Many of the most magical moments on stage are purely visual, such as the breathtaking sunsets in “The Oldest Boy” this year at Lincoln Center, or the astonishing effects that the cast of Nella Tempesta accomplished at LaMaMa with ordinary blankets. (See video at bottom.)

Other moments can be strictly sound, such as the opening bars of one of Carole King’s hit songs — “I Feel The Earth Move” —  as sung by Jessie Mueller, in “Beautiful”:

Not all the magical moments are beautiful or transcendent, or even heartwarming. Some are funny. Some are chilling. Some are shocking – so shocking we can’t tell you about them, since (as the shows are still running) they’d be spoilers, such as the climactic encounter in “Disgraced,” or the last brutal image in “Cabaret.”

Some are….hard to categorize: Neil Patrick Harris as Hedwig the “internationally ignored” transsexual song styling leaning down and licking the stage of the Belasco – “Tastes like Kathy Griffin” – then later lasciviously licking his bandmate’s guitar.

What made moments on stage “magical”  to me in 2014, as in past years, is that they felt as if they could only occur in live theater; they were happening right in front of us….while at the same time taking us somewhere else — into our own thoughts and emotions and imagination, and memories.

“Live every moment like you know how long a moment is,” Noah Robbins cracked on Twitter. As it happens, Robbins, a young actor who with Laura Benanti is the wittiest Tweeter among New York performers, took part in what was to me one of the most memorable moments on stage in 2014, as I attempt to picture below, mostly in chronological order. Click on any of the photographs to see them enlarged and read the extensive captions that explain the captivating stage moments.

Has there ever before been such a touching love scene between poultry? In The Year of the Rooster, by Eric Dufault, a young rooster named Odysseus Rex, played by Bobby Moreno like an angry punk with a knife, is introduced to Lucky Lady (Megan Tusing), a hen genetically engineered by McDonald’s to be twice her normal weight, and so virtually unable to stand. At first they don’t get along. He’s all…well…cocky. She behaves in a way that explains where the phrase “hen-pecked” comes from. But swiftly she is able to reach inside his chest and remove the anger he says is there, shaped like an anvil. They kiss, like the French (like birds!), cheek to cheek, and snuggle.

The revival of Sophie Treadwell’s 1928 play, “Machinal,” about a woman who murders her husband, establishes the woman’s drab, machine-like life from the very first scene, when we see drab people in drab overcoats shoved together in a line in a subway train car, with lights flashing by and a loud clacking noise, and the woman works her way into the line. It is an arresting image, and it instantly recalls scenes of urban life painted by the Ashcan School, who were Treadwell’s contemporaries. Here, for example, is George Luks’ “Subway”

Although the resolution of “Outside Mullingar” is a bit lunatic, the body language makes for a memorable moment between Debra Messing and Brian F. O’Byrne as two shy middle aged people who finally revealing their love for one another – awkward squirming turning to tense confrontation melting into relieved embrace.

Marin Hinkle and Jeremy Shamos play a married couple who learn their best friends are divorcing in “Dinner With Friends.” There is a scene (not this one) in which they talk about their fears about their own marriage while they prepare for bed, folding a bedspread in perfect unison like some kind of two-man Olympic team, so practiced in the act that they are unaware of it.

In Love and Information, 15 actors portrayed 100-plus characters in more than 60 scenes, some as short as a few seconds, Most memorable was this couple , standing upright in a bed, as if the audience were looking at them from above. The entire scene: Sleep/ I can’t sleep/ Hot milk/ I hate it now/ Book?/ I don’t have one I like./ Just lie there and breathe./ My head’s too full of stuff. Are you asleep?/ No, no, what it’s fine. You can’t sleep?/ I think I’ll get up and go on Facebook.

In Red Velvet, Adrian Lester, playing the great 19th century Shakespearean black actor Ira Aldridge, puts on makeup to make him look white. (A similar scene occurs in The Octoroon.)

Take your pick of moments in The Mysteries, the 6-hour epic retelling of Bible stories by 48 playwrights, including David Henry Hwang and Jeff Whitty. God was played in every scene by 4’2″ Matthew Jeffers. One moment: Gabriel: What’s up for day number two? God: Oh, you know…getting rid of Chaos Gabriel: All of it?

Audra McDonald re-creates the voice of Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson Bar and Grill, and there is a sad, sad moment, after Billie has gone off-stage (clearly to shoot up), when she comes back, cheerful and wobbly.

Act One, the dramatization of Moss Hart’s beloved theater memoir, comes alive when Santino Fontana as Hart first begins to collaborate with Tony Shalhoub as Hart’s quirky mentor George S. Kauffman.

show-stopping tap dance number in Bullets Over Broadway by Nick Cordero and his fellow goons to the tune of “Tain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness If I Do.”

Gabriel Ebert puts on a dress for the first time in public in the play based on a real-life 1950’s resort for straight cross-dressers in Harvey Fierstein’s play Casa Valentina

By doing nothing more than doing fake ballet moves, Annaleigh Ashford, turns her lines into memorable hilarity in “You Can’t Take It With You.”

At the end of Indian Ink, Rosemary Harris looks on as her younger self (Brenda Meaney) goes to the gravesite of her sister, and meets the young officer (Philip Mills) who will become her husband. The snow that starts to fall is just the right punctuation.

Megan Fairchild and Tony Yazbeck dance to Joshua Bergasse’s choreography in “On The Town”

In the last, still-powerful scene in the revival of this 40-year-old black comedy, the peppy Ozzie and Harriet suburban family cheerfully encourage their Vietnam veteran son to slice open his wrists.

In Simon Stephen’s “Punk Rock,” bully Bennett (Will Pullen) smears lipstick on his intellectual classmate Chadwick (Noah Robbins). The play climaxes in a mass shooting.

At the Puppets and Poets Festival at The Bushwick Star, Kevin P. Hale told the life of Edgar Allan Poe using puppets made out of match sticks. It was funny and moving.

As the actress Mrs. Kendal, Patricia Clarkson slowly undresses for John Merrick (Bradley Cooper), who, repulsively deformed, has never seen or touched a woman.

Every Brilliant Thing, with Jonny Donahoe

Alexander Sharp as Christopher in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time literally climbs up the wall, which then turns into an escalator. He is on his own in a London train station, and the moment works on several levels, helping us to feel his disorientation, while thrilling us with the stage craft.

Links to reviews and more photographs of the shows whose moments I list above:

Machinal

Year of the Rooster

Outside Mullingar

Dinner with Friends

Love and Information

Red Velvet

The Mysteries

Lady Day

Act One

Bullets Over Broadway

Casa Valentina

You Can’t Take It With You

Indian Ink

On the Town

Sticks and Bones

Punk Rock

Puppets and Poets Festival

Elephant Man 

Every Brilliant Thing 

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

(In this complete video of the show, watch, for example, between 17:30 and 18:30, or, better, between 24 and 26, understanding that the video doesn’t come even close to re-creating the effect the live performance had on the in-person audience.)

This doesn’t count, and may not be true (I hope it is!) But it’s certainly magical: