New York ? An authoritarian nun. A paranoid young man and his willing helpmate. A delightfully interfering mother. A firebrand AIDS activist. A low-comedy Greek god. A serial killer and the mother of one of his victims.

They are among the characters who made New York theater worth watching in 2004. Here then, a top 10 list of the year’s best shows — and the performers — who brought them to life:

‘Doubt’

Just in time, John Patrick Shanley’s bracing drama came to the rescue of a disappointing fall season. The play stars the extraordinary Cherry Jones as Sister Aloysius, a no-nonsense principal of a Catholic grade school in the Bronx. The woman has her suspicions about Father Flynn and his interest in one of the school’s young male students, and she’s out to prove them. Therein lies the play. One thing about “Doubt” is certain: This Manhattan Theatre Club production undoubtedly will make its way from off-Broadway to Broadway sometime in 2005.

‘Bug’

Tracy Letts is a triple-threat kind of a guy — an actor, director and playwright. It was as a playwright, though, that Letts scored big with “Bug,” a vivid tale of trailer-trash debauchery. As two lost souls united in a seedy Oklahoma City motel room, Shannon Cochran and Michael Shannon were just about perfect in their portrayal of all-consuming paranoia.

‘Well’

Lisa Kron’s freewheeling and very funny memoir at the Public Theater dealt, at times, with the star’s health issues and how she coped. But it found its heart in the performance of Jayne Houdyshell, portraying Kron’s mother, a woman who couldn’t help having her say — whether it was wanted or not — about her daughter’s life.

‘Frozen’

Cherry Jones portrays Sister Aloysius in John Patrick Shanley's drama, Doubt, at the Manhattan Theatre Club. The play was scheduled to run through Jan. 30 at the off-Broadway theater in New York.

An unnerving drama by Bryony Lavery about a serial killer and the lives he destroyed, particularly the mother of a little girl he murdered. Brian F. O’Bryne, in a Tony-winning performance, was the murderer, and a moving Swoosie Kurtz the child’s brokenhearted mother who bravely put her life back together.

‘The Normal Heart’

Nearly 20 years after it was first seen off-Broadway, Larry Kramer’s call to arms about the AIDS crisis remains a potent piece of political theater. This Public Theater revival, which had too brief a run, was ignited by Raul Esparza as a committed protester — not unlike Kramer — who was unafraid to shout to get what he wanted.

‘The Frogs’

Nathan Lane played the Greek god, Dionysos, in this mixture of low comedy and high-minded satire, laced with a Stephen Sondheim score that included a half-dozen new songs. The plot was loosely — very loosely — based on the Aristophanes’ classic and concerns a quest to find a great writer to save the world. Will it be William Shakespeare or George Bernard Shaw? With Roger Bart, another accomplished clown, joining Lane on stage, “The Frogs” proved to be a show that could, without hesitation, be called a real musical comedy.

‘Twelve Angry Men’

Philip Bosco and Boyd Gaines head the cast of the current Roundabout Theatre Company production of Reginald Rose’s jury-room, life-and-death drama. The play may creak, but the production, directed by Scott Ellis, does not. It’s ensemble acting at its finest.

‘Gem of the Ocean’

August Wilson’s latest play in his monumental, decade-by-decade look at the black experience in the 20th century. The mystical, magical “Gem,” set in 1904, actually begins the cycle and features an amazing performance by Phylicia Rashad as the ancient Aunt Esther, a repository of black wisdom since the beginning of slavery. It was quite a year for Rashad, who in June won a Tony Award for playing the matriarchal Lena Younger in last season’s hit revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” that brought Sean Combs to Broadway.

‘A Number’

Caryl Churchill looks at cloning in this current New York Theatre Workshop production, and her play is an intriguing look at whether nature or nurture makes the man. In his first New York stage appearance in years, Sam Shepard is a believable, guilt-ridden father trying to make sense of his many look-alike offspring. But it’s the incredible Dallas Roberts, as three distinct versions of the son, who blazingly brings Churchill’s provocative work to life.

‘Barbara Cook’s Broadway’

The most satisfying musical-theater experience of the year. In her latest one-woman show, Cook, the great ingenue of Broadway’s golden age, saluted composers and lyricists who wrote at the same time she was building her career in the New York theater. At 77 and still in marvelous voice, she has earned the right to be called legendary.