The Book of Mormon really is important:

Every year yields at least one hit Broadway musical, a show that's a money-making hit in New York: Jersey Boys, Wicked, The Addams Family. But occasionally a musical will cross that midtown Manhattan base into the social consciousness. It changes the creative direction of theatre, movies, and television. Kids begin singing its songs at auditions for their high school play. Dads in Iowa say things like, "Have you heard of this show called...?"

Book of Mormon is one of those shows. Its button-pushing content manages to get people talking while still respectfully making a point about the issues in hand (in this case, faith and tolerance). Not only that, but the show's music is of the finest quality, sending-up Gershwin, Rodgers, and Hammerstein as brilliantly as it pays homage to those classic Broadway composers. The just-announced national tour will likely encounter controversy&mash;and sold out box offices—at each city stop, and it's only a matter of time until the show is mentioned in the same breath as other modern musical theatre gamechangers. On Sunday, Book of Mormon will highlight its soaring anthem "I Believe," an anthem that not only encapsulates the overarching message of the show, but will surely put Tony viewers' faith in Broadway again.

And so is The Normal Heart:

If there's one play expected expected to sweep most of the awards on Sunday, it's the timely, resonant, and extremely powerful The Normal Heart. It's a revival of playwright and LGBT rights activist Larry Kramer's "scorching" 1985 drama, "an indictment of a world unwilling to confront the epidemic that would come to be known as AIDS" according to Ben Brantley in the New York Times that "blasts you like an open, overstoked furnace."

As the anniversary of the AIDS epidemic dawns, the fierce anger, frustration, and desperation that the play—about an activist and a doctor on a crusade to have this "gay disease" taken seriously—carried 26 years ago has evolved into a gutting stab in the heart today. Joe Mantello and Ellen Barkin are mesmerizing as the driving forces of the play; The Big C's John Benjamin Hickey, Pushing Daisies's Lee Pace, and The Big Bang Theory melt the audiences as the supporting players. Produced at any time, anywhere, The Normal Heart is an imperative docu-drama that incites outrage and, maybe, change with its content. But with this cast, this staging, and this poignant occasion in the history of battling the disease—it's sociopolitical and culture landscape-altering theatre.

And War Horse, too:

It's not very often that a Tony-nominated play is adapted into a Steven Spielberg-directed, big-budget film the same year it premieres on Broadway, but that's precisely what's happening with War Horse. The play is ostensibly a love story, about a young British boy in World War I and the horse he is inextricably bonded to. When the horse is sold into war service, the boy sets on a cross-country trek to be reunited with his friend. It's a plot that quite obviously translates into one of Spielberg's sweeping epics. But why is the story on stage so magical that it sells out each night, spawned a national tour, and extended its limited run indefinitely? Puppetry.

Not since The Lion King has puppetry been used on stage in such a revolutionary way. Made primarily of cane and plywood, it take three-actor teams to control the massive creatures. The fluidity of the movement, the astonishing balance reached between strength and grace, and the emotional heft given to what amounts to a stage prop not only makes the horse believable, it drives the entire emotional arc of the play. Tear-filled ovations are a regular occurrence at the Lincoln Center Theatre, where War Horse is playing. If viewers have any luck, the horse may even make an appearance Sunday night.