I could take the high road and say I was interested in seeing this show to study its aesthetics, but instead I’ll tell the truth. I was intrigued by this provocative and highly effective ad:

Just look at them. Couldn’t you just eat them up? They’re dancers and you can see them in a blast furnace of a show called NOĊTÚ that’s in previews at the Irish Rep.

I’ve started this sentence three times and still cannot find the right combination of words to convey how much fun this show is. And, mind you, I’m not a big fan of dance. It’s choreographed and directed by Riverdance Principal Dancer Breandán de Gallaí, but to simply call it “Irish dancing” seems wholly inadequate. It uses traditional step dancing merely as a jumping off point.

Maybe it’s because the Irish Rep is such a small venue and the dancers are right in your FACE. (I’m not certain it would work as well in a larger house.) Or perhaps it’s the perfect song selections. Or maybe it’s because they’re such accomplished dancers (they all have impressive bios). But this is such a powerful piece of theater. I wish I could take you to see it.

13 superb dancers wind their way through routines choreographed to the likes of Björk, Goldfrapp, Leonard Cohen (of course) and Kate Bush. There’s a seductive pas de trois to Imelda May’s My Big Bad Handsome Man that made me wish I had taken more chances when I was in my 20s. There’s a section of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite that’s worth another viewing (which I hope to get before word gets out and tickets vanish). Although, please, can you spare me the false ending? It’s unnecessary. False endings are right up there with audience participation for spoiling my night out.

Can the Irish Rep ever do wrong?! It would seem not. Their next show is the rarely performed Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel. The autumn theater season is just underway. Tonight, it’s seasoned pro Frank Langella in Terrence Rattigan’s 1963 drama Man and Boy at the Roundabout. It’s time, once again, for those dreary theater posts that you all pass over.

I did not listen to the President’s speech last night. Nor did I watch the Republican presidential candidate debate on Wednesday. My apathy towards politicians is at an absolute nadir. None of those fucking clowns can help me with my problem. No one can. I have to figure it out for myself. We should all pray that NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg runs for President. There’s a guy who could light the political fires under my ass again. But this current crop? Worse than useless.

Here’s another gaggle of shows that should be seen or avoided.

In the spectrum of entertainers, I think I have the most respect for, believe it or not, stand-up comedians and actors who do one-man shows. Imagine walking out on a stage all by yourself and all you have is your words and talent! No other actors around to support you or prop your ass up if you get into a jam. It’s a crazy notion but when it works it’s magic. Señor Leguizamo was a tad overindulgent and could have trimmed :15 minutes from Ghetto Klown but it was still a great evening.

Some of Our Parts is, as advertised, seven 10-minute plays about disability. The sincere, if somewhat clunkily named TBTB (Theater Breaking Through Barriers), is an earnest troop of actors, some of whom are disabled. I love an evening of one-acts. If the play stinks, just hang in there for a few minutes longer and an entirely new story will replace it. You can’t go wrong! It’s not like Spider-man whereby I was trapped in my seat with the same abysmal material for almost three hours.

In case it’s too small to read, the cartoon headline is “Autumn in the Leper Colony.” The caption is “Now get out there and rake up those fallen limbs!” Oooh.

I’m going to admit right up front that I’m not very comfortable around disabled people. Yeah, I know it’s my hang-up and I’m working on it, so spare me the sermons. The theme that seemed to string these stories together is that the disabled want to be treated like everyone else so here goes. Overall it was an enjoyable evening but some of the acting and writing was sub-par. Of the seven play (playlets?) five were serviceable but the last two achieved greatness. Neil LaBute’s Cripples, about three guys sitting on a park bench discussing sex with a legless woman, was black and funny. The last piece, Samuel D. Hunter’s Welcome to Wal-Mart, where two disabled Wal-Mart greeters dish on customers and each other, was pure genius.

I admire the Roundabout Theater for it’s healthy mixture of producing time-tested classics and new material, some of it by young, unknown playwrights, so I am reluctant to criticize anything they do. But I’m sorry, Death Takes a Holiday didn’t work for me on any level. I went with DG, who is seasoned and he enjoyed it a lot so what the hell do I know?

I’m just not good with traditional Broadway musical stylings (The Book of Mormon being the exception). I’ve never seen Oklahoma or Annie Get Your Gun or Carousel or South Pacific or The Music Man or any of that crap-ola. If it’s a staple for high school thespians, I’m not interested. A valiant effort, but Death Takes a Holiday never rose above it’s bland songs, clumsy stage direction or obvious (even to an idiot like me) plot devices.

But that’s an awesome poster, don’t you think?

I loved, LOVED All New People, the new show at the 2econd Stage Theater. It’s written by Zach Braff, who was on TV for years in Scrubs and also wrote a very good movie called Garden State. Is it fair that one guy gets to be in a successful TV show AND is a talented writer to boot? I’d like to know that he suffers just a bit to balance it all out.

CB is correct that it’s derivative of a lot of other things, specifically, The Breakfast Club, but I don’t care and I don’t think he did, either. It’s well acted and funny. I’ve decided that Anna Camp, who was brilliant as the hot blond minister’s wife in True Blood and here plays the stereotypical hooker with a heart of gold, is my new pretend girlfriend. Sorry Mary-Louise Parker. You had your chance.

Once again, I am too lazy to write individual posts for these plays so I decided to lump them together. We are all better off for it.

Through a Glass Darkly is a stage adaptation of a 1962 Ingmar Bergman film. Cheery, it ain’t. But Carey Mulligan, who was so good in An Eduction, gives such a powerful and convincing performance as a woman who is descending into mental illness, that I’m actually quite worried for her. I don’t know how she can put herself through that wringer eight times a week for eight weeks and come out the other side undamaged. When I left the theater, I was actually upset and had to phone Mrs. Wife so she could talk me down.

Part of what makes this so effective is that it’s playing in a small, off-Broadway venue in the East Village and everything is RIGHT IN YOUR FACE. You don’t feel the detached protection that a big Broadway house offers. Not to be missed but not for the meek.

What to say about Spider-man: Turn off the Dark? It is not good. The friend I went with saw an early preview and he said that it has improved insofar as it now has a coherent plot (albeit the same tired Spider-Man story I’ve been reading since I was a kid). Apparently, prior to being shut down, it was a confused mess of junk.

Some of it was quite stunning to look at from a design standpoint and the costumes were fantastic. Julie Taymor’s influences were pretty obvious. The actors wanted it to work so bad but it didn’t. And I’ll tell you whose fault it is:

Those guys should stay the hell off Broadway. The music was AWFUL. Each song was one boring funeral dirge after another that dragged the show down. Songs would start and I couldn’t wait until they were over. That’s a major problem if you’re trying to stage a musical. 2:35 long and there were exactly two—that’s TWO—songs that didn’t work like a 50-pound stone strapped to the actors’ backs. And, yet, the crowd gave a standing ovation. I don’t get it.

Mark Ryalnce is the current man of the hour in New York theater. What a tough, funny performance. Jerusalem is three hours of pure adrenalin rush. There was some concern that this London transplant was too “British” for a U.S. stage. (Whatever the hell that means. Shakespeare is pretty British and he does just fine.) Rylance is Johnny Byron, local seducer of disenfranchised youth. Firmly anti-establishment and not one to respect the rules, he pays for his rebellion in a most violent way. My toes curled back to my heels. Hope they perform a snippet of the torture sequence on the Tony Awards this Sunday.

Check all your razors and your guns
We gonna be rasslin’ when the wagon comes
I wanna pigfoot and a bottle of beer
Gimme a reefer and a gang o’ gin
Slay me ’cause I’m in my sin
Slay me ’cause I’m full of gin

Needless to say, I won’t be bringing the daughter to see this one. The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith is less play and more musical review. There are some brief biographical interludes but it’s mostly one great blues song after another. A sax. A stand-up bass. An upright piano and one strong voice belting out songs from the early blues era about love and sex and cheating and drinking. Kind of like country music today.

Robin William was great for two reasons. First of all, he wasn’t Robin Williams. He altered his voice, look, posture and body movements to become someone who isn’t quite so recognizable. I dispensed with the preconceived notions within a few minutes. Second, he’s being used as bait. His name is above the title but he is not the lead. More like the third or fourth, actually. The actors who drive the show are committed, believable characters. So people are drawn in to see Robin Williams and what they end up with are solid performances by actors who otherwise wouldn’t get this kind of exposure. And that’s a beautiful thing. The play is rough stuff. Lots of war and blood and mysticism and ghosts and talking to God. I liked it a lot.

Oh, let’s see Play Dead! It’ll be a funny, spooky night out in Greenwich Village. Ha ha. So fun! It’s just a magic show!

Okay. There were a couple of moments in this show that were so genuinely frightening that if the lights had been on, I’d have run screaming out of the theater like a little girl. Creepy old Todd Robbins got together with the magician Teller and created a show that is definitely for adults only. In more than one segment they turn out the lights. They somehow received permission from the City of New York to also turn out the exit sign lights, so that you are plunged into a pitch-black darkness. The he starts telling gory stories.

You’ve been warned.

I try to use superlatives sparingly. If you use them too often, they lose their luster and your credibility is shot. Not everything can be the best or the brightest or the most clever.

But I’m going to go on a limb and say that The Book of Mormon, the new Broadway musical, is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m not kidding, bitches. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard in my life.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the guys who write South Park, got together with Robert Lopez, who wrote the music for Avenue Q and created a modern masterpiece.

I’d be very careful as to who I’d recommended this to. It’s not for everyone. There are some extraordinarily vulgar and crude things being said and done on stage. The creators of the show are clearly not believers. The humor is all derived from actual Mormon doctrine. I had a Mormon girlfriend when I lived in Phoenix and I read The Book of Mormon to try and get inside of her head. The jokes in the show that seem the most outlandish and get the biggest laughs are actual teachings from the book! But the the magic trick is that they don’t slander Mormons or religion. It’s a celebration of blind, stupid faith.

I rarely, rarely see anything twice. If I get a night-out chit, I want to use it to see something new. But I already have tickets for another dose of this show in April. Little Miss Daisyfae will be in town on business and I’m dragging her with me. She gets her hands dirty in her local community theater, so I think she’ll have an appreciation for what happens on stage from a technical standpoint. It’ll be nice to show her what can be done with a monster budget at your disposal. And I’m fairly certain she can handle the blue material.

This pic accompanied a story in The New York Times about Bob Porbert, a member of the Detroit Red Wings who passed away last July at age 45.

An autopsy revealed that repeated blows to the head caused a degenerative brain disease. Probert was an “enforcer.” An enforcer, for the uninitiated, is a guy on a hockey team who will skate out onto the ice and beat the shit out of someone in order to intimidate the other players or payback an opponent who has fouled his team. A 2007 Hockey News poll rated him the “Greatest Enforcer in Hockey History.”

Bill Daly, deputy commissioner of N.H.L., commenting on the autopsy report, said he thought the findings were “interesting science” but, at this time, couldn’t recommend taking any steps to address excessive fighting.

Hockey will always be a bush-league, second rate sport until they clean up this mess and get rid of idiots like Bill Daly. And the scariest part of that photo isn’t the blood. It’s the look on that kid’s face.

Speaking of idiots.

I saw Green Day’s American Idiot, currently at the St. James. It has had a pretty successful run but I had mixed feelings about it.

The music was, of course, great, which comes as no surprise since I already know and like the album. The performances were good enough. A lot of pseudo-punk Broadway kids. The staging and lighting was genius. There was an wholly unexpected hallucinatory dream/flying sequence between a wounded Iraq war vet and a veiled Middle Eastern dancer, that was beautifully rendered. It whetted my appetite for Spider-man.

But, Holy Mother of God, what were they all so angry about?! The play starts and everyone is very, very pissed but you’re never given any context as to why. I think it’s because they live in the suburbs or they hate Republicans or they’re angry at their their step-dads but I’m not entirely certain. I thought the choreography was amateurish. :90 minutes of fist pumping, head bobbing and foot stomping does not a dance make.

Most surprising of all, I had no idea the show was so damn dreary. I like a little dramatic ebb and flow to my plots. This thing was one long ride straight to hell without a breather. So I don’t know what all the fuss is about. I think I must be the wrong demographic.