The visionary director Robert Wilson has returned to Lincoln Center with a new offering from the Comédie-Française, one of the oldest and most respected theater troupes in the world. A staging of a handful of the French poet Jean La Fontaine's fables based on those of Aesop, "Les Fables de La Fontaine" is an accessible introduction to the tales and makes great theater for children of all ages. The actors wear masks representing the animals and a throaty-voiced Christine Fersen plays Fontaine himself, addressing the audience while weaving between the masquerading characters. The haunting original music by Michael Galasso, lighting and set design by Wilson, and inventive costumes by Moidele Bickel come together to create an engaging spectacle that's not to be missed. My one complaint: inadequate supertitles that only summarize every 10 lines of text instead of giving line-by-line translations of the original French. Thankfully, English language versions of the poems are included in the program, but you'll have to wait until after the show to pour over them.
Online extra: Calvin Klein is looking leathery these days. Did his contract with Mephistopheles expire or has he stopped drinking the life-giving boy juice that had kept him young for so long? Maybe he's finally started practicing the heterosexual lifetstyle he's claimed all these years?
