While musicals certainly seem to dominate Broadway box offices, we've seen some incredible plays that will certainly go down as some of the best works of our time.

These plays serve as the very best examples of what drama should be. Their creativity, depth, and characters have set a new standard for playwrights for generations to come. With comments by those who reviewed their productions, here are our updated picks for the Best Plays of the 21st Century...so far.

25. Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman

Metamorphoses is perfect theatrical storytelling that never stumbles or strikes a false note. Zimmerman's approach is painterly and literary but also acrobatically physical, and the ten-member cast bring it to life, combining athletic movement with beautifully spoken narration. - Albert Williams / Chicago Reader

24. Venus in Fur by David Ives

Nina Arianda and Hugh Dancy in Venus in Fur (© Joan Marcus)

To most minds. Ives also has written a very beguiling 100-minute drama that manages to titillate and entertain while conveying enough intellectual content that a subscriber in the third row does not feel like this has been a trip to the Kitty Kat Lounge in South Bend, Ind. (the subject of another, different play I saw this past weekend). This is a superb piece of commercial writing. - Chris Jones / Chicago Tribune

23. Sweat by Lynn Nottage

In “Sweat,” Lynn Nottage goes where few playwrights have dared to go — into the heart of working-class America. Her insightfully observed characters all went to the same schools, work at the same factory, drink at the same bar, and are going to hell in the same handbasket. - Marilyn Stasio / Variety

22. The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl

Matilde (Ursula Cataan, center) and Lane (Patricia Hodges, right) discuss the day's events in the Cleveland Play House production of The Clean House.

The key to its success is the fullness with which Ms. Ruhl’s sees her characters, who all possess complicated interior lives that begin to impinge upon one another in mysterious ways as their fates become intertwined. “Who are they?” a startled Matilde asks, entering Lane’s pristine living room unexpectedly and seeing an unknown couple embracing. “My husband and the woman he loves,” Lane responds coolly. “Don’t worry. It’s only my imagination.” - Charles Isherwood / New York Times

21. God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza

Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis, Jeff Daniels (with a bottle of rum) and James Gandolfini in "God of Carnage" on Broadway in 2009.

Even if Reza's moral is mechanically delivered, there's something theatrically bracing about the sight of grown-ups throwing off their civilized constraints. The play's insights hardly constitute breaking news, but what great fun it is watching these characters tear into one another's self-regard. - Charles McNulty / Los Angeles Times

20. War Horse by Nick Stafford

American actor Seth Numrich as Albert, with his horse Joey, in the New York production of 'War Horse' Photo: Credit photo: ©Paul Kolnik

This is much more than a puppet show, however. Nick Stafford's powerful adaptation of Morpurgo's novel, which wisely ditches Joey's narrative and tells the story through dialogue among the human characters, brilliantly captures not only the mysterious and intense relationship that can exist between humans and animals, but also the dreadful waste and terror of the Great War. - Charles Spencer / The Daily Telegraph

19. Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz

Marela (Amanda Morish) gets to know lector Juan Julian (Martin J. Rodriguez) in the Teatro Nagual production of "Anna in the Tropics.

Cruz's story is sound, highlighting the transformative powers of literature on the human mind and soul and the unstoppable nature of progress in both people and business. - Matthew Murray / Talkin' Broadway

18. Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar

While Disgraced has its schematic aspects, the writing effectively observes the insidious tensions that ripple through both personal and professional relationships in post-9/11 America. The play is particularly incisive in its commentary on the volatility of certain words and talking points, rendering them unsafe in any conversation. Akhtar also provides a thoughtful examination of how denial and self-loathing can distort an individual’s sense of cultural identity. - David Rooney / The Hollywood Reporter

17. The Humans by Stephen Karam

The formula for a family-reunion play goes like this: Multiple generations of a clan get together for a holiday, air their dirty laundry at dinner, start fighting over dessert and at the end of the day are weary of battle. Stephen Karam’s warm-hearted play “The Humans ” follows the formula, but only to the point of exposing everybody’s secrets. Instead of erupting in bitter hatred, Karam’s characters respond to these revelations with deep love. - Marilyn Stasio / Variety

16. Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire

A perceptive and poignant study in the day-to-day aches of bereavement: problems with personal intimacy, the uneasy friends who don’t call, the emptiness in a house packed with reminders. … Heartbreaking in its theme and details, ‘Rabbit Hole’ is a beautifully crafted work of great sensitivity. — Michael Sommers / Star-Ledger

15. Take Me Out by Richard Greenberg

Daniel Sunjata (Left) and the cast of Take Me Out (Photo © Joan Marcus)

Take Me Out eventually builds to a dramatic and tragic denouement. It asks questions about the whole of American society and not just the world of baseball. This is baseball as a metaphor for life. - Philip Fisher / British Theatre Guide

14. Red by John Logan

Eddie Redmayne, left, as an artist's assistant, and Alfred Molina as Mark Rothko in “Red.” Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Best of all is a sequence when Rothko and his helpmate prime a blank canvas by creating a base, plum-coloured layer. As the two men enthusiastically splash on the paint, to the sound of a Gluck aria on the studio phonograph, we get to share the physical exhilaration of initiating a piece of art. That moment compensates for Logan's occasional overemphasis on Rothko's vision of art as a suffering-laden vocation, and for the hero's apparent indifference to the world beyond the studio: he shows no interest in Ken as a person, and even regards the revelation that his parents were murdered as a creative stimulus. But what emerges is something rare in modern drama: a totally convincing portrait of the artist as a working visionary. - Michael Billington / The Guardian

13. Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by Christopher Durang

For knee-slappers you have funny-sexy, funny-psychological, funny-psychic, funny-Chekhovian boredom and funny-erudite. There is even a play within a play. All this and more is crowned at the end in a brilliant ranting monologue by Vanya, delivered with comedic punch and passion by Jacobs, on the demise of wholesome values in the early 21st century.

Durang drops in a profundity now and then, such as: “True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body: nourishment and refreshment.” - Barbara Rose Shuler / Monterey Herald

12. The Coast of Utopia by Tom Stoppard

Brian F. O’Byrne, seated, as Alexander Herzen, in a scene from “Salvage,” the third part of Tom Stoppard’s trilogy, “The Coast of Utopia.” Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Utopia is like a stage version of a nineteenth-century novel, leisurely, historically sweeping, idealistic, overloaded with characters who talk by the paragraph rather than in grunts and expletives. Like a traditional Russian novel, Utopia drags in places, but its cumulative effect is wonderful. - Richard Hornby / The Hudson Review

11. Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks

Mos Def and Jeffrey Wright in Topdog/Underdog (Photo: Michal Daniel)

It’s rich in both metaphor and foreshadowing as the playwright shows the brothers grappling with their distrust of each other, their desire for supremacy, their poverty, their darker natures and the pain of their past - Kelly Clawson / Ohio.com

10. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Simon Stephens

There are plays that entertain, plays that illuminate, and plays that bring us to an exalted new place. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time does all three. This is exhilarating, dynamic theatre which triumphantly expands the boundaries of theatricality. - Steven Suskin / Huffington Post

9. The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh

The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh with David Tennant,Jim Broadbent opens at the Cottesloe Theatre on 13/11/03 CREDIT Geraint Lewis

When a story is good, it's irresistible: How easy is it even for adults to turn up their noses at a children's tale if it's charmingly written and engagingly presented? And don't children love to be scared? And don't many people count on just about anything new and different to give them the satisfaction that coarsely manufactured, run-of-the-mill entertainment so seldom provides? The Pillowman, addresses not only the terrifying and redemptive power of stories and the hold they can exert on us, but spins a spellbinding yarn of its own along the way. - Matthew Murray / Talkin' Broadway

8. The History Boys by Alan Bennett

The History Boys at the Lyttelton Theatre, 2004 Photo: Alastair Muir

The History Boys are eight pupils, with varying accents, at a minor public school in the North. They form an Oxbridge Scholarship class of the 1980s and the play follows their education as well as their sexual and mental awakenings as they are groomed by two very different teachers.

This is more than a simple coming of age drama. It is also an allegory on Thatcherite values, as culture and knowledge for its own sake give way to the spin and results-driven society that we see today. - Philip Fisher / British Theatre Guide

7. Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris

From left: Damon Gupton, Annie Parisse, Crystal A. Dickinson and Jeremy Shamos. Photo: Nathan Johnson

Taking in a half-century of sociodynamic shifts with a mischievous wink, Norris considers how much has changed pre- and post-political correctness. Even more pertinently, he exposes how much our attitudes toward race remain mired in a communication impasse. Well-meaning liberalism may have yielded surface advancements, but the play tartly shows that patronizing insensitivity is alive and well. - David Rooney / The Hollywood Reporter

6. Proof by David Auburn

Mary-Louise Parker and Ben Shenkman in the Manhattan Theater Club's 2000 production of "Proof."

Nearly every scene is based on a piece of information cunningly withheld until the last moment; and unlike playwrights who take such strategic games in ponderous earnest, Auburn perceives their essential playfulness, as do his characters, who toy with each other much as he toys with them and with us. It's impossible to resent manipulation that's carried on in such a generous spirit; by its uninsistent acceptance of its own shallowness, it opens out into a vision of reality. - Michael Feingold / The Village Voice

5. The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? by Edward Albee

Goodman Theatre's production of Edward Albee's The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?. Staged by Goodman Artistic Director Robert Falls, The Goat or, Who is Sylvia? was part of the 2003/04 season.

What is perhaps Edward Albee's most unlikely play, “The Goat Or, Who Is Sylvia?” is certainly one of his very best. What starts out as a sort of lewd joke concerning one man's ill-fated love affair with a barnyard animal unfolds into a tragedy of Greek proportions, complete with a shocking denouement all the more devastating for its sheer improbability. - F. Kathleen Foley / The Los Angeles Times

4. Indecent by Paula Vogel

Adina Verson and Katrina Lenk in Indecent Carol Rosegg

It seems appropriate to use a German expression – gesamtkunstwerk – for Indecent. It means a work of art encompassing many arts: drama, music, poetry, dance. It isn’t understating to call this fantastic play a work of all-encompassing art. It takes us a very long distance in just an hour and 40 minutes. It’s an exhilarating ride you’ll never forget. - Jeremy Gerard / Deadline

3. Doubt, A Parable by John Patrick Shanley

Rod Brogan and Lucy Martin in the production of Doubt at Syracuse Stage

A play this thoughtful, this well-crafted, this passionate is hard to ignore and even harder to resist. Yes, it addresses issues of great meaning to many: faith, truthfulness, determination to do what's right at any cost. But those are incidental concerns. The play's specific story - about a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, where a priest might be carrying on an inappropriate relationship with the school's lone black student - is also beside the point. The real drama comes from how you, like the characters, deal with a situation that can't be fully understood because it cannot be interpreted in only one way.

But what's the truth? We don't know. We can't know. In the end, it doesn't matter. Dramatically, that ambiguity is key. And that's the beauty of Doubt. - Matthew Murrary / Talkin' Broadway

2. Ruined by Lynn Nottage

Nottage's focus is very precise: she deals with a bar-cum-brothel in a small Congolese mining town on the edge of the rainforest. The bar's presiding spirit is Mama Nadi who believes, like Brecht's Mother Courage, that as long as business is good and she avoids taking sides, she can survive the war. But, in the course of the action, head and heart come into conflict.

It's not merely a good play. It jolts our conscience about a forgotten conflict. One emerges both shaken and stirred. - Michael Billington / The Guardian

1. August: Osage County by Tracey Letts

The cast of Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize-winning play August: Osage County, directed by Sam Gold, at The Old Globe May 7 - June 12, 2011. Photo by Henry DiRocco.

Alcoholism, drug addiction, adultery, sexual misbehavior: The list of pathologies afflicting one or another of the Weston family is seemingly endless, and in some ways wearily familiar. But Mr. Letts’s antic recombination of soapy staples is so popartfully orchestrated that you never see the next curveball coming, and the play is so quotably funny I’d have a hard time winnowing favorite lines to a dozen. (Much of the “Greatest Generation” speech would definitely make the list.) - Charles Isherwood / New York Times

The Top 25 Plays of the 21st Century So Far