Looking Back at 2010: Some of the Best and Worst

THE New York theater season runs spring to spring, so we're only about two-thirds through the current one, but the end of the calendar year is just too tempting not to call forth a few informal awards. Here are some of the best and most outstanding (in other ways) of 2010.

(Note: You won't see "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" on this list, because we're going by its formal opening date and considering it a 2011 show. Also, it's all just too upsetting to talk about.)

BEST ACTOR PLAYING ELIZABETH I David Greenspan (above, surrounded by worshipful co-stars) in Sarah Ruhl's "Orlando." (Runner-up: T. Ryder Smith in "Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play." He also played Hitler and Ronald Reagan.)

BEST ENTRANCE Joanna Lumley in "La Bete." So sparkly!

BEST EXIT David Hyde Pierce in "La Bete." So lonely and dignified!

BEST OFF BROADWAY PERFORMANCE BY A WOMAN SCORNED Natasha Lyonne in "Tigers Be Still." (Comforted by "Top Gun" and Jack Daniel's.) Following Viola Davis and Jan Maxwell, honored last spring for their Broadway performances in "Fences" and "Lend Me a Tenor."

BEST OLD GUY David Margulies in "After the Revolution." As a liberal family foundation's biggest supporter, age 70-plus, he was the only character with much sense of perspective. Of course, having $4 million to give away does free the mind.

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR PLAYING A GAY MAN WITH A FAMOUS LESBIAN WIFE AND AN EYE FOR COLLEGE BOYS Boyd Gaines in "The Grand Manner."

BEST REPLACEMENT CASTING Bernadette Peters replacing Catherine Zeta-Jones as Desiree in "A Little Night Music." Without question.

BEST SCENE SET IN A CHINESE RESTAURANT The depressed, high-kicking Santas commiserating musically over Christmas Eve dinner in "Elf."

BIGGEST BROADWAY COMEBACK Barbara Cook in "Sondheim on Sondheim." After almost 40 years.

BIGGEST FLOP WITH TWO BELOVED STARS "All About Me." An evening with Dame Edna would have been great. An evening with Michael Feinstein would have been fabulous too. But putting them side by side, ridiculing each other, was a highly misguided plan.

FUNNIEST SHAKESPEAREAN Hamish Linklater as Bassanio in "The Merchant of Venice" in the park. He is much missed now that the show has moved to Broadway with David Harbour in the role.

MOST UNFORTUNATE WALKOUT Megan Mullally quitting "Lips Together, Teeth Apart." because she felt a fellow cast member, Patton Oswalt, wasn't good enough. As a result, the whole production never happened.

MOST PROFITABLE KARAOKE SHOW "Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles on Broadway." It just earned back its $2 million investment in a scant two weeks. (Credit to Charles Isherwood of The New York Times for referring to the show as "enhanced karaoke.")

SADDEST INTERSPECIES EMBRACE Michael Shannon giving CPR to a tropical fish in "Mistakes Were Made."

SCARIEST REMINDER OF WHAT HAVING AIDS IS REALLY LIKE Christian Borle's don't-take-me-to-the-hospital scene in "Angels in America."

WORST MISCASTING Kristin Chenoweth in "Promises, Promises." We've bought her as a little girl (Charlie Brown's kid sister) and as a witch, but Chenoweth as a fragile sexual victim who would consider suicide after a rejection? Too far-fetched.


WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Scroll on to read about our Gossip Girl and Guy of the Week, Bernadette Peters and Sebastian Arcelus, starring in "A Little Night Music" and "Elf" respectively. Then search to read about stars like Robin Williams, Nicole Kidman, Cherry Jones, Katie Finneran, Sean Hayes, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Mark Rylance.

Gossip Guy of the Week: Sebastian Arcelus

ONE new show has brought real Christmas cheer to Broadway this season: a musical version of the movie comedy "Elf," about a human baby who is raised by elves at the North Pole, maintains a positive attitude despite growing up as a terrible misfit, then decides to seek out his workaholic birth father in New York and spreads holiday spirit from Macy's to Central Park. It's a piece of joyous silliness, thanks in large part to the joyous actor in the role. Merry Christmas, Sebastian Arcelus, you cute thing! Please come back next year.

CURRENT GIG "Elf." He plays Buddy, the title character, and looks adorable in tights.

AGE 34.

BORN AND RAISED New York City. Then Port Washington, on Long Island.

ALMA MATER Williams.

AVAILABILITY Married to Stephanie J. Block. They were both in the national tour of "Wicked."

BROADWAY DEBUT "Rent." He was a replacement for Roger Davis, the Adam Pascal role.

FAMOUS RELATIVE Think Russia before the revolution. His great-grandmother was a Romanov.

WHY WE LOVE HIS CHARACTER IN 'ELF' "Buddy has no limits. He’s liberated from self-judgment or judgment from others. He doesn’t correct himself. We walk through life constantly judging ourselves."*

*t2c.com.

"Elf," Al Hirschfeld Theater, 302 West 45th Street. Opening night: Nov. 10, 2010.

WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Scroll on to read about Bernadette Peters, our Gossip Girl of the Week, now winding up her role as Desiree in "A Little Night Music." Then search to read about dozens of 2010 shows and their stars.

Gossip Girl of the Week: Bernadette Peters

SOME people are counting down the days (well, by now the hours) to Christmas. Or the days till the holiday season is over. But some of us are sadly counting the few days left in which Bernadette Peters remains in the Broadway production of "A Little Night Music." Meanwhile, she's plugging away. On "The Today Show" just yesterday (below left), she showed up to chat with Kathie Lee Gifford (center) and Hoda Kotb about "Night Music," her children's book "Stella Is a Star" and why people should be nicer to pit bulls.

CURRENT GIG "A Little Night Music," in which she plays the aging, lovely, reflecting-on-clowns actress Desiree Armfeldt, but only for two and a half more weeks (through Jan. 9).

NEXT GIG "Follies," at Kennedy Center in Washington this spring. She'll be Sally, which means lucky audiences will get to hear her version of "Losing My Mind."

AGE 62.

BORN AND RAISED Ozone Park, N.Y. That's in Queens.

ALMA MATER After attending Quintana's School for Young Professionals in Manhattan, she just went back to work. She'd started out as a small child on television shows like "Name That Tune" and "The Horn & Hardart Children's Hour."

AVAILABILITY Widowed. Her investment-adviser husband, Michael Wittenberg, died in a helicopter crash in Montenegro in 2005.

BEST KNOWN AS Seurat's muse in "Sunday in the Park With George." The witch in "Into the Woods." But she won her Tony Awards for "Gypsy" (1999) and for "Song and Dance" (1986), an Andrew Lloyd Webber flop that Frank Rich called "grating" and "monotonous."

BROADWAY DEBUT The City Center revival of "The Most Happy Fella" (1959). She was not quite 11.

THANK GOD "I think Broadway is a good place and I should stay."*

*As told to Charles McGrath in The New York Times this year ("Broadway's New Desiree, Learning as She Goes Along").

CHECK OUT
Bernadette singing "Send In the Clowns," as it should be sung.

"A Little Night Music," by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, directed by Trevor Nunn, Walter Kerr Theater, 219 West 48th Street, (212) 239-6200, telecharge.com. Opening night: Dec. 13, 2009.

WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Scroll on or search to read about the stars of shows including "Spider-Man," "Elf," "Driving Miss Daisy," "Wishful Drinking," "Mistakes Were Made," "Spirit Control," "After the Revolution" and, strangely, "The Colbert Report."

Singing Along With the Beatles, Because You Just Can't Help Yourself and You Know the Words

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT The cast of "Rain," the Beatles tribute currently at the Neil Simon Theater, sort of recreate a certain 1965 Shea Stadium concert.

ALL around them, important new shows are dropping like flies. "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson," the supercharged emo-rock musical, is closing right after New Year's. "La Bete," with its amazing reviews and its brilliant cast headed by Mark Rylance, is shutting down a week later. "The Scottsboro Boys," the last Kander & Ebb musical, justly praised for its inventiveness and daring, is gone already.

But just a few blocks north, "Rain" -- full title "Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles on Broadway" -- rocks on. Although it was scheduled as a limited run through Jan. 15, the show is just taking a short break then and coming back in February at a new theater: the 1,100-seat Brooks Atkinson.

God knows it's not an original idea. "Beatlemania" played Broadway back in 1977 (John Rockwell of The New York Times called it "an unobjectionable diversion"). God knows it isn't a technologically sophisticated concert experience; compared with the Green Day musical "American Idiot," it's a garage band still rehearsing int he garage. God knows it isn't a profound experience. Yet "Rain" is bringing in the audiences, and now that I've been there, I understand why.

Here's a show that is nothing more than a celebration of its audience. Welcome back, people who were young and beautiful and full of life in the '60s. Here are the songs you remember. Here are video clips of -- hmmm, interesting -- not the Beatles' 1964 "Ed Sullivan Show" appearance or the Shea Stadium concert themselves but the hysterical young audiences at those events. Remember when you wore those simple yet hip clothes and those tricky hairstyles?

And here are some TV commercials from the era. Look: Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble smoking Winstons! Throw in some news clips of horrors like John F. Kennedy's assassination and the Vietnam War. Put the cast, playing John, Paul, George and Ringo (although those names are never mentioned), in a series of familiar nostalgic costumes and hairstyles. Then just turn the cameras on the theater audience and leave us to our own desperate devices.

What we get onstage are Joe Bithorn, Ralph Castelli, Joey Curatolo and Steve Landes doing more than two dozen Beatles songs in roughly chronological order. Act I starts with peppy numbers including "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "I'm Happy Just to Dance With You," then moves into moodier compositions like "Strawberry Fields" and ends with "A Day in the Life" ("I read the news today, oh, boy"). It also throws in a very pointed "When I'm 64." Oh, yeah, fake Beatles? Well, you don't exactly look like high school kids yourselves.

Act II begins with the high-energy "Hello Goodbye," then reminds us that maybe we don't remember all the lyrics, by throwing in "I Am the Walrus" ("Semolina pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower," etc.). And onward, to "Come Together," "Revolution, "Give Peace a Chance," "Let It Be" and the like. The strange thing is that they never sing "Rain."

It's cheap. It does what it sets out to do. Hey, Jude.

"Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles on Broadway," no writer or director credited, Neil Simon Theater, 250 West 52nd Street, through Jan. 15. From Feb. 8, 2011: Brooks Atkinson Theater, 256 West 47th Street. (877) 250-2929, ticketmaster.com. Opening night: Oct. 26, 2010.

CHECK OUT
"Another Long and Winding Detour," Charles Isherwood's New York Times review of "Rain."
"Beatlemania's Formula Is Sincerely Flattering," John Rockwell's 1977 Times review of the Broadway production of "Beatlemania," the precursor to "Rain."
raintribute.com, the show's official site.
"Beatles: I Am the Walrus," the lyrics, from lyricsfreak.

WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Scroll on to read about Stephen Sondheim's wacky interview on "The Colbert Report." Then search to read about Carrie Fisher, Michael Shannon, James Earl Jones, Mark Rylance, Tracee Chimo, Bobby Steggert, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Scarlett Johansson and dozens of other theater people who've done fascinating things over the past year.

The Great Stephen Sondheim Does the Great Stephen Colbert Show (and Is Serenaded)

EVENING OF THE FAWN? Stephen Colbert, right, interviewed Stephen Sondheim on "The Colbert Report" and, at the end, admitted he was kind of thrilled to have him there. (Photo by Kris Long.)

'A QUATRAIN becomes an entire scene," says Stephen Sondheim, comparing a song to a one-act play. "If you tell a joke in rhyme, it's twice as funny as it would be in prose." "The audience is the final collaborator on every show."

If you caught Stephen Sondheim's interview on "The Colbert Report" last night, you didn't hear any of those observations. (They're from Jeffrey Brown's "PBS NewsHour" interview with Sondheim, which you can find on youtube.) But you did get to hear Sondheim, 80, reassure Colbert, 46, who confessed to having trouble dealing with criticism, "Well, I don't think there's much to criticize with you, is there?"

Neither the publicist for the Comedy Central show nor the personal publicist for Sondheim would reveal to theatergossip.com whether Sondheim -- father of "Company," "Sweeney Todd," "Assassins," "Sunday in the Park With George," and on and on, the Broadway composer and lyricist who is a religion unto himself -- was a huge fan of the show or Colbert was a huge fan of his guest or both, but somehow Sondheim found himself being interviewed on this hip-hit late-night show to publicize his new book, "Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics 1954-81." And before signing off, Colbert even acknowledged that while he normally didn't fawn over guests, well, you know.

From the beginning, he paid Sondheim appropriate respect. The interview was introduced by musical clips from "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" ("A Comedy Tonight"), "West Side Story" ("Tonight"), "A Little Night Music" ("Send In the Clowns") and "Gypsy" ("Rose's Turn").

"Wow! that's just a smattering of what you have accomplished in your career," Colbert said after the clips, before asking for a definition of lyricist, insisting that all Sondheim's big hits started out as Disney animations and suggesting that the wistful ballad "There's a Place for Us" in "West Side Story" was misleading because surely Maria was an illegal immigrant from Puerto Rico and would be back in San Juan soon. Sondheim suggested that Maria and Tony, heretofore trapped in Upper Manhattan gang wars, might have been dreaming about a move to New Jersey.

Sondheim told the story of Oscar Hammerstein, his mentor, teaching him in one afternoon pretty much everything he knew about writing a musical. (At age 15, Stephen had penned one and figured Hammerstein would want to produce it on Broadway.) But the highlight of the six-minute interview had to be Colbert's suggested new lyrics for "Send In the Clowns" and his memorable rendition of same. The rewrite begins, "Where are the clowns?/ I booked them for 8/ Hold on, that's them on the phone/ Saying they're late."

Sondheim smiled and nodded. "I don't see any reason why Bernadette Peters can't sing that" during the last three weeks of the current Broadway run of "A Little Night Music." He added, "We need some laughs in the second act."

CHECK OUT
The full episode on Colbert Nation.
The New York Times review of "Finishing the Hat" ("Isn't It Rich?"), written by Paul Simon.
The Stephen Sondheim Society.


WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Scroll on to read about Carrie Fisher and her solo show "Wishful Drinking," now on HBO. Then search to read more about Sondheim (he was Gossip Guy of the Week when "Sondheim on Sondheim" opened at Studio 54) and lots about shows like "Mistakes Were Made" (theater producer takes too many phone calls), "Elf" (tall North Pole foundling visits New York City), "Les Miserables" (reformed criminal does good things in 1832 Paris) and "After the Revolution" (dead 1950s Commie disappoints the people who love him).

Gossip Girl of the Week: Carrie Fisher

IF you really want to know about the irreverent, sophisticated, self-deprecating, seen-it-all Carrie Fisher, just read her books or check out her one-woman show. But here are a few useful facts.

CURRENT GIG Doing her solo show "Wishful Drinking," which had its television premiere on HBO on Sunday night.

AGE 54.

BORN AND RAISED Hollywood. IMDB says she was born in Beverly Hills, but in "Wishful Drinking" she says it was Burbank.

ALMA MATER Central School of Speech and Drama, London.

AVAILABILITY Long divorced from Paul Simon. Long split from Bryan Lourd, the father of her daughter, Billie.

FAMOUS PARENTS Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, the Brad and Jen of the 1950s.

BEST KNOWN FOR "Star Wars" (1977 and onward). She was the alluring Princess Leia, but you knew that.

OTHER NOTABLE MOVIE APPEARANCES "Hannah and Her Sisters" (1986). She was Dianne Wiest's business partner and romantic rival. "When Harry Met Sally" (1989). Meg Ryan's best friend, who finally gets over that married man and marries Bruno Kirby, who is Billy Crystal's best friend.

MOVIE DEBUT "Shampoo" (1975). She played Lee Grant's spoiled teenage daughter, who introduces herself to Warren Beatty's highly heterosexual hairdresser character by asking if he'd like to have sex. He would.

BROADWAY DEBUT "Irene" (1973). Mom was the star. Teenage Carrie was in the chorus as one of more than a dozen nameless debutantes.

MERYL STREEP PLAYED HER In the film version of Fisher's autobiographical novel "Postcards From the Edge" (1990). Shirley MacLaine played the Debbie Reynolds character.

ON NOT BEING NOMINATED FOR A TONY "Couldn't they see what a stretch it was for me to play 'Carrie Fisher'?"

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post incorrectly gave Fisher's age as 56.

WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Scroll on to read all about Fisher's "Wishful Drinking," which just had its TV debut on HBO. Then search to read about Michael Shannon, "Mistakes Were Made," the new "Les Miserables" and a huge array of interesting people like Jennifer Coolidge, Mark Rylance, Benjamin Walker, Laura Benanti, Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Cherry Jones and Christian Borle.

Carrie Fisher's 'Wishful Drinking' Is on HBO: What Could Drive a Person Crazy

CARRIE FISHER -- actress, novelist, Hollywood baby, poster child for bipolar disorder and forever Princess Leia -- is 54 now. And it's been a rocky, glamorous, fascinating 54 years. Last year she took her story to Broadway in an autobiographical one-woman show called "Wishful Drinking." Tonight you can see the show on HBO.

Fisher jokes that "Star Wars," the movie franchise that made her world-famous at age 21, could also be the title of the movie-star scandal that defined her childhood. And she spends the first half-hour of "Wishful Drinking" explaining that scandal and the relationships that resulted.

In short: In the 1950s, Carrie's mom and dad, bubbly actress Debbie Reynolds and handsome singing idol Eddie Fisher, were America's sweethearts. Their best pals were another Hollywood couple, Elizabeth Taylor and her older-man husband, Mike Todd, whom Eddie idolized. When Mike was killed in the crash of a private plane, young Elizabeth was devastated, and Eddie, as his daughter explains onstage, "comforted her with his penis." Debbie and Eddie divorced. Liz and Eddie married. And that lasted until Liz met Richard Burton while filming "Cleopatra."

Fisher, of course, goes into her mom's remarriages too. And her husbands' other marriages. And how Carrie repeated her mother's pattern by marrying a short Jewish singer herself: Paul Simon. We also learn that Eddie Fisher was jealous when Debbie had a hit record with "Tammy" from her movie "Tammy and the Bachelor." Hey, hit records were supposed to be his exclusive domain!

The TV version of "Wishful Drinking" clocks in at about an hour and 15 minutes, and it's just as witty and wonderful as it was at Studio 54 (which, in case you didn't know, is now a Broadway theater). We learn:

*What it was like growing up in Hollywood. The family house "looked more like a place where you'd go to get your passport stamped" than a home. There were three pools, in case two broke.

*That Fisher attended the prestigious Central School of Speech and Drama in London, which explains, she tells us, why Princess Leia sometimes had a British accent. And sometimes didn't.

*That at 81, Eddie Fisher smoked five joints a day (not for medicinal reasons) and was nicknamed Puff Daddy. (He died not long after the HBO special was filmed, and it's now dedicated to him.)

*The joys of receiving awards not for acting or writing but for being such a fine example of a person with mental illness who's had substance abuse problems. ("I adore pills. Seriously. Huge fan.")

*How much having starred in George Lucas's "Star Wars" changed her life. As Princess Leia, she ended up as a Pez dispenser, for one thing, and as a life-size sex doll, for another. And somehow Lucas owns her image. "Every time I look in a mirror, I have to send him a couple of bucks."

What's different about "Wishful Drinking" on screen, other than how much better the visual aids work (e.g., old film clips of her parents' work), is how much sadder it seems. That's why movie directors invented close-ups, I guess. But the show is still relentlessly funny. And oddly, plenty of us would still be happy to change places with its star.

When I saw the shots of audience members, my first reaction was that it revealed just how badly people dress for an evening of Broadway theater these days. But it turns out that the HBO show was not shot at one of the Broadway performances, as you might think, but at the South Orange Performing Arts Center in New Jersey instead.

"Wishful Drinking," written and performed by Carrie Fisher, directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, Sunday, Dec. 12, 9 p.m., HBO.


CHECK OUT
"Make 'Em Laugh With Tales of Tears," Alessandra Stanley's New York Times review of the HBO version of "Wishful Drinking."

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post incorrectly gave Fisher's age as 56.

WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Speaking of being nuts, scroll on to read about Michael Shannon, who continues his brilliance at playing crazy people in "Mistakes Were Made." Then search to read more about that wacky Off Broadway play; all about the new, truly revived "Les Miserables"; and paeans to stars including Brian Stokes Mitchell, Laura Benanti, Cherry Jones, Katie Finneran, Sean Hayes, Al Pacino and Lily Rabe.

Gossip Guy of the Week: Michael Shannon

HE'S tall. He's intense. We're awfully lucky he decided to become an actor. And if he's been typecast as crazy (or at least very troubled) guys, Michael Shannon doesn't seem to mind. "I don't really see the point of playing characters that are content," he once told The Chicago Sun Times. "I don't really see what's interesting about them."
(Photo by Ari Mintz.)

CURRENT GIG "Mistakes Were Made," Craig Wright's new off-center Off Broadway comedy about a day in the life of a small-time theater producer who should never have picked up the phone that morning.

AGE 36.

BORN AND RAISED Lexington, Ky.

ALMA MATER Chicago theater. (Which must have broken the heart of his college-professor father.)

AVAILABILITY Longtime relationship with Kate Arrington.

GREAT MOVIE ROLE "Revolutionary Road." He plays Kathy Bates's son, fresh from a mental institution, the only character who thinks Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet's characters' plan to move to Paris is a good idea.

MOVIE DEBUT "Groundhog Day." Still a teenager, he plays a tiny part, a customer at the Tip-Top Cafe. Bill Murray tells him that his fiancee, Debbie, is having second thoughts. Later he's thrilled with a wedding gift of Wrestlemania tickets.

GREAT TV ROLE "Boardwalk Empire," the HBO/Martin Scorsese series set in Atlantic City. He's a Prohibition agent who drinks.

GREAT OFF BROADWAY ROLE BEFORE THIS "Bug," written by Tracy Letts, which he did in Chicago and London as well as in New York. It's kind of hard to describe his character, but the play takes place in a seedy motel and he behaves strangely when he hears a cricket.

BROADWAY DEBUT Hasn't happened yet. There's a Michael Shannon listed on IBDB, but that guy was working before this Michael Shannon was born.

WHY HE TAKES ACTING SERIOUSLY "People are very complicated," he told his hometown newspaper, The Lexington Herald-Leader ("Lexington's Michael Shannon on Revolutionary Road"), "so it takes a lot of preparation and thought to try to create one."

WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Scroll on and read more, a lot more, about "Mistakes Were Made." Then search to check out all sorts of theater news, including the spectacular new production of "Les Miserables" at the Paper Mill Playhouse.

Third-Rate Theater Producer Has a Bad Day

SHEEP KILLER Michael Shannon stars in "Mistakes Were Made" as a producer who gives his all to negotiating a big-deal production. (Photo by Ari Mintz.)

WHO says the telephone is such a rich, efficient means of human communication? In "Mistakes Were Made," things start to go downhill when Felix Artiflex, a desperate small-time theater producer with a multi-line phone, puts an egotistical movie star on hold. Then he tries to rewrite a play about the French Revolution (Marie Antoinette escapes and runs off with a handsome young guy carrying a baguette), suggestions that the Midwest-based playwright doesn't appreciate. Felix proves to be inept at negotiating with flame-thrower-wielding terrorists on a trans-Atlantic chat. And with 10 trucks full of innocent sheep on fire halfway around the world, he takes a call from his ex-wife.

"Mistakes Were Made" is the hysterically funny current attraction at the Barrow Street Theater. It's around through Feb. 27 and costs less than half what you'd pay for an evening with "Donny & Marie: A Broadway Christmas."

* This extremely wacky comedy was written by Craig Wright, whose past works have included "The Pavilion," about a high school reunion, and "Lady," a poignant political-personal drama about old friends on a hunting trip. Now Wright is writing lines like "I'm on the phone with Omar Crazypants" and somehow making the repetition of the sentiment "Fuck you, Helen" sound like Noel Coward.

* Hey, some credit has to go to the star. This is pretty much a one-man show (although a secretary makes a brief appearance, and there's a puppeteer behind or beneath the office aquarium), starring Michael Shannon. He's best known to serious film fans for his Oscar-nominated performance as Kathy Bates's crazy-sane son in "Revolutionary Road" and to TV viewers as the deranged federal agent Nelson Van Alden on HBO's "Boardwalk Empire."

* It's marvelously directed by Dexter Bullard, who also directed Shannon in Tracy Letts's "Bug" back in 2004.

* The Times found the show "only fitfully entertaining" but pronounced Shannon's performance excellent. Charles Isherwood called it "as meticulously naturalistic in detail as it is vivid in churning anger and anxiety." ("A Producer, His Telephone and Desperation.")

*But New York Magazine called it "90 furious, fulminating, very funny minutes of American hucksterism in extremis, a symphonic one-man meltdown" ("A Perfect Michael Shannon in Mistakes Were Made"). The New York Post's Frank Scheck loved it ("You'll Want to Catch 'Mistakes' "). And The New Yorker called it "an exquisite piece of comic writing, fully realized" ("Manifest Comedy").

* It includes a scene in which a man gives a tropical fish CPR.

"Mistakes Were Made," by Craig Wright, directed by Dexter Bullard, Barrow Street Theater, 27 Barrow Street, (212) 868-4444, smarttix.com. Opening night: Nov. 14, 2010.

WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Scroll on to read about the big redo of "Les Miserables" and which train New Yorkers have to take to see it. Then search to find items about theater folk from James Earl Jones to Jennifer Coolidge. You'll also learn what we loved about "Elf," why we're hot for Brian Stokes Mitchell and why we're still annoyed with HBO about "The Miraculous Year."

London Has Sent Us a Brand-New 'Les Miz' . . . But You'll Have to Go to New Jersey to See It

DOOMED Jeremy Hays, center, is Enjolras, the leader of the bloody June Rebellion (Paris, 1832), in the Paper Mill Playhouse's production of the newly reworked "Les Miserables."


BACK in 1985, when Ronald Reagan was in the White House, home computers were a hot new item and Angelina Jolie was in fifth grade, a musical called "Les Miserables" opened in London and made a big splash. It arrived on Broadway two years later and stayed until George W. Bush launched the war in Iraq, iPods were old hat and Jolie, a two-time divorcee, was gearing up to do a movie with a married man named Brad Pitt.

After "Les Miz" won its armful of Tonys, there wasn't much to say. Until now. To celebrate the show's 25th anniversary, the producers in London -- where it's been playing uninterrupted all this time -- commissioned a major makeover. The result is a major winner, but it isn't on Broadway. The new version is having its American premiere at the highly esteemed but definitely out-of-town Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., a 40-minute train ride across a state line from Penn Station.

Here are some things you should know about the production. (Or you could just read the New York Times review: "Back to the Barricades: 'Les Miz' Reworked at 25.")

* Just in case you don't know (or have forgotten), here's the story, courtesy of Victor Hugo:

A nice-guy Frenchman, Jean Valjean, gets sent to prison for years for having stolen a loaf of bread in a moment of desperation. When he gets out, he vows to become a model citizen (after an inspiring encounter with a selfless bishop who would have made Mother Teresa look like Paris Hilton).

Valjean takes in a dying prostitute (Fantine, who has the big "I Dreamed a Dream" number), and when she breathes her last, he raises her little daughter, Cosette. Sweet Cosette grows up and falls in love with a guy who has gotten involved with the June Rebellion, in which some good-looking, idealistic young students try to defeat the monarchists. And all this time, a very stubborn policeman named Javert is out to get Valjean and put him back behind bars.

No, the story has nothing to do with the French Revolution. That happened in these characters' grandparents' day.

* The music stands up beautifully. "I Dreamed a Dream" is far from the only number with show-stopper possibilities. A week and a half later, I can't get "One Day More," "Bring Him Home," "On My Own" or just the lyric "To love another person is to see the face of God" out of my mind.

* The projection design, by the set designer Matt Kinley, is exquisite. And we're not just talking about the pretty street scenes inspired by Victor Hugo's own paintings, although they're lovely. The scene in the Paris sewers and Javert's farewell scene at the bridge, brought to life by moving projections, are both knockouts. Dare we compare them to the effects in "Brief Encounter"?

* Various London reviews recognized the new version's assets, with comments about "a new propulsive momentum" (The Stage Reviews), "nothing to grouch about" (londontheatre.co) and "a marvelous mix of elements" (British Theatre Guide).


"Les Miserables," by Claude-Michel Schonberg, Herbertz Kretzmer, Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel, directed by Laurence Connor and James Powell, Paper Mill Playhouse, 22 Brookside Avenue, Millburn, N.J., (973) 376-4343, papermill.org. Opening night: Nov. 28, 2010.

WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP? Scroll on to read about Jeremy Sisto, playing a freaked-out air traffic controller in "Spirit Control." Then search to read about theater news from Robin Williams's plans to play a dead tiger to Nicole Kidman's to play an actress.