In your face and on the mark

Funny -- while many of my favorite movies of 2005 were small (''Junebug"), quiet (''Capote"), or defiantly old-fashioned (''Walk the Line"), my taste in live entertainment went in a very different direction.

It's the visceral stuff that wouldn't let me go. Not the genteel, well-made play or the cozy concert, but events that were aggressive and discomfiting, brassy and in your face.

Luckily there was plenty of nervy work to discover onstage, in the concert hall, and at galleries. (And, yes, at the movies, too; watch ''Head-On" for proof positive.) Here's what I expect to still remember even a year from now:

1. ''Topdog/Underdog," New Repertory Theatre

The big news for New Rep was the move to a bigger space in Watertown. What may be lost, though, is the kind of brutal immediacy provided by this stunning production of Suzan-Lori Parks's Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Under Kent Gash's direction, the battling brothers Lincoln and Booth literally rattled the cage in which their tragicomic story unfolded. We watched riveted, and left spent.

2. Chunky Move, Jacob's Pillow Dance

The revolving stage sounded like a gimmick, but this Australian company's ''Tense Dave" turned out to be clever, scary, witty, and profound. Slithering from room to room, the gangly Dave became entangled in the erotic fantasies and violent dreams of his friends and neighbors. A physical tour-de-force, perfectly scaled at just an hour.

3. ''Desire Under the Elms," American Repertory Theatre

Director Janos Szasz has proven to be the most exciting visiting director on the ART's roster, and this aggressive reimagining of Eugene O'Neill's hoary melodrama ranked with earlier takes on ''Marat/Sade," ''Mother Courage," and ''Uncle Vanya." An aging patriarch, his feral young wife, and his son spar on a blasted landscape of gravel and rocks. Actress Amelia Campbell wore knee pads, and for good reason; this was a bruising night for cast and audience both.

4. ''Follies," Barrington Stage Company

Nothing revolutionary, except lucid staging, just enough spangles, and the talent onstage to bring home ''I'm Still Here," ''Broadway Baby," and other Stephen Sondheim classics. This time around, though, it was the Act 1 closer that reverberated: Jeff McCarthy and Kim Crosby in a truly searing version of ''Too Many Mornings."

5. ''The Kvetching Continues" with Jackie Hoffman, Boston Center for the Arts

The funniest night out I had all year, thanks to the Theatre Offensive, who brought in this priceless New York sourpuss for an evening of nonstop invective in story and song. A ''Hairspray" veteran whose mother still asks whether everyone on Broadway gets Monday nights off, Hoffman took aim at tourists, castmates, and those silly Abe Rybeck earrings. So good that I passed up the chance to see her latest show in New York, figuring, why spoil a perfect memory?

6. ''Christian Jankowski: Everything Fell Together," MIT List Visual Arts Center

The funniest afternoon I had out all year, courtesy of Jankowski, a German video artist. The karaoke room is a blast, and the piece in which a Texas evangelist makes a compelling case for conceptual art is a wonderful surprise. But it's ''The Matrix Effect," in which gussied-up kids act out an art-world cocktail gathering, that simply must not be missed. (Runs through Dec. 31).

7. The Mountain Goats at the Museum of Fine Arts

Sometimes you want to hear a favorite band in a seat in a quiet auditorium. And thanks to Dan Hirsch's music programming at the MFA, now you can. John Darnielle, a.k.a. the Mountain Goats, was powerful last year competing with the nightly racket at the Middle East, but new songs, like ''Lion's Teeth" off ''The Sunset Tree" CD, were even more powerful in the low-key setting. Darnielle himself lost nothing in translation. His voice ached gracefully, and his geeky storytelling was that much more affecting.

8. ''The Winter's Tale" at Brooklyn Academy of Music; ''King Lear," Actors' Shakespeare Project; ''Hamlet," Commonwealth Shakespeare Company

A local presenter must get Edward Hall's Propeller company to Boston, and soon. The all-male troupe's heart-rending ''Winter's Tale" found the emotional core of this troubling Shakespeare play by focusing on the impact of parental jealousy on the children. Speaking of heart-rending, the sight of a half-clothed Alvin Epstein, begging for understanding as King Lear, marked the full arrival of the Actors' Shakespeare Project as a local stage force. In a very different mode, actor Jeffrey Donovan grew from petulant schoolboy to star in this summer's ''Hamlet," the most fully realized Commonwealth Shakespeare production so far.

9 . Alarm Will Sound at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

The Gardner's hushed Tapestry Room came alive with the kaleidoscopic sounds of this 20-piece new music ensemble performing compositions by John Adams. Excerpts from the earnest oratorio ''I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky" were unexpectedly poignant, and the 1992 Chamber Symphony was a goofily rockin' good time. Kudos to the museum for partnering with Columbia University's Miller Theatre on this Composer's Portrait series.

10. Dee Dee Bridgewater at Scullers Jazz Club

No performer delivers a night of concentrated joy like Bridgewater, who turned a Scullers late show into a jazz hootenanny with ''Girl Talk," a saucy reminiscence that blew up into a singing-rapping-scatting extended jam.

And on screens of all sizes: ''Walk the Line," ''Kung Fu Hustle," ''Junebug," ''My Summer of Love," ''Brokeback Mountain," ''Brothers," ''Capote," ''Memories of Murder," ''Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance," ''War of the Worlds," ''Head-On," ''Mysterious Skin," ''Lost," ''Entourage," ''Project Runway," ''The Comeback," ''State of Play," ''Slings & Arrows," the commentary track on the ''Sideways" DVD.

Globe arts editor Scott Heller can be reached at sheller@globe.com