nytheatre Archive
1998-99 Theatre Season Reviews

Little Me tells the rags-to-riches story of Belle Poitrine, nee Schlumpfert, who rises from the slums of Venezuela, Illinois to become a celebrated movie star and memoirist. (It is, in fact, the occasion of the publication of her autobiography, called Little Me, that frames the evening.) At the tender age of sixteen, a naive but very well-endowed Belle meets the richest boy in town, Noble Eggleston, and the two instantly fall in love. Noble cannot marry her, though, until she achieves wealth, culture, and social position. Belle's pursuit of these goals propels her story, which takes her to such unlikely places as the trenches of France during World War II, the men's room of a movie studio in Hollywood, a tiny duchy in Europe called Rosenzweig, and the deck of the S.S. Gigantic.

The story spins outlandishly and hilariously forward, thanks to a book that is vintage Neil Simon, which is to say chock-full of shtick, one-liners, and gags. My personal favorite is the title that the Grand Prince Cherny gives to Belle when she saves tiny Rosenzweig from bankruptcy ("the Countess Zaftig"); there are hundreds to choose from. Mr. Simon's dexterous and abundant humor ensures that Little Me is never dull and never slow-moving.

It's not, however, what you'd call high art; that's where Martin Short comes in. Little Me is unabashedly a vehicle, its raison d'etre being that the various men in Belle's life are portrayed by one actor. Mr. Short rises to the challenge beautifully, playing Noble Eggleston as well a nasty old miser, a vaudeville agent turned movie producer, a French cabaret singer, a near-sided doughboy, a tyrannical German film director, and the aforementioned Prince Cherny. Mr. Short is an enormously appealing performer, and he sings and dances pleasantly. If he falls back on his Ed Grimley leap a bit too often, he is nonetheless a crowd-pleaser and a bona fide star.

When Little Me isn't clowning, it's singing: here's where Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh come in. This musical contains one of the finest scores of the 1960s, featuring songs like "Real Live Girl," "I've Got Your Number," "Here's to Us," "Be a Performer," and the title tune. Their melodies are pretty and memorable, and their lyrics are witty and smart. Even as played by the smaller-than-desirable orchestra (badly amplified by Brian Ronan's inferior sound design), they sound glorious.

So the pleasures of Little Me are many and substantial. (Let me mention here that the ensemble is generally excellent, especially Ruth Williamson, who is very funny as both Belle and Noble's mothers, and Brooks Ashmanskas, a terrific dancer who should be given more to do.) It is necessary, though, to at least delineate the show's failings, and I will do so quickly. First, Faith Prince is miserably miscast as Belle, particularly as the character has been reconceived for this production. In the original, Belle was portrayed by two actresses, one playing the Young Belle, the other playing the older, wiser Belle who is writing her memoir. Ms. Prince is never convincing as the Young Belle and seldom convincing as the Old. Her singing is generally okay, but she's otherwise fairly leaden in the role; she and Mr. Short have no chemistry whatsoever.

Rob Marshall's staging borders on the disastrous. In scene after scene, he undermines the show's strengths--not to say internal logic--with coarse, clumsy effects. The overture--a glorious, brassy medley hinting of the zippy good cheer to come--is cut short by a frenzied but uninspired crowd scene that looks like a poor copy of a scene from Mame. "I've Got Your Number," a sexy seduction sung by Belle's old friend Lucky, trying to lure her away from her devotion to Noble, is done here, embarrassingly, as a striptease. Unforgivably, a production number on board the sinking Gigantic happens behind an extremely tall piece of scenery that is supposed to be the Atlantic Ocean--so tall, in fact, the patrons in the front rows can't see any of what's going on. (Shame on everyone involved for not realizing that about 5 - 10% of the seats in the theatre have obstructed views.)

Presumably Mr. Marshall's reconception of the show as a vehicle for two instead of a vehicle for one, as well as his dumbed-down vulgarization of every available moment, have been approved by Mr. Simon and Mr. Coleman (Ms. Leigh is no longer with us and, consequently, no longer culpable). I wonder why they have allowed such tampering with material that is, if not great, certainly better than average. I wonder too why a terrific talent like Martin Short has to take hand-me-downs from Sid Caesar, the brilliant comic for whom this show was written in the first-place. The men of Little Me are Mr. Caesar's characters, not Mr. Short's, and in places like the death scene of film director Otto Schnitzler, where Mr. Simon has written in the precise rhythms and cadences of his old boss from Your Show of Shows, Mr. Short's unsuitability is palpable. He deserves to have talents as big as Neil Simon and Cy Coleman writing shows for him, which is to say for him.

Little Me is not nearly as bad as it could have been: it's not as dismal as, say, The Goodbye Girl, Mr. Short's previous Broadway outing. But it's still a regrettable disappointment, because it so clearly illuminates so much of what's wrong with how we seem to produce Broadway musicals nowadays. Taste and artistry no longer seem to be the prime considerations: they've been replaced with conservative, fiscally-based hedging and a lowest-common-denominator cheapening of the material at hand. It's not a pretty picture.

Yet, as I say, Little Me is actually fairly darn enjoyable. And life is short. So enjoy Martin Short's clowning, laugh at Neil Simon's endless stream of gags, and sink into Cy Coleman's and Carolyn Leigh's irresistible songs. You will have a good time.

As you probably know, On the Town tells the story of three sailors during World War II, on a 24-hour pass in New York City. The shy romantic one, Gabey, is immediately entranced by a picture he sees in a subway car of "Miss Turnstiles," and decides that he must meet her before the day is over. His pals Chip and Ozzie agree to help him on this quixotic mission. Along the way, Chip meets up with feisty cabdriver Hildy Esterhazy, while Ozzie encounters the man-hungry anthropologist Claire DeLoone at the Museum of Natural History. Meanwhile, Gabey actually does find his dreamgirl, whose name is Ivy Smith, taking a singing lesson in a Carnegie Hall Studio. They arrange to meet for a date later that evening, but then things start to go awry.

Gabey's dreamy pursuit of Ivy propels the show through two busy, fast-paced acts. But On the Town is less about this particular pair of lovers than about all of the lovers in wartime New York, whether suddenly separated or hastily united. It's about fleeting moments of utmost joy and deepest yearning, all informed by the unspoken but plain fact of a country at war: Gabey and Chip and Ozzie may never have another 24 hours alive, anywhere. I can't express it better than lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green do in the show's most tender song: "Where has the time all gone to?/Haven't done half the things we want to/Oh well, we'll catch up some other time."

Director George C. Wolfe has found the soul of wartime New York--all of the happiness and all of the sadness, all of the exaltation and all of the loneliness--and placed it squarely and forthrightly on stage. Leonard Bernstein's score is beautifully played by Kevin Stites and a grand orchestra: songs like "Lonely Town" and "Lucky to Be Me" and "New York, New York" send us out of the theatre humming, while the evocative ballet music for no fewer than six extended dance sequences electrifies and energizes us: this score literally soars. As for the book and lyrics by Comden and Green, well, they sparkle with originality and wit and then suddenly, when you least expect it, give eloquent voice to the sweet sadness that pervades this work. On the Town is pragmatic but never harsh, adult but never cynical: above all, it is honest, grounded in a time and place when there was something real to believe in.

Keith Young's choreography is less interesting than it might be, but he gets some of the key moments exactly right. The company is generally excellent, and in at least one case much better than that: Mary Testa, in the relatively small role of Madame Dilly (Ivy's singing teacher) is magnificent, singing and clowning with enormous aplomb. It's the kind of performance that would seem to have "Tony Award" written all over it: Ms. Testa has got talent and star quality to spare. Almost as delightful is Lea DeLaria, a chubby comedienne with first-rate chops who plays the bossy cabdriver Hildy. She sings up a storm, moves with surprising grace, and clowns commandingly.

Robert Montano, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Perry Layton Ojeda are fine as the three sailors, with Mr. Ojeda in particularly good form for the main ballads "Lonely Town" and "Lucky to Be Me." Tai Jimenez is a sweet, leggy Miss Turnstiles, and Sarah Knowlton acquits herself nicely as Claire, although she just misses the zaniness that's called for in this role. Jonathan Freeman offers sturdy support as one Pitkin W. Bridgework, Claire's long-suffering fiancé.

Adrienne Lobel's set, dominated by a rendering of one of New York City's famous bridges, serves the piece well; the costumes by Paul Tazewell are lovely. They evoke the city not as it was but as it should have been, which is just right for Mr. Wolfe's lush, loving tribute to a fine and faraway time.

As On the Town ends, Chip and Gabey and Ozzie head back to their ship at the end of their unforgettable day, hearts full of joy and sadness. At the same time, three other sailors burst onto the scene, filled with anticipation. It's a final moment to treasure in an evening brimming with them.

The friendship at the center of Snakebit is that of Michael, a social worker whose lover has recently left him for a much younger man, and Jonathan, an ambitious movie actor whose marriage may be faltering. Jonathan and Michael are old, old friends, but they have drifted apart as their lives have led them in different directions. Jonathan's wife Jenifer, meanwhile, has gotten closer and closer to Michael, and it is this closeness that ultimately jeopardizes Jonathan and Michael's relationship.

I will leave it for you to discover the unhappy events that occur during Jonathan and Jenifer's three-day visit at Michael's house. Suffice to say that Michael is in pain for having lost a lover and, more significantly, a chance at a truly lasting and fulfilling relationship. Jenifer is deeply guilty over an incident in her past that may have dangerous consequences to the health of her young daughter. And Jonathan, the most honest and therefore the most brutal of the three friends, is still quietly recovering from losing the love of his life, slowly and ineffably. None of this, mind you, plays out the way you probably think.

Mr. Grant has provided his actors with outstanding opportunities here, and his fine cast never lets him down. Geoffrey Nauffts is just about perfect as Michael, capturing the gentleness and the smoldering anger of this complex and conflicted man. Jodie Markell is excellent as Jenifer: her reading of a simple line of dialogue near the end of the play (telling her husband that he can't pack his boots in his suitcase) is so natural and real that it just about takes your breath away. Nevertheless, it is David Alan Basche as Jonathan who delivers the evening's strongest performance. Mr. Basche imbues this man, who could easily be portrayed as a self-indulgent, handsome male bimbo, with enormous intelligence and humanity. Jonathan's tragedy--a complicated and multi-layered betrayal at the hands of his best friend Michael--is the central one in Snakebit, and, as realized by Mr. Basche, it cuts sharply and deeply.

Michael Weston does well in the play's fourth, much smaller role, as a potential buyer of Michael's Los Angeles home, which he is getting ready to leave while the events of Snakebit unfurl. And set designer Dean Taucher's rendering of this chaotically half-packed house is splendid, a telling metaphor for the unraveling relationships that are played out within it.

Fool Moon is two hours of sheer, unadulterated joy.

This is the third time Bill Irwin and David Shiner have brought this sublime entertainment to Broadway, and the third time that I have seen it. It only gets better and funnier with age and repeated viewing. David Shiner, a sly and mischievous clown whose personality is a blend of the worst traits of each of the Marx Brothers, is one of the most supremely funny men in the world. And Bill Irwin, his gently sweet-natured, dizzyingly gravity-defying partner in crime, is a genius. See them in Fool Moon immediately: they're only going to be in town for four more weeks.

I don't want to tell you too much about what happens in Fool Moon because I don't want to spoil the surprise. I will tell you that it consists of several sketches, all pantomimed, featuring one or both of Messrs. Irwin and Shiner. Several of them include musical accompaniment from the onstage band The Red Clay Ramblers (who are brilliant). This folk-ish quintet also gets a few turns of its own, while the clowns are taking well-deserved rests, and the offbeat songs that they perform are entertaining and delightful. (A highlight is the one about a group of hicks attending a performance of the opera Pagliacci.)

Several sketches also include, importantly, the audience. Each act begins with Mr. Shiner making his inimitable way through the crowd: what he does has to be experienced to be fully appreciated. And each act climaxes with elaborate pieces involving one (Act I) or four (Act II) unwary spectators. Mr. Shiner manages to make these people look and seem funnier than they could ever hope to be, as he stages first a spectacularly silly first date and then, grandly, an entire silent movie. Again, these things must be seen to be entirely understood. But during them, as throughout every inch of Fool Moon, the laughter is deep and unabashed and nonstop.

Every once in awhile Mr. Irwin and Mr. Shiner halt the comedy long enough to execute an intricate dance step. Believe it or not, these are the best moments in Fool Moon. Limber does not begin to describe these men: Mr. Irwin, in particular, is my favorite dancer in the world, period: watching him perform is one of the greatest pleasures I know of. (You'll also get to see him do his trademark shtick where he jumps headfirst into his hat; I've seen him do it three times now and I still have no idea how he manages it.)

At the end, a giant crescent moon hovers in the air behind our heroes, to carry them off  heavenward. A little tear forms in the corner of each eye, partly because the moment is so sweetly touching, and partly because we don't want the evening to be over so soon. For Fool Moon flies by: it's true what they say about having fun.

We are in the home of Mrs. Elizabeth Heathcote, nee Big, who with her sisters Alethea and Catherine and her brother Harris is hosting a Christmas gathering. Also present are the large Austen family, headed by Reverend George Austen, and including, among others, his 28-year-old daughter Jane, who fancies writing and has, in fact, devised an afternoon's entertainment for the group featuring various stories, plays, and poems that she wrote in her youth, to be recited and enacted by various members of the Big and Austen families and a few of their friends.

If you only know Jane Austen from Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility, then you may be pleasantly surprised to learn how agreeably short and light and funny these offerings turn out to be. They are also often sharply satiric, reminiscent of the Regency comedy of Sheridan or Boucicault. There are, for example, seven letters, most featuring young people longing for love but conniving for money; my favorite, titled "The Murderess," is the confidential confession of a brazenly greedy woman who counts among her crimes having forged her own will (think about it).

There are also enactments of two of Jane's early novels. "Jack and Alice" is a long, convoluted narrative involving a handsome rake named Charles Adams, a trio of women who adore him, and another trio--sisters--who come to assorted, highly dramatic ends. The other is the ingenuous and very brief "The Beautiful Cassandra," which relates a day in the life of a spoiled and adventurous young lady.

The most unusual item among these Innocent Diversions is Jane's History of England (from Henry IV to Charles I), which is a slightly off-kilter, slightly satiric, and entirely romanticized view of the lives of a dozen or so British monarchs, of which Mary, Queen of Scots is the unabashed heroine, while Elizabeth I is depicted as an irredeemable villainess. And the funniest item is a gently scathing comedy of manners called "The Visit," in which the customs of the upper-middle class are neatly twitted in four clever, compact scenes.

The sketches--sixteen in number--fly by in quick and happy succession. Adapter-director Lynn Marie Macy has done a magnificent job stitching Innocent Diversions together from Jane Austen's writings, creating an evening that very well may have actually happened back in 1803. All of the actors are splendid, capturing the spirit of this homespun amateur theatrical with sincerity and respect. First among equals in this company is the very talented Karen Eterovich, who does a capital job as the evening's writer-director-producer Jane (she conveys all of these duties with agreeable naturalness during the course of the show). Some other performances that I particularly enjoyed include William Richert, devilishly perfect as Charles Adams in the "Jack and Alice" sequence; Denise Alessandra Hurd, gleefully wicked as "The Murderess"; and Judith Jarosz, broadly comical in a number of roles, including the Beautiful Cassandra and a particularly evil young woman in "Jack and Alice."

No Christmas party you're likely to attend this year will match the one thrown by the Big Sisters (oops! they hate to be called that). Innocent Diversions hearkens back to an era when we had just our wits and our wiles to amuse one another: how sweetly and charmingly these witty, wily folk are able to amuse us. It's perfectly appropriate for the entire family, too, and--at less than two hours in length--you'll have plenty of time for a singalong or some play-acting of your own when you get home.

In Scene Two, we find Callie in a police station, narrating the circumstances of the senseless, brutal beating that Sarah has received, one that has sent her, battered and comatose, to the hospital. Subsequent scenes move forward from Scene One, showing us how Callie and Sarah's friendship grows and deepens until at last it blossoms into that sweet, lovely embrace. Alternating with these are scenes revealing how Callie and Sarah survive the attack, which turns out to be a gay bashing, and how they come to terms with their identities and their relationship. Callie, in particular, who never thought of herself as a lesbian and never thought herself capable of committing lastingly to another human being, learns a lot about who she is and--more importantly--who she can be.

Stop Kiss has political content: its depiction of the bitter aftermath of a random hate crime is unsparing and disturbing. It's also a pointed and witty account of the way we live now: Callie and Sarah--and Callie's on-again, off-again boyfriend George--personify the hollow aimlessness of contemporary urban life. But mostly Miss Son has written a play about a journey toward self-discovery: Callie, so purposeless and scared at the beginning of Stop Kiss, finds the courage not only to commit to Sarah but to fight for her by its end.

That we are so moved by Callie's voyage in Stop Kiss is a function of Miss Son's urgent and evocative writing. But it is also a result of the fine playing of her cast, particularly Jessica Hecht as Callie, Sandra Oh as Sarah, and Kevin Carroll as George. Miss Hecht, recently seen in The Last Night of Ballyhoo and Plunge emerges here as one of our best young actresses, and though her characterization relies a bit too heavily at times on some quirky mannerisms, it is nevertheless enormously effective and deeply moving. Miss Oh has some showy moments after the attack has left Sarah partially paralyzed, and she plays them honestly and courageously; throughout she brings a good-natured eccentricity to the role that is appealing and interesting. Mr. Carroll is wonderfully easy and natural and George, and, as witness to the surprising attraction between his long-time pal and her new friend, helps to guide us through its recounting here with perplexed good humor. He has some of the script's wittiest lines, such as his response when Callie tells him that Sarah won a fellowship to get her job in a tough Bronx public school. ("What do the losers get?")

Stop Kiss has emerged as a surprise hit of the fall season. It's moving and funny and thoughtful and sad and socially significant; so its unevenness and occasional heavy-handedness are easily forgiven and forgotten. Miss Son is a writer of talent and conviction. She has given us a play that deserves to be seen.

The format of this Evening is simple enough. Mr. Crisp enters, attired dandily in black suit, overcoat, and gloves, with a chic black and gold scarf wrapped loosely about his neck and a handsome black fedora worn rakishly over two unruly tufts of curly white hair. He seats himself on a fine velvet chair and begins to talk to us. After about an hour he looks at his watch and announces that it's time for a pause "and a good cry"; after intermission he takes questions from the audience for about 30 minutes more, and then he calls it a night.

Mr. Crisp does this to earn his keep, to be sure--he is quite forthright about that--but also because he clearly lives for an audience. When faced with one, he can hold forth with immense vigor and fortitude, on just about any topic; the pleasure he has in doing so is palpable; and the pleasure he has in sensing our pleasure even more so. Mr. Crisp pontificates here about how each of us needs to develop his or her own personal style; as he demonstrates over and over again throughout his show, few other living humans are better versed in this subject. Many of his familiar bon mots are here: the one about why you should not clean your house, the one about never keeping up with the Joneses, the one about how actresses age.

But underneath the epigrammatic wit, Mr. Crisp has a serious, even profound, point to make, and he makes it emphatically both in word and deed. Mr. Crisp means for us above all to be true to ourselves: to plumb deep inside ourselves and figure out who we are and then invent, unafraid and unembarrassed, a fully-formed self around whoever that turns out to be. This of course is precisely what Mr. Crisp himself did, decades ago, when being a flamboyantly open homosexual was not only shocking but downright dangerous. And this is how Mr. Crisp, who has embraced life but never love, has survived and thrived for 90 years (his birthday was opening night, Christmas 1998).

Mr. Crisp advises us to have lots of money but few possessions, to view our home as our dressing room and the rest of the world as our stage, and to make sure that everything in our home accurately reflects the character we want the world to see. He also tells us to live by the words of Saint Teresa, who said that we should always treat others as our betters. (He also tells us the secret of the universe, but I won't give that away here.) I, for one, plan to take Mr. Crisp's encomiums to heart.

Pound for pound and minute by minute, there's probably not a wiser show in New York right now than this one. That it's also often wickedly funny and consistently entertaining is the icing of the cake. Spend An Evening with Quentin Crisp while he's still here to share them with us; you'll be glad you did.

Just such a leap backwards in time awaits you at the Pearl Theatre Company, where a lively and vivid new production of Mr. Wycherley's classic is currently on the boards. As staged by the Pearl's artistic director Shepard Sobel, The Country Wife feels resoundingly authentic, with its bewigged gentlemen and bejewelled ladies--a decidedly vain and shallow lot--making fools of themselves and their audience while spinning out the dizzy convolutions of an absurd yet entirely plausible plot. Mr. Sobel has neither tempered the (surprisingly) smutty tone of the piece, nor excised its languid long-windedness. And so in addition to the rollicking farce being performed on stage we also get something of a history lesson, with the historical and social context of this famous Restoration Comedy clearly and forthrightly elucidated for us.

A quick summation of the events of The Country Wife: Harry Horner, as described above, has succeeded in convincing his male friends that he is no threat to their women; and he has convinced the women of quite the opposite, with the result that they seek his company in droves. But one of his neighbors, Mr. Pinchwife, has been away in the country and consequently hasn't heard the news about Harry. So he very jealously tries to conceal his pretty, naive young bride--Margery, the lady of the play's title--from roguish Harry. Of course, Harry connives to make love to Margery, and Margery quite willingly complies by falling in love with him. This leads to enormous complications, including the near-collapse of Harry's ruse. But by the end of the play, everything is neatly sorted out, with Margery restored to the cuckolded but somewhat chastened Pinchwife and Horner's false reputation still in intact.

Yet, though it can be made to sound like standard-issue farce, The Country Wife is anything but. There is an alarming lot of cynicism in this play which sets it squarely in its time and also makes it timeless. The married gentlemen who Horner so roundly makes fools of are but elder incarnations of him and the young dandies with whom he socializes. Mr. Pinchwife is rather a terrifying man, repeatedly locking poor Margery in her room so that she might not meet anyone, and threatening to beat and even kill her when he suspects that she nevertheless has. The life to which she finds herself assigned at the play's presumed happy ending promises to be more a trap than a treasure.

So The Country Wife turns out, unexpectedly, to be satire. Just as unexpected, for me anyway, is how relentlessly dirty it is. Many of the most ribald jokes aren't even double entendre: the references to sex and body parts are direct and unconcealed. They're also very funny; there is, notably, the famous scene in which three of Horner's ladies converge to see their favorite eunuch's "china" at the same time, with hilarious results.

As usual, Mr. Sobel has cast his show felicitously. Ray Virta is suitably slippery as the likable scoundrel Horner, while Patricia Dalen is delightfully vigorous and eager as his unwitting victim Margery Pinchwife. Providing outstanding support are Pearl regulars Edward Seamon as the most foolish of the cuckolded husbands, Robin Leslie Brown as his chic, deceitful wife, Christopher Moore as Horner's most foppish friend, and Joanne Camp, brilliantly funny as the most desperate of Horner's conquests. And Anna Minot contributes a fine cameo as that lady's mother, proclaiming, with deadpan nonchalance, that everything--including her daughter's questionable reputation--has been restored to rights after the obligatory final far-fetched explanations have been delivered.

One quibble: Dan Daily's Pinchwife is perhaps a bit too terrifying: he strikes me as rather too formidable and menacing for comfort. Of course, that may be precisely Mr. Daily's and Mr. Sobel's point: this Country Wife casts an honest, jaundiced eye on the society and mores that it twits so outrageously.

The hero of Far East is Sparky Watts, scion of a well-to-do Midwestern American family, a young naval officer stationed in Japan just after the close of the Korean War. Sparky is fresh and confident and eager: he is here to see the world and to have lots of interesting experiences: to find himself, he hopes, and as far away from his conventional, narrow-minded family as possible.

Sparky is viewed with annoyance and then with avuncular bemusement by his commanding officer, a career military man named James Anderson, a pioneer flyboy grounded after the death of his son. Anderson's wife Julia also takes a very personal interest in handsome Sparky, especially when he reveals that he is in love with a Japanese woman, and that he intends to marry her. Julia is an old friend of one of Sparky's aunts, and her bitter, racist reaction to this news prompts her to inform Sparky's family of his wayward behavior.

Running parallel to the story of Sparky's Michener-esque love affair is another, sadder one, also of betrayal, involving Sparky's roommate Bob. While preparing to take a week of vacation, Bob turns over custody of some classified documents to Sparky. Sparky discovers that some items are missing; Bob eventually admits that he is being blackmailed by a man who was his lover but has turned out to be a Communist spy. Sparky's naive honesty compels him to turn his friend in; effectively ending Bob's career, of course, but also prompting a crisis of conscience for himself that he never satisfactorily resolves.

Near the end of Far East, Sparky and Bob reconcile and talk about their futures. Sparky speaks romantically of a life with his Japanese fiancée, away from the strictures of his youth and his family. Bob, meanwhile, is entirely uncertain of what lies ahead: rejected by the Navy and by his mother, he literally has nowhere to go, nothing to do. Sparky says he understands; Bob replies, quietly, that he cannot.

But we know that Bob is going to flourish wherever he finally lands, because he also tells Sparky that he is not going to deny his true nature anymore: he will live as what he is, without fear or regret. And we fear, paradoxically, that Sparky is doomed to do so as well.

Michael Hayden is nothing short of magnificent as Sparky. There's a scene, for example, when he finds himself coerced into taking a ballroom dance lesson: Mr. Hayden's tentative, self-conscious awkwardness shows us the vulnerable center of this appealingly brash young man with grace and eloquence. Bill Smitrovich (Anderson),   Lisa Emery (Julia), and Connor Trinneer (Bob) do fine work here, also. Special mention must be made, too, of Sonnie Brown, who plays all of the other characters in the story, in the guise of a Reader, stationed on a small balcony overhanging the main playing area, observing, narrating, and occasionally participating in the action below.

The Reader is, of course, an acknowledgement of the play's setting, a rather deliberate and un-subtle borrowing from the conventions of Japanese theatre. The strangeness of this device helps to remind us that Sparky and his colleagues are a long way from home. They learn to do miraculous things in the Far East; the question is, when they return home, will they remember what they have learned?

The final, tender, sad scenes of Some Voices catch you unawares, in spite of ample preparation provided by what comes before them: you may find yourself, as I did, dealing with a lump in your throat and some tears in your eyes. Joe Penhall, whose first play this is, has drawn an honest and moving portrait of a young man suffering from schizophrenia. We watch as the disease uncontrollably and irretrievably destroys his capacity for reason, sending him helplessly into a world of voices that only he can hear. It's heartbreaking.

Some Voices begins in a mental hospital in West London. Ray, in his mid-twenties, obviously bright, energetic, and distinctly edgy, is saying goodbye to his friend Ives. His condition apparently stable, he has been released to the care of his older brother Pete, the owner-chef of a modest restaurant.

But when we next see Ray, at Pete's flat, it's clear that he's having trouble assimilating: he's drinking beer non-stop, he's not taking his medication, he hasn't checked in with the counselor who is assigned to assist him. Worse, he's taken to wandering off on his own for long stretches of time. On one occasion, he stumbles upon a young Irish woman, Laura, as she is being beaten up by her volatile boyfriend Dave. He foolishly, gallantly intervenes, receiving a black eye from Dave for his trouble; he falls in love with Laura at first sight, as well, and embarks on a vigorous and surprisingly successful campaign to woo and win her.

I don't want to give too much away, so suffice to say that things don't turn out as Ray would have them. Soon his old friend Ives, from the mental hospital, turns up, ranting like the madman that he is and--more pointedly--that Ray seems inescapably bound to become.

Ray's cocky insouciance (wonderfully embodied by the young actor Jamie Harris in one of the season's best performances) keeps Some Voices from being a movie-of-the-week tearjerker. It also makes Mr. Penhall's unexpected resolution of his play all the more affecting: what vibrant life gets lost, unaccountably, to the seemingly random destructiveness of disease!

Mr. Harris's virtuoso turn here is matched by the expert work of his co-stars, especially Max Baker as his brother Pete, initially exasperated but later transformed by prolonged exposure to poor manic Ray; and Mitchell McGuire, eerily dead-on as the hopelessly ill Ives. Frank Pugliese's staging is assured and sensitive, and leaves us with a startling final sensory image that conveys Mr. Penhall's theme subtly but effectively. The design, particularly the lighting by James Vermeulen, serves the work admirably.

Some Voices is funny in places and wise in places, breathlessly dramatic (especially at its surprising climax) and unabashedly sad. It treats its subject with respect and care, yet is unflinching in depicting the cruel ravaging of this scary disease on the heart and mind of its young hero.

So--disarmingly--begins Margaret Edson's acclaimed new play Wit: hospital platitudes spoken with jovial irony by Vivian Bearing, Ph. D. Vivian wears a hospital gown and a baseball cap, which covers her bald head; she is very, very ill with advanced ovarian cancer, for which she is undergoing an experimental and rather harrowing treatment. Her initial observation about her present condition--the first of many insightful ones, by the way--has to do with the hackneyed, soulless greeting that she receives from virtually everyone she comes in contact with--doctors, nurses, interns, and orderlies. "I am waiting for the moment when someone asks me this question and I am dead," she tells us. "I'm a little sorry I'll miss that."

Welcome to the darkly tragicomic world of Wit, a long sad one-act play about a woman facing death alone, armed with nothing but, well, her wit. It's also an exploration of how people justify their lives in an age of diminished meaning; and also a fairly compelling expose of the brusque neglect with which we seem to treat one another these days. Vivian receives neither companionship nor compassion during her eight-month sojourn in the hospital, unless you count the cheery visits of Susie, her sweet-natured but rather simple nurse. To her doctor, and especially to his assistant, the brilliant but difficult Jason Posner, M.D., she is not so much a patient as a lab rat. Vivian is deconstructed by these men into body parts and data; the worst aspect, perhaps, of a terrible ordeal.

Not that this kind of thing is foreign to Vivian. She is, or was, a professor of English literature, an authority on the works of the great metaphysical poet John Donne. In her job she terrorized her students unthinkingly and dispassionately while instructing them on another sort of deconstruction. Jason turns out to have been one of these students, and Ms. Edson draws many parallels between him and Vivian, who are in fact very much alike. Both are born researchers, dedicated first and foremost to contributing to humanity's body of knowledge, without stopping to contribute any part of themselves to humanity.

Wit covers a lot of ground in its intermissionless two hours, including, in addition to the foregoing, insights about the power of language, John Donne's Holy Sonnets, and the nature of medical research. It's a carefully written play, and an intelligent one, and although I finally did not find it particularly affecting I certainly appreciate its thoughtfulness and its incisive point of view. (I should point out that many in the audience were visibly moved by what they saw, including my companion.)

Wit is blessed with a brilliant central performance by Kathleen Chalfant: she makes Vivian a vital and unforgettable presence, finding the stubbornness and pride and frailty and--eventually--the raw hurt and anger that define this woman. Alec Phoenix, whose matinee idol good looks perhaps do not serve him well here, is less convincing as Jason, though the fault may lie with Ms. Edson's ambivalence about this character. Paula Pizzi and Walter Charles do solid work as Vivian's nurse and doctor. The most affecting performance, however, comes from Helen Stenborg, as Vivian's mentor E. M. Ashford. Near the end of the play, Professor Ashford, now well into her 80s, pays Vivian a visit at the hospital and reads to her: she's the only visitor Vivian ever receives, and it's the only moment in the play when we see a moment of genuine, heartfelt tenderness.

The absence of actual human emotion--notwithstanding lots of discussion around the subject--is Wit's distinguishing characteristic. This is a play for the mind, not the heart; yet it offers riches well worth discovering. It has already emerged as one of the season's best-reviewed plays, and it's encouraging to see that audiences are flocking to it despite its downbeat subject matter. Intellectual it may be, but it is also stimulating and uplifting--and savagely funny and honest.

While he was still alive, Bob Fosse staged his own tribute to his genius with the musical revue Dancin', and he immortalized his ambivalent world view on celluloid in the autobiographical film All that Jazz. Each in its own way showed us the effervescent song-and-dance man battling with the darkly cynical master of razzle-dazzle for the heart and soul--and talent--of one of Broadway's greatest choreographers. Now, more than ten years after his death, the two women who knew him best, Gwen Verdon and Ann Reinking, have teamed up with Livent (US) Inc., Richard Maltby, Jr. (the creator of Ain't Misbehavin'), and a cast of several dozen expert, sinewy dancers to give us Fosse, billed as a celebration in song and dance of the career of the man who gave us Sweet Charity, Chicago, and the movie version of Cabaret. Have they succeeded in bettering the master's own efforts to encapsulate his legacy for a new generation?

Regrettably, no. Fosse balances the hell-for-leather razzmatazz of the fearless young dancer-choreographer with the jaded, sardonic self-righteousness of the embittered older director-choreographer. But it makes no progression from the one to the other: it makes no connections, it tells no story. Lacking heart and soul and mind, Fosse emerges solely as a collection of body parts, arranged--sometimes beautifully, sometimes astonishingly, always with mind-numbing precision--into a series of technically impressive but entirely unaffecting dance numbers.

Which is not to say that Fosse is without merit: taken on its own terms, this is a dazzling showcase for some very talented performers. Valerie Pettiford, for example, does a sultry "Mein Herr" (from Cabaret) which makes you forget you ever saw or heard Liza Minnelli's rendition; a (very) long-legged woman named Elizabeth Parkinson executes some gravity-defying steps in the finale ("Sing, Sing, Sing," from Dancin'); and Scott Wise, one of our most accomplished male dancers, has a couple of wonderful moments in "I Wanna Be a Dancin' Man" (Dancin') and "Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo" (Damn Yankees). There are genuine sparks generated during the show's opening number, a recreation of the "Bye, Bye, Blackbird" number from Liza With a Z. And the opening tableau of Sweet Charity's "Big Spender," with its lineup of dance hall hostesses suggesting an update of Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon, still has the capacity to thrill.

But such high spots are few, and they come farther and farther between as the evening wears on. (Indeed, even at just under two-and-a-half hours, Fosse feels much too long.) Almost all of the show's 34 musical numbers are recreations of Mr. Fosse's work in theatre, film, television, and nightclubs; a few are adaptations or blends of moves and themes from the Fosse oeuvre. Because most of these dances are outstanding, even classic, examples of their form, Fosse is always entertaining. But out of context many of these pieces lose some of their impact; and, strung together one after another without narrative or other relief, their effect is eventually deadening.

Most damaging, though, is that we've seen most of these numbers before, danced, indelibly, by the performers for whom they were devised. I find it interesting that virtually none of the choreography that Mr. Fosse created for his principal muse, Gwen Verdon, is here. What is here--Ann Reinking's famed high kicks from Dancin', Carol Haney's puckish "Steam Heat" from The Pajama Game, even Mr. Fosse's own torrid 45-second duet with Ms. Haney from the film Kiss Me, Kate--is recreated with museum-like precision. But it never has the fire or zest or appeal of the originals, all of which are available on video or, reasonably fresh, in our memory banks. The excerpts from Chicago, available right next door in the hit revival of that musical, fall particularly flat.

Apart from a singular lack of inspiration, no specific element of Fosse is subpar: this is a case where the whole is distinctly less than the sum of its parts. Anyway, it prompts me to make this suggestion: Let's stop cannibalizing our musical theatre heritage and let's start developing new work instead. The cast of Fosse are eager, energetic, enthusiastic, and very, very talented. They deserve something better than specters from the 50s and 60s and 70s: someone needs to devise killer choreography for them to introduce instead of saddling them with retreads from the past.

But I find it brilliant: compelling, riveting, fascinating theatre: a free-wheeling smorgasbord of ideas and emotions that brings Euripides powerfully and passionately up-to-date. Here are heroes and heroines--ordinary men and women forced by circumstances to make horrendous choices that affect thousands of people--looking their creators and their fates squarely in the eye, defying them, daring them to wreak more havoc. And here are these same heroes and heroines, opportunistically employing their own fearless hubris to bend others to their will. If this isn't the stuff of great theatre, then I don't know what is.

The Iphigenia Cycle actually consists of two plays, both written by the great Greek tragedian Euripides near the end of his life. The first is Iphigenia at Aulis, which tells how Agamemnon, leader of the Greek army, comes to sacrifice his eldest daughter Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis, in return for a promised victory over his enemies in Troy. Over the objections of his brother Menelaos, his wife Clytemnestra, and the young soldier Achilles, he manages to convince Iphigenia of the nobility of her sacrifice and she agrees to it, only to be rescued at the last minute by the goddess herself.

The second play, Iphigenia in Tauris, picks up the story ten years later. Iphigenia has been taken by Artemis to the barbaric land of Tauris, where she serves as the priestess of her temple. The custom here is to kill any Greek who ventures on Taurian soil, and it is Iphigenia's duty to supervise these killings, which are sacrifices to the goddess. One day two Greek travelers show up, who Iphigenia discovers are in fact her younger brother Orestes and his friend Pylades. Orestes, who murdered Clytemnestra to avenge that lady's murder of Agamemnon, is being pursued by the Furies. To free him of this miserable torture, the god Apollo has commanded him to steal the statue of Artemis housed at this very temple. He and Iphigenia reunite and contrive to steal the statue and indeed Iphigenia herself from the temple at Tauris. At the end of the play, the goddess Athena affirms the victory of the Greeks over the Taurians, leaving us with the promise of Orestes's just return to rule over his people.

These two stories were certainly intended to show the nobility of the Greeks, who follow the commands of the gods at enormous personal cost (sacrificing daughters, killing parents, and so on) to ensure the glory of their nation. How grandly Ms. Akalaitis has managed here to subvert that theme! In her hands, Agamemnon and Meneleos become crafty politicos, bending the supposed whims of the gods to suit their own savage agendas. Clytemnestra's bitter lamentations are rooted in selfishness rather than sorrow. And Orestes and Iphigenia are depicted not as the stoic beauties we have come to expect but rather as a pair of severely damaged children of dysfunctional parents: she, very much her father's daughter, is a cynical burned-out punk star worshipped as a priestess by an ignorant people, who understands and uses her power for her own purposes; while he, very much his mother's son, has lapsed into a debilitating state of schizophrenia, and is lurching toward fulfillment of a martyr complex brought on, no doubt, by his deep guilt over what he has done.

The Iphigenia Cycle is great not for having reimagined its characters in these contemporary terms, but rather for revealing so much about humanity as a result. We see this most clearly through the eyes of the six women who comprise the chorus. In the first play, they are high-spirited young women who have arrived at the beach at Aulis to watch the army set out for Troy: they have come to witness some warfare, and they intend to stay until some takes place. They get, as the drama of Iphigenia's impending sacrifice unfolds, more than they bargained for. And as each of the grand, larger-than-life figures proclaims how he or she feels about what's going on (Menelaos, Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Achilles, and finally Iphigenia herself), they find themselves transported: each speaker, with radically different arguments and points of view, persuades them. Ms. Akalaitis definitely understands how politics works.

This production of The Iphigenia Cycle is blessed with some startlingly gifted performers. Anne Dudek is remarkable in the title role, projecting a pure and naive nobility as the young heroine of the first play, and then, in a stunning transformation, letting us see the bitter, angry nihilism of the grown-up savage priestess of the second. Taylor Price, whose professional debut this is, plays Achilles and Orestes. His Orestes, in particular, is outstanding, a pathetic but hopeful creature, riddled with ticks and twitches: his reunion with his sister Iphigenia is at once joyous and anguished. This fine young actor is one to keep an eye on.

The other members of the ensemble are excellent as well, especially Ora Jones, who doubles as Clytemnestra and Athena, and Eddy Saad, who plays Menelaos and Pylades. The six women of the chorus are also worthy of special mention: Genevra Gallo, Lynn M. House, Carmen Roman, Sophia Salguero, Genevieve VenJohnson, and Anne Louise Zachry are endlessly interesting to watch, singly and as an astonishingly cohesive unit. As our guides into the brutal world of The Iphigenia Cycle they act like shock absorbers, keeping us slightly removed from the appalling events of the play, the better for us to understand and interpret what we are seeing.

Finally, a brief word about The Iphigenia Cycle's exceptional design. The simple unit set by Paul Steinberg is wonderful, morphing from a stark and barren beachfront in Act One to the blood-soaked but stately entrance to the Temple of Artemis in Act Two. Doey Luthi's costumes, which sometimes seem engineered to call attention to themselves, nonetheless serve the piece well, especially the different but similar outfits assigned to the chorus. And Jennifer Tipton's lighting is effective in reminding us of the moods of the play's mercurial characters with simplicity and directness.

The change of scene that occurs between the two plays is accomplished with self-conscious theatrics: stagehands re-arrange the space and then, seemingly randomly but in meticulous detail, install twenty or so towering poles, each topped with a portrait of a man and some blood-red rags; another stagehand applies bright red paint to the stairs of the temple with the same macabre precision. As the second act begins, it slowly sinks in that we have been made witness to the carnage that has occurred in this place: we understand that the blood on the steps is the blood of the men who portraits adorn the facade. It's a chilling and startling stage picture that immediately sends the mind reeling: the perfect visual analog for this endlessly compelling work of theatre

And happiness is discovering--if you didn't already know it--that Kristin Chenoweth is a powerhouse talent of the first order, singing one of the show's new songs, "My New Philosophy" in a squeaky but pure voice at once mischievous and authoritative.

And happiness is seeing B.D. Wong, as philosophical Linus, make his blanket dance...or Stanley Wayne Mathis, as piano-playing Schroeder, lobby for a national holiday in honor of Ludwig von Beethoven...or Ilana Levine, as crabby Lucy, dispense helpful advice from behind her psychiatrist stand...or Anthony Rapp, as hapless everykid Charlie Brown, disappear inside his lunchbag, utterly mortified that the little red-haired girl has seen him do something utterly stupid.

If, like a lot of the members of the audience at the performance I attended, you're four or five years or old, then You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown is filled with simple, happy moments of fun and song that will delight you. If, like me, you're old enough to remember the heyday of the first Peanuts craze (back in the sixties, when "Happiness Is..." was a catchphrase as popular as any yada yada thought up by Jerry Seinfeld), then you'll find yourself time and again wearing a smile of recognition as beloved iconic moments from nearly fifty years of Charles M. Schulz's cartoon come to life on the stage of the Ambassador Theatre. Charlie Brown tries to fly a kite...Lucy bosses Linus around shamelessly...Snoopy battles his old nemesis the Red Baron. At the end, the whole gang concludes in song that "Happiness is anyone and anything at all that's loved by you," and you go all misty, remembering the long-ago afternoon when you sang that song in your sixth-grade school pageant.

Then--in 1967, when Clark Gesner wrote it--and now, You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown proves only a modest entertainment, never quite capturing the inspired, anarchic inner logic that propels Peanuts and makes its characters so insistently compelling. But it's funny, tuneful, and brimming with a good-natured charm that is ultimately irresistible. At its best, as in the first act finale, in which Lucy, Schroeder, Linus, and Charlie Brown are writing book reports about Peter Rabbit while Sally and Snoopy are off hunting rabbits, it shows off Charles Schulz's familiar characters to great advantage: Lucy methodically counts the words she has written, while Linus examines the psychological and historical underpinnings of his subject; Charlie Brown works himself into anxiety-induced inertia, while Snoopy keeps popping up in different get-ups in search of his prey.

The show moves briskly and happily through sixteen songs and a couple dozen sketches, some as good as that one, many not quite so good. Under Michael Mayer's direction, the company is enthusiastic and vivacious. Mr. Wong is deliciously appealing as sweet-natured Linus, and Ms. Chenoweth, a real crowd-pleaser, is a devilish and precocious Sally Brown. Roger Bart is terrific as Snoopy, opening Act Two with a bang with "The Red Baron" number and bringing it to a show-stopping climax with a Jolson-esque "Suppertime." Set designer David Gallo has gotten things exactly right, with cartoonish, two-dimensional props (like mailboxes and psychiatrist stands) flying on- and off-stage with pleasing regularity. (Costume designer Michael Krass does less well dressing the characters, especially the women, who look too much like young ladies and not enough like little girls.)

I had a great time at You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. As far as I could tell, so did the very young children who made up a healthy percentage of the audience the evening I went; and so did their parents. This is probably the nicest family show on Broadway right now, especially with its child-friendly weekend schedule and its relatively abundant supply of tickets (at least compared to The Lion King). It's nice to have the Peanuts gang on stage in New York again: partake of the happiness, and enjoy.

Death of a Salesman tells the story of a man who bought into the American Dream and then discovered too late that it was a fraud; it tells, also, the parallel story of his son, whose unshakable trust and admiration for his father is cataclysmically destroyed by a single sad act of betrayal. Both Willy Loman and his son Biff are victims of lies they knowingly accept and knowingly tell. Biff is redeemed because he finally comes to understand this. Willy is tragic because he never understands.

Willy is tragic, too, because the bushwah he bought into is so deceptively slippery. At the very center of the play, Willy tells his employer why he became a salesman: when he was a very young man, he met an 84-year-old man so beloved by his customers that they flocked to his hotel room to bring him business. This man, Willy says, died the death of a salesman, with a funeral packed to the rafters with cronies and colleagues from the road. For Willy, who really does believe that success can be attained just from a smile and a shoeshine, this man's funeral is the ultimate achievement. He misses the sad irony of his pronouncement: that 84-year-old man did die the death of a salesman, alone and unloved in his hotel room.

At its best--in this scene, for example--the current Death of a Salesman is superb, because it clarifies and illuminates the play's themes so well. The truly successful men with whom Willy interacts--his boss Howard (Steve Pickering), his neighbor Charlie (Howard Witt), and his neighbor's son Bernard (Richard Thompson)--are all enacted here with enormous intelligence and compassion: their homely groundedness makes for a bitter contrast with Willy's lost, questing soul. Mr. Thompson's Bernard, for example, whom we see both as a gangly, pesky youth and as a successful and happily married attorney, exudes a simple and open humanity that has entirely eluded Willy. And Mr. Witt's Charlie, possessed of a more calloused world view than others I've seen, points up what confidence combined with humility combined with overarching honesty can do for a man; again, strongly contrasted with Willy's empty bravado.

The production is less successful in showing us Willy's family. Elizabeth Franz's Linda is alternately waiflike and shrewish, hardly the helpmeet that Willy needs to sustain him. And as Willy's sons, neither Kevin Anderson (Biff) nor Ted Koch (Happy) ever convinces us of the blind devotion these two once had for their father or for each other: this Loman family, which needs-be must thrive on mutual deception and illusion, feels wholly disconnected. I never believed that these people loved each other; lacking a palpable bond, there is no impact when it is broken.

Brian Dennehy's Willy, interestingly, rises and falls with his co-stars. In his scenes with Charlie, Bernard, and Howard he is wonderful, showing us Willy's delusion and desperation, nakedly and eloquently. But in scenes at home, he is less of a piece, here all bluster and bloat, there a pathetic, sad-eyed lost soul. In the scene where we first see Willy with his sons, they should believe the outright lies he tells them about his life on the road, and for a moment we should believe them, too; they don't, and neither do we. I think, too, that Mr. Dennehy's Willy starts out rather too defeated by life, with the consequence that his dramatic journey is somewhat aborted.

Mr. Falls's staging is deliberately slow and stately, punctuated by leisurely, elaborate set changes that belie the dreamlike, cinematic quality we expect in this play (they are also inordinately noisy). These intervals give us time to reflect upon what we are seeing and hearing; unfortunately, they also give us time to focus on the play's flaws. And sometimes--as in the penultimate scene, when Happy and Biff return home from their aborted dinner with Willy--the sheer length of time required by the actors to get from one place to another on Mark Wendland's expansive set significantly reduces the dramatic tension. (One more quibble: why is Willy's older brother Ben rendered so very very old? And why, in this smokefree age, is it necessary for him to smoke an authentically malodorous cigar?)

I found things in this Death of a Salesman that I hadn't been aware of before, ideas that have run through my mind since I saw the play and that are compelling me to return to the text. For this, Robert Falls and his collaborators must be credited with success, even if they sometimes falter during the (too-long) three-hour running-time of this show. Death of a Salesman is an authentic classic and so--forgive me--attention must be paid.

It's also as brutally reflective of the way the world works today as Moliere's original Misanthrope was in its own time. Mr. Crimp's loose but faithful rendering tells the story of Alceste, a man who refuses to adhere to the hypocritical modus operandi of fashionable society. Though his candor with friends and enemies alike leads them to categorize him as "a kind of misanthrope," he is in fact an idealist and a romantic, yearning for a world based in content rather than style. Alceste states his credo thus: "Never try to deceive,/and only say what you truly believe." And he means it.

He stands in contrast to all of the members of his circle, typified by his friend John, who states his philosophy thus (in, be warned, somewhat coarse language):

...It's hard to be 'enraged'
if one is philosophically disengaged.
And the human animal looks far less fearsome
through the prism
of post-modernism.
The world's a mess. Absolutely. We've fucked it.
So why not just sit back and deconstruct it?

(I love this passage: How deftly Mr. Crimp captures here the essence of the present-day intelligentsia!)

Alceste is a playwright; the other characters in The Misanthrope are likewise of the media elite. There's Marcia, an acting teacher; Julian, an actor; Alexander, an agent; Covington, a critic; and Ellen, a journalist. Most significantly there's Jennifer, a beautiful young American movie star, iconic flavor of the moment, a seeming plaything of the sycophantic coterie surrounding her. Jennifer enjoys playing to this crowd, dazzling them with wicked, witty bitchery. Alceste is in love with Jennifer, and she says she's in love with him. He wants to rescue her from the shallow hypocrisy of her existence. But it's not at all clear that she wants to be rescued.

Indeed, Jennifer emerges as the most powerful personality in the world of The Misanthrope, more powerful, even, than the journalist Ellen who would--in accordance with the practice of her profession these days--set the agenda for all discussion among these bright and dangerous people. How she settles accounts with Alceste and her friends propels the play to a conclusion that would be blisteringly sardonic if it weren't so sad.

It could be that some of Jennifer's grandeur derives from the captivating actress who portrays her here: Uma Thurman, every inch the movie star that she actually is, stunningly beautiful and deceptively self-aware and self-assured. This is not stunt casting: Ms. Thurman is an accomplished performer with very real presence on the stage: you never take your eyes off her.

Setting aside sheer glamour, Ms. Thurman is matched by the excellent actor Roger Rees, who plays tortured Alceste, and by Mary Lou Rosato (a delightfully bitter Marcia) and Michael Emerson (an alarmingly placid and disconnected John). Barry Edelstein's staging glitters with the same diamond-hard brilliance as Ms. Thurman and her co-stars, a ruthless embodiment of the demeaned and devalued world that these characters inhabit. And his design team have served his concept and Mr. Crimp's intentions spectacularly, from the stark metaphor of Narelle Sissons' mirrored backdrop, to the harsh brilliance of Stephen Strawbridge's lighting, to the ineffable extravagance of Martin Pakledinaz's Louis Quatorze costumes for the denouement. (Ms. Thurman's gown alone--a dizzying collage of pretty faces--is worth the price of the admission.)

Mr. Crimp's achievement--a significant one--is to reimagine a classic play in thoroughly contemporary, thoroughly relevant terms. Mr. Edelstein's achievement--perhaps even more impressive--is to bring Mr. Crimp's creation to vivid, indelible life. The Misanthrope is savagely, wittily entertaining; it's also, in its cold, hard reflection of the way we live now, utterly chilling. I haven't been able to get it out of my mind since I saw it.

What I like best about Making Peter Pope is the original spin that it puts on a number of very familiar ideas. Its hero, Peter Pope (born Peter Popo), is a not-so-young gay man living in contemporary Manhattan. Peter has a lot on his plate. His mother died suddenly just a few days after New Years'; his father, who lives in hopelessly Middle American Lima, Ohio and with whom Peter has only the most superficial of relationships, responds to this tragedy by almost immediately dating, and then marrying, a coarse and abrasive woman named Neva Maloni. Peter's sister Anna is struggling with her own demons in Los Angeles. Neva's daughter Faye wants to escape her dead-end marriage and become an actress in New York; her husband Jeff is an abusive homophobe. And then there's Henry, a sweet-natured galoot with a dubious job and uncertain family connections with whom Peter has unexpectedly fallen, head-over-heels, in love.

As I said, nothing here very unusual for a 1990s gay-themed comedy: dysfunctional family, homophobia, the specter of death (AIDS?), and so on. But Edmund de Santis, the author of Making Peter Pope, has something more on his mind. This is very much his millennium play: Peter deals with all of these difficulties literally at once, as they war for attention within his addled and confused brain. Peter wants to control these random events (he is constantly rewriting the conversations he has had with the other characters), but he can't: no one can. All he can finally do is commit to being himself, to make himself Peter Pope (as opposed to Peter Popo), and in this act this aimless, careerless, sex-addicted lapsed Catholic finally approaches something like redemption. Love turns out to be the answer for Peter, and also acceptance--of his father's choices, of his guilt about not having been closer to his mother, of himself.

Mr. de Santis writes astonishingly beautiful dialogue, poetic and descriptive and yet entirely at home on the stage. I very much want to read this play, which includes, for example, a (very funny) riff on trashy Neva by Peter's sardonic sister Anna in which she describes all of Neva's clothes as having something sewn, glued, or hanging from them; and a description by Peter of his mother's death as an "untethering" event; and an admonition by Neva, regarding Peter's conversation with his dad, to "keep it trite." His characters, despite their clichéd quirkiness and uncanny self-awareness, are somehow refreshingly real: these are people we come, with Peter, to understand and care about.

This is due in no small measure to the expert work of the eight actors who bring these characters to life. Everyone has a moment or two to shine: Michael Anderson shows us the bitterness and insecurity behind step-brother-in-law Jeff even as he drunkenly bullies Peter; Alysia Reiner (outfitted in a hilarious getup, by the way) captures the sadness of dim, sweet Faye, fretting, for example, when she realizes that she doesn't know all the words to "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?" (which she plans to sing at her mother's wedding to Peter's father). Fred Velde shows us the fear and anger that have kept Leo Popo from ever making any real connection with Peter or his sister; while Carol Hache nicely encapsulates the many moods of wounded, mercurial Anna. Joanne Dorian is delightfully vulgar as Peter's nemesis Neva (reminiscent of Marsha Mason's savvy turn on Frasier). And Eric Morace is earnest and sweet as the love of Peter's life, good-naturedly dopey Henry.

Last, but certainly not least, Harry Bouvy is superb in the title role: Onstage for virtually the entire running time of the show, he is unflaggingly vulnerable and appealing and interesting as he guides us along this cathartic journey through Peter Pope's heart and mind and soul.

A nod, finally, to director Derek Todd and his creative team who have served Mr. de Santis well in translating his vision from page to stage. And also, kudos to producer Stuart Warmflash, artistic director of Harbor Theatre, for bringing this very honest, very special work to the stage.

Mind you, it helps that they've selected not only one of the finest plays of American theatre's so-called Golden Age, but also one whose influence on contemporary drama is enormous and palpable: every police procedural drama on TV, from Dragnet to Hill Street Blues to NYPD Blue owes a structural and stylistic debt to this smart, savvy work. Detective Story is set in the Squad Room of New York City's 21st Precinct, on a hot night in August; there's a full moon, and the officers and detectives on duty know that this portends a busy and difficult evening.

Here's some of what happens to these cops that night: Detective O'Brien has nabbed a shoplifter, an engaging but nervous young woman whose appointment at night court will keep him on duty long past his normal shift. Patrolman Barnes has brought in two gnarling, nasty gangsters called Charlie Gennini and Lewis Abbott, caught in the act of burglarizing a ritzy lady's apartment. Detective Gallagher is calmly but firmly reassuring loony Mrs. Farragut that the people watching her from the top of the Empire State Building are under surveillance by 25 officers. And Detective Jim McLeod, a hard-boiled veteran who lives and breathes justice, has several things on his plate tonight: Kurt Schneider, a heartless monster who performs illegal abortions, is about to be fingered by his most recent victim (who is hovering near death at a local hospital); and Arthur Kindred, a young, tortured veteran who rashly stole $480 from his employer to impress his girl, has turned himself in.

In the course of a tense and harrowing three hours, mostly played out in real-time, McLeod, his partner Lou Brody, and the rest of the squad deal with these cases and several more, some emergencies, some mere annoyances. The Arthur Kindred case tests McLeod severely: for him, things are either black or white: Kindred has stolen money and is therefore a criminal, notwithstanding circumstances or regret or his heroic record in the Navy. But the Schneider case shakes McLeod's code to its very foundation, particularly when it starts to hit close to home, with McLeod's wife Mary hopelessly embroiled in it, forced to reveal things about her past that threaten to destroy their marriage and their lives.

The brilliance of Detective Story is its ability to get us caught up in all of these tales; there's suspense and action aplenty in the play's exciting third act, as all of the loose ends get tied up and a kind of justice gets served. The engine of this piece is its atmosphere, beautifully recreated here by director Mary Boyer and her designers and cast. The set is perfect: it's exactly what we think a Manhattan police station would look like circa 1948, a neat but dingy collection of desks and typewriters and file cabinets on a nondescript tiled floor. The entrance to the theatre doubles as the entrance to this set, allowing us to hear, from the adjacent lobby, hubbubs of varying sizes as the colorful characters approach the squad room.

No fewer than 28 actors appear in Detective Story, every one of them essential to the overall ambiance of the piece. The ensemble here is very good, with outstanding work being done by (in no particular order) Deena Lynn Rubinson as the shoplifter, Jonathan Strait as Detective Gallagher, Dionne Cole as Mrs. Farragut, David Aston-Reese as Detective Brody, Tommy Minnix as Arthur Kindred, Walter Hyman as Charlie Gennini, and Megan Palmer as Arthur's friend Susan. Paul Frediani and Jody Booth, in the central roles of Jim and Mary McLeod, seem a little young for their roles; but Mr. Frediani gets Jim's last scene exactly right. Indeed, those breathless final moments of Detective Story are so thrillingly played by this company that I found myself gasping in surprise even though I know this work well.

And that, in a nutshell, is the gift that Ms. Boyer and her company have for us: an unstintingly careful, vividly realized production of a great American play. A drama the size and shape of Detective Story would never be mounted on Broadway nowadays: it would defy the economics of the theatre. So this fine staging at T. Schreiber Studio is a very special event. Don't miss it.

Duellists, which was devised by fight choreographers Joseph Travers and Rod Kinter, traces the history of the duel from 16th century France right up to the present day. (It will probably surprise you to learn that the last known recorded duel happened just 40 years ago in Paris.) In eight original one-act plays, written by Messrs. Travers and Kinter with J.R. Robinson and Ricki G. Ravitts, we watch men and women do battle to defend their honor (or that of those whom they hold most dear). Some of the plays are broad, even comic, in tone, such as "Wilhelm the Jew," in which a lone Jewish visitor to a Zurich tavern fends off the insults of a band of six barbaric warriors. Others are more traditionally romantic, like the exciting adventure of young d'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers that closes Act One, or the startling and unusual story of Mademoiselle Maupin, an actress who finds herself dueling with three men at once, which begins Act Two.

And some are reflective and sad, like the tragic "Duel of the Handkerchief" in which an argument between two good friends escalates irreversibly into a battle to the death, as their horrified comrades look on helplessly. It is in this piece, especially, that the double-edged theme of Duellists is most clearly seen: We admire these brave and gallant men and women who valued things like truth and integrity so highly that they were willing to die for them. But we mourn the tragic waste of human life that was necessarily the by-product of such nobility.

I love Duellists for its ability to make us ponder such serious and important ideas even as it dazzles us with its vigorous and vivid stagecraft. There are about a dozen fight scenes in Duellists, all different and all stunningly exciting. My favorites include the battering that Wilhelm the Jew gives to his six drunken adversaries (one of whom, portrayed by Jeff DeRocker, takes a spectacular fall backward off the stage onto a table which collapses onto the auditorium floor); the eight-man bout which pits d'Artagnan and the Musketeers against four opponents; and the thrilling swordplay between Mlle. Maupin (played smashingly by Ricki G. Ravitts) and her villainous enemies.

The production, which happens all over the stage and auditorium of Theater Ten Ten, is expertly directed and performed. Standouts among the cast, in addition to the aforementioned, include Jason Kuschner, wonderfully appealing and commanding as Wilhelm and several other characters, and Rod Kinter, who takes the roles of Athos (one of the Musketeers) and Jacques (one of the duellists in "Duel of the Handkerchief"). Mr. Kinter's every move--from the mere sliding of a bench with his leg to the most high-powered swordplay--is executed with authority and grace; we watch him with the same pleasure that we watch Michael Jordan play basketball or Baryshnikov dance ballet.

Have I convinced you yet that Duellists ranks as one of the most exciting, theatrical diversions in New York right now? If so, hurry and reserve tickets (and think about taking the kids along, too--they'll have a blast). If not, don't blame me the next time you're underwhelmed by the lame fight scenes in Broadway shows like The Scarlet Pimpernel: the real thing is on display here, though for just a few weeks. Duellists gives us, first and foremost, stage combat performed with passion and panache. It is not to be missed.

The very first show I can remember seeing was Annie Get Your Gun starring Ethel Merman (the 20th anniversary revival); on that electric evening, I suppose, my passion for live theatre was born. I was surprised how much of that production I remembered while I was watching this production of Annie Get Your Gun, which features a re-arranged and slightly abridged version of Irving Berlin's score and a new book by Peter Stone, and which stars the estimable Bernadette Peters as the legendary sharpshooter Annie Oakley. I mention this because it is possible that those cherished memories somehow got in my way, keeping me from enjoying a show that clearly satisfied many others in the audience.

Possible, but not likely: this Annie Get Your Gun is a misbegotten mess, saved only by the classic and indestructible Irving Berlin score that is its only possible raison d'etre, and graced by a couple of classy performances (by Ron Holgate as Buffalo Bill and Tom Wopat as Frank Butler). At its center is a game but ill-conceived star turn by Peters, who is entirely wrong for her role in practically every way: she's as miscast as Annie Oakley as Merman would have been as Dot in Sunday in the Park with George.

That said, let me assure you that Peters acquits herself rather well with the songs, or at least some of them: she's perfectly comfortable with a ballad like "I Got Lost in His Arms" and absolutely at her best doing a tender and lovely rendition of "Moonshine Lullaby." But then she finds herself, in the grand comic duet "Anything You Can Do," forced to sing a line like "I can sing anything sweeter than you" and the hopelessness of her cause subsumes it: because when Merman sang that line, it was funny, but when she sings it, it's...true.

But except for the lapse of judgment when she signed the contract, I don't blame Peters for this show's problems. They stem from the almost complete lack of respect for and confidence in a piece that, though fifty years old, was solidly enough constructed to become one of the biggest hits of the golden age of the American musical theatre. I mean, we're not dealing with an Ankles Aweigh here; yet director Graciela Daniele and librettist Peter Stone treat their show as if that's what it is. The straightforward story of how Annie Oakley came out of nowhere to become the star of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and, incidentally, the wife of rival sharpshooter Frank Butler, is still here. But it's been rather clumsily framed by a show-within-a-show concept that makes very little sense; and it has furthermore been augmented by a subplot involving a mixed-race couple lifted directly from The King and I. Annie Oakley as Anna Leonowens? I don't think so.

"I'm an Indian, Too" has been excised in the name of political correctness, as have Frank Butler's "I'm a Bad, Bad Man" and the original opening number "Colonel Buffalo Bill," possibly for the same reason. Instead the show opens with the anthemic "There's No Business Like Show Business," which is reprised several times but never manages to be the show-stopper it should. The direction is clumsy and the choreography uninspired; the original book couldn't possibly have been any dopier than this adaptation.

Peters exhibits real star quality at times, and actually seems to be enjoying herself. Tom Wopat is a sturdy and handsome leading man with a nice voice. Ron Holgate is an elegant Buffalo Bill. The talented Valerie Wright is stuck with the show's stupidest role as  bigoted villainess Dolly Tate; she deserves something better to do. So does Bernadette Peters: wouldn't some producer like to cast her in an original musical?

At the moment, Mrs. Bramson has other things on her mind: a difficult, mean-tempered old hypochondriac, Mrs. Bramson is perpetually annoyed with her sharp-tongued housekeeper Mrs. Terrence and her smart but diffident niece-companion Olivia; and she is especially annoyed with her foolish serving maid Dora, who has not only broken several pieces of the china, but also revealed herself to be in an embarrassing and troublesome condition of pregnancy. Mrs. Bramson demands to meet the young man responsible, a local drifter named Dan. Her intent is to shame him into meeting his obligations, but when Dan appears, in the charming and disarming person of Matthew Broderick, her agenda changes rapidly. Before the end of scene one, she has been won over entirely by this young man, the only person in the world, it seems, able to understand her sad and intolerable circumstances. By the time the next scene begins, she has hired Dan and he has moved in easily, to the consternation of Olivia, as her faithful retainer and surrogate son.

Of course, you don't need a degree in dramatic literature to figure out that Dan is the murderer; a psychotic, in fact, as well as a pathological liar, with neither conscience nor scruples. It won't surprise you either that Olivia is the only one who suspects him; everyone else in Mrs. Bramson's household is entirely won over by the engaging young man. Even the Scotland Yard detective who pops up ominously from time to time fails to arrest Dan, despite his having made some clearly incriminating statements.

Night Must Fall is a thriller of the classic model, and it's climactic final scenes--with Mrs. Bramson finding herself helpless and alone and realizing far too late that Dan's solicitousness has masked murderous intentions--are true to form. And although nothing that has happened on stage up to this point comes close to matching the impact of that exciting opening image, don't worry: the ending will. (Obviously I can't tell you anything more: you'll have to see Night Must Fall for yourself to find out.)

Director John Tillinger has clearly taken some liberties with the text, written--a mite stodgily --some sixty-five years ago by Emlyn Williams. All of them, including the attention-getting nude man, help the production mightily. He has cast the piece well, with sharply-etched featured performances by Michael Countryman as Olivia's ineffectual boyfriend Hubert, Peter MacRobbie as the inscrutable detective Belsize, and Judy Parfitt (since succeeded by Paddy Croft) as nasty old Mrs. Bramson. J. Smith-Cameron, who you will not recognize as Alexa Vere de Vere in last season's As Bees in Honey Drown, is splendid as Olivia; her characterization may lead you to wonder, as I did, just how innocent she really is. And Patricia Kilgarriff practically steals the show as the savvy cockney housekeeper Mrs. Terrence, in a solid witty performance that simultaneously (and smartly) defines and parodies the creaky but tried-and-true traditions of suspense melodrama.

Firmly at the center of things is Matthew Broderick as the oily, evil Dan, proving once again that he is one of the strongest stage actors of his generation. Not all that far removed from his familiar persona of lovable but naughty boy, Mr. Broderick's Dan adds a dangerous, sexy quality to the mix that we haven't seen before.

If theatre-going were a strong habit among Baby Boomers, then shows like Night Must Fall would open every season and enjoy long, successful runs; it wasn't that long ago when skillful though slight entertainments such as this were a staple of Broadway. Alas, today we have TV for that. But it's much more fun in the theatre, where, when something unexpected happens, you can experience the communal thrill of gasping along with five hundred other people.

One of Ms. Kron's stories is about her father, and a trip she took with him a few years ago to Poland to see the concentration camp Auschwitz where his parents were killed by the Nazis during World War II. This trip, long anticipated by both father and daughter and yet nonetheless a source of enormous anxiety and trepidation, is described with a raw power that is startling and unforgettable. Ms. Kron talks about the rooms they passed through, filled with hair or eyeglasses or artifical limbs, with a numbing dispassion; and then she takes us outside to the death camp Birkenau, a place that she characterizes as "malevolent ground."

The second story is about her family's annual pilgrimage to a gigantic Ohio amusement park. This one is told in broad, comic strokes: we see, for example, Ms. Kron's Aunt Frances emerging from one of the family's massive American cars, in a wheelchair carrying a portable oxygen tank, and if our smile isn't necessarily one of recognition it's nevertheless a smile: Ms. Kron's lovingly detailed portrait of her eccentric clan is enormously funny. Her father, now well into his 70s, has lately taken up riding roller coasters and so she accompanies him on the 2.5 minute ride of the play's title. "Two and a half minutes on a roller coaster is a long time when you're actually enjoying yourself," she tells us. "So imagine what it's like when you think you're killing your father."

The third and, in some ways, most important story is about her brother's wedding. This gala event at a Jewish community center in Brooklyn seemed to epitomize all of the things that Ms. Kron, liberal lesbian performance artist that she is, detested. Yet, she recounts, there she was, having the time of her life, eating and dancing and raucously joining in when her table-mates starting shouting "Table 12 rules!" at the reception.

I've described these stories in separate paragraphs for convenience, which is not at all what Ms. Kron does; she delivers them in dense, richly textured counterpoint. Sometimes she simply narrates; sometimes she enacts events for us; other times she stands before a screen, showing us a slide show of her trips to Poland and Ohio. But the slides are all blank: these experiences, which she is compelled to tell us, cannot be captured handily in any medium; they must be recalled and recounted in person. 2.5 Minute Ride is a live happening between performer and audience, an experience about having real experiences.

As opposed, that is, to having packaged ones, like the kind fed to us by Disney or the cheesy amusement park where the Krons make their annual trek. What's breathtaking about 2.5 Minute Ride is Ms. Kron's honesty about her capacity to settle for such artificial fodder. When she visited Auschwitz, she says, she saw an old man pushing a cart down a dirt road and an old lady picking a potato out of the ground. She wanted to somehow incorporate those images within herself, she tells us, but she couldn't; instead, she found herself longing to substitute for them a trip to "Polish-Land," where she could buy postcards and kielbasa at neat and attractive kiosks. I understand exactly what she's talking about, and--like her, I think--try hard to guard against the lazy passive life that that portends.

I said before that the wedding was perhaps the most important story, which probably surprised you: surely, you say, the trip to Auschwitz provides the most compelling and resonant moments in the show. It does, but Ms. Kron's discovery that a sacred event like the marriage of her only brother could touch her jaded heart and soul is the most wonderful thing that happens in 2.5 Minute Ride.   She is us--at least for the hour and a quarter she's on stage--and her capacity to feel something genuine in this cynical age is more than reassuring, it's awe-inspiring.

So is this marvelous show. 2.5 Minute Ride is smart and thoughtful and funny and wise; also profound and sad and moving. The Public Theatre has, happily, extended its engagement through early June so there's still plenty of time for you to see it. I urge you, wholeheartedly, to do so.

Act One of The Iceman Cometh offers a slow, deliberate introduction to the sad denizens of the broken-down saloon operated by Harry Hope. They're a sorry but gallant lot, spending their nights getting drunk on Harry's cheap booze and their days mostly passed out, but clinging nonetheless to shreds of dignity and humanity by nursing harmless but elusive pipe dreams of better days ahead. Larry, the most self-aware of the bunch, calls this desolate place the "No Chance Saloon":

"Don't you notice the beautiful calm in the atmosphere? That's because it's the last harbor. No one here has to worry about where they're going next, because there is no farther they can go."

Larry and all of the others are waiting for Hickey to come; a traveling hardware salesman, Hickey stops by the bar every year at this time for Harry's birthday party. At the end of the first act, Hickey does arrive, but he's not the glad-handing partner in crime that he has been in the past. Hickey has changed: he is here to bring his friends salvation from the pipe dreams that, he says, are destroying them. In the succeeding three acts of The Iceman Cometh, Hickey eventually does exactly that, but not in the way that he had planned.

Much of The Iceman Cometh's astonishing power derives from the loose but very real brotherhood that Harry, Larry, and their comrades create to bolster their sagging humanity. It's based in illusion, of course, which is exactly the point: we need these lies to get through our lives. In previous productions of Iceman, I felt this sense of community strongly. Interestingly, Mr. Davies de-emphasizes this aspect of the characters' existence here, choosing instead to focus on their individuality. The effect is overwhelming, like visiting a dozen private hells in a single unrelenting night. These men need each other, but they need more to keep alive the tiny lying piece of themselves that's still able to imagine a way out of the hole they've dug themselves into. Or they will, indeed, perish.

The actors bring these men to life vividly and with naked honesty. What a privilege to witness these performers at work! Tony Danza gives a performance of supreme naturalness and subtlety as Rocky, the good-natured (but short-fused) bartender. James Hazeldine is spectacularly grumpy and good-hearted as gruff old Harry, while Jeff Weiss is brilliant as his good-for-nothing chiseler of a brother-in-law Ed Mosher. Clarke Peters stops the show as the proud but defeated Joe, a black man who once flourished as a gambler and now finds himself reduced to living among whites, earning his keep as Harry's janitor and sometime equal. Michael Emerson is just as unforgettable as Willie Oban, the bar's most pathetic and far-gone inhabitant, the son of a disgraced patrician whose sins have been visited on him in the worst way. And Robert Sean Leonard brings his usual intelligence and intensity to the role of Don Parritt, a troubled young man who has come to the bar to find Larry and his own salvation.

Kevin Spacey, a compelling and thoughtful Hickey, is the ostensible star of the show; but this Iceman is truly an ensemble piece, with every one of its nineteen actors leaving an indelible mark on their role and on the audience. (A word about Mr. Spacey's performance: I saw Jason Robards as Hickey, twice, about a dozen years ago, and echoes of his perhaps-definitive portrayal kept creeping into my consciousness during this production.)

Everything about the physical production--Bob Crowley's stunning naturalistic set and costumes, Mark Henderson's evocative lighting, Paddy Cunneen's lovely but understated musical underscoring, and John A. Leonard's blessedly unamplified sound design--enhances Mr. Davies's realization of Mr. O'Neill's work. As I watched this Iceman, I found myself attaining a new level of appreciation for this rich and complex play. I noticed, for example, the subtle social hierarchy underlying even this lowest rung of society, with the Irish (Harry, Larry, and their cronies) firmly on top, the upstart Italians (Rocky and his friend Chuck) next, and the black man Joe immovably at the bottom.

I am left with at least three moments to treasure. Two of them involve poor Willie Oban, played so beautifully by Michael Emerson. In one, electrifyingly, he begins to bellow a profane and raucous ditty, accompanying his tuneless singing with noisy raps on the exposed pipes of the barroom. Mr. Emerson does more than simply sing here, however; in his hands, this becomes a blatant, yet poignant, plea for companionship. The aloneness that pushes this sad man to create this deliberate disturbance is absolutely palpable.

Moments later, Willie has passed out, his head and upper body resting solidly on a table. And resting on Willie, comfortably and unabashedly, is the equally passed-out Ed Mosher: an ineffably haunting--and evocative--stage picture.

The other unforgettable moment comes near the end of the play, after Hickey has very nearly destroyed his friends by chasing away their illusions. Harry, struggling to bounce back from defeat, invents a lie to bring his pipe dream back to life. He turns to his employee Rocky to confirm his story; Mr. Danza, as Rocky, hesitates for just a moment and then, with the fervor of a convert, agrees wholeheartedly with his boss. A tiny victory for Harry, perhaps, but an enormous one for humanity.

This is the world of Patrick Hamilton's Angel Street, the thriller that he wrote in 1938 which became one of the most successful plays ever on Broadway and then the basis of the classic Ingrid Bergman film Gaslight. It's being revived by Pearl Theatre Company and it's just delicious: even if you know the story, I think you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat during the play's exciting climax. And even if overfamiliarity with this sort of thing keeps that from happening, I think you'll nevertheless be entertained by this brisk production: director Rob Urbanati and his cast of seven are clearly having fun with this taut (though perhaps implausible) melodrama, and so does the audience.

Here is a quick synopsis: The Manninghams have recently moved into an unfriendly and rather creepy house in London--purchased with Mrs. Manningham's money, by the way--after having spent the first few years of their marriage abroad. Ever since moving into this house, Mrs. Manningham has been showing signs of severe strain: weird occurrences such as misplaced paintings and lost grocery bills happen with increased regularity and her husband is quite convinced that she is the cause of these incidents. It seems that Mrs.