide where to draw the line between survival and resistance. The barebones production in a raw Downtown space was a triumph of spare intensity.

6. 'AFTER MRS. ROCHESTER'
Polly Teale, Quantum Theatre
Quantum's "found" space was the original Carnegie Music Hall in Braddock, its aged and faded grandeur framing a complex, multi-layered biography of British writer Jean Rhys and her mental demons, including the mad woman in the attic of "Jane Eyre."

7. 'MONTY PYTHON'S SPAMALOT'
Eric Idle, et al, PNC Broadway and Pittsburgh CLO
Arthurian myth according to Monty Python was given a Las Vegas makeover (including decorative showgirls) a la Mel Brooks by Eric Idle and director Mike Nichols. The tour preserved the inspired silliness, parody and physical humor of the Broadway original.

8. 'OPUS'
Michael Hollinger, City Theatre
Hollinger returned for his third premiere at City, a drama about the inner workings, musical and personal, of an all-male string quartet forced to hire a new member, a woman, with an important performance in the offing. The ensemble acting of the company matched the musical interdependence of their characters.

9. 'NATHAN THE WISE'
G.E. Lessing, Carnegie Mellon
This 18th-century play has much to teach about peaceful coexistence among warring Jews, Christians and Muslims. The CMU cast and creative staff created a grand and colorful parable, as beautiful to the eye as satisfying to the heart and mind.

10. 'FORBIDDEN BROADWAY'
Gerard Alessandrini, CLO Cabaret
After the cozy nostalgia of "Forever Plaid," the CLO Cabaret switched to the edgier comedy of show biz parody. Not only did they find a skilled and inventive cast right in Pittsburgh, they proved this supposedly "in" humor could find a responsive Pittsburgh audience.

Here are 15 more memorable theater evenings:

11. "The Pillowman," PICT.

12. "El Paso Blue," Quantum.

13. "Oedipus the King," Public.

14. "Contact," Point Park.

15. "August in February," Cultural Trust and Pittsburgh Playwrights.

16. "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," CLO.

17. "Wicked," PNC Broadway.

18. "Chicks with D****," Bricolage.

19. "The Birthday Party," Playhouse Rep.

20. "The Piano Lesson," Pittsburgh Playwrights.

21. "22 Drywall Macbeth," aka, "Macbeth: The House Tour," Stephen Pellegrino.

22. "Fool for Love," Thank You Felix.

23. "Seven Guitars," Kuntu Rep.

24. "American Buffalo," Playhouse Rep.

25. "Pittsburgh: The Opera," Squonk Opera.