Imagine what it must have been like to sit around the camp fire listening to Homer sing of the wrath of Achilles, the fall of Troy. That’s what it’s like at New York Theatre Workshop where two actors, alternating performances, are giving a contemporary spin on Homer, An Iliad. Denis O’Hare and the director, Lisa Peterson, have adapted Homer’s epic, and O’Hare and Stephen Spinella take turns telling it. Both are very different, but both are extraordinary – sometimes funny, sometimes moving; always spellbinding. 

Don’t miss this one. 

Also on your don’t-miss list: Nina Raines’ Tribes, at the Barrow Street Theatre. This is a drama about a contentious family. Three adult children live at home. The youngest – and quietest – is Billy, who is deaf although he can speak. Billy has been raised not to view his deafness as a handicap – until he meets Sylvie who, it turns out, is slowly losing her hearing. Sylvia is active in the “deaf community,” and through her Billy comes to an understanding about himself which leads him to challenge his parents’ opinions about his deafness. 

David Cromer’s production is absolutely wonderful, as you would expect from this gifted director, and the cast is uniformly first-rate. My faves were Russell Harvard (who is himself deaf) as Billy and Susan Pourfar as Sylvia. 

Tribes is one of the high points of what has turned out to be an excellent season.

Dan LeFranc’s The Big Meal, at Playwrights Horizons, rips off Thornton Wilder’s The Long Christmas Dinner – but I mean that in a good way. LeFranc has borrowed Wilder’s structure, which showed several generations of a family at table over time. His play is set in a generic restaurant, and covers four generations as young people fall in love and grow old together. Sam Gold’s production is one of his best, although I felt that occasionally he lets it get a little languid – but his cast is terrific. 

Jeff Cohen’s The Soap Myth, produced by the National Jewish Theatre at the basement theatre of the Laura Pels and directed by that organization’s Artistic Director Arnold Mittelman, is a compelling about an elderly Holocaust survivor’s obsession with getting the truth out that the Nazis made soap from human beings. I always thought that this was a historical fact, but apparently there is no concrete evidence. When a Holocaust institute will not accept Milton Saltzman’s eye-witness testimony as proven fact, he enlists the air of a young journalist to get the word out and to put pressure on the institute. Greg Mullavey is all towering rage as Saltzman. He’s great, but so are the other actors. Highly recommended! 

Frank Tangredi’s Lifeline, at Abingdon, is an everything-is-not-it-seems drama. A man named Ken rents an apartment in Pete’s basement, where he licks his wounds over the breakup of his marriage. Pete befriends Kenny, helping him get over his anger and depression. Then Kenny’s mother arrives, and that’s when we see that a lot of what Kenny has told Pete about himself just may not be true. Jules Ochoa’s direction is excellent, and there are strong performances from Buzz Roddy (Pete), Brian Wallace (Kenny) and Caroline Monferdi (Phyllis, the mother). 

Tin Pan Alley, at the Actor’s Temple, is a revue of the American popular songbook circa 1890-1940, conceived and directed by Gene Castle who also performs in it. If you love this music, as I do, you’ll have a good time. The four performers are delightful, and Castle’s choreography is wonderfully goofy. 

My Occasion of Sin, at Urban Stages, by Monica Bauer, is an earnest drama set in the turbulent sixties, about a husband and wife who have a music store which is going under until they hire a Black jazz musician named Luigi Wells to change their inventory to drums and guitars and to give lessons in rock ‘n’ roll. Inevitably, racism rears its ugly head. Also in the mix is a spunky Black teenaged girl who comes in from time to time to talk about her life. The mystery is – who is she and what is her connection to the other characters in the play? Urban Stages’ Artistic Director Frances Hill has directed the play with a steady hand, getting fine performances from her cast. My faves were Royce Johnson as Luigi and Danielle Thompson as Vivian, the Black teenager. 

No Place to Go, at Joe’s Pub, is a revue/musical by Ethan Lipton wherein Lipton talks about what he decided to do when the company he worked for decided to move its operation to Mars. This whimsical premise allows Lipton to make many humorous observations about the tenuousness of employment in These United States. He’s sort of a Mose Allison/Woody Guthrie kind of singer – more of an actor than a singer – but his  songs are mordantly witty. Recommended. 

I also enjoyed Give Me Your Hand, at Irish Rep, wherein two wonderful Irish Actors perform the poetry of Paul Durcan, which consists of whimsical riffs on paintings in London’s National Gallery. Dermot Crowley and Dearbhla Molloy are charming, and hearing them made me want to get Durcan’s poetry and read it – it’s delightful. 

Now.Here.This., at the Vineyard, is a new musical by the team who gave us (title of show). Here, Our Heroes again basically play themselves. They start off ruminating about The Cosmic Meaning Of It All, then go to the Museum of Natural History where they make jokey observations and talk about themselves. These four actor/writers have turned self-referential/reverential into an art – but just not a very interesting art, because these just aren’t very interesting people. The show’s a hit and has been extended – but I found it a dud. 

Mike Nichols’ production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, is very strong. I had my doubts about Philip Seymour Hoffman as Willy, but Hoffman quickly dispelled them. His is a beautifully-modulated, touching performance; but everyone’s terrific. Linda Emond, as Willy’s wife Linda, will break your heart. 

Nichols has used the iconic Jo Mielziner set from the original production, so influential on scenic design ever since, to beautiful effect. Don’t miss this fine production. 

Another don’t miss: TACT’s lovely production of Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers, at the Samuel Beckett Theatre. Director Jenn Thompson has gotten superb performances from her cast all around. Particularly good are Finnerty Steeves as addled Aunt Bella, Alec Beard as shady Uncle Louie, Cynthia Harris as mean ol’ Grandma Kurnitz and Matthew Gumley and Russell Posner as the two hapless boys left in Grandma’s care. As you would expect from a play by Simon, this is often quite funny; but it is often quite poignant too. I love the play, and loved this production. 

AN ILIAD. New York Theatre Workshop, 79 E. 4th St.

            TICKETS: www.ticketcentral.com or 212-279-4200

TRIBES. Barrow Street Theatre, 27 Barrow St.

            TICKETS: 212-868-4444

THE BIG MEAL. Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St.

            TICKETS: www.ticketcentral.com or 212-279-4200

THE SOAP MYTH. Basement Theatre, Laura Pels, 111 W. 46th St.

            TICKETS: 212-352-3101

MY OCCASION OF SIN. Urban Stages, 259 W. 30th St.

            TICKETS: www.smarttix.com or 212.868.4444

TIN PAN ALLEY. Actors Temple, 339 W. 47th St.

            TICKETS: www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

LIFELINE. Abingdon Theatre Co., 312 W.36th St.

            TICKETS: www.abingdontheatre.org or 212-868-2055

NO PLACE TO GO. Joe’s Pub, 425 Lafayette St.

            TICKETS: 212-967-7555

GIVE ME YOUR HAND. Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 W. 22^nd St.

            TICKETS: 212-727-2737

NOW.HERE.THIS. Vineyard Theatre, 108 E. 15^th St.

            TICKETS: 212- 353-0303

DEATH OF A SALESMAN. Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 W. 47^th St.

            TICKETS: www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

LOST IN YONKERS. Samuel Beckett Theatre, 410 W. 42^nd St.

            TICKETS: www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200 

For discount tickets for groups of ten or more, contact Carol Ostrow Productions & Group Sales. Phone: 212-265-8500. E-Mail: ostrow1776@aol.com. 

“It requires a certain largeness of spirit to give generous appreciation to large achievements. A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day, when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry.” 

                                                                                      — George F. Will 

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who actually does strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” 

                                                                                    — Theodore Roosevelt

Lawrence Harbison, The Playfixer, brings you up to date with what’s hot and what’s not in New York. This week, Larry reports on CARRIE, BEYOND THE HORIZON, A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN, PORGY AND BESS, HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE, WIT,  THE LADY FROM DUBUQUE, GALILEO, PAINTING CHURCHES, RUTHERFORD AND SON and LOOK BACK IN ANGER – and some thoughts on the following, which have closed: CHIMERA, LEO, GOB SQUAD’S KITCHEN, DEDALUS LOUNGE, RICHARD III. 

New York theatre-goers have their choice of several fine revivals on the boards now. This column is exclusively about them. I’ll catch up with the new shows in a few days. 

I always have a soft spot in my heart for shows which I feel have been cruelly, unfairly treated by the theatre ayatollahs (i.e., the critics). Last season, for instance, I was at a loss to understand the bitch-fest that went on about Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown; ditto, this season’s Bonnie and Clyde. The latest is MCC’s wonderful revival of Carrie at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, which has been slammed by the critics. The original production of Carrie was the Moose Murders of Broadway musicals. I saw it – it was indeed pretty terrible. The new incarnation has been reconceived by director Stafford Arima, who has set it in what looks like a large fire-blackened room. The book is now structured as a flash-back, during which the only survivor of the horrific prom night holocaust tells what happened to the police. All of this gives the evening an air of rueful doom, which works brilliantly. 

Molly Ranson is sensational in the title role, as is Marin Mazzie as Carrie’s demented religious nut mother. Arima’s staging is brilliant, and his cast is uniformly terrific. A Broadway transfer for Carrie was a strong probability. No more. It’s a damn shame. Don’t believe what you read – this show is great. 

You have your choice of not one but two revivals of plays by Eugene O’Neill – Beyond the Horizon at Irish Repertory Theatre and A Moon for the Misbegotten at Pearl Theatre Co. 

Beyond the Horizon is early O’Neill. It won him his first Pulitzer Prize, in 1920, but it seems rather creaky today, as does some of Ciarán O’Reilly’s staging. It’s the story of two brothers. The youngest, Robert, yearns to get away from the family farm and see the world. The oldest, Andy, is a stay at home who loves farming. Both love the same girl, Ruth. When Robert and Ruth declare their love for each other, the heartbroken Andy goes off to sea and Robert stays home and marries Ruth. And the tragedy begins, as Robert fails both in his marriage and as a farmer. 

O’Reilly’s cast is solid, so this is not a bad sit. This play is rarely staged, so here’s your chance to see a fairly good production of it. 

The Pearl’s production of A Moon for the Misbegotten, on the other hand, is unforgettable. It’s one of the best productions of the many I have seen of this play. I hope to God it doesn’t inspire another bitch-fest. 

Beautifully directed by the Pearl’s Artistic Director J.R. Sullivan, A Moon for the Misbegotten features sensational performances by two actors new to the Pearl and one grizzled veteran. The vet is Dan Daily, whose endearing performance as tenant farmer Phil Hogan is Yet Another gem from this wonderful actor, who shone earlier this season at the Pearl in The Bald Soprano and The Philanderer. Kim Martin-Cotton, as Josie, Phil’s daughter, just breaks your heart. But the most extraordinary performance comes from Andrew May, the best James Tyrone, Jr. I have seen since Jason Robards in the famous Broadway revival in 1973. May, who has spent his career playing leading roles at major regional theatres, is here making his New York debut. His is a harrowing, deeply nuanced performance, and to my mind it establishes him as one of our greatest actors. 

You may say to yourself, “Ah, but I’ve seen this play. I saw Kevin Spacey, Eve Best, Cherry Jones, Gabriel Byrne, etc. Those were fine productions, to be sure – but this one’s even better. Don’t miss it. 

Porgy and Bess, at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, is another one which has gotten some unfair slams, mostly from purists who would have preferred to see all 4+ hours of it, as a traditional opera. What director Diane Paulus and librettist Suzan-Lory Parks have done is to turn this classic into more of a traditional musical drama, cutting the recitative along with the running time, turning the Gershwin classic into something which can be done by amateur and professional theatres which do musicals, as opposed to opera. So, yes – this is a cut down version; but it’s still full of glorious songs, sung by astonishing singers. Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis, as Bess and Porgy, are unforgettable. Both should win major awards this spring. 

How I Learned to Drive, at Second Stage, is a solid production of Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winner, but it doesn’t make the case for the play as an Enduring Classic. Kate Whoriskey’s direction tries to blend the silly with the serious; but all too often the blend doesn’t work. Neither Elizabeth Reaser or Norbert Leo Butz transcend memories of Mary Louise Parker and David Morse in the original production. Butz is always good; but here he just seems too young for his role. 

Margaret Edson’s Wit, another Pulitzer winner, produced by Manhattan Theatre Club at the Friedman Theatre, is a moving drama about a college English professor, a specialist in the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, who fights a losing battle with ovarian cancer. Lynne Meadow’s direction is excellent. Cynthia Nixon is wonderful as the dying professor, though there are times when I feel she doesn’t quite have the vocal chops necessary for this almost Shakespearean role. Still, I recommend seeing Wit. What a pity that Margaret Edson, an elementary school teacher in Atlanta, apparently isn’t interested in ever writing another play. 

The Lady from Dubuque (now being called “Edward Albee’s The Lady from Dubuque”), at Signature Theatre Co.’s spectacular new complex of three new theatres, doesn’t exactly make the case for this play, which flopped on Broadway 30 years ago, as a major work in the Albee canon, but David Esbjornson’s is a fine production, featuring a harrowing performance by Laila Robins as a dying woman unwilling to go gentle into that good night. Signature also just closed a fine production of Athol Fugard’s Blood Knot, directed by the author and featuring wonderful performances by Scott Shepherd and Colman Domingo, who made the play’s 2-1/2 hours fly by. 

CSC’s production of Brecht’s Galileo, directed by Artistic Director Brian Kulick, is worth seeing, mostly for F. Murray Abraham’s performance in the title role – but also if you are, like me, appalled by the Forces of Ignorance now framing our political debate, just as they were in Galileo’s time. I just wish Kulick’s supporting players were stronger; but still, this is a 20^th Century classic, in a fine production – which means it’s a must-see. 

Keen Company has brought back Tina Howe’s lovely Painting Churches, at the Harold Clurman Theatre. Once again this production, directed by Carl Forsman, didn’t dispel my fond memories of the original production, but it features wonderful performances by John Cunningham and Kathleen Chalfant as Gardner and Fanny Church. It was a pleasure to see this fondly-remembered play again. Highly recommended. 

Mint’s production of Gita Sowerby’s Rutherford and Son, a compelling family business drama, is also well worth seeing (as is, for that matter, everything at the Mint), featuring uniformly fine performances across the board and taut direction by Richard Corley. It’s a well-constructed realist drama with a powerful ending, unlike so many plays from our era, which just sorta peter out, which makes it a pleasure to see. 

I’ve left the worst for last. Roundabout’s production of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger is Just Plain Dreadful. Director Sam Gold has hacked up the script, cutting many of Jimmy Porter’s rants against the inequities of the British class system, turning the play into an unpleasant one about an abusive husband. The set is one of the worst I have even seen at a major New York Theatre. I’m not going to mention the actors – it’s not their fault. 

Fans of Weird Theatre have had much to cheer about of late. Chimera (which has, alas, closed at Here) was a fascinating one-woman piece wherein Our Heroine explained to us that she was actually genetically her own sister, and that her son was genetically he sister’s son, not hers. Suli Holum was fantastic, playing both the speaker and her teenaged son, and the set and video designs by Jeremy Wilhelm (Video Design: Room 404 Media (Kate Free & David Tennent) were astonishing. 

Also wonderful was Leo (alas, closed at the Clurman Theatre), another one-person show brought over from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival by Carol Tambor, who every year chooses what she feels is the Best of the Fringe and brings it over here for a short run. On one side of the stage was a bare room; on the other side, a huge video screen. Tobias Wegner, the performer, moved about in the room as his movements were projected on the screen – but the screen showed the room at a different angle, so Wegner appeared to climb up the walls. This wordless piece had a Beckettian existential feeling which I quite enjoyed – and Wegner was astonishing. 

One you can still catch is Gob Squad’s Kitchen (You’ve Never Had It So Good) at the Public Theatre, an  amusing send-up of Andy Warholism comprised largely of improvisation wherein the British troupe Gob Squad recreates abridged versions of Warhol films such as Sleep, bringing audience members up on the stage to become part of the film. It’s all done In All Seriousness and In all Tongue-In-Cheek and is great fun. 

Dedalus Lounge, at the Interart Theatre Annex, is a real play, but it has some of the same weirdness of the above three shows. It’s about three Irish friends who hang out in the title bar and incorporates Queen-esque songs by Anthony Rapp, who appears in the play. Although the play itself doesn’t amount to much the three performers – Rapp, James Kautz and Dee Roscioli — are terrific. 

The Bridge Project’s production of Shakespeare’s Richard III, at Brooklyn Academy of Music’sHarveyTheatre, directed by Sam Mendes, is one of the great Shakespearean productions of recent years and is not to be missed. Mendes has found a lot of humor in the play, most of it coming from Kevin Spacey in the title role, who Just Plain Astonishing, and has chopped up the battle scenes in the end as if he were doing a film. Ordinarily, I am not a fan of this kind of directorial intrusion; but I have to say, if Will was writing this play today, I think this is exactly how he would do it. The supporting cast is uniformly good, right down to the smaller roles. 

CARRIE. Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher Street

            TICKETS: 212-352-3101

BEYOND THE HORIZON. Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 W. 22^nd St.

            TICKETS: 212-727-2737

A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN. City Center Stage II, 130 W. 55^th St.

            TICKETS: 212-581-1212

PORGY AND BESS. Richard Rodgers Theatre, 226 W. 46^th St.

            TICKETS: www.ticketmaster.com or 800-745-3000, 877-250-2929

HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE. Second Stage. Alas, closed

WIT. Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Alas, closed

THE LADY FROM DUBUQUE. Signature Center, 480 W. 42^nd St.

            TICKETS: 212.244.7529

GALILEO. CSC. Alas, closed.

PAINTING CHURCHES. Clurman Theatre, 410 W. 42^nd St.

            TICKETS: www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

RUTHERFORD AND SON. Mint Theatre Co., 311 W. 43^rd St.

            TICKETS: 866-811-4111 or www.minttheater.org

LOOK BACK IN ANGER. Laura Pels Theatre. Fuhgeddaboudit. 

For discount tickets for groups of ten or more, contact Carol Ostrow Productions & Group Sales. Phone: 212-265-8500. E-Mail: ostrow1776@aol.com. 

“It requires a certain largeness of spirit to give generous appreciation to large achievements. A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day, when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry.” 

                                                                                      — George F. Will 

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who actually does strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” 

                                                                                    — Theodore Roosevelt

The revival (revisal?) of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever at the St. James, which is closing next month, is not as bad as you’ve heard; but neither is it all that good. I am unfamiliar with the original production, which double-cast Barbara Harris as both a psychiatrist’s patent and the woman she was in a past life, which notoriously didn’t work, so all I can say is that the decision to make the patient a gay man and his past incarnation a female swing music singer doesn’t work either – though it does give Harry Connick, Jr. the opportunity to almost-kiss his cute patient, David, at the end of Act 1. Harry spends most of his time in the 1940s, with Melinda the chantoosie, with whom he falls in love. In other words, this is not only about reincarnation – it’s also about time travel. This new incarnation just doesn’t work, either.

That said, the show features lovely songs by Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner, winningly delivered by a fine cast. Connick has been derided for being miscast, I guess because he never takes off his shirt or plays the piano; but I thought he was excellent, both in his acting and in his singing. David Turner, who plays David, is a gifted comic actor here constrained by a straight role, if such a thing can be said of a character who’s about as fey as fey can get, and –surprise, surprise! – he sings beautifully in a rich baritone. The other lead, Jessie Mueller, is giving the best performance in the show, as Melinda.

If you can buy the premise, you just might enjoy On a Clear Day, You Can See Forever. You’d have to make a huge willing suspension of disbelief, though.

Meanwhile, the revival of the early 1970’s Stephen Schwartz musical, Godspell, is hanging on at Circle in the Square, I think largely because it must have a low weekly nut. It’s a rather goofy show about what used to be called “Jesus Freaks,” its book updated with many contemporary topical references, performed by an energetic and very talented young cast headed by Hunter Parrish as JC, who’s not the hippie of the original production but a guy who looks like he’s wandered in from The Book of Mormon.

This is a silly take on Christianity, probably more palatable to skeptics than to believers.

Another show that’s not as bad as you’ve heard is Molly Smith Metzler’s Close up Space, wherein David Hyde Pierce plays a supercilious book editor as a variation on Niles from “Fraser.” Metzler has a gift for wacky characters and even wackier dialogue. She’s been slammed for this one, but watch for her Elemeno Pea, a hit at last year’s Humana Festival, currently at South Coast Rep and I think coming to NYC next season.

Hip-hop hipster Baba Brinkman is back at the Soho Playhouse, this time with The Canterbury Tales Remixed , a rapped version of three of Chaucer’s tales with Beowulf thrown in for good measure, which I found delightful. Brinkman is a charismatic performer and a gifted wordsmith, and he makes the rap idiom more than palatable – which is a lot coming from someone who is usually as appalled by rap as I am.

Lysistrata Jones, which moved from Off Broadway to Broadway and Died The Death, was a goofy modern adaptation of Aristophanes’ comic classic about a sex strike; in this case, by cheerleaders fed up with their school basketball team’s lackadaisical attitude about winning. It was as delightful on Broadway as it was Off, but with no stars it had no chance. If commercial Off Broadway were economically viable, that’s where it should have gone.

Sistas, which plays a few performances a week at Theatre at St. Luke’s, is an engaging though rather contrived musical about black women who have gathered in the attic to go through the possessions of the recently-deceased family matriarch, there to talk a lot about the past (mostly boring) and sing kickass versions of songs made famous by the likes of Dionne Warwick, Billie Holliday and The Supremes (wonderful). I took a Black lady friend and she whooped it up. The book’s mediocre; but if you love hearing this music again, as I do, you won’t mind so much.

The Women’s Project continues their roll with Catherine Trieschmann’s mighty fine How the World Began, at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre in Theatre Row, about a city woman who is trying to put her life back together by teaching high school biology in a small town in the heart of the Bible Belt, who runs afoul of local religious beliefs when she refers to the Book of Genesis as “gobbledygook.” Heidi Schreck is superb as the teacher, and the play itself has much to say about the vast cultural divide between secularists and evangelicals which is so much a part of our current political debate.

This one’s a don’t-miss.

Athol Fugard’s The Road to Mecca, being revived by Roundabout at the American Airlines Theatre, is a mixed bag. It’s a fine production of a rather tedious (particularly the first act) play about an elderly artist named Helen who lives by herself in a house out in the karoo who just may be thinking of suicide the young woman who drives from Johannesburg to try and save her and an elderly preacher who wants to put her in an old folks’ home. Rosemary Harris and Carla Gugino are excellent, but the standout performance comes from Jim Dale, most touching as the preacher.

Three great actors, in a boring play.

ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER. St. James Theatre, 246 W. 44^th St.

TICKETS: www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

GODSPELL. Circle in the Square, 235 W. 50^th St.

TICKETS: www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

CLOSE UP SPACE. Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center, 131 W. 55^th St.

TICKETS: 212-581-1212

THE CANTERBURY TALES REMIXED. Soho Playhouse, 15 Vandam St.

TICKETS: 212-691-1555

LYSISTRATA JONES. Alas, Closed

SISTAS. Theatre at St. Luke’s, 308 W. 46^th St.

TICKETS: www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

HOW THE WORLD BEGAN. Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, 416 W. 42^nd St.

TICKETS: www.ticketcentral.com or 21227-4200

THE ROAD TO MECCA. American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42^nd St

TICKETS: 212-719-1300

For discount tickets for groups of ten or more, contact Carol Ostrow Productions & Group Sales. Phone: 212-265-8500. E-Mail: ostrow1776@aol.com.

“It requires a certain largeness of spirit to give generous appreciation to large achievements. A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day, when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry.”

— George F. Will

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who actually does strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

As you probably have heard, Bonnie and Clyde, the new musical at the Schoenfeld Theatre, has received pretty much dismissive reviews, across the board. I hope you haven’t scratched it off your list, because it’s the victim of a totally unfair bitch-fest the likes of which hasn’t been seen since last season’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Yes, it has some flaws, but overall this is a terrific show, with a magnificent score by Frank Wildhorn (music) and Don Black (lyrics), featuring what should have been a Star-is-Born performance by Jeremy Jordan. All around me, people were buzzing, “This got bad reviews?!?” Let it be a lesson to you. Just because you read it in the newspaper, that doesn’t mean it’s true.

Ivan Menchell’s book is cleverly constructed, and the score features one great song after another. Jordan is superb as Clyde Barrow, managing to make this sociopath rather likeable. My one quibble, and it’s a major one, is that I think Laura Osnes, who plays Bonnie Parker, is miscast – or at least, misdirected. Her Bonnie is a rather sweet ingénue. It’s where she starts, and it’s pretty much where she finishes. What was needed, I think, was a deluded woman who, gradually, becomes as much of a sociopath as her man. Osnes sings beautifully, of course, but Bonnie Parker was not a pretty ingénue. Had director Jeff Calhoun seen the role as a character lead rather than a romantic lead, I think the show would have been much more interesting. I hasten to add that Osnes isn’t the reason this show is dying the death.

The reason, I think, is the Broadway critics’ irrational, deep-seated detestation of composer Frank Wildhorn, which I am at a loss to explain. Possibly, it’s because Jekyll and Hyde managed to have a successful run despite their lukewarm-to-negative reviews. They hate that. Maybe they’re still mad about Wildhorn’s bomb of last season, Wonderland. I didn’t care for it either — but I’m not holding it against him.

You better go soon if this interests you, as I think it will probably close precipitously. You won’t regret it, unless you’re the sort of person who can’t stand shows which tug on the heart-strings.

We rarely get to see plays about issues that really matter, plays with large casts, plays painted on a large canvas. Such a play is JT Rogers’ Blood and Gifts, at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre. It’s not about a dysfunctional family. It’s not about the tribulations of being gay, or about relationships – at least, interpersonal ones. Only Lincoln Center could afford a play like this. Thank God for them.

The play is set in Afghanistan, shortly after the Russian invasion in the early 1980’s, and involves a covert CIA operative’s attempts to funnel weapons to the Afghan fighters. The question is – which group merits covert U.S. support? Rogers’ subject, and it is a Big One, is to inquire into the origins of our involvement in this chaotic land, which began long before we invaded the country. The Road to Hell was paved with good intentions.

Bartlett Sher’s production is brilliant, and his cast is superb. Jeremy Davidson is very strong as the CIA guy, and Jefferson Mays is amazing as his counterpart in the Britain’s MI6. Also good are Michael Aronov as a KGB spy, Bernard White as an Afghan warlord and Pej Vahday as his American pop music-loving second in command.

This one is a don’t-miss, certain to make several top-ten lists.

Also excellent is CSC’s rather unconventional production of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, featuring Dianne Weist as a particularly childish Ranevskaya and John Turturro as a particularly likeable Lopakhin. The Main Event, though, is Andrei Belgrader’s direction, which dusts off the relics in the play of 19^th Century dramaturgical fustiness and finds a way to make them work for a contemporary audience. There is much direct address to the audience, and occasionally characters even venture out into the house to sit and chat with us. I loved this. Belgrader’s uniformly strong cast also features Daniel Davis as a particularly inanely garrulous Gaev, Michael Urie as a particularly clownish Epikhodov, Juliet Rylance as a heartbreaking Varya and the Waterston sisters, Katherine and Elizabeth, total babes who are two of my favorite young actresses.

Another don’t-miss – if you can somehow finagle a ticket. What a shame this has to close. What a shame there is no place it can move to.

The Pearl Theatre Co.’s production of Richard II is worth seeing, if only because one rarely gets a chance to see this play; but overall it’s rather dull. Sean McNall, as King Richard, is just OK in the first half, better when he loses his crown. There are some strong performances in supporting roles, but in the end the Pearl’s limited resources sink the production. Director J.R. Sullivan, the Pearl’s A.D., no doubt due to budgetary restrictions, has tried to do the play with too few actors, forcing him to employ much doubling, some of it ridiculous. When the lovely Jolly Abraham, who has just left the stage as Richard’s Queen, entered in the very next scene as Harry “Hotspur” Percy, my eyes really rolled.

Still, Richard II is worth seeing – again, if you’ve never seen the play.

Lydia Diamond’s Stick Fly, at the Cort Theatre, is a smartly-written comic black family drama, marred only by Diamond’s tendency to let scenes go on too long. There’s not much plot, but what there is concerns a family reunion of sorts. Two sons have brought their ladies home to meet Mom & Dad. Mom is absent for some reason. In the end, we find out why.

My only quibble with Kenny Leon’s direction is that he allows the scene changes to go on too long, which adds length to an already over-long evening. Since these contain incidental music by Alicia Keys, who put up a lot of the dough for the show, I guess he didn’t have much choice.

Ethan Coen’s Happy Hour, produced by the Atlantic Theatre Co. at Signature’s Peter Norton Space, is a bill of three very dark on-act plays. I lose the term “play” loosely, because Coen is as clueless as he was with his piece in Relatively Speaking as to what, exactly, a play is. All three pieces are unrealized sketches, which makes them ultimately pointless. Director Neil Pepe has done the best he could; but, really, the best thing he could have done was not to produce them at all. So what if Ethan Coen is a famous Hollywood dude? He’s not a playwright.

NY Theatre Workshop’s Once, a musical based on an Oscar-winning film from Ireland, is long on charm but rather short on actual dramatic interest. It’s about a suicidal wannabe songwriter/singer who is “rescued” by a kooky Eastern European chick. Although it’s being sold as a musical, Once really isn’t. It’s a play with a lotta songs inserted therein, several of which are lovely but none of which function as songs in a musical need to function. Play stops. Nice song. Play resumes. This was a “musical” in the days of Jerome Kern. Not now.

This is moving to Broadway in the spring. Into the Valley of Death Rode the Six Hundred … Well, maybe not. The capitalization and weekly nut are going to be very low (but of course they’ll be charging the standard outrageous Broadway musical ticket price), so maybe Once has a shot.

The Public Theater has had three Shakespeare productions this fall: Love’s Labors Lost, King Lear and now Titus Andronicus. The first was a silly parody of the play, easily the worst Shakespeare at the Public since the notorious Andre Serban Hamlet. The second was a lot better (in spite of what you read). Sam Waterston was a fine Lear, and Bill Irwin a scarily good Fool.

Titus Andronicus, running now, is a very early play, a horror story loaded with blood and gore which the actors go at full bore, under Michael Sexton’s erratic direction. This is a low-budget Lab production. Like the Pearl’s Richard II this has a lot of doubling, much of it confusing. Daoud Hadami plays various characters and must get killed about three or four times, only to come back in the next scene costumed more or less the same. The audience is going, “I thought that guy just got killed.”

Ultimately, what makes the play worth seeing (I mean, other than the fact than when are you ever going to see another production of this play) are the extraordinary performances of Jay O. Sanders in the title role and Stephanie Roth Haberle as Tamora, Queen of the Goths, who’s tricked by Titus into eating the chopped up bodies of her two sons in a pie. Euuww!

Dael Orlandersmith’s Horsedreams, at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, is a bummer of a play about a man and woman who had it all but lost it all to drugs. Like all of Orlandersmith’s other plays (at least the ones I know), it’s composed entirely of narrative monologues. These are well-written, and well-performed, but this kind of writing just is not, and never will be, drama.

Finally, the reviews for Alan Ayckbourn’s Neighbourhood Watch at 50 E 59 have been rather ho-hum. You might think, therefore, that this is miss-able. It’s not.

The play is a dark comedy about a brother and sister who found a neighborhood vigilante association which becomes increasingly like a microcosm of a fascist state. Wonderfully directed by the author, it features a cast of superb British character actors. Ayckbourn does not get the respect over on this side of the pond that he deserves. This is one of the greatest living British dramatists. Sure, he’s written more brilliant plays than Neighbourhood Watch but so what? This is one of the best plays running in New York right now.

BONNIE & CLYDE. Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 West 45th Street

TICKETS: www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

BLOOD AND GIFTS. Mitzi Newhouse Theatre, Lincoln Center

TICKETS: www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

THE CHERRY ORCHARD. CSC, 136 E. 13^th St.

TICKETS: 212-677-4210

RICHARD II. New York City Center Stage II, 130 West 56th Street

TICKETS 212.581.1212

STICK FLY. Cort Theatre, 138 West 48th Street

TICKETS: www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

HAPPY HOUR. Atlantic at Peter Norton Space, 555 West 42nd Street

TICKETS: www.ticketcentral.com or 212-279-4200

ONCE. NY Theatre Workshop, 79 East 4th Street

TICKETS: www.ticketcentral.com or 212-279-4200

TITUS ANDRONICUS. Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St.

TICKETS: 212.967.7555

HORSEDREAMS. Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, 224 Waverly Place

TICKETS: www.ticketcentral.com or 212-279-4200

NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH. 59 E 59 Theatres, 59 E. 59^th St.

TICKETS: www.ticketcentral.com or 212-279-4200

For discount tickets for groups of ten or more, contact Carol Ostrow Productions & Group Sales. Phone: 212-265-8500. E-Mail: ostrow1776@aol.com.

“It requires a certain largeness of spirit to give generous appreciation to large achievements. A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day, when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry.”

— George F. Will

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who actually does strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop, at the Jacobs Theatre, takes place on the night before Martin Luther King was killed, in his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. King, alone late at night, calls the front desk for some coffee, which soon is brought up by a maid. He’s lonely; she’s seemingly astounded that she is talking to the famous “Preacher King.” Yes, King half-heartedly comes on to her; but she deflects his advances and they settle in for a chat. It is emblematic of the playwright’s skill, as well as that of the two actors (Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett) that this chat sustains dramatic interest, right up to the surprising ending.

Jackson is magnificent as Dr. King; but he is more than matched by Bassett. Kenny Leon’s direction is subtle as he builds dramatic tension until the incredible ending which literally made my jaw drop. No, I’m not going to say anything more. You’ll just have to see it to believe it.

Relatively Speaking, at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, is a bill of three unrelated one-act plays. The first, Talking Cure by Ethan Coen, is more of a sketch than a play, about a psychiatrist interviewing a man in prison about what he did (we never find out). When it ends, you can hear the audience go “Huh?” Elaine May’s George is Dead is better. At least it’s funny. Marlo Thomas plays an airheaded rich broad who’s just learned that he husband has died. She comes over to the apartment of a woman whose mother used to be her nanny, for advice and consolation. Why does she do this, since there’s no evidence that the two women have been in contact? In other words, it’s a playwright’s contrivance; but what makes it bearable is Thomas’ splendidly ditzy performance. The final play is Woody Allen’s intermittently amusing Honeymoon Hotel, set in a tacky honeymoon suite. A couple enters, all excited, having just left the reception. He’s older than she, but so what? Well, it turns out that he is actually the groom’s stepfather, and he and the bride fell so in love/lust at the wedding that they’ve run off together. One after another, various wedding guests show up to find out what’s going on, and our evening gets less and less funny, until it finally peters out.

It amazes me that these inane plays are on Broadway; but what amazes me even more was that they dodged a bullet. The NY Times could have quickly closed the show with a scathing review, but The Ish, well-known for his scathes, rather liked this. So, it looks like they’re going to have something of a run. Go figure …

The revival of Noël Coward’s Private Lives, at the Music Box, goes short on droll and long on flippancy. Since most productions I have seen of the play emphasized drollery, I enjoyed director Richard Eyre’s emphasis on Coward’s point that flippancy is what’s needed to live in this world. Except that when I think on’t, when Private Lives was first produced, the world was going to hell in a handbasket, even worse than it is now. But Coward’s characters inhabit a glamorous world of champagne, beautiful clothes and fabulous vacations. None of them appear to have any source of income. In other words, they’re the 1% that the Occupy Wall Street protesters are railing about.

Although I enjoyed this production – particularly, Kim Cattrall’s Amanda and Paul Gross’ Elyot, I have to say that Coward’s characters seem awfully callow. But if you think flippancy and glamour is just what you need right now, you’ll enjoy Private Lives.

David Ives’ Venus and Fur, which introduced Nina Arianda to New York audiences off Broadway two seasons back, has re-opened at the Friedman Theatre now that she has become a star (from her scene-stealing, unforgettably hilarious performance as Billie Dawn in last season’s revival of Born Yesterday). She is much the best reason to see this new production, although her co-star, Hugh Dancy, is no slouch.

Dancy plays a harried playwright/director who is trying to cast the female lead in an adaptation of a notoriously risqué 19^th Century novel. He’s about ready to leave for the day when Arianda bursts in, and insists upon auditioning. Miraculously, she knows the script by heart, and the two of them basically do the whole play, which is about a masochist and a woman he makes into his dominatrix. It’s all very sexy and titillating; but when we find out in the end who the actress really is, the play is revealed for the hooey it is.

So: two wonderful performances, in a completely contrived play. Go anyway. You don’t want to miss these performances – particularly, Arianda’s.

You also don’t want to miss Jon Robin Baitz’ Other Desert Cities, which received outstanding reviews last season when it played at the Mitzi Newhouse and which has now transferred to Broadway’s Booth Theatre. This is a gripping, intellectually engaging drama wherein the great Stockard Channing and Stacy Keach play a wealthy retired couple who were once major players in Republican Hollywood. Their two adult children come home the holidays. Their son produces a “reality TV” show and their daughter is a writer. They had a third child, Henry, but he succumbed to drugs and suicide years ago after becoming implicated in a deadly bombing perpetrated by a radical group. The daughter, Brooke, has come though a nervous breakdown and has written a memoir of her family which basically accuses her parents of complicity in the death of Henry. Much of the play involves a debate over whether of not she should have the right to publish her book. This one has an ending which caught me completely by her surprise.

Channing and Keach are great, but so are Rachel Griffiths as Brooke and Thomas Sadosky as the brother. Judith Light plays laconic Aunt Silda with just the right amount of sarcasm.

This one’s definitely a don’t-miss.

I would say, so is David Henry Hwang’s fascinating (and very funny) Chinglish, at the Longacre Theatre, about a desperate American businessman who goes to China to try to get a contract which will save his company, there to come up against a business climate which is nothing like he has ever encountered. He receives some unexpected help from a Chinese official named Xi Yan. Will he get the contract? And what’s in it for Xi Yan?

Leigh Silverman’s direction is brilliant, and Jennifer Lim is wonderful as Xi Yan. Gary Wilmes is good as the American businessman, but it’s Lim who really shines. Also, I rarely wax poetic about a set but David Korins’ is astonishing.

Nicky Silver’s The Lyons, which has closed, was a wonderfully quirky, mordant family drama about a dysfunctional family to end all dysfunctional families. The pater familias, a nasty old coot named Ben, is dying. Basically, no longer does he give a shit about being nice to anyone, least of all to his domineering wife, Rita. His daughter is a screwed-up not-so recovered alcoholic; his son, an equally screwed up gay man who appears to have an imaginary boyfriend. Mark Brokaw’s production was hilarious, and featured an unforgettable star turn by Linda Lavin as Rita. This run was sold out and extended. It would not surprise me if the play resurfaced in a commercial production. I hope so – it deserves it.

Thomas Higgins’ Wild Animals You Should Know, an MCC production at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, is about two teenaged boys who are boy scouts. Matthew is a studly, rather narcissistic straight kid; Jacob is a very gay kid who lusts after him. They are best friends. Also in the mix is Matthew’s father, a disengaged man who tries to connect with his son as an assistant scoutmaster on a camping trip. Matthew happens to find out that their scoutmaster, Rodney, is gay, and with deliberate callousness decides to out him.

Trip Cullman, one of my favorite directors, has done a wonderful job, helped enormously by a pitch perfect cast. For Some Strange Reason, most of the critics didn’t much care for this play. I think it’s a lot better than they have led you to believe, and I would call it a don’t-miss.

Also don’t-miss is Standing on Ceremony: the Gay Marriage Plays, at the Minetta Lane Theatre, a compendium of short pieces by the likes of Paul Rudnick, Adam Bock, Moisé Kaufman, Wendy MacLeod and Jordan Harrison. Some are quite funny (Rudnick’s in particular), but some are quite poignant, such as Kaufman’s London Mosquitoes, a eulogy by a man at his partner of 47 years’ funeral, delivered beautifully by Richard Thomas. The rest of the cast includes Harriet Harris, Polly Draper, Craig Bierko and Mark Consuelos – all great. The evening is done as a reading, though all the actors appear to be off book. It’s one of those events like Love, Loss and What I Wore which can be done with rotating casts, as it no doubt will be for quite some time – but try to see it with the original cast. It’s wonderful.

Jesse Eisenberg, the young actor who was deservedly nominated for an Oscar for his performance in The Social Network, demonstrates a gift for quirky comedy in Asuncion, at the Cherry Lane, which has been extended and at this writing is still running. Eisenberg plays Edgar, a slacker 20-something who lives with a former college professor named Vinny, a white dude who teaches black studies and who spends most of his time smoking weed. Edgar is a wannabe writer, but most of the time he mostly just talks about writing, rather than doing it. Edgar’s brother, Stuart, shows up one day with his bride, a Filipino woman named Asuncion, saying he needs her to stay with Edgar for a while. Edgar decides that Asuncion is a sex worker, and decides to write about her horrible life in the Philippines, and Vinny hits on her. Eventually, Stuart comes back to reclaim her.

This is a preposterously contrived premise, but Eisenberg almost pulls it off. And he’s wonderful as Edgar, as is Justin Bartha as Vinny. Asuncion is worth seeing if only for these two.

THE MOUNTAINTOP. Jacobs Theatre, 242 West 45th Street.

TICKETS: www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

RELATIVELY SPEAKING. Brooks Atkinson Theatre, 256 West 47th Street

TICKETS: www.ticketmaster.com or 800-745-3000

PRIVATE LIVES. Music Box Theatre, 239 West 45th Street

TICKETS: www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

VENUS IN FUR. Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street

TICKETS: www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

OTHER DESERT CITIES. Booth Theatre, 222 West 45th Street
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

CHINGLISH. Longacre Theatre, 220 West 48th Street

TICKETS: www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

THE LYONS. Vineyard Theatre. Alas, closed.

WILD ANIMALS YOU SHOULD KNOW. Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121   Christopher St.

TICKETS: 212-352 3101

STANDING ON CEREMONY: THE GAY MARRIAGE PLAYS. Minetta Lane Theatre, 18 Minetta Lane.

TICKETS: www.ticketmaster.com or 800-745-3000

ASUNCION. Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce St.

TICKETS: 212-352-3101

For discount tickets for groups of ten or more, contact Carol Ostrow Productions & Group Sales. Phone: 212-265-8500. E-Mail: ostrow1776@aol.com.

“It requires a certain largeness of spirit to give generous appreciation to large achievements. A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day, when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry.”

— George F. Will

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who actually does strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

Danny, the hero of Jeff Talbott’s The Submission, at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, is a struggling young playwright who has had readings galore but never a production of one of his plays; until, that it, he is inspired by an incident which happened to him on the subway to write a play in which the characters are all black. Believing that no professional theatre will do a “black” play written by a white dude, he makes the author of his play a pseudonym which looks like the name of a black woman, submits the play to a major theatre, and then gets a production offer almost immediately. He hires a black actress as his front. There are many problems with this scenario, but the most glaring one has to do with the submission process of his play.

The Submission posits that it tells it like it is in the Real World of the theatre. It asks us to believe that this totally unknown playwright sends his play to Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, and they accept it almost immediately for the Humana Festival. I have attended the Humana Festival every year since 1980, and I know that Actor’s Theatre has not accepted unsolicited submissions for at least 15 years. Plays have to be submitted by agents, or as a result of a “professional recommendation.” ATL would, in fact, send Danny a form letter telling him this – not an offer to produce his play. The Submission starts in October and ends the following October. The playwright finishes his play, sends it to ATL – and they accept it immediately!?! This could never happen. In the Real World, theatres take months to respond to submissions – even when they are from agents. Also, Jeff Talbott thinks that the Humana Festival takes place in the spring. Actually, it starts in February, as Actor’s Theatre opens each play one by one, and culminates in late March or early April, when they present all the plays for two long weekends. By October, when The Submission begins, ATL has set the contents of the next Humana Festival, because they have to start hiring directors and casting. Also: they don’t require the playwright to make a curtain speech at the first preview or at any other performance, a crucial plot point in Talbott’s play. These things happen in the play because the playwright needs them to happen; but he makes no effort to make them credible. This is the classic hallmark of bad playwriting.

If you can accept this Basic Premise, which I find impossible to do, The Submission contains a lot of pithy observations about race and political correctness, both in the theatre and in Real Life. It is well-acted, and well directed. It’s just preposterous.

Dan Klores’ The Wood, at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, is a drama about the late NY Daily News columnist Mike McAlary, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Abner Louima story (Louima was falsely arrested and then brutally beaten by cops, a beating which included sodomization with a toilet plunger). McAlary died of cancer shortly after he won the Pulitzer. John Viscardi is giving a terrific performance as McAlary, and there is good work on display as well from the rest of the cast, most of whom play multiple roles. This is a play about an American hero, a man who was determined all his life to discover, and tell, the truth. I found it gripping.

Also gripping is Chad Beckim’s After, produced by Partial Comfort Productions at the Wild Center in the East Village. Last season, Partial Comfort’s production of Samuel D. Hunter’s A Bright New Boise put this small company on the radar. It was honored with three Drama Desk nominations and the playwright won an Obie Award. After is in this league.

Monty, a man in his mid-30s, has just been released after spending 17 years in prison. He has been exonerated by DNA evidence of the rape charge for which he was convicted, and now he is trying to put his life back together – tough going given all that he has been through. Alfredo Nasciso is heart-rending as Monty; but all the other actors are just plain wonderful too – with special kudos to Jackie Chung as a drugstore clerk who falls for Monty who has emotional scars of her own, and Denargo Sanyal as a co-worker at the pet store where Monty works who hates his job. Stephen Brackett’s direction is exquisite.

This runs a few more days. Catch it if you can.

Motherhood Out Loud, at Primary Stages, is a collage about, you guessed it, motherhood. Various playwrights, including Theresa Rebeck, Lisa Loomer, Leslie Ayvazian and Beth Henley, have written scenes and monologues, and the whole thing has been stitched together seamlessly by director Lisa Peterson. The four performers — Randy Graff, Mary Bacon, Saidah Arrika Ekulona and James Lecesne – are all funny when funny is needed, and poignant when it isn’t.

You don’t have to be a mother to enjoy Motherhood Out Loud.

Keen Company has another fine revival up and running, of Lanford Wilson’s 1970 autobiographical drama Lemon Sky at the Clurman Theatre, featuring a wonderful performance by Keith Nobbs (still a credible teenager after All These Years) as a kid who goes to live with his father and his new family in California. Both father and son struggle to reconnect.

A lot of this play features narrative direct audience address, which ordinarily I dislike, but Wilson (who died recently) was such a great writer that ultimately I was won over. I liked Jonathan Silverstein’s sensitive direction, and all the actors are wonderful, with particular praise due to Kellie Overbey as Alan’s step-mom and Alyssa May Gold as his slutty half sister Carol.

This one’s a don’t-miss.

Pearl Theatre Co. has an outstanding revival of Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano up and running at City Center Stage II. This seminal comedy was, in its day, a fart in the face of genteel realism, and its playful use of language at times reminded me of the best of the Marx Brothers. Nowadays, the play seems rather quaint, though undeniably still funny. Fortunately, the cast under Hal Brook’s witty direction, captures Ionesco’s anarchic style perfectly. I particularly enjoyed Dan Daily as the Fire Chief.

If you’ve never seen The Bald Soprano, this would be a good opportunity to see it done well.

Also excellent is Sharyn Rothstein’s The Invested at the East 4^th St.Theatre, a tale of financial skullduggery seemingly ripped from today’s headlines, featuring a wonderful performance by Christina Haag as a high-powered financial manager trying to avoid being blame for the collapse of a shady hedge fund run by her boss.

I’m way behind with my column. My bad. Several excellent shows have closed, includinl all of the 1^st Irish Festival. My Irish faves were Bogboy, a beautifully acted about a woman struggling to put her life back together after addiction who befriends a strange man who, years ago, was involved as an IR member in the murder of a young man, Noah and the Tower Flower, a sort of Irish Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, also beautifully acted, and A Night with George, wherein a chatty middle-aged woman comes back from a night of pub-crawling toting a life-sized stand up cutout of George Clooney and proceeds to tell George her life story. Donna O’Connor was hilarious as Our Heroine. Cirque de Légume was a goofy clown show involving a lot of vegetables. I thought it was rather silly, but many in the audience were laffing their heads off. Noċtú was a terrific Irish dance show, a sort of New Age Riverdance.

Also worth seeing were Richard Nelson’s Sweet and Sad at the Public Theatre, a bittersweet meditation set on the 10^th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy which featured a terrific ensemble of some of NYC’s finest actors, among them Jay O. Sanders, Laila Robbins and J. Smith Cameron, C.S. Hanson’s fascinating Charles Winn Speaks at the Cherry Lane Studio, about a high-powered hedge fund guy who turns out to be a Russian émigré named Vlad, and Victor Cahn’s Dally with the Devil at the Beckett Theatre, which was about politics and spin and featured a wonderful performance by Elizabeth A. Davis as an advisor to a right wing candidate who’s trying to prevent a political internet columnist from publishing damaging revelations about her man.

THE SUBMISSION. Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher St.

TICKETS: 212-352-3101

THE WOOD. Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, 224 Waverly Pl.

TICKETS: www.smarttix.com or 212-868-4444

AFTER. The Wild Project, 195 E. 3^rd St.

TICKETS: 212-352-3101

MOTHERHOOD OUT LOUD. Primary Stages, 59 E. 59^th St.

TICKETS: www.ticketcentral.com or 212-279-4200

LEMON SKY. Harold Clurman Theatre, 410 W. 42^nd St.

TICKETS: www.ticketcentral.com or 212-279-4200

THE BALD SOPRANO. City Center Stage II, 130 W. 55^th St.

TICKETS: 212-581-1212

THE INVESTED. East 4^th St. Theatre. Alas, closed.

For discount tickets for groups of ten or more, contact Carol Ostrow Productions & Group Sales. Phone: 212-265-8500. E-Mail: ostrow1776@aol.com.

“It requires a certain largeness of spirit to give generous appreciation to large achievements. A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day, when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry.”

— George F. Will

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who actually does strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

The Broadway musical season has gotten off to a fine start with the wonderful revival of Follies, the 1971 Stephen Sondheim/James Goldman musical at the Marquis Theatre. The original production, legendary to many, closed at a loss, and the Roundabout’s revival of 10 year ago didn’t fare very well either. This is one of those shows which perhaps was ahead of its time; but this time around, it’s time is now.

I assume you know the story, which is about a reunion of ex-showgirls in the dilapidated theatre where they performed 30 years before in a Ziegfield Follies-like series of revues, examining the hopes and dreams of their younger selves, contrasted with their disillusionment in the present. Sondheim’s score much, though not all, of which is delightful pastiche, is truly one of his greatest; and Goldman’s book, always underrated, here emerges as one of the finest Broadway musical books for all of Sondheim’s shows.

Eris Schaeffer’s direction is brilliant. As for the performers, the four leads (Bernadette Peters as Sally, Jan Maxwell as Phyllis, Ron Raines as Ben and Danny Burstyn as Buddy) are all great, ably supported by the likes of Elaine Page (who nails “I’m Still Here”), Terri White, Mary Beth Peil and Jane Houdyshell, whose rousing rendition of “Broadway Baby” practically brings down the rafters. I counted no less than six times that the show was stopped cold by these wonderful performances. When’s the last time you were in a Broadway theatre and that happened?

The Mint Theatre has a hit with another play by Teresa Deevy, whose Wife to James Whelan was so great last season, called Temporal Powers. A highly-regarded playwright in Ireland in the 1930s, Deevy’s work was forgotten until The Mint dug it up. That’s what they do better than anyone else.

Temporal Powers is about a dirt-poor Irish couple who have been recently evicted from their home and are now squatting in an abandoned building. The husband, Michael, finds a packet containing a large sum of money in the rafters; and the question then becomes, where did it come from and what does he plan to do with it? Naturally, his long-suffering wife Min has her own ideas, and as the drama plays out she emerges as the central character in this enthralling tale.

Jonathan Bank’s production is first rate, and his ensemble of actors are the equal of any you will see on a New York stage this season. This production has been extended twice, but it can’t run forever. It’s a don’t-miss.

Play It Cool, at the Acorn Theatre, is a witty, noir-ish musical set in 1953, in a nightclub in Hollywood called Mary’s Hideaway which caters to homosexuals and lesbians, which means it’s very much of an underground place as homosexuality in those days could land you in the hoosegow. The Mary in the title is a former jazz singer who, because she dresses and acts like a man, has had to abandon her career. She pays protection dough to a crooked cop named Henry; and the great question is, will it be enough to keep the hounds at bay?

The book, by Martin Casella and Larry Dean Harris, maintains just the right amount of tongue in its cheek; but it’s the jazz-infused songs by Philip Swann (music) and Mark Winkler (lyrics) which make this well-worth seeing – that and the fine performances. Sally Mayes is wonderful as Mary; but there is fine supporting work too from Robyn Hurder as the club’s chantoosy, Michael F. McGuirk as the charmingly crooked cop, Chris Hoch as a Hollywood insider and Michael Buchanan as a cute guy fresh off the bus, dreaming of Hollywood stardom.

Play It Cool is great fun.

At The Lapsburgh Layover, at Ars Nova, we are international travelers whose plane has had to make an unscheduled stop for repairs in some sort of mittel-European country. While we wait, we are invited to a nightclub and treated to a goofy show (again, a noir spoof), which turns apocalyptic at the end. The four performers are also the writers, and they all delightful, managing to make the ridiculous premise of their show sustain right up until the end, when it kinda falls apart as the audience is enlisted to defend the world against The Attack of the Giant Frogs.

Some might roll their eyes at all the silliness; but I quite enjoyed myself. If you’re in the mood for Something Completely Different …

The Tenant, at West Park Presbyterian Church, is another one of those increasingly ubiquitous “site-specific” evenings, this one put together by a group which calls itself the Woodshed Collective, who have taken the Roman Polanski movie and fractured it into scenes, written by several different writers, which take place all over the building. You can stay in one room and watch whatever happens, or you can follow the performers around.

Woodshed tries very hard to duplicate the experience of Punch Drunk’s Sleep No More of last season; but the problem is, you don’t know where to go, so much if this is incomprehensible. My advice, if you go, is follow the guy with the Polish name whom everybody meets in the first scene. I think he’s the central character – but who knows?

Bluebird, which has closed at Atlantic Stage II, a play by British playwright Simon Stephens, was an episodic look at one night in the life of a London cabbie, played with haunting brilliance by the great British actor Simon Russell Beale. The entire run was sold out, and deservedly so. Beale was wonderful, but so were the actors who played his many passengers on the night when he tries to get in touch with his ex-wife, whom he hasn’t seen in 5 years.

I hope you managed to get in.

FOLLIES. Marquis Theatre, 1535 Broadway

TICKETS: www.ticketmaster.com or 800-745-3000

TEMPORAL POWERS. Mint Theatre, 311 W. 43^rd St.

TICKETS: www.minttheater.org or 212-315-0231

PLAY IT COOL. Acorn Theatre, 410 W. 42^nd St.

TICKETS: www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

THE LAPSBURGH LAYOVER. Ars Nova, 511 W. 54^th St.

TICKETS: 212-352-3101 or 866-811-4111

THE TENANT. West Park Presbyterian Church, 165 W. 86^th ST.

TICKETS: Free!

BLUEBIRD. Atlantic Stage II. Alas, closed.

For discount tickets for groups of ten or more, contact Carol Ostrow Productions & Group Sales. Phone: 212-265-8500. E-Mail: ostrow1776@aol.com.

“It requires a certain largeness of spirit to give generous appreciation to large achievements. A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day, when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry.”

— George F. Will

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who actually does strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

Death Takes a Holiday, the new musical produced by Roundabout at the Laura Pels Theatre, has apparently been kicking around a while, as original book writer Peter Stone died in 2003. Maury Yeston, who wrote the music and lyrics, has linked up with Thomas Meehan to put the finishing touches on Stone’s book, and the result is one of the loveliest, most enchanting Off Broadway musicals in recent memory.

It’s based on Alberto Cassella’s 1922 play in Italian, produced on Broadway later that decade and made into a rather famous film in 1934, and has a whimsical, fanciful premise: what if Death decided to take a break from his grisly job for a few days? Death  (played by Kevin Earley, who took over the role when original star Julian Ovenden came down with a bad case of laryngitis), decides that he would like to know what it’s like to be human, so he poses as a Russian prince and comes to stay with a wealthy family at their villa in Italy. There, he meets Grazia, the beautiful daughter of Duke Vittorio, the pater familias. She is engaged to be married, but she falls for the handsome prince and breaks it off. Since Death is now human (if only for the weekend), he is now capable of love – and he falls for her. She wants to leave with him, not knowing of course that if she does, she must die. When he finally reveals to her his true identity, both lovers must decide if their love is, as it were, eternal.

Yeston’s score is sublime, with one beautiful song after another, and Stone and Meehan’s book is expertly constructed and most engaging. The performers, under Doug Hughes’ wonderful direction, are all terrific. Earley is particularly impressive. He is charming and charismatic in the title role, and he sings like a dream. This is a “Star is Born” performance.

Don’t miss Death Takes a Holiday. Bring Kleenex.

Silence! at Theatre 80, is a raunchy spoof of The Silence of the Lambs. Jenn Harris, a wonderfully gifted comedienne still waiting for that breakthrough role, sends up Jodie Foster’s performance in the film with malicious glee, and Brent Barrett pays homage, rather than sends up, Anthony Hopkins’ iconic performance as Hannibal Lecter. Director and Choreographer Christopher Gatelli’s work is very witty, and his ensemble cast, all playing multiple roles, has a lot of fun with them.

If you’re in the mood for something outrageous and raunchy, and you can’t get into The Book of Mormon, this one’s worth a visit.

At 59 E 59, Primary Stages has a new comedy by Charles Busch – only the third play he’s done in which he does not appear – called Olive and the Bitter Herbs. The “Olive” in the play is an elderly bit part and TV commercial actress who starts seeing a ghost in the mirror in her living room. Also in the play are a theatrical company manager who looks in on Olive from time to time, a gay couple and the elderly father of Olive’s co-op’s Board of Directors. All, it turns out, have a personal connection to the ghost in the mirror.

Busch’s writing is, as you would expect, very witty; but the play peters out in the second act, devolving into stories about the man in the mirror which become increasingly far-fetched. All the performances are wonderful, though. Marcia Jean Kurtz is delightfully cranky as Olive, and Julie Halston pulls out all her inimitable schtick as her friend Wendy.

Olive and the Bitter Herbs isn’t top-drawer Busch, but it supplies intermittent fun.

Josh Koenigsberg’s Herman Kline’s Midlife Crisis, at the Samuel Beckett Theatre, is an amusing comedy about a doctor who finds a bag of what he thinks is crack (it’s actually uncut cocaine) in the body of a murder victim and decides to keep it. He has just learned that he is seriously ill, and the baggie in his pocket becomes a kind of “security blanket.” Meanwhile, a young dope dealer is desperately searching for the missing coke.

Koenigsberg’s writing is fresh and assured, and the direction by Sherri Eden Barber equally so. All the performances are terrific, with special kudos to Bobby Moreno as the increasingly desperate drug dealer. This just got a pan in the Daily News. It didn’t deserve it. Herman Kline’s Midlife Crisis is well worth checking out.

As is Summer Shorts, Series A, at 59 E 59, which is much the best bill of one-acts I have seen in the 5-year history of this series. It starts off with Carrie and Francine, a comedy by Ruby Rae Spiegel about two teenaged girls. One’s determines to have sex with the honoree at a bar mitzvah, the other is determined to lose her baby fat by learning the complex art of bulimia. The play is funny and raunchy and features babe-alicious performances by Lydia Weintraub and Louise Sullivan. Next up is Triple Trouble with Love, three monologues by Christopher Durang, the first two or which are inter-locking, about a woman who only dates men she calls “hobbits” before dumping, about one of her hobbits, and about a woman with a predilection towards horrible choices in men. Alexander Dinelaris’ In This, Our Time, the only drama on the bill, is about a teenaged girl and her wayward mother. I found it touching, and beautifully acted. The piéce de resistance of the evening is Neil LaBute’s The New Testament, about an incredibly racist playwright who is adamant that the role of Jesus in his new play cannot be played by an Asian actor. Labute’s humor is outrageous as he sends up the whole issue of what has come to be called “non-traditional casting.”

Summer Shorts Series A is excellent, across the board.

I also enjoyed The Greenwich Village Follies, at Manhattan Theatre Source, a historical cavalcade of Village history with terrific songs by Doug Silver and Andrew Frank. Most are irreverently funny, but there are two “serious” songs thrown in which I found most memorable, a setting of Village poet Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “The Dream” and a heartbreaking song about the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in 1911. There are nine performers available to do this show, but only four perform at any one time. Three of the four I saw were pretty good, but the fourth, Meghan Dreyfuss, was more than good. She has a Big Voice and an engaging stage presence, and I have no doubt I’ll be seeing more of her, in bigger venues than the tiny stage of Manhattan Theatre Source.

DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY. Laura Pels Theatre, 11 W. 46^th St.

TICKETS: 212-719-1300

SILENCE! Theatre 80, 80 St. Mark’s Pl.

TICKETS: 212-352-3101

OLIVE AND THE BITTER HERBS. Primary Stages, 59 E. 59^th St.

TICKETS: www.ticketcentral.com or 212-279-4200

HERMAN KLINE’S MIDLIFE CRISIS. Samuel Beckett Theatre, 410 W. 42^nd St.

DISCOUNT TICKETS: Call 212-947-8844 and mention code TRHERMAN

SUMMER SHORTS SERIES A. 59 E. 59^th St.

TICKETS: www.ticketcentral.com or 212-279-4200

THE GREENWICH VILLAGE FOLLIES. Manhattan Theatre Source,177 Macdougal St.

TICKETS: 212-501-4751

For discount tickets for groups of ten or more, contact Carol Ostrow Productions & Group Sales. Phone: 212-265-8500. E-Mail: ostrow1776@aol.com.

“It requires a certain largeness of spirit to give generous appreciation to large achievements. A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day, when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry.”

— George F. Will

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who actually does strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

Many of the reviews for Zach Braff’s All New People, currently at Second Stage, have to varying degrees excoriated Second Stage for presenting such a “lightweight” comedy. The play is about a distraught man who wants to kill himself. Apparently, Off Broadway theatres are required to produce plays which make the audience want to kill themselves.

The play takes place in a beach house on Cape Cod and begins with a man named Charlie trying to hang himself – when a young woman, a real estate agent, comes in to check on the house before the arrival of potential renters. She’s British, in this country illegally, hoping to figure out a way to stay here permanently. Then Myron, the local fire chief arrives. He’s also the local drug dealer and in love with the Brit chick. Finally, a cute young blonde named Kim arrives. She’s an “escort,” sent out to the Cape by Charlie’s buddy, the fabulously wealthy guy who owns the house, to cheer Charlie up. It’s party time!

Film interludes give us the back story of each of the characters. The Brit babe was involved in something shady back home (what, we find out later); Myron used to be a high school drama teacher but he got fired for doing drugs with his students; the hooker is raising money to promote her music career; Charlie, an air traffic controller, got distracted on the job and was responsible for a plane crash which killed six people.

Director Peter Dubois does a fine job, and the actors are excellent. Best are David Wilson Barnes as Myron and Anna Camp, who is charming as well as babe-alicious as Kim. All New People is a lot of fun.

The Silver Tassie, at the Gerald Lynch Theatre at John Jay College, part of the Lincoln Center Festival, which has just closed, was a chore to sit through. The play, by Sean O’Casey, is rarely produced. Now I understand why. It’s a World War I drama about Irish doughboys which alternates between realism and expressionism, an awkward mix which just doesn’t work. The production was by the Druid Theatre Co., directed by that great director Gerry Hynes; but even she couldn’t make it work. I doubt if anyone could. Also, the Irish accents were so thick that much of the play was unintelligible, though this may have been due partially to poor acoustics.

The Silver Tassie was a real stinker.

The Judy Show, at the DR2 Theatre is an autobiographical one-woman show written by Ms. Gold and Kate Moira Ryan, wherein Gold plays herself, a Jewish lesbian stand-up comic. She talks about her life and career, and enacts various pitches she has made to TV executives over the years, in hopes of interesting them in various ideas she has had for a TV series called “The Judy Show.” In fact, The Judy Show seems like an extended pitch itself. Sometimes Ms. Gold is quite funny; most of the time, she is merely engaging.

The Judy Show is a pleasant evening, but not exactly what I would call must-see theatre.

The Patsy (at the Duke Theatre), on the other hand, is quirky and wonderful. The eccentric actor David Greenspan performs all the roles in this obscure, justly-forgotten comediy from the 1920s by Barry Conners about a middle-class family with nothing more pressing to contend with than which daughter is going to marry which fella. Greenspan, who usually speaks in falsetto, here exhibits a surprising vocal range and is both funny and quite touching as he creates this portrait of American life in a less cynical era than our own. His performance is a triumph, and not to be missed.

ALL NEW PEOPLE. Second Stage, 305 W. 43^rd St.

TICKETS: 212-246-4422

THE SILVER TASSIE. Gerald Lynch Theatre at John Jay College. Closed

THE JUDY SHOW. DR2 Theatre, 103 E. 15^th St.

TICKETS: www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

THE PATSY. Duke Theatre, 229, W. 42^nd St.

TICKETS: 646-223-3010

For discount tickets for groups of ten or more, contact Carol Ostrow Productions & Group Sales. Phone: 212-265-8500. E-Mail: ostrow1776@aol.com.

“It requires a certain largeness of spirit to give generous appreciation to large achievements. A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day, when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry.”

— George F. Will

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who actually does strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

Terrence McNally’s drama, Master Class, at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, sends the new Broadway season off with a bang. The play is based on actual master classes the great opera diva Maria Callas taught at Juilliard, when she was long past her prime, here condensed to sessions with three students – a terrified soprano, an overconfident tenor and a fiercely determined soprano, during which Callas pontificates, insults and cajoles these young people in an effort to make them understand what it takes to be a great artist. There are also two dramatic arias, if you will, interior monologues during which Callas talks about her life and career, alone onstage as director Stephen Wadsworth rolls out the stage of Alice Tully Hall and replaces it with that of a surreal opera stage.

Tyne Daly is sensational as the difficult, tempestuous diva, but there is excellent work as well from Alexandra Silber, Garrett Sorenson and Sierra Boggess as Callas’ three victims – sorry, students. Boggess is particularly impressive. Who knew from her charming performance as Ariel in The Little Mermaid that she has an operatic-quality singing voice?

This one’s a don’t-miss.

Signature Theatre Company decided, For Some Strange Reason, to wind up its Kushner season with Kushner’s translation of Corneille’s The Illusion, which seemed to me rather anticlimactic after Angels in America and The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide etc etc etc.

The play is something of a whimsical comedy about a man who goes to the cave of a magician hoping that he (in this production, she) can conjure up news of his wayward son. What ensues are three possible fates for him, in the last of which he dies. It’s all elegant and witty but, in the end, rather inconsequential; but Michael Mayer’s production was delightful, featuring lovely performances by veterans Lois Smith and David Margulies, as the conjuror and her new client. I was less impressed with the younger actors, but this is fairly typical for me. Smith and Margulies have the technical facility to speak verse beautifully, while all too often the younger actors have lazy tongues, and fail to hit all the notes as a result.

THE DEVIL’S MUSIC: THE LIFE AND BLUES OF BESSIE SMITH, at Theatre at St. Luke’s, is for all practical purposes a one-woman show, featuring an astounding performance by Miche Braden as the tragic blues singer. Joe Brancato has done a wonderful job of directing, and the music’s great.

This one is also definitely recommended.

Mint Theatre’s production of Rachel Crothers’ A Little Journey was a beautifully directed, acted and designed evening, so typical of evenings at the Mint, of a fascinating slice-of-life play about passengers on a training heading Out West. Roger Hanna’s set was a carousel of compartments constantly on the move, brilliantly choreographer by director Jackson Gay. The actors were all terrific; but I was particularly impressed by Samantha Soule as a young woman who loses her one way ticket to nowheresville and McCaleb Burnett as a rugged young man who proves her salvation.

What an invaluable company the Mint is! They specialize in resurrecting unjustly-forgotten plays and making them shine like new. On pain of death, never miss one of their productions!

Ordinarily, I abhor modern adaptations of ancient Greek dramas, which almost always seem to be to be even more boring than the originals, but an exception may be found at the Joan Weill Center for Dance, where a South African company called The Farber Foundry is presenting a riveting modern adaption of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, set in contemporary South Africa, called MoLoRa, adapted and directed by Yael Farber, featuring a titanic performance by Dorothy Ann Gould, something of a South African version of Judi Dench, as Klytemnestra. Also terrific are Jabulile Tshabalala as Elektra and Sandile Matsheni as Orestes. Klytemnestra is white, Elektra and Orestes are black, so Farber’s version takes Aeschylus’ classic revenge drama, sets it in South Africa, and asks, in the end, if revenge is morally justified. It’s fascinating, wonderful theatre, and not to be missed.

Voca People, at the Westside Arts, is a silly/weird theatrical whatzit, about a crew of white-clad aliens whose spaceship runs out of juice. They land on Earth, and have to sing sing sing in order to recharge it. This they do a capella, with much use of audience participation, which I found rather cloying. But the singing is phenomenal. If you are in the mood for something silly and totally weird, this would be a good choice.

MASTER CLASS. Samuel J. Freidman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street

TICKETS:  www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

THE ILLUSION. Signature Theatre Co. Alas, closed

THE DEVIL’S MUSIC … Theatre at St. Luke’s, 308 West 46th Street

TICKETS: 845-786-2873

A LITTLE JOURNEY. Mint Theatre Co. Alas, closed

MOLORA. Joan Weill Center for Dance, 405 West 55th Street

TICKETS: 212-352-3101

VOCA PEOPLE. Westside Arts, 407 W. 43^rd ST.

TICKETS:  www.telecharge.com or 212-239-6200

“It requires a certain largeness of spirit to give generous appreciation to large achievements. A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day, when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry.”

—– George F. Will