2011 Tony Awards: Honor-bound?

All four plays primarily feature working-class characters who don’t have two nickels to rub together. But the fundamental battle these characters wage is moral rather than economic: Each faces a stark personal choice in extreme circumstances, where their personal integrity is on the line, and the choice they make will define them, for good or ill. It’s not just a matter of right vs. wrong, but also of true vs. false, of finding their authentic selves while picking through a minefield of possibilities.

In Stephen Adly Guirgis’s “Hat,’’ when Jackie declines an offer of sex from Ralph D.’s wife, Victoria (Annabella Sciorra), he insists he is “not trying to be honorable,’’ but then goes on to adduce a canon of behavior that, while inchoate, clearly matters to him. “Men, even though we’re [expletive] up, we got a code,’’ he explains. “It’s a [expletive]-up code, but still, it’s a code.’’

Jackie goes on to explain to Victoria that he took a certain impulsive action against the then-unidentified title character (or, rather, against his hat) because he suspects the character “broke the code’’ by sleeping with the love of Jackie’s life. But the smooth-talking Ralph D. does not subscribe to the code, to put it mildly. In a display of sophistry aimed at tying Jackie in knots and getting himself out of a serious jam, Ralph D. poses this rhetorical (and self-justifying) question: “Why should anyone — anyone — have to live by some stupid rules that make no sense, because the fact is we’re all gonna die anyway?’’

One question hovering over “Hat’’ is whether Jackie can find the strength to forgive. But the broader issue is whether he can remain the better person he has tried to become after serving time and getting clean, or will instead respond to betrayal by taking a lethal step that will put him permanently on the wrong side of the law.