A Tisch student named Danlly Domingo has sent us a photo, of a behatted Mia Thermopolis—along with other members of the cast—offering slices around to the weary-but-committed ticket hopefuls.

Sure this might have been some carefully orchestrated PR thing—even though it was the last day of Twelfth Night, Hathaway will return to the New York stage in Promises, Promises and possibly a Judy Garland musical—but who cares. It's still pretty cool that at 3am the morning before her big final performance, the actress came out to say a gracious thank you to devoted theatergoers.

Good things do happen in New York! And sometimes, just sometimes, they involve celebrities. Give us your hat so we can tip it to you, Anne.

Yes, the Twitter-obsessed, Muppet-headed actor may be coming to Broadway, as one of Neil LaBute's awful male characters, to boot. The playwright/director's play Fat Pig recently received a well-reviewed production in London, and now producers plan to move the thing overseas. And Kutcher might be the lead!

So if you're not too tired out from waiting in line alllll day just to see Anne Hathaway mangle Twelfth Night (for free!) in the park this summer, maybe next season you should go drop $100 just for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see Kelso from that one show about the 70s be a jerk to a fat girl. That Miss Julie with Sienna Miller will just have to wait.

• Mary Stuart, the Donmar transplant directed by Phyllida Lloyd, sounds terrific, and not just for the awesome-looking onstage rainstorm.
• Another English exchange student, Alan Ackybourn's The Norman Conquests trilogy at Circle In the Square, was well-received too, though 1970's British sex farce doesn't exactly thrill this roundupper.
• If you want to see The Nanny Diaries done by one lady, onstage, and apparently done well, go see Exit Cuckoo at the Clurman.
• Should a white person direct any of August Wilson's plays? Wilson didn't think so, but his late wife signed off on the hiring of Bartlett Sher for the strongly reviewed Joe Turner revival on Broadway right now. Were a dead man's wishes unhonored?
• Speaking of dead theater geniuses, the estates of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein have sold the rights to the duo's musicals—The Sound of Music, South Pacific, Rent (not actually)—to a Dutch pension fund. The CEO of the fund, Imagem, says that he "see[s] musicals as a very big growth area for investment," which, um, if people are turning to stage musicals to make money, then you know your world economy is fucked.
• If you are lucky enough to be in Indianapolis at the end of November, do yourself a favor and go see Shirley Jones and Florence Henderson together in concert.
• Oohh Broadway Week on Regis & Kelly. Aren't you excited?
• Oh good. Someone's given poor Andrea McArdle work down in Florida.
• It begins. Outer Critics Circle Award nominations have been announced, meaning we're just one short month away from that most dreaded, feared, and delightful New York evening, the Tony Awards.
• Speaking of the outer circle, in Los Angeles you might want to steer away from The Seafarer at the Geffen. While lauded on B'way in 2007, this production of the great Conor McPherson's drunk Irishmen telling stories play sounds a bit less than seaworthy. In Boston you can be artsy but a little creepy by going to the Zeitgeist's mounting of teen sex cautionary tale Spring Awakening. No, not the full-of-itself musical. The actual old-ass play. Oh, and do take the wig down from the shelf and go see Hedwig and the Angry Itch at the American Theater Company in Chicago.

• Joe Turner's Come and Gone, August Wilson's favorite of his ten-play American history cycle, won a rave this week, which is awesome. That poor, forgotten Belasco theater over there, on the mysterious east side of Times Square. They get some good, overlooked shows. Go see it. It's a beautiful play.
• Also earning a hearty blowjob this week was new musical Next to Normal, which... (biting tongue) is... interesting. I will say on the good side: Aaron Tveit is hot as balls, even with his silly Rent mannerisms fully intact, and child musical theater prodigy Jennifer Damiano is just that. She's fierce and wonderful in a show that's not quite... urgh.
• The 24 Hour Musicals charity thing happened this week, and you didn't go. Because you're not cool or awesome or connected and you're also poor and the tickets were really expensive so, better luck next year, New York. (I am talking to myself.)
• Hair is doing really well in the ol' ticket sales department. Which is great. I wish the show was great—it's not, it's smug and annoying—but this is still great. Theater could use the sunshiny boost.
• Brian Kulick has made a hash of the Oresteia. Do you hear me? A hash!!!
• I also saw Desire Under the Elms this week, that stuttering O'Neill play about love and rocks and New England. Carla Gugino is a marvel, as is Brian Dennehy. And it's such a shame that Pablo Schreiber isn't attractive. I mean I just wish that he was a good actor and had an outstanding ass and I wish you saw it in this play, but you know... these are just wishes. Desires, even.
• Man oh man, don't you just wish you lived in London sometimes? Rachel Weisz, who was supposed to be doing Miss Julie in New York—this is a true fact!—but probably won't because of stupid Sienna Miller, is going to be raggedy old Blanche DuBois in a Donmar production of O Streetcar!, a musical written by Jon Lovitz. No, just playin'. She'll be in regular Streetcar. Want to see so bad.
• The OBCR of Chess not enough? (In case someone who doesn't know theater is reading this, Chess is: a musical about chess written by the dude from Abba. Seriously). Chess in Concert will air on PBS in June. Diny Menzel's in it, as are Adam Pascal and Josh Groban. OMG, "One Night in Bangkok" is gonna be off the hizzzayyyyyy.
• Oh gloryoski I just love the theater. Diane Paulus? She directed that smug and annoying but successful Hair revival? Well she's the artistic director of the ART in foggy Bostontowne and hoo boy a change has come to Beansburg. Two musicals are scheduled for next season. Two! The weirdo Polish director reign of terror ushered in by Bob Woodruff has ended. Now we get Elevator Repair Service's Gatz and an R&B reimagining of A Winter's Tale and a songer called Red Sox Nation. Plus The Donkey Show! Oh Diane, you minx.
• Weren't Kerry Butler, Mary Catherine Garrison, and the otherworldly Elizabeth Marvel awesome on 30 Rock on Thursday? Yes they were. That is the correct answer.
• The Chorus Line documentary came out. Go see it.
• Do you live by the lake? Go see Abbie Spallen's Pumpgirl at A Red Orchid. It sounds dynamite!
• Go see "magical" and "overwrought" Lydia at the Mark Taper Forum, if you're unfortunate enough to live in Los Angeles. The staged telenovela sounds like an exciting tiptoe into the vastly unexplored world of Latino theater.

• Rock of Ages opened on Broadway and was fun, if a bit silly.
• The Humana Arts Festival at the Actors' Theatre of Louisville got underway. The most interesting show (for me)? Actress Zoe Kazan's (Three Sisters) play Absalom. Didn't know she wrote.
• After a few missteps (Adrift in Macao, anyone?) arch black comedian Christopher Durang is back in good graces with Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them at the Public.
• Meanwhile Brunch: The Musical, about struggling actors working as waiters on the Upper East Side sounds positively dreadful, both in concept and performance. Best line of the review? "These mostly unlikable characters want audiences to know that they hate 'crying kids, blue hairs and strollers,' as one waiter mentions. And they want 20 percent tips." Ha.
• Matthew Broderick began previews of The Philanthropist at the Roundabout on Friday night.
• Speaking of the Roundabout, the terrific Julie White (a Tony winner for Little Dog Laughed) will star in that company's New York premiere of busy, busy lady Theresa Rebeck's play The Understudy. And the indispensable Laurie Metcalf is Broadway bound twice in the coming year, once quite literally. She's landed lead roles in revivals of both Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound. Brighton will likely bow in October, with Bound following in December.
• Legendary bitch, but brilliant performer, Anna Deavere Smith will bring her Let Me Down Easy to the off-Broadway stage this fall. The show premiered at the ART in Boston this year.
• Also off-B'way, the great Sherie Rene Scott began previews for Everyday Rapture a new musical by the Thoroughly Modern Millie duo and directed by Michael Mayer.
• In regional news, I really want to go see The Tempest at the Steppenwolf in Chicago. Tina Landau's production sounds spectacular. I'm also sort of curious, if in an apprehensive way, about Chalk Rep's Family Planning, a two-parter that takes place in actual houses. Could be Fefu, could be just awkward. The LA Times liked it.

The Twisted Sister frontman wasn't the only aging, leather-clad rocker in attendance. The dudes from Night Ranger were there, so was the guy who used to sing for Survivor. They all creaked up to watch the songs of their beloved, boozey, LA wastoid 1980's spring to glittery gay life on the Broadway stage.

The show is: Constantine from American Idol is a wannabe rocker who meets cute with a girl (Amy Spanger—girl I saw you in Rent in Boston like seven million years ago and you look exactly the same, so good work) who's a wannabe actress and they fall in love and save a rock club as a jerky German tries to turn the Sunset Strip into an adult amusement and shopping park (hmm... kinda like that company that bought Coney Island?) It's a thin story, entirely forgettable, but there are some good jokes and who the hell really cares. The real reason the show exists is so those awesome 80's songs—"Hit Me With Your Best Shot", "Don't Stop Believin'", "We're Not Gonna Take It"—can rock out with their gypsy robe-covered cocks out and melt our faces off. And, for the most part, it works!

The show straddles a delicate balance between openly mocking the silliness of that whole, old scene and laboriously giving it a blow job. It's loving, but not overwrought. Poking fun, but not mean. And it's just really fun. If you have a friend or surly younger brother in town who hates Broadway shows but kinda secretly wants to see a Broadway show, you could definitely do worse than this. Charles Isherwood agrees!

After the opening there was a party next door, which featured a hilarious but vaguely unsettling mash-up between your usual "helloooo!!" Theatre types and a crowd of booze-guzzling old rockers, their precarious brides hanging on their arms. It just didn't seem right in some way, two worlds that should never collide.

In celebrity attendance news! I bumped into (literally) that fruit from Ugly Betty. And I gawped embarrassingly at Patrick Wilson. Katrina Bowden from 30 Rock shimmied by at one point, and the rumor is that Zac Efron poked his head in too, but I'm not sure I believe it. After I made a complete spectacular ass of myself when trying to talk to one of the show's cast members—sorry about that!—I decided it was time to leave.

The whole party left me feeling just a bit sad—sure there were crazy ladies drunkenly clapping and whooping during the show, but there in the safe confines of Pretend Land, it all seemed OK, it was kicky good fun. But out there in the real-ish world, a place that's long ago left these big-haired oddities behind, it all suddenly seemed so melancholy. These people, lost in time. Now beholden and grateful to their once most hated (and, let's be honest, rightfully so) enemy, musical theatre folk.

But on stage! On stage it's still quite alive and happy. I feel bound by some innate corniness to say this:

It rocks.

• When I saw Neil LaBute's reasons to be pretty Off Broadway last year, I thought it was just all right. Pablo Schreiber and Allison Pill were great, as always, but everything else felt a bit flat. Well now Ben Brantley loves a new non-Pill, non-Schreiber production of the play that's just opened, sans big long monologues, on Broadway. Go figure.
• Also getting good notices in midtown this week were Tovah Feldshuh's performance in Irena's Vow, despite a not-so-great production, and Theater for a New Audience's Hamlet. It's the company's second Shakespeare production this year to earn a flat-out rave in the Times.
• Speaking of raves, Brantley slobbered all over the Public's Hair revival, moved indoors after its successful run in the park last summer. It's a talented young cast, for sure, but being lectured for an hour and a half about Vietnam by kids born in 1990 came across, to me, as nothing short of smug.
• Unfortunately Happiness, the new musical from the Grey Gardens team at Lincoln Center, sounds less than a delight.
• Tonight, after the regularly scheduled 4pm and 8pm performances of Sleepwalk With Me, the show's star will be sitting down for a talk back with This American Life host Ira Glass. Then he'll be recording a new story for the occasion, to be aired on the Showtime show. Sleepwalk is supposed to be great anyway, so now there's added incentive to make the trip. You can go see Fast & Furious any other time, after all.
• The Times has a nice profile of Roslyn Hart and Nick Chase's weirdo one-woman cabaret comedy act, Shells. She has a show this Sunday, as always at Joe's Pub.
• John Stamos (How to Succeed In Business...), Gina Gershon, and Bill Irwin have been announced as the cast for the Roundabout's Bye Bye Birdie revival. All three have respectable stage chops (Gershon could actually carry a tune when I saw her in Cabaret), so that sounds promising. The all-important roles of Kim and Conrad have not yet been cast. Zac Efron!!!
• A documentary about the New York production of the terrific rock concert/musical/travelogue Passing Strange will receive a screening at the Tribeca Film Festival.
• Across the pond, Gillian Anderson and Christopher Eccleston are set to appear in the Donmar Warehouse's upcoming production of A Doll's House. Scully as Nora? I want to go to there.
• In regional news: The Lyric in Boston's production of Speech & Debate was well received, and makes me wish even more that I'd seen the play when it was here in New York. Also, the ART's Trojan Barbie opened, and Milford High School will be the first school in the region to put on Rent: School Edition.. In Chicago a new production of Twelfth Night at Chicago Shakespeare will feature a big swimming pool. Meanwhile you'd probably rather soak your head than sit through Silk Road Theatre Project's Pangs of the Messiah, which Hedy Weiss calls "painful." And in LA, The Manchurian Candidate at the Chandler sounds like an intriguing misfire.

• Geoffrey Rush and Susan Sarandon slay in Ionesco's Exit the King at the Barrymore, while Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons are apparently not so effective in the drab-sounding Impressionism.
• Meanwhile Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage seems intriguing in a brutish intellectualism sorta way. Plus a cast of Hope Davis, Marcia Gay Harden, Jeff Daniels, and James Gandolfini sounds pretty solid.
• Off Broadway, Inked Baby—by a still in school Christina Anderson—starring LaChanze sounds blah. And Haggadah at LaMama ought to be a confusing but fun trip into the Passover story.
• My classicist friend Cathy tells me that An Oresteia at Classical Stage Company has really awful blindspots in the 'partially obstructed' section, so if you're going to see the turgid two-parter, make sure you buy a seat in the middle.
• Speaking of classical epics, terrific and on-the-rise actor Denis O'Hare (seen recently at the Classical in Uncle Vanya with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard) is developing An Iliad, a one-man show, at Seattle Rep.
• The poorly-reviewed film Spinning Into Butter, based on Rebecca Gilman's race-relations-in-academia play, is finally being released. (That one's for you, Depardoo).
• Khaled Hosseini's smash hit novel The Kite Runner was already a movie. Well, now it's a play, too.
• For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf was supposed to get a revival in New York this year, but the economy scared it off (along with Godspell, alack). Well, now it's going to become a movie, too.
• If you missed Ian McKellen as Lear at BAM last year, you can watch the performance on New York Public Television in April.
• In regional news: The god-like Laure Metcalf (who first hit big at Steppenwolf when she did that honking 30-minute-long monologue in Balm of Gilead) will star in the comedy Voice Lessons next month at the Zephyr Theatre in LA. The national tour of Mary Poppins started in Chicago this week, as did the run of new play Magnolia (not related to the movie) at the Goodman. Unfortunately, it's not great. The "modern multimedia" Hunchback of Notre Dame at the Majestic in Boston sounds weird and fun.
• Also, a friend text-messaged me tonight because he thought that Elaine Stritch died. She did not. Don't anyone scare me like that ever again.

• The Times didn't love the new revival of West Side Story, but I think Brantley's wrong. It's a beautifully done revival—Jerome Robbins' iconic choreography feels fresh and brand new and exciting, Josefina Scaglione was basically grown in a lab to play Maria, Karen Olivio is a serious, statuesque Anita, and there are many cuuuuuute boyyyyssssss. So there.
• Meanwhile the Twelfth Night at the McCarter in Princeton is apparently quite good, plus it features the marvelous Veanne Cox as Olivia. So, you should go.
• Sure Blithe Spirit—with Angela Lansbury, Rupert Everett, Christine Ebersole, and the always-terrific Jayne Atkinson—sounds like fun, but I hear it's a long and boring production.
• 'Rock Romance' Rooms seems amusing, but maybe also a little cloying.
• If you still haven't caught Lynn Nottage's Ruined or one-man show about clowns Humor Abuse (both well reviewed), you now have more time. Manhattan Theatre Club has extended both runs, to May 3rd and April 19th, respectively. Go!
• Stacy Keach, currently starring in the national tour of Frost/Nixon, suffered a mild stroke in Los Angeles earlier this week, but is expected to make a full recovery and rejoin the tour at some point.
• In Chicago, Wait Until Dark at Court Theatre is taut and scary, while the Porchlight Theatre's Pacific Overtures is "sparkling."
• In LA, Theatre Banshee's Scottish Play is "vanilla", but Stalin-era thriller The Letters at the Andak Stage Company in NoHo is "impeccably performed."
• In Boston run! don't walk! to The Pain and the Itch at Company One, featuring the divine Nancy Carroll and directed by the lovely and talented Bevin O'Gara.
• Finally, the lights dimmed on Broadway (and in the West End) for a minute on Thursday night to honor one of the stage's most exciting stars, Natasha Richardson. The actress passed away following a head injury she suffered while skiing near Montreal.

• Don't worry! In these times when Jim Cramer has single-handedly robbed you blind and stolen your house, Broadway theatre still soldiers on. For example, West Side Story is performing well, grossing over $2 million for the two weeks it's been in previews.
• Plus big stars are filling the stages this spring, from Susan Sarandon to James Gandolfini to Joan Allen to Jane Fonda herself. The traitorous actress got pretty solid notices for her performance as a dying Beethoven scholar in Moises Kaufman's limp-sounding play 33 Variations.
• Been a lady in war, or just curious what female soldiers' experiences have been like? Go check out The Lonely Soldier Monologues (Women at War in Iraq), at Theater for the New City in the E-Vill. Supposedly parts of it are "revalatory and disturbing." I, for one, don't wanna sit around watchin' a bunch of gals cookin' Army food! Right??
• If you think your parents are clowns (they are), meet Lorenzo Pisoni, whose pops actually was one. He discusses what it was like growing up in that strange sort of household, and does some of the routines, in his one man show at MTC, Humor Abuse. His physicality is, evidently, "breathtaking."
• Well, here you go. Melissa Gilbert, who played Laura on the O.G. Little House On the Prairie TV show, will be playing Ma in a tour of the stage musical based on Laura Ingalls Wilder's famous book series. Set to begin after the show a ends five week run at the Paper Mill in NJ, the 30-city extravaganza starts in Minnesota, where it first premiered. (Patty Noons, if you're reading this, I hope you made the tour.)
• The new Catch Me If You Can musical, based on the movie, with music by Scott Wittman and Mark Shaiman and a book by Terrence McNally, will premiere this summer at the increasingly-popular-for-tryouts 5th Avenue Theater in Seattle. Cutiepants Aaron Tveit will play the Leonardo DiCaprio part, with seasoned veteran Norbert Leo Butz stepping into the Tom Hanks role. If the whole production basically just looks like the opening credits sequence, then I can forgive the show for being yet another movie adaptation.
• Casting has begun for the New Georges and the Hip-Hop Theater Festival's co-production Angela's Mixtape, a play by Eisa Davis. You may have seen Davis as the mother in the terrific Passing Strange, on both East and West coasts, or as Bubbles' sister on The Wire.
• Go see Martha Clarke's dance (sort of) piece Garden of Earthly Delights at Minetta Lane before it closes on March 29th.
• In other regional news: Chicago's Theo Ubique Theatre Company is apparently doing good things with a "vest-pocket-sized" production of Evita. Go see the "huge talents" at the No Ext Cafe, in Roger's Park. In LA, the Road Theatre Company's well-reviewed The Bird and Mr. Banks at the Lankershim Arts Center just got extended to May 2nd. Now you have even more opportunities to see Bernard from Lost (also known as Sam Anderson) as a murderous CPA with a bird obsession. If you want to go see something pretty, but flawed, in Boston, head over the Huntington for Two Men of Florence, a play about Galileo that has a "beautiful set" if not a moving script.

Enjoy.

• The new Guys & Dolls revival, starring the unlikely duo of Oliver Platt and Lauren Graham, is maybe not so good. Go see the new sorta-for-kids version of Henry V instead.
• Oh my god, you have to see this. Replacing Estelle Parsons, who's going on tour, in the New York production of Tracy Letts' thundering play August: Osage County will be... Phylicia Rashad. Those Cosby folks are busy! But seriously, Claire Huxtable as the racist, pill-popping, decidedly-white matriarch of a crumbling Oklahoma plains family? One ticket, please.
• Cynthia Nixon's new Off-Broadway play Distracted sounds like a pleasant... diversion. While The Savannah Disputation sounds less so.
• Robin Williams' Broadway return has been delayed by his heart condition.
• There will be a Ghost musical in the West End in 2010. Sigh. Though, the clay scene should be interesting on stage.
• Yikes. Mary Zimmerman's modern times La Sonambula envisioning got heartily booed at the Met.
• In regional news, the Lyric Opera of Chicago's new production of Mozart's comic opera The Abduction from the Seraglio is apparently quite good. Kirk Douglas will be performing as Kirk Douglas at the Kirk Douglas Theater in Culver City, CA. Wonder how he got that job. The Trinity Rep's (in Providence) production of David Hare's dusty old 1988 play The Secret Rapture is probably not worth the trip.
• Last and certainly not least, Texas tale-spinner Horton Foote died at age 92 in Connecticut on Wednesday. The winner of two Academy Awards for screenplays and a Pulitzer prize in drama for The Young Man from Atlanta, Foote was seen by some as a Southern Chekhov. A comparison I kinda like. Read Ben Brantley's obit here.

OK, that's it. Go see something you never thought you would. Or take a walk and enjoy the nice weather. Just don't stay inside all weekend. (I'm talking to myself here.)

• Simple, no-frills revivals of Our Town and Othello were the critical darlings of the week. Especially Othello, which you should see if only because my college roommate Matt did the sound design.
• A Cosby Show alumni-stuffed production of Three Sisters (Sondra! Cliff's dad!) up in Harlem didn't fare so well.
• You should go check out This Beautiful City, from theatre troupe The Civilians. Their show Gone Missing was the best thing I saw on stage in 2007, I'm pretty sure. This one's about Evangelism in Colorado Springs.
• In the requisite Jeremy Piven news, he wept and felt sad. But he's not out of the woods yet.
• Robin Williams is coming to town with a one man show. It's called, in true Williamsy dated fashion, Weapons of Self-Destruction. So, there's that.
• The new musical at Lincoln Center Happiness, from the Grey Gardens music team, began previews last night. Though it's directed by Mel Brooks panhandler Susan Stroman... so. We'll see.
• A musical based on The Addams Family will be coming to Broadway in 2010. Hammy vets Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth played Gomez and Morticia in a workshop last month, but they're in no way confirmed for the actual run. It's gonna be big! Maybe.
• In regional news, a Dutch version of Mourning Becomes Electra is getting good notices in Chicago (unlike its New York cousin, which is closing early). If you're bored in Boston (but really, how could that be?), you should go see Boston Ballet's well-received production of George Balanchine's Jewels. (Ballet is: a bear wearing a fez, driving a tiny car in circles.) If you're in the Southland, go see Caryl Churchill's A Number at the Rude Guerilla Theatre Company in Santa Ana. The production of the haunting, chilling play about cloning is apparently "arresting."

OK, that's it! Happy viewing. Though, you're just going to stay home and watch TV aren't you?

Sigh. Me too.

Well, you know, it has gay stuff in it. Like references to committed same sex-couples, but also to AIDS and bad words. Even though there's something called a "School Edition" of the 1995 rock musical extravaganza about AIDS-riddled bohemes (gay, straight, trans, whatevs) living and dying in the East Village, which cuts out some language and the sex song "Contact," people in places as diverse as Orange County, Texas, and West Virginia are objecting. Principals have canceled productions, incorrectly citing things like "prostitution" as their reasons. (There is no prostitution in the show).

Theater teachers and supporters of the show are upset with what they feel is a bias against homosexuals. The director at Corona del Mar High School, in Newport Beach, said that he undertook the show because he'd seen a rise in homophobic language on the school's campus. But the principal shut him down and remains tight lipped about the whole gay thing.

So where should we fall down on this? Outrage over gay suppression and backwards thinking and all that ("We're a bit back in the woods here," said a West Virginia principal who stopped her school's version)? Or should we just sigh and resign ourselves to the fact that even shows as relatively tame as Rent will still rankle in big, lopsided America? Well, as I said to a friend earlier, high schools wouldn't do Buried Child or Oleanna or even Angels in America. Nor should they. It's just an age and experience thing. But, as she argued back, kids should see Rent if it'll pry open their eyes a bit. So when do they get that opportunity, if not at their school?

Ultimately I think it's a case by case basis. Some poor decisions will be made, some brave and convicted ones will be too. It's the good/bad nature of theatre that, unlike movies, everyone can tackle a piece, and make it their own issuey, bad production if they want to. While the she show's composer Jonathan Larson and his producers and cast may not have found the show scandalous fourteen long years ago, some sweater-vested principal might find his own school's version to be Last Tango in Paris: For Kids. We have to take that good and take that bad and just be glad, I guess, that the debate and controversy and silliness can exist at all. I mean, at least they're fighting over a show that was once seen as something of a polemic, right? It's not like we get arguments about really tame shows anymore!

Oh, wait.

The New York Times's Ben Brantely found it fun, if a bit slow in parts:

But ultimately this production is less about the legacy of George W. Bush than it is about the comic persona that has been perfected by Will Ferrell. "You're Welcome America" is a lot like Mr. Ferrell's more middling movies, not quite on a level with "Blades of Glory" or "Talladega Nights." Sometimes it's really funny, and sometimes it sort of sags. I laughed, I yawned.

Um... Blades of Glory, really? No. Nothing with Jon Heder has ever been, or will ever be, funny. Even that Napoleon thing. Never.

The New York Post thought it was yuks-heavy but slight as well:

Granted, the generally lowbrow humor of "You're Welcome America. A Final Night with George W. Bush" is hardly cutting-edge political satire. Basically a (nearly) solo extended sketch, it's theatrical comfort food for Broadway audiences who want to see one of their favorite comic actors live.

The grouch at USA Today hated it, shockingly:

You're Welcome America offers fresh ammunition to those who would cast Bush's detractors as petty, snooty and redundant. ... The highlight of You're Welcome America arrives toward the end, when Ferrell invites audience members to tell him their occupations so that he can give them nicknames, as Bush did his colleagues. At a recent preview, one brave man who identified himself as a critic was dubbed "Obsolete Professional." Fair enough. But for what this obsolete professional's opinion is worth, Ferrell's mission ought to have been aborted.

The New York Daily News was the most praising of the three:

The stage is mostly bare, with just a few props and video screens where images of places, faces and ruder body parts help set the scene. If some sequences run out of steam, another laugh is looming just around the bend. Ferrell has Dubya down pat - the stance, butthead chuckle, constant squint and tumbleweed twang, which sparks one of the show's best jokes.

The "ruder body part" referred to there is apparently a picture of a penis.

So it sounds like the show is a good time, if not a bit of a retread of material previously seen on Saturday Night Live. Unlike that show, however, tickets to You're Welcome America are seriously expensive. I kinda feel like I have to see it live, but will more than likely just watch the live broadcast on HBO in March.

Milan's opera house La Scala announced last May that it was commissioning composer Giorgio Battistelli to turn Gore's An Inconvenient Truth into an opera. No one's really explained much about how Gore's carbon dioxide charts will come to life as an opera, but in July poet J.D. McClatchy signed on as librettist and Friedkin joined as director.

Friedkin, who directed 1970s classics The French Connection and The Exorcist but has spent the last couple decades directing films like Jade and Rules of Engagement, quit the production last week citing the old standby, "creative differences." But McClatchy, says it was for personal reasons. McClatchy then went on to needle Friedkin for wanting to use special effects in the sure-to-be-bizarro La Scala production, saying "opera isn't Hollywood." Oooohhhhhh snap!

Regardless of who directs it or bitches about it, we just hope there's a long aria sung by a dull-voiced Tennessean on a hydro lift. We'd fly to Italy for that. [NYT]

Landis has sued Jackson over the 1983 creepfest video before, as he still has a 50% share of the video's rights. But when Jackson sold them to the Nederlander Organization, a large theater production company, he says the creepy singer essentially got $400,000 of what should have been Landis' money. According to Landis, MJ hasn't paid him any royalties on the property for about four years, so the stage rights really weren't his alone to sell, nor should the Nederlander have snapped them up so quickly.

So we'll have to wait and see. If Landis and Jackson can resolve their zombie dance-off, then maybe we can go full steam ahead with the stage musical based on 14 minutes of material. If not, the world will have to go without. [Daily Mail]

Chief theater critic Ben Brantley has gone and re-reviewed the show, watching both short-term replacement Norbert Leo Butz and long-term guy William H. Macy. He loves both of 'em, and thanks Piven, whose excuse and seemingly quick recovery have been called into question, for leaving when he did. He gives him little digs like:

"Mr. Piven’s absence has made me fonder of “Speed-the-Plow” than I would ever have thought possible."

and

"In large part thanks to them, “Speed-the-Plow” is just as fun as it was in October, but also richer and more satisfying. That Mr. Piven hasn’t been part of that evolution is his loss."

While Brantley does give Piven some praise, it must sting a little to read that the play didn't need you after all. In fact it's better in some ways for you having left. But critics, shmitics. Piven can take comfort in the show's box office, which dropped significantly after he left. People like Butz and Macy may have the adoration of the stuffy old Times, but Piven has a small nation of gurgling TV watchers behind him.

"Everybody is pretty outraged," said Mary Anne den Bok, who is representing his children. "Ray Charles was a genius in many ways, not just musically, and this is just an attempt to exploit him.

It does Ray Charles a great disservice, and does not capture any aspect of his real life. If we had our way, the producers would do a complete rewrite."

The family was particularly upset over a scene in which Charles meets the queen of England. The singer, played by Brandon Victor Dixon, uses his "Braille" method of checking out women — caressing their wrists and arms — when he meets the queen. "The choice to depict Ray Charles as a buffoon . . . is just one of many tasteless moments in the play," Den Bok wrote.

• 'Ray Charles Live!' outrages singer's family [LAT]