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.

Matthew Morrison (South Pacific at Lincoln Center) plays Will, a bored Spanish teacher with a materialistic shrew of a wife who gets a bit of divine inspiration one day and decides to become the new head of his school's once-proud, now fading show choir.

Lea Michele (a Julia Allison lookalike from Spring Awakening on Broadway) is the star singer, a less political and more musical Tracy Flick, and the adorrrrrable Corey Monteith is Finn, the aw-shucks football star with a secret passion for song. These two characters may sound a bit like cliches, and they are. But as livened up by sparkling writing and non-showy performances, these old archetypes seem suddenly shaded and complicated. Really, they seem new again. Whereas you can plug the same plot formula into any other number of let's-put-on-a-show high school stories and get basically the same results every time, Glee's first 43 minutes seemed to hint that the tale will unfold a little bit sideways, into the world of the weird. Think The Office set in high school and with, you know, really fun musical numbers ("Don't Stop Believin'" being a particular highlight last night).

The show is a definite gamble for Fox. It's gay as hula hoops, stars mostly unknowns (if you're not a theater nerd), and the second episode won't air until the fall. But if it pays off, something good and earnest (but not treacly) could bloom on a network that, sans the chintzy corporate glitz of American Idol, is in dire need of some cynicism antivenom. One hopes that where this show would sputter and quickly disappear on the more unforgiving ABC (the only other logical place on network TV for this kind of program), Fox—which seems to have slightly different ratings standards—will give it a longer runway. Other than song rights it can't cost much to produce. The actors are probably payed in collectible old Playbills! Because they're theatery!

But the show really isn't just for show queens, I promise.

Here embedded is the first episode. Put your work headphones on and give it a chance. Blow off the QED report and please watch it and tell other people to watch it.

I think you'll find that the title of the show says it all.

• 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.

• 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.

A recent union hearing left the actor unscathed, so the producers have pressed on to arbitration, the dates for which were announced Wednesday (June 8 and 9). This prompted the release of a lengthy statement from Piven, explaining that his poisoned sushi is seriously a really, really big major health issue, since he may have nearly had a heart attack, hypothetically, but also because the president said so:

Mr. Piven is looking forward to testifying in Arbitration along with his doctors so that the truth comes out about the very health serious risks caused by Mercury exposure, which the Obama administration has recently described as the world's gravest chemical problem.

It's true: The White House said just that (sans odd Capitalization) when calling for a global mercury-limit treaty last month, according to the Associated Press. Then it specifically mentioned fetuses and children as being at risk.

It's worth noting, though, that there's juuuust enough scientific chatter about fish-based mercury poisoning in adults to make Piven's story plausible, if you ignore his sketchy doctor and past behavior.

Piven's medical records might help settle the question, but the actor demanded the producers sign a confidentiality agreement before they could access them. Which makes sense, because if Piven's M.D.s made house calls, lord only knows what sort of raw meat they saw being devoured.

(Pic: Piven at an Obama fundraiser in Chicago, June 2007. Getty.)

• 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 previously unkown painting comes from the private collection of "an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family, the Cobbes, who have owned it for nearly 300 years, since inheriting it through a family relationship with Shakespeare's only known literary patron, Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton."

If that's not gay enough for you, Burns describes the painting in lurid detail:

The Cobbe portrait, as the scholars now call it, shows a head-turner of a man. In middle age, this Shakespeare has a fresh-faced complexion, a closely trimmed auburn beard, a long straight nose and a full, almost bouffant hairstyle. He is dressed in elaborate white lace ruff and a gold-trimmed blue doublet of a kind worn only by the wealthy and successful men of his age.

Now are you convinced? OK, here's what the Shakespeare Birthday Trust, which introduced the Cobbe portrait in a news conference, had to say on the matter:

In a handout for reporters, the trust said the portrait might open a new era in Shakespeare scholarship, giving fresh momentum, among other things, to generations of speculation as to whether the playwright, a married man with three children, was bisexual.... "This Shakespeare is handsome and glamorous, so how does this change the way we think about him?" the handout said. "And do the painting and provenance tell us more about his sexuality, and possibly about the person to whom the sonnets are addressed?"

The Entourage star was certainly in tears after the hearing, when he sat for an interview at the offices of the New York Times.

Mr. Piven... twice broke down in tears...

He cried as he described the stress of fearing for his health while pushing himself to continue with the play. "I've never missed a day's work or a rehearsal in my life," Mr. Piven said. "I think there's a reason you've never heard of any problem like this before."

Times writer Patrick Healy also noted that Piven "looked exhausted and often meandered" during his interview. Which, along with the crying, is totally fake-able, especially by, say, an actor. And which could also be symptoms of suddenly-curtailed access to a stimulant.

There's no word yet on the results of tests performed by a doctor other than Piven's sketchy personal M.D., results that had been expected at the hearing, so all we have to go on is the word of Piven and his doctor. The actor also said he was in bed "almost every night" — you can find the known exceptions here.

Certainly the producers were not convinced; their five reps all voted against Piven, while the five Actor's Equity reps voted with him. (Actor's Equity includes both actors and stagehands.) The producers have the option of escalating to more aggressive proceedings. It's not clear if they'll do that , but lead complainant Jeffrey Richards pulled an apparently snarky move on the Times:

Reached by telephone at home after the hearing, Mr. Richards said he was sick and on medication and would have no comment.

This snide joke is actually a nice opening for Piven's PR team. If it trumpets Richard's purported sickness as evidence that illl health regularly prevents hardworking people from doing their jobs, Richards will be in a bind: He either concedes the point or, to dispute it, admits he was lying.

As for Piven's honesty, it's almost irrelevant at this point: If Piven told the truth Thursday, and has been going through hell, he deserves more credit for his acting, specifically for his professional commitment to Speed the Plow. If he lied, duping fellow thespians and a Times reporter, he also deserves more credit for his acting, specifically for being such a convincing con man.

(UPDATE: The Post's sources say Piven was indeed crying during the hearing, as well.)

(Image via)

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.

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.

Nederlander runs 'Broadway in Chicago,' so some are suggesting that the extravaganza—based on the 1983, John Landis-directed creepshow homage—could plant its roots in that windswept burg. It doesn't sound as if Nederlander plans to obtain rights to the rest of the songs on the same-titled album, but MJ is broke as an M F'n joke and maybe dying, so maybe he'd sell them at a discount. A rep for the Organization says that Jackson "will be personally and fully involved in the creation of the show," which might mean new tunes. We could make a joke about his involvement simply being as a model for the zombies or something, but that would be too easy.

We could also moan and groan yet again that every musical these days is based on a movie or whatever, but this is based on a music video. The key word there being 'music.' Oh, and there's great dancing! This probably has more potential than, say, Chocolat. [via Observer]

In other theatre news, much-beloved actress Mary-Louise Parker is starring in a revival of Hedda Gabler at the Roundabout that received a right thrashing in the New York Times this morning. Chief critic Ben Brantley called it "one of the worst revivals I have ever, ever seen." Yeeouch. We're still curious to see it, if only so we can understand just what Brantz is talking about. This could be our Carrie! Though, um, it's probably not that fabulously awful.

Among the recent ranks of mostly-untested LA fugitives are Jason Biggs, Jennifer Garner, Katie Holmes, the mercury-doomed Jeremy Piven, and the soon-to-be-hoofing-it Lauren Graham, Susan Sarandon, Rupert Everett, and Jane Fonda (among others). While big namers do earn more than a typical theatre star would to glow under the lights, the pay isn't great and the performance schedule can prove grueling. So why are so many folks jumping on the theatre bandwagon?

Well, of course there's the whole building-cred thing. Though that's sort of been debunked in years past. Ashley Judd (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) and Julia Roberts (Three Days of Rain) proved that bad notices for stage work can make you look like kind of a jackass. (See Julia's sad "you people are insanely talented" Tonys mea culpa.) And how often has the risk really paid off? Holmes (All My Sons) and Garner (Cyrano) got mostly decent reviews for their performances, but does anyone really respect them more because of it? At some point—especially in Ms. Holmes' case—doesn't it start to seem like it's just a lame fallback? When the screen work dries up, go hobbling off to New York where devoted theatre fabs will greet you with open, grateful arms. Right? Increasingly, not so much.

Did you hear that collective grumble that rose up among young male actors in New York when Haley frickin' Joel Osment got cast in the ill-fated revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo? The kid got that role simply because he starred in a couple of shitty movies ten years ago. He'd done little to no acting since. But producers, desperate for ticket sales, will throw just about any known screen actor into a significant role in a play, despite their lack of any discernible chops. Which is, you know, kind of a slap in the face to actual "theatre people." The more it happens, the more true straddlers of both mediums—your Mary Louise Parkers, your Laura Linneys, your Ethan Hawkes—get lumped in with the sad pile. The stunt casting cheapens the medium, reducing it to just an excuse to see your favorite star live and saying things. (Who the hell really wanted to see Pygmalion? No, they just wanted to see Angela Chase up close.)

So who knows about Miller. She did study acting in New York, but so did Jessica Alba. Maybe she'll flourish though, and stick around. Just once it'd be nice to see that conversion (you'd better stay put, Denis O'Hare) happen in reverse.

Anyway, this is probably just sad theatre nerd grumbling—there are plenty of good, hardworking theatre actors all over the country (Elizabeth Marvel, Thomas Derrah, etc.) who've seemingly no motivation to cross over into the glitz. It's just sad to see them overshadowed. But really, who's to argue with ticket sales? Lord knows the industry needs it.

Let's just avoid that Anne Hathaway Oleanna that was rumored about a while back. I don't give a shit if theatre is her "first love."

"Who do you think you aaarrree??" she bellows at the poor theatre fan, stopping mid-song in what is probably the crowning role of her career. The audience is totally on her side, clapping and cheering, which is understandable. For one thing, it is completely obnoxious to be distractingly taking pictures in a dark theater while actors pour blood and sweat on the stage floor. And, also, Patti sounds just so damn terrifying that I'd probably have shot the guy if she'd told me to. She gets the audience member booted by security, then sallies forth. It's amazing. And scary. Scary amazing. [Daily Musto]

You may remember that a New York bigwig theatre advertising exec named Hyancinth von Applebritches Nancy Coyne was quoted as saying, while talking about supposedly-snobby New York theatre audiences, "we hate tourists from Cleveland." Well the Mistake by the Lake got all up in arms in their polite Midwestern way and the battle broke out. We helped stoke the flames!

But, yes, now it's been resolved. The musical Chicago, which is not about Cleveland, is now offering Free Ticket for Clevelanders days in January (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday), in which anyone with a valid state ID proving their Cleveburg residency can get a free-ass ticket. That's a good deal, eh! Also Coyne is going on Cleveland radio (which is two cows listening to two cans connected by string) to give out more free tickets to other shows in January and February.

"I'm sorry we were mean to you. Come see our shows for free. Pay hundreds of kabillions of your Cleveland Space Bucks to come out here and stay in hotels, sure. But the singin' and dancin' is gratis." Ah well! It seems to have worked anyway. I mean, I'm not having buckeyes lobbed at me while I walk down the street anymore.

You hear that Petraeus? Maybe there's a good production of Jesus Christ Superstar comin' up that everyone might enjoy.

Oh. Oh, right.

Pal Joey is apparently not so good (if you believe Ben Brantley). Shame for the "misused" Stockard Channing, but nice that Martha Plimpton got glowing reviews. She has been quietly taking over New York theatre over the past couple of years. Actually, I would see this show just to watch her sing "Zip." The overall lack of good buzz is bad news for Roundabout, though, as it heads into a play-heavy spring.

Speaking of their play-heavy spring, everyone should be excited about Mary Louise Parker in Hedda Gabler, which comes rumbling along in January. It's perfect casting, in a weird way. Plus, Parker is just one of the best reviewed theatre actresses of her generation, so seeing her return from the thick weeds of California is always nice. And Roundabout's Waiting for Godot, with Nathan Lane (ugh) and Bill Irwin (hooray!), ought to be interesting. (Or, you know, it could be kinda boring except for the times when you're marveling at Irwin. Like in Rachel Getting Married.)

On a smaller scale, I'm pretty interested in Potatoes of August. A play-with-music about metaphysical philosophizing sparked by a creepy potato boom? Yes, please. Plus it's right off the F!

But really, the best thing about all of these shows, even Pal Joey? Jeremy Piven isn't in any of them.