This was the season in which the first new theaters opened in the Boston area since 1929, a pair of Tony-nominated shows began life in the Theater District, a talented group of local actors began a new Shakespeare troupe, and a local playwright had a new play produced by the Huntington Theatre Company.

All these developments gave rise to the hope that Boston was emerging as a first-class theater city. Yet none was revolutionary. In essence, the 2004-'05 season was a step in the right direction, but not a great leap forward.

There are two significant measurements for a theater community. One: Does it satisfy the needs of local theatergoers? Each season for the past seven or eight years the answer has been an increasingly definitive ''yes."

The bar is higher for the second measurement. What if theater lovers from outside the area came to town and said, ''Take me to some shows that make Boston theater special." That might not show Boston theater in as flattering a light.

But here's how I would answer the challenge:

I would take them to anything at the American Repertory Theatre, which has pursued a very strong aesthetic in the three years that Robert Woodruff, Rob Orchard, and Gideon Lester have been in charge.

I would take them to anything that artistic director Nicholas Martin is directing at the Huntington Theatre Company, particularly if it features one or two of the great actors he's brought to Boston, like Nathan Lane or Andrea Martin.

I would take them to anything written by the area's three most promising playwrights, Ronan Noone, Melinda Lopez, or John Kuntz.

I would take them to almost any musical that one of the midsize theaters is doing, particularly the Lyric or the New Repertory Theatre, or any musical with Leigh Barrett in the cast.

I would take them to the Sugan Theatre Company, particularly if the play is at the new Roberts Theatre at the Boston Center for the Arts. I'd also drive them to the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, now that the company's season begins earlier and lasts longer than the usual summer fare.

I would look for shows that reflected the area's excellent directing talent and improving but still patchy pool of actors.

The season now winding down showed off many of Boston's best at their best. Yet a faint whiff of disappointment clings to the year.

The ART and Zero Arrow Theatre
The one company that didn't disappoint was the American Repertory Theatre.

Perhaps the most notable thing about the ART under Woodruff, Orchard, and Lester is the consistency of experience. When you step into the Loeb Drama Center, you know you're in for a flight of imagination that you can't get anywhere else in New England.

This past season saw a procession of auteur directors such as Mark Wing-Davey (''The Provok'd Wife") and János Szász (''Desire Under the Elms") bring new life to plays that could have been dull period pieces. Even when a director misfires, as I think Neil Bartlett did with ''Dido, Queen of Carthage," ART productions are something to savor. (There are two to go -- ''Amerika," which is in previews and opens Wednesday at the Loeb; and ''Frogz" by the Imago Theatre from Portland, Ore., which has a preview Tuesday and opens Wednesday at Zero Arrow.)

The ART also did a better job this year with 20th- and 21st-century work, importing two tremendously moving pieces, Robert Le-page's ''The Far Side of the Moon" and Pamela Gien's ''The Syringa Tree," which returns July 15.

Even though it is a work in progress, the new theater, Zero Arrow, helped the company highlight contemporary work. Pieter-Dirk Uys's comedic polemic, ''Foreign Aids," ushered in Zero Arrow as part of the successful South Africa festival. Then Woodruff rearranged the Zero Arrow furniture for what was perhaps the highlight of a terrific season, Edward Bond's bracing tale of working-class desperation, ''Olly's Prison."

The company is bringing in more material than it has in the past, but if this season is any indication, the audiences have been well served by the mixture of home-grown work and imports.

The Huntington and the Wimberly
If the ART is a showcase for world-class directors, the Huntington has turned into a mecca for the excellent actors, directors, and designers whom Martin has attracted to Boston, such as Michael T. Weiss, the star of ''Burn This," and Alexander Dodge, the set designer of ''The Rivals."

Still, the best part of the Huntington season was the fall openers, when the Huntington renewed its longtime association with August Wilson on the main stage (''Gem of the Ocean") and then opened the doors to the new Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA with Lopez's ''Sonia Flew," a rich investigation of ethnicity and assimilation with references to the Cuban revolution and the war in Iraq. It also showed off the Wimberly Theatre, the larger and warmer of the two spaces, with smooth stagecraft, good sightlines, and a generally positive theatrical experience.

Except for the dreary ''36 Views," the rest of the Huntington main-stage season was pleasurable but tame. Even the edgier fare at the Wimberly after ''Sonia Flew" -- ''Culture Clash in AmeriCCa," ''Trumbo," and ''Laughing Wild" -- seemed pretty safe. Playing host to the African American Theater Festival was an example of good citizenship, but it didn't produce great theater.

And while the Wimberly is warm, the new BCA configuration is altogether too cold. Think of the Public Theater lobby in New York and how welcoming it is to theatergoers. The Calderwood is like a fortress, with a tiny outer lobby and a narrow inner one providing only a handful of seats. There is room to congregate outside, which is fine in June and September and useless the rest of the year.

Elsewhere at the Calderwood . . .
The new smaller theater, the Roberts, turned out to be a much less flexible space than advertised, at least this year, and SpeakEasy Stage Company had mixed results in its first two forays -- ''Company" and ''Johnny Guitar" -- before finishing strong with ''Take Me Out," a coproduction with Boston Theatre Works.

On the other hand, the Sugan's Carmel O'Reilly made great use of the space in Tom Murphy's ''The Sanctuary Lamp," in which it seemed you were practically looking down into a church where three lost souls had gathered, and the company finished the season with a superb production of Gregory Burke's ''Gagarin Way."

The polish of both productions combined with O'Reilly's determination to investigate the darker recesses of contemporary Celtic theater brought the Roberts alive and signaled that the Sugan has become an invaluable part of Boston's theater mosaic.

. . . and at the BCA
The hope was that as the Sugan and SpeakEasy moved into the newer spaces that the older theaters would bring other companies to the fore. Zeitgeist Stage Company had an excellent production of Joe Penhall's clever British play, ''Blue/Orange," but I didn't see anything else to attract those hypothetical out-of-towners. Tony Kushner's ''Homebody/Kabul" by Boston Theatre Works was a particular disappointment.

The Lyric and New Rep
The new home at the Watertown Arsenal wasn't ready for the New Rep, so producing artistic director Rick Lombardo had to spend the entire season in Newton. Even if every production wasn't a smash, it was an adventurous one for the company -- a world premiere of a Michael Weller play, ''Approaching Moomtaj"; ''Permanent Collection," which handled racial tensions with refreshing candor; and ''Into the Woods" finished the season with a solid Sondheim production. In between, Lombardo had two of the foremost American playwrights in tow, Doug Wright (''Quills") and Suzan-Lori Parks (a coproduction of ''Topdog/Underdog").

If the ART is a director's theater and the Huntington favors projects that team the right actor with the right director, then Lombardo has set up the New Rep as a theater that features great writers. He's hoping to do Tom Stoppard's ''The Invention of Love" and Tony Kushner's ''Caroline, or Change" but might lose ''Caroline" to the North Shore Music Theatre.

The Lyric has been moving in a similar direction. Spiro Veloudos, a great Sondheim director, made the characters of ''A Little Night Music" more human than in any production I've seen. It was magnificently sung and far and away the highlight of the year for musicals. The rest of the season did not particularly call out to me, though there were interesting productions of ''The Glass Menagerie" and ''Living Out."

Next year, though, is particularly ambitious. I can't wait to see what Veloudos does with ''Urinetown: The Musical" and he has recent plays by Neil LaBute (''Fat Pig") and Caryl Churchill (''A Number") on his ''maybe" list. Most significantly, the Lyric is doing Edward Albee's transgressive ''The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia" after the Huntington turned it down.

Downtown
Perhaps it was always too good to be true, but it looked as if Boston had returned to its roots as a tryout city with four pre-Broadway productions on the schedule of Broadway in Boston -- ''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," ''Sweet Charity," ''Lennon," and ''On the Record."

But Kathleen Turner was not a memorable Martha when ''Virginia Woolf" opened, Christina Applegate broke her foot and nearly died, ''Lennon" decided to skip Boston after negative reviews elsewhere, and ''On the Record" was a dismal Disney jukebox musical.

Then again, Bill Irwin was sensational as George in ''Virginia Woolf" and went on to win the Tony; Doug Wright's Pulitzer-winning ''I Am My Own Wife," with Jefferson Mays playing an East German transvestite who escaped both the Nazis and the Communists, came to the Wilbur; there was a memorable visit from Elaine Stritch; and, if you count the summer as part of the season, there was the grand reopening of the Opera House with a solid touring production of ''The Lion King."

Next season looks considerably more traditional, though, with Martin Short's one-man show the only pre-Broadway event slotted so far.

Here and there
One can make too much of developing a local scene. At its best -- Harold Pinter's ''The Homecoming" -- the Merrimack Repertory Theatre, which casts mostly from out of town, reminds you how refreshing it can be to not see the usual suspects.

Actually there was one familiar face, that of Allyn Burrows, who has been a distinguished member of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox for many years and, this past season, helped make the inaugural season of the Actors' Shakespeare Project a successful one.

After strong productions of ''Richard III" at the Old South Meeting House and ''Measure for Measure" at the Jorge Hernandez Cultural Center, the company dropped the ball with ''Julius Caesar." But considering how difficult it has been for local small and midsize companies to do Shakespeare well, two out of three isn't bad for starters.

Into the future
How does Boston build on its strengths and minimize its weaknesses? It needs to sell itself as a place where actors can work with world-class directors like Woodruff and Martin as well as talented artistic directors elsewhere at the other theaters. With more depth in the acting pool, more writers would want to see their plays developed here.

Beyond that, a wish list:

With a less impressive Broadway in Boston schedule for next year, the door is open for the Wang Center for the Performing Arts to look for coproducing ventures with other entities such as those that brought ''Medea," ''As You Like It," and ''Playboy of the Western World" to town.

The obvious partner is the Huntington, but there should be ways to collaborate with the ART, Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts, or Brooklyn Academy of Music, to name a few.

The ART and Huntington brought a number of productions from outside Boston to their new theaters, but there still needs to be a place for successful shows such as ''A Little Night Music" or ''Into the Woods" to transfer and for plays and musicals from the Berkshires or Cape to come to town.

Someone needs to develop an aesthetic and a space that, like the Public in New York, is welcoming to younger, more diverse audiences. Steven Maler does a good job in that regard with the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company's annual free production.

Finally, don't be provincial. Lombardo has the right idea at the New Rep. If you don't have the right actors here, get out of town. Rather than settle for a mediocre production by getting the best people you can locally, just cast the best people you can afford. Actors can learn from new blood and audiences will see the kinds of productions that make them come back for more.

You don't have to give the people what they want, but you do have to get them to come back for more.

Ed Siegel can be reached at siegel@globe.com.