"Guilio Cesare" by Georg Frederick Handel

Ruth Ann Swenson's final performance in "Giulio Cesare" at the Met occured on a warm Saturday afternoon in April. It was a cloudless day and most of my friends were doing outdoor things. The occassional invitation to join them collected silently in my pocket while I bathed in the warm rays of Handel's score and Swenson's scintillating Cleopatra. I couldn't think of a better way to spend the day.

"Coram Boy" by Helen Edmundson, after the novel by Jamila Gavin

This highly melodramatic epic about three generations in a British family during the 18th century really grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go until it's choked every last tear from the inner reaches of your gut. Interspersed with selections from Handel's "Messiah" and performed by a talented cast, it feels like you're watching an intricately staged Masterpiece Theater serial that incorporates live choral music. Is this the one for "Coast of Utopia" to beat come awards season? Yes, and it will. Nevertheless, "Coram Boy" is a great evening in the theater and is not to be missed. Look for the always charming Jan Maxwell in yet another conniving villainess role.

"110 in the Shade" by N. Richard Nash, Harvey Schmidt, and Tom Jones

By no means is "110 in the Shade" a perfect musical. But unlike Aaron, I did walk out humming tunes. And not just one. There were at least three lingering melodies in my head giving argument to the already pestering voices. And the reason? Audra McDonald gives a sensational performance as Lizzie Currie. I can't remember the last time I actually felt moved at a musical. Weepy-eyed moved, even. The cast is all around terrific and it's great to see John Cullum back on stage where he belongs. Bobby Steggert is endearingly cute and a bundle of energy. Kudos to Lonny Price for what I'm thinking is his best work yet — No, I unfortunately didn't see "A Class Act." But I'll be going back to see this again once it opens.

"The Distant Sound" by Franz Schreker

Franz Schreker's opera "Der ferne Klang" (1910) hadn't ever been performed in the United States until Sunday, when Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra gave the premiere at Avery Fisher Hall. With an altogther glorious cast of relatively uknown singers, particularly the dramatic German soprano Yamina Maamar, who I'm hoping will be in New York again soon, the ASO hasn't sounded this good I think ever. The score, which can only classified as modern Romantic, is bombastic, swooping, hummable, and downright catchy. Just when you're still reeling from an emotional ballad, you're thrown into a dervish of a czardas and your feet can't stop a-tappin.' Why hasn't this been staged in NY yet? Wake up, Jimmy, and give us some Schreker.

"Deuce" by Terrence McNally

Old women say "fuck," "cunt," and "goddamn" just like the rest of us. That's what I learned on Saturday, after sitting through an interminable 105 minutes of watching Marian Seldes and Angela Lansbury squirm in what appear to be uncomfortable plastic stadium seats. That old adage about the phone book isn't true; it's horrifying when it actually happens. The play ranks among McNally's worst. On top of that, lines were dropped more often than a hot potato in a kindergarten class. Owing, I'm guessing, to a constantly changing script, a scriptgirl was heard from my seat in Row B of the mezzanine, feeding lines to both of the two ladies throughout the show. I stopped counting after I heard the disembodied voice (uncredited, of course) more than 30 times. Let's hope this shapes up, or else what was once the most anticpated Broadway play of the season will quickly become the most panned one. Someone should start a pool to determine how many performances this will actually last. I'd put 10 bucks on any of the single digit squares. Perhaps we should lobby the award committee so the scriptgirl could get a Tony nom?

"The Yeoman of the Guard" by W.S. Gilbert and A.S. Sullivan

photo by Kate Weiman
The Blue Hill Troupe is one of only two NYC companies that present Gilbert & Sullivan operas every year. What's different and most surprising about the Blue Hill Troupers isn't that they always give us high quality performances, it's that they're (mostly) non-professional actors who work in the evenings and weekends to rehearse and construct two productions a year. Their Spring offering of "Yeoman" bests their previous work of the past few seasons, with high caliber production values as well as superb singing that made for a very entertaining Saturday matinee. On top of that, all proceeds of ticket sales go to a different charity each year, so there's no reason you shouldn't see it. This year's beneficiary The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children would agree.

"LoveMusik" by Kurt Weill and Alfred Uhury

Caught the first preview of a new book musical that uses forgotten songs from the Kurt Weill canon to tell the tale of his tormented love with singer and actress Lotte Lenya. Harold Prince's new project clocks in at three hours. If those three hours weren't so damned entertaining, I would be complaining instead of writing a loose leaf love note to a Germanic musical drama. But in the end, it will need to be cut, as some of those neglected numbers stop the show cold with no clear relation to the the story, as if to say: and while Kurt was suffering attacks from Brecht in Los Angeles in 1944, this song of his was perfomed in (ENTER NAME OF UNKNOWN WEILL MUSICAL HERE) that played Broadway for -10 performances. The orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick are sublime. His overture is a shiny gem of a compliation, and I've never heard "Speak Low" sound so haunting and heartbreaking. Cerveris is exceptional and Donna Murphy is an actress who sings and she knows how to sell each of her big numbers, including Surabaya Johnny and September Song. But she doesn't sound anything like the real Lenya, especially the later Lenya who is preserved on record. But where's Donna's "Pirate Jenny"? After three hours, don't we at least deserve that?

"The Magic Flute" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emanuel Schikaneder

BAM hosted a prodution of "The Magic Flute" that originated at De Munt/La Monnaie, the Royal Opera House of Belgium. The white line animations decorating the show curtain and the subsequent shadow play film clips offered no new insight to the timeless Mozart piece, but do provide winsome entertainment, especially in moments that need it. Using wildlife fantasy isn't anything new to productions of Flute. Where Julie Taymor had dancing polar bears, William Kentridge opted for somersaulting rhinos. The stiffly directed production was decorated with seemingly 19th Century retro costumes and the singers were just O.K. The only standout was the terrible Queen of the Night, who not only was singing in the wrong fach, she was singing the wrong notes. And why is it that the BAM programs never list the name of the librettist? Poor dead white guy Schikaneder.

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus

Clowns can be scary. But what's more frightening is the whipping received by the tigers, horses, and zebras during the first half of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus this past Sunday evening at Madison Square Garden.

In lieu of an indictment of the poor treatment of animals at the circus, I'm simply going to post a link to PETA's subsidiary activist group that is fighting the good fight. They have a well-organized website. Go to http://www.circuses.com/ for more information.

"Volume of Smoke" by Clay McLeod Chapman

This assemblage of fictionalized historical monologues by the victims and survivors of a fire that destroyed the Richmond Theater in 1811 is well constructed and researched. Not bad for a young writer. I was willing to forgive him for the multiple clichés and melodramatic renderings of characters that seemed to bog it down.

"Be" by Mayumana

Oy. What a headache. I left before the end of this intermissionless show. If I'd wanted to see buskers, I could've descended into the Union Square subway station and watched street artists do it for less money than it cost me to see this Off-Broadway reiteration of noisy bang-on-a-bucket shows.

"A Moon for the Misbegotten" by Eugene O'Neill

photo by Simon Annand

Kevin Spacey gave a good but also lacking performance. Eve Best gave an amazing performance. While he's no Jason Robards Jr. (who is?), she definitely contends with past Josies, Colleen Dewhurst included. But no matter how well received this production, I still can't get the Cherry Jones/Gabriel Byrne combo out of my head, which I saw twice in 2000.

"Boys Just Wanna Have Fun" by Anthony Wilkinson

If you find yourself drunk and wandering the streets of the gay West Village on a Friday or Saturday night, I'd say definitely check this out. It's more TV than theater, as the writer is a soap opera veteran, and there's enough high camp to keep you laughing into the wee hours (this past Friday's performance was scheduled for 10 p.m. but actually didn't get underway until a good 20 minutes after that.) The standouts in this gay male comedy were the women and, of course, the men dressed up like women. Fanny Fondue, you have a new fan.

"Flavio" by Georg Handel and Nicola Francesca Haym

Don't try to figure out the plot in this brain-teasing love story, where the bethrothed are ensconced in love affairs and double-crossing condrundrums that only English court audiences of the 18th century would find remotely amusing. But do go to New York City Opera for the gorgeous score, expertly treated by conductor William Lacey and the fabulous cast headed by not one but two, count 'em, TWO countertenors: David Walker and Gerald Thompson.

"Blackbird" by David Harrower

Here's something you rarely see: A play about sexual abuse that's highly riveting. Both Jeff Daniels and Alison Pill give gut-wrenching performances. Please let this transfer to a bigger house. During this rainy day Wednesday matinee performance there were no walk-outs, but a gentleman in the audience bearing a striking resemblance to Santa Claus seemed a bit uncomfortable, and at the first use of a four-letter word, he got out of his seat and disappeared into the rear of the theater to watch the rest of it while standing. It's kinda fun to see Santa unsettled.

The Metropolitan Opera's 40th Anniversary Gala

Scraping the bottom of the Volpe barrel, the Met threw together a gala performance of three acts from three different operas to showcase the vocal talents of Ms. Netrebko (Trebs) and Mr. Villazon (Viz) — T&V for short, henceforth. A friend was recently asking me what "Opera Hot" means. Well, if you look at the above photo, you'll get an idea. Yes, Trebs is a looker, if you enjoy looking at those sorts of things. But those eyebrows on Viz aren't very attractive, and yet he's considered the hot Mexican enchilada in the opera world. Which is strange, I might add, since if you're searching for pretty Mexican tenors, I'd take Ramon Vargas any day over him, and even he doesn't hold a candle to that other Mexican, Domingo.

The singing was all in all quite good, but the bar is a bit low for these two, since they're opera hot and can sell out a house like no one's business. A ticket to the Dec. 5 "Boheme" (featuring T&V) this past fall was harder to get than an STD in a convent. For the gala, they repeated their Act I romantic fireworks from "Boheme," with Viz supplying an excellent "Che gelida manina" that brought down the house. Then Act III, scene 2 from "Manon" gave him a chance to just whip it like a bad boy, a Maurice (!) Chevalier des Grieux dressed as a priest. Sorry, couldn't resist ... it rhymes, in a way. Then Trebs threw herself on the floor and wailed a few French lines, recalling her "Puritani" mad scene (also from December). I'm getting the sense that she sings better while lying down. Then a brief intermission, and the entire second act of John Copley's garish production of "Elisir d'Amour," fully staged and fully entertaining. But the voices seemed to be tired by this point, and Trebs didn't come close to Ruth Ann Swenson's Adina from last season. A full-throttled Viz delivered a hearty "Una furtiva lagrima," sustaining l-o-o-o-o-o-ng notes for the final few bars, bringing down the house again.

But the one standout for the entire evening was Mariusz Kweicien, a young baritone who sang Marcello in the "Boheme" and Belcore in the "Elisir." I forgot who was doing what whenever he took to the stage. His voice is commanding and more than pleasant to the ear. For the first time ever, I wished Adina would just forget Nemorino and run off with the captain. And as for opera hot, well, his sizzle doesn't fizzle.

But back to Viz's eye shingles. If one of the hair dressers at the Met could get one of the stagehands to pin him down for a shave, or at least a plucking, they could harvest enough follicles to make yet another wig for Millo, when she triumphs in her final performance ever at the Met (?) as Maddalena on April 14. Or maybe she could borrow one of Botha's?

78. "Frost/Nixon" by Peter Morgan

I don't know which president Frank Langella thinks he's mimicking in "Frost/Nixon" but it surely isn't our 37th. At times, the characterization seems a bit other worldly, and in some moments, it sounds like he's channeling Walter Cronkite. That isn't to say his performance is bad — it's quite the opposite. There was only one obvious moment when he completely lost character on Monday night and did his usual effete gesticulation ... during a drunk scene in which Nixon phones David Frost late on the eve of their final interview. With hand raised, palm facing the audience and hip cocked to one side, Langella assumed his typical heroic poet stance as if to say, "here comes the nut" of this entire evening. Peter Morgan's play is overall quite good, but is burdened by an obnoxious tendency to have secondary characters interrupt the action to announce "And this is the moment when we knew Nixon had crumbled" and "Now we've past the point of no return." Duh!

But regardless... I welcome this production with open arms. Bring it on, Donmar!!! I want more.

77. "Oliver Twist" by Charles Dickens as adapted by Neil Bartlett

photo by Michael J. Lutch
Theater for a New Audience has given us a thoroughly mesmerizing adaptation of the Dickens tale. Too often I've walked out of stagings of "Oliver!" with digusted contempt for a musical that glamourizes a period of history that was anything but cheery. With this Victorian melodrama, justice has been served in the form of a stylized morality tale that weighs good against evil, and exposes the darker side of innocence, blah blah blah. I'd say wait a few more weeks before this production gels, but the run is very short. Sunday evening's performance was a bit stale, with uneven acting and a lack of much needed intensity. Despite that, go now and don't miss it.