Chad Jones’ Theater Dogs

Steven Culp, whom you might recognize from his stint as the late Rex Van De Kamp, husband of Martha Stewart-wannabe Brie Van De Kamp on ABC’s “Desperate Housewives,” doesn’t want me to tell you much about the play he’s in at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater.

The play is Blackbird by British playwright David Harrower, and it is indeed an intensely tricky piece of work.

“I’d prefer it if audiences came in cold and just let the play unfold,” Culp says after a day of rehearsals.

Yes, that would be nice, but Blackbird definitely is not for everyone. Like David Mamet’s Oleanna, a two-person drama about power shifts in a teacher-student/male-female relationships, Harrower’s play is about a man and a woman with a startling relationship.

About 15 years prior to the start of the play, Ray (Culp’s character) had a relationship with Una (played in this production by Jessi Campbell). But here’s the thing: At the time of their relationship, Ray was 40 and Jessi was 12.

Playwright Harrower says of the play, which also opened in New York earlier this month: “I don’t believe this is a play about pedophilia. And I didn’t want it to be. Yes, it discusses an illegal, under-age relationship, and in most people’s minds, the man would be termed a pedophile. … What interested me is how people then go on to deal with the consequences of their actions and desires, how they justify or explain to themselves the reasons for what they did.”

Culp, 51, doesn’t really want to address the issues in the play, but he will say that Harrower’s language, which can be sparse and full of pauses, reminds him of Mamet, Pinter and Albee.

“This language has to express the inexpressible,” Culp says. “What happens in the play involves moving beyond what these characters have been told by society, by therapists, by whomever. It’s full of the rawness of the inexplicable and the unknowable mysteries of the human heart. These are two human beings with a complexity of feelings for one another.”
Culp also sees the play as a “classic cathartic work full of pity and terror.”

Enough about the play he needs to promote but doesn’t really want to talk about. With his ongoing success in television — in addition to “Housewives” he was on “The West Wing,” “CSI” and “Star Trek: Enterprise” – Culp really didn’t need to go back to the theater.

But a fluke of scheduling, involving his new ABC series “Traveler,” which has delayed its premiere so as not to compete with “American Idol,” left him with time on his hands. He wanted a project, a theater project, to be specific, and it had to fit into his time frame.
Having worked at ACT about 15 years ago as Joe Pitt in Angels in America, Culp decided to check out the company’s Web site. He saw it had “Blackbird” on the schedule. Though he didn’t really know anything about the play, he called the casting director anyway.

“They sent me the script,” he recalls. “I read it and thought, `Oh, my God.’ I didn’t know if it was something for me, but then I couldn’t get it out of my head. My goal was to find something that took everything I had and more. The moral is: Careful what you wish for.”

The father of 5 1/2-year-old twins, Culp was hesitant to leave his family in Los Angeles, but he says he was convinced this was the best possible time for a theatrical challenge.

“Rehearsal has been fruitful,” Culp says. “Loretta (Greco, the director) has been great. I’m fully engaged.”

Culp pauses and offers a smile. “This kind of experience invigorates me,” he says. “But it’ll age me.”

Blackbird continues through May 27 at American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary St., San Francisco. Tickets are $17.50-$73.50. Call (415) 749-2228 or visit www.act-sf.org.

Because of the play’s controversial nature, there will be audience discussions following each performance. There will also be two “Theater on the Couch” sessions in which members of the San Francisco Foundation for Psychoanalysis discuss the psychological aspects of the play after the shows on May 4, 6 (matinee) and 12.

Impact ratchets up vice, vitality in Measure for Measure
three stars Well measured

By all counts, Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure is a comedy — if you measure comedy not in the Will Ferrell sense but by the more classical definition that has all the major cast members alive at the end of the play.

Measure for Measure, which would have won the “Most Problematic Play of 1604” trophy had such an award existed, has always been an uncomfortable comedy. There’s really only one expressly funny character (Lucio, described in the text as a “fantastic,” which could also mean slacker, con-man, troublemaker), and the bulk of the play is twisted into moralistic knots.

Berkeley’s Impact Theatre, the group that works diligently to keep younger generations interested in live theater, makes a Shakespearean detour every season, and the results are always interesting.

Director Melissa Hillman’s Measure for Measure, now at LaVal’s Subterranean Theatre, makes some valiant attempts to loosen some of Shakespeare’s knots.

First, the play has been effectively trimmed (no constable Elbow or foolish Froth) to two acts and two-plus hours. Second, and most important, the notion of comedy — except for Jeremy Forbing’s spirited take on Lucio and Stacz Sadowski’s Barnardine, a condemned prisoner perpetually too drunk to hang — the notion of comedy is effectively banished.

This is, at heart, a serious play about faith, narrow-mindedness, the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. Nothing particularly comical about any of those issues, especially when a man’s life, a leader’s overweening power and a nun’s virtue are on the line.

The three central performances in Hillman’s production are rock solid.

Ted Barker is Duke Vincentio of Vienna, who pretends to go away and then disguises himself as a priest to take the true measure of his sin-infested city, which is depicted in images of red, white and chain link in William McBride’s set.

The Duke’s temporary replacement is Angelo, a staunch military man unwilling to deviate from the letter of the law. As played by Cole Alexander Smith, Angelo is a pill-popping moralist whose first brush with temptation turns him into a monster.

That temptation comes in the form of Isabella, a novice nun whose brother (Daniel Duque-Estrada) is to be executed for impregnating his girlfriend (Dana Lau). As Isabella, Marissa Keltie is not what you’d expect. This is an extremist nun with a fear of sex we — and probably she — never quite understand. Hardly shy or retiring, she’s as single-minded about chastity as Angelo is about law, so it makes sense when the two of them clash.

Angelo, flush with power and lust for the young nun, is willing to make a deal: He’ll save the brother if the sister will relinquish her virgin body and sleep with him. “My false overweighs your true,” he tells her when she threatens to expose his horrible behavior.

Of course the disguised Duke gets wind of all this but takes his sweet time putting everything right. The painfully extended denouement has long been a challenge for directors because in the midst of all this dark, twisted storytelling, we get conventional comedy writing shuttling us to the improbably, and frankly unwelcome, happy ending.

Hillman has a few tricks up her sleeve, and even if it means re-writing Shakespeare in the play’s final moments, let it be said that her inventions seem much more in tune with the violent, hot-tempered tone of the play.

For more information on Measure for Measure, visit www.impacttheatre.com.

Lynda Carter and I are bonding over the phone.

I tell her that for my 11th birthday, my parents took me to the Sahara Reno (no longer there) for a big show. The maitre d’, knowing it was a big day, took us to a table right next to the stage, and we settled in for the headliner: Wonder Woman herself, Lynda Carter.

Though she wore glittery gowns with nary a tiara or red-white-and-blue bustier in sight, I was dazzled, all the more so when the gorgeous brunette leaned down and shook my hand, which I tried not to wash ever again (which lasted about two days).

“Wow. It never ceases to amaze me — the smallest, kindest gesture can end up being a moment in another person’s life that is not even momentous, just a lifting kind of think,” Carter says from her home in Washington, D.C. “That so strengthens my feeling and belief — I know this is trite — that what goes around comes around. It’s also about how we affect each other. I’m sure that evening seeing your sweet little face did something for me. It never just goes one way. It always goes both ways.”

We’re having this conversation because Carter, 54, is about to make her Bay Area debut as a cabaret singer. Actually, it’s more than that. Though she started out as a singer, she’s only just getting back to singing after nearly two decades of dedicating most of her time to her husband, a D.C. lawyer, and her two kids.

“I didn’t really stop singing,” she says. “I just stopped singing publicly. I still worked on music myself.”

We’ll all get to hear Carter Tuesday when she opens her new act at San Francisco’s Empire Plush Room.

Back in her early days Carter, born Linda Jean Cordova Carter (part Irish, part Mexican), performed in a string of bands. First, there was Just Us, then the Relatives and then The Garfin Gathering with Lynda Carter. That last group made its debut at a new Holiday Inn in San Francisco.

“That was the first big city I ever played in,” Carter says.

But that was before her success on “Wonder Woman,” which ran from 1975 to 1979 and firmly etched images of the beautifully built Carter into the pop psyche.

Though she has popped up in a “Law and Order” here or a contact lens commercial there, Carter has kept a fairly low profile.

The offer to create a cabaret act in San Francisco hit her just at the right time. She says the spark to sing was relit when she played Matron “Mama” Morton in the London production of Chicago.

“It’s an exciting time for me to contemplate singing again,” she says. “It was such a big part of my career before I had children. I feel lucky to have the opportunity to get back to it now.”

In selecting songs to sing, she’s been going back through her variety specials from the late’70s and early’80s, as well as her Reno and Vegas nightclub acts.

“I’ll probably do ‘Cry Me a River,’ ‘Blues in the Night’ and a song called ‘Cloudburst’ from one of my specials,” she says. “I may also do ‘Put the Blame on Mame,’ which I sang when I played Rita Hayworth in a TV movie. I’ll bring that out of the mothballs.”

She probably won’t sing her big Chicago number, “When You’re Good to Mama,” nor will she sing the theme song from “Wonder Woman” (though, when challenged, she does indeed know the lyrics).

Obviously, her audiences will want her to address Wonder Woman in some way, but Carter hasn’t quite figured out how she’ll do that.

“I’ll most likely mention her throughout,” Carter says. “I’d like to talk about her in an intimate way, like what I thought of her. I’d like to offer a part of myself I don’t normally give, and that will involve insights into what she was like and how I might relate that to something I’m singing.”

Though she wouldn’t balk at another TV show, Carter says her biggest goal is to be a good parent and “pass as little baggage to my children as possible. They’ll create their own.”

And she’s trying to keep a flexible, tolerant, open-minded, forgiving view of the world and herself.

“I can’t make any plans past right now,” she says. “I love this song by James Taylor, ‘Secret o’ Life,’ and like he says, I’m going to try and keep doing what I’m doing now, enjoying the ride.”

For ticket information visit www.empireplushroom.com.

In New York recently, I had an amazing experience with Ricky Ian Gordon, an extraordinary composer who has written for the theater (My Life with Albertine, Dream True) and for the opera (his adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath recently premiered at Minnesota Opera).

Sitting in the apartment he shares with his boyfriend, Kevin, Gordon was talking about his upcoming trip to Berkeley — he performs alongside fellow composer Jake Heggie and Alameda’s resident opera star, Frederica von Stade, on Sunday, April 29, as part of the Cal Performances season — and he brought up a poem by James Schuyler called “Virginia Woolf” that he had set to music and that will be performed on Sunday.

Being a man of music, just talking about the song was insufficient, so he got up and sat at his spinet piano and indicated that I should sit next to him. Then he played the song and sang it full out.

The experience of sitting next to a composer performing his own work is mesmerizing, and the song itself, full of the intricate, haunting melodies Gordon is famous for, is spectacular. If Sunday’s version is anything like Gordon’s, the audience at Hertz Hall on the UC Berkeley campus should be blown away.

Gordon says his half of the concert will be typically him, which is to say, a little bit of a lot of things.

He’ll be joined by Heggie on a four-hand piano piece, “Ring-a-Ding-Ding,” followed by vocal performances by von Stade and others of songs with texts by Emily Dickinson, James Agee, Stanley Kunitz, Edna St. Vincent Milay and others.

There won’t be anything from his well-received The Grapes of Wrath (libretto by Michael Korie), although that epic endeavor will arise again in Utah next month and in Pittsburgh and Houston in 2008 and 2009, respectively.

So how does a composer like Gordon, with feet in both worlds, decide if something is musical theater or opera?

“There’s nothing I can’t do in the theater, but I do feel often like there’s this thing you face with musicals: the critics,” Gordon says. “You’re writing for critics who don’t know how to write or talk about music. I often feel musically misunderstood in the theater.”

There were parts of The Grapes of Wrath, Gordon says, that sounded like musical theater, but musical theater along the lines of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess or Weill’s Street Scene.

“My vocabulary includes music in the American vernacular,” Gordon says. “There are moments when it sort of explodes in operatic texture, while other moments could feel like a musical. Then you’re back into an aria. The truth is, that is so my aesthetic. To me, that’s me doing what I do. I had room to spread out in this opera and just be so Ricky. That’s what was totally fun about it.”

Just because he’s found success in the modern opera world (the Metropolitan Opera has even been sniffing around), Gordon insists he has not forsaken the world of musical theater.

He and Korie (also the lyricist for the Broadway hit Grey Gardens) are working with playwright Craig Lucas on a commission for the Signature Theatre about a major choreographer at the end of his life trying to come to terms with who he has been as a human being and an artist.

He’s also working with the director/writer Tina Landau on spiffing up an old project, “States of Independence,” and creating another opera, Morning Star, with William Hoffman.

“Yeah, I have a lot coming up,” Gordon says. “I’m going to sort of do it all.”

Theater in Song: Music by Jake Heggie and Ricky Ian Gordon is at 3 p.m. April 29 in Hertz Hall on the UC Berkeley campus near Bancroft Way at College Avenue. Tickets are $62. Call (510) 642-9988 or visit www.calperformances.net.

In my final discussion of the shows I saw in New York last week, I’d like to simply honor the extraordinary work of Bob Crowley, who until recently, was best known as the go-to guy for mind-blowing production design.

I had three Crowley experiences: Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia, Part Two: Shipwrecked, Disney’s Mary Poppins and Disney’s Tarzan, which Crowley also directed.

In each of these shows, even the talky Stoppard play (the middle part of a trilogy at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre), Crowley’s work is what makes the biggest impression.

Walking out of the theater after Shipwreck (when I ran into former San Francisco playwright Adam Bock – New York is such a small town), I could tell you I saw actors Jennifer Ehle, Brian F. O’Byrne, Jason Butler Harner, Ethan Hawke and Amy Irving do some interesting things, but they sort of all ran together in a mish-mash of Russians expounding on philosophical, romantic and political themes. But I won’t soon forget the images by Crowley (working here with Scott Pask): a stunning, forced-perspective view down the Champs d’Elysees; a demolished post-riot white marble statue; a gaudy chandelier and a man sitting deep in thought in the middle of a raging sea.

For Mary Poppins (at the New Amsterdam Theatre), a stage adaptation of one of my favorite movies of all time, Crowley rendered the Banks household as a giant dollhouse with the front cut away so we can see into bedrooms, offices, the basement kitchen and the attic nursery. He also throws in a gorgeous watercolor park (for the “Jolly Holiday” number), giant demonic toys (for the new song “Temper, Temper”), an enormous umbrella full of stars (another new song, “Anything Can Happen”) and, of course, the rooftops of London – coo, what a sight.

Mary Poppins does some impressive flying (and Bert the chimney sweep creates the show’s only real magic when he tap dances all the way around the proscenium), but for some intense flying, check out Crowley’s Tarzan at the Richard Rodgers Theatre.

On an inflated jungle set full of cubby holes and spongy rope serving as foliage, Crowley creates a show unhampered by gravity. With the help of aerial expert Pichon Baldinu and choreographer Meryl Tankard, actors playing gorillas and Josh Strickland, playing Tarzan, don’t spend much time on the ground.

I didn’t love any of the above shows, but Crowley’s work (he also designed the costumes for Poppins and Tarzan) dazzles. If you’re going to have epic shows in which the show itself is the star of the show, you can’t do any better than Bob Crowley.

I know Rufus Wainwright is not a theater person…yet. One day he’ll actually write the musical version of Tales of the City, which has been buzzed about for years, and then he’ll justify my including this concert review on a theater blog.

Wainwright’s wall of sound concert anticipates `Stars’ release

Before he was famous as the star of a televised murder trial, Phil Spector was a vaunted music producer noted for creating a distinctive “wall of sound’’ in ‘60s tunes by the likes of Ike and Tina Turner (“River Deep, Mountain High’’) and the Righteous Brothers (“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling’’).

As Rufus Wainwright, one of the best and brightest pop craftsmen out there, matures as a singer and songwriter, he’s entering his own “wall of sound’’ phase.

This was especially evident Wednesday night when Wainwright performed a sold-out show — or “showette’’ as he called it — at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts Theatre.

Sort of a public rehearsal, Wainwright and his seven-piece band (guitar, bass, drums, three horns and a multi-instrumentalist who played piano when Wainwright was on acoustic guitar) used the show to work through the elaborate tunes on Wainwright’s upcoming album, “Release the Stars,’’ which drops May 15.

On many of the new songs, Wainwright is clearly going for a Spector-ish feel, with epic arrangements for strings (heard on pre-recorded tracks), backing vocals and electronic samples.

It’s a style he first demonstrated on “Beautiful Child,’’ a thrilling track from 2003’s “Want One’’ (and also a highlight of Wednesday’s show). Filled with symphonic, Wagnerian chaos, the song was clearly laying the groundwork for new tunes like “Release the Stars,’’ “Tiergarten,’’ “Between My Legs’’ “Do I Disappoint You?’’ and “Slideshow.’’

Such baroque arrangements give Wainwright ample opportunity to show off his grandly theatrical side and marshal his considerable musical talents. He’s always pushing his voice farther and farther, and, surprisingly, he keeps gaining more vocal control.

Unfortunately the wall of sound was too often a wall of noise on Wednesday, with the sound mix at the Palace of Fine Arts often tending toward terrible, especially when the live band was augmented by tracks.

But the audience didn’t seem to mind. They were there for Wainwright’s trademark blend of quirkiness and brilliance, and they got what they came for.

It says a lot about the 33-year-old poperatic performer that his best new songs — “Nobody’s Off the Hook,’’ “Not Ready to Love,’’ “I’m Leaving for Paris No. 2’’ — don’t’ seem at all out of place next to classics like the Gershwins’ “A Foggy Day’’ and Noel Coward’s “If Love Were All’’ (both songs are from Wainwright’s near-legendary re-creation of Judy Garland’s 1961 Carnegie Hall concert).

The first single from the new album is the ballad “Going to a Town,’’ a classic love-gone-wrong break-up tune. But in this case, the misbehaving lover is America, and Wainwright has had enough.

After singing the tune and praising the Bay Area’s liberal slant, Wainwright praised House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “God, I love her,’’ he said. “I want her to be the mother of my children. I guess I’m not having children.’’

That distinctive Wainwright humor is apparent in the new songs “Rules and Regulations,’’ which he says is about “an overweight, out-of-shape guy watching the Olympics,’’ and “Tulsa,’’ a musically complex tribute to Killers lead singer Brandon Flowers that begins, “You taste of potato chips in the morning.’’

Though his head is clearly in the new material at the moment, Wainwright did throw in a few older tunes, mostly from “Want One’’ (“I Don’t Know What It Is,’’ “Harvester of Hearts,’’ “14th Street’’ and “Pretty Things’’) and “Want Two’’ (“The Art Teacher,’’ “Gay Messiah’’).

He also dedicated an old Irish tune, “Macushla,’’ to his mother, Kate McGarrigle, and dueted beautifully with old friend (and opening act) Teddy Thompson on “One Man Guy,’’ written by Rufus’ father, Loudon Wainwright III.

Even in a throw-away show like this one, when he’s obviously getting ready for bigger, better things, Rufus Wainwright is able to please his fans, have some fun and reassert his peculiar pop genius.

Visit Rufus’ official Web site at www.rufuswainwright.com.

Stream samples of three of the new songs here.

Every year around this time, the casts of Broadway shows make a spiel at the end of every performance and solicit audience donations for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, which then makes donations to organizations caring and providing for people living with HIV and AIDS as well as to organizations dealing with women’s health issues such as breast and ovarian cancer.

Well, for the first time in BC/EFA history, the company that raised the most money happens to be out on the road. More specifically, the cast of Jersey Boys at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre raised $238,000.

To raise that much money, the San Francisco company, after singing their way through the life story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, asked audience members to give on their way out of the theater, charged nominal fees for photo opportunities, sold signed posters and sold rag dolls (get it — like the Four Seasons song “Rag Doll”) they made themselves. They also performed a fundraising cabaret that included Jersey Boys trivia questions.

Applause applause to the Jersey Boys fundraising effort (headed by company member Jennifer Evans) and to Bay Area audiences for such stellar contributions.

For Jersey Boys info visit www.shnsf.com.

More from last week’s Broadway binge.

Couldn’t resist returning to see Legally Blonde at the Palace Theatre to see how the show had evolved since its January out-of-town tryout at the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco.

I’m happy to report that the show is in fantastic shape. Director/choreographer Jerry Mitchell (making his Broadway directorial debut) and his team – composer and lyricists Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin and book writer Heather Hach – have tightened things up and made some smart changes.

The biggest change is a new song, “Positive,” sung by the “Greek chorus” of sorority girls (Annaleigh Ashford, DeQuina Moore and Leslie Kritzer) and Elle Woods (Laura Bell Bundy). This replaces the number “Love and War” we saw out here.

Costumer Gregg Barnes has revamped almost the entire show, with especially fetching new designs for the sorority girls. And Elle’s fabulous pink finale dress – sort of Flashdance meets A Chorus Line – is accented with a lawyerly tie used as a sassy belt.

Bundy’s performance as Elle has sharpened considerably. She’s more knowing in her humor – sincere but with a certain self-awareness that makes it easier for us to laugh at her (and with her).

Orfeh as hairdresser Paulette has also warmed up. She’s funnier, and her big number, “Ireland,” finally gets its boffo Broadway ending. Orfeh’s real-life husband, Andy Karl, is still stealing scenes as Karl, the UPS guy who gets laughs with a walk (more of a “Hey, I’m Brown” strut).

If anything, Legally Blonde has turned into more of a crowd pleaser. The Friday-night audience I saw the show with was eminently pleased. A sign of things to come in that audience: a group of tween girls in pink T-shirts with “Harvard Law” stenciled on the front and “Class of 2022” on the back.

From the pink, happy world to the decidedly grim, gray world of another musical, Grey Gardens.

I have to give credit to book writer Doug Wright (Pulitzer Prize winner for I Am My Own Wife), composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie: they set out to create an intelligent, well-considered musical about the dark side of the American dream. And they succeeded.

Trouble is that the show didn’t involve me any way other than intellectually, and I found myself wishing I were watching the extraordinary documentary, Grey Gardens, that inspired the musical.

If you don’t know the story, go watch the DVD immediately. Failing that, I’ll give you the short version: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy’s aunt, Edith Bouvier Beale, and her cousin, Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale, were at one time the cream of East Hampton, but by 1972, the two ladies were living in their family manse, called Grey Gardens, whch was condemned by the Suffolk County Board of Health in 1972. That’s when famous cousin Jackie (then Onasis) stepped in to help them out. In 1974, Albert and David Maysles spent six weeks filming the Beales and their cats and raccoons and craziness.

The musical takes a fictional leap into the past to imagine what life was like at Grey Gardens in 1941, when Little Edie was a dazzling debutante and Big Edie was a quirky patron of the arts with a rich, philandering husband.

Act 1 attempts to show us Big Edie’s tremendous jealousy of her daughter’s beauty (and beaux) and Little Edie’s suffering at the hands of her mother’s passive aggressive smackdowns.

Act 2 gives us the Beales we saw in the movie and quotes, often verbatim, lines spoken by the real women in the documentary.

I’m told the reason to see Grey Gardens is for the central performance by Christine Ebersole, who plays vibrant Big Edie in Act 1 and mentally unbalanced Little Edie in Act 2. After missing performances and taking a well-deserved break from the show, Ebersole was back in action for the matinee I saw.

She puts on quite a show and sings beautifully. But to my mind, her performance has become mannered caricature of caricature. Her imitation of Little Edie in Act 2, complete with the crazy outfits she fashioned for herself from anything she could get her hands on, is uncanny. But it’s just that: an imitation.

Mary Louise Wilson as bed-bound Big Edie gives a more realistic performance, but we never quite understand how the beautiful, intelligent (albeit psychologically tormented) woman in Act 1 could be come such a mess in 30 years.

Same is true of Little Edie – it seems the most interesting part is in the middle when she attempts to live independently in New York and begin a show-biz career but then gets sucked back into her mother’s psychosis.

There are also issues of mental illness here that are never addressed (nor are they addressed in the film), which can make laughing at these women and their sad plight uncomfortable.

My favorite number is the Act 2 opener “The Revolutionary Costume for Today” performed by Ebersole. Her big ballad, “Another Winter In a Summer Town,” is lovely, but it seems too knowing – how can Little Edie be so self-aware and sad and so crazy? It’s possible, but we’re not given enough insight to really believe it.

Boy was it hard to leave New York City. The day after I arrived, the city was hit by a nor’easter (a nice name for a Category 2 hurricane-type storm) that dumped, so I’m told 5 ½ inches of rain on the city in one day. Most of it, I believe, was in my shoes (which were ruined, in case you care).

But by the end of the week, the weather had turned into glorious spring. The pear blossoms on West 69th Street had blossomed, and even the waiters at the legendary Broadway diner the Edison Café were nice (actually, they were rude and unhelpful).

Even a hurricane, sorry, nor’easter, couldn’t keep me from the theater. My first show, a Sunday matinee, was at the Belasco Theatre for a revival of R.C. Sherriff’s 1928 play Journey’s End.

This seems as good a place as any to begin my review of the Broadway shows I sampled. Today I’ll talk about the best three shows (of eight) I saw. Check back later this week to hear about the others.

Journey’s End is an extraordinary play about life in a dark (and we’re talking DARK) trench in France during World War I. Sherriff, a veteran of the war, was a British insurance salesman who turned his life experience into a play – an extraordinary play that sidesteps politics and goes straight into the heart of soldiers preparing for battle.

It’s almost impossible – at least it was for me – not to think about soldiers in Iraq while watching British hunk Hugh Dancy (the tormented captain), Boyd Gaines (a truly great performance as the older, wiser lieutenant), Stark Sands (as the earnest newbie) and Jefferson Mays (as the crackerjack cook).

Director David Grindley’s production is dimly lit but extraordinary, and I wouldn’t be surprised if regional theaters around the country start “rediscovering” the play after its current Broadway exposure.

The biggest surprise of the week was how much I liked the revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s Company starring Raul Esparza as Bobby (below), the perennial bachelor surrounded by an assortment of wry, bitter married friends.

This is director John Doyle’s second Sondheim done in the typical Doyle fashion. Like Sweeney Todd before it, the actors also serve as the orchestra. Here, that means all the married people play instruments, while bachelor Bobby plays nothing but the kazoo (until his breakthrough number, “Being Alive,” which he begins by playing the piano at long last).

I heard complaints that the supporting cast was wan, but I thought they were terrific, especially Barbara Walsh (delicately sidestepping Elaine Stritch’s formidable shadow) as Joanne and Elizabeth Stanley (with her deer-in-the-headlights face) as April.

But it’s Esparza’s warmth and humor that creates a vibrant center around which the show swirls. This is the first time I’ve seen Company that matched the production I envisioned in my head every time I listened to the original cast album (and I listened to that album a lot). If you read previous blogs, I dogged Esparza on the new cast album, but after seeing his performance and having him spit on me (I was in the third row center), I have no complaints.

And now to the reason I planned the trip to New York in the first place: Spring Awakening. My expectations were high, which is never a good thing. Expectations only lead to inevitable disappointment. Having been a huge fan of Duncan Sheik since Day 1 and of the original cast album since its release last December, I suspected I would love the show.

And so I did. But here’s the really good news: the show is even better than I had imagined. Sheik’s music and Steven Sater’s lyrics as well as his adaptation of the Franz Wedekind play of the same name combine to create the most pleasing pop-rock score to come from a Broadway show (OK, it’s not a long, distinguished list, but still).

The show has been beautifully and rigorously directed by Michael Mayer and choreographed by Bill T. Jones, and the young cast (all in their 20s or younger) is extraordinary. This is one of those cases of musical alchemy – all the right ingredients coming together to create something new. There are whiffs of Rent here and there, but on the whole, the music is far more appealing and the story more genuinely moving (which is to say not nearly as maudlin).

And I’ll even go so far to say that this is the best musical adaptation of a play since My Fair Lady.

I could go on and on about the actors, but let me just say that the Jonathans _ Gallagher Jr. and Groff _ as Moritz and Melchior respectively are extraordinary, and Lea Michele as Wendla has a stunning voice (as does the entire cast). I also have to mention Jonathan B. Wright as Hanschen, a lad with a healthy opinion of himself. Wright is hilarious (and for some reason, his name was left off the CD insert on the original cast recording) and deeply strange at the same time. A great combo.

Spring Awakening is moving in ways I didn’t expect, and I find myself returning to the cast album again and again.

Hey, Theater Dogs!

I’m off to New York to finally see Spring Awakening (among other shows). Will write all about it when I return next week.