Cook.

Warm as a cashmere muffler, relaxed as a happy kitten, and ready for an attack of total perfection, Barbara Cook’s new show at Feinstein’s at Loew’s Regency shows off the legendary singer in a more intimate light than ever. She calls this appearance “Let’s Fall in Love,” and for good reason. Spring is a time for love songs, so through April 21, she’s up to her Easter bonnet brim with them. And this is the first time she has ever selected the song list on her own, without the aid of a musical “boss,” and done the layouts and interpolations herself. The result is fresh and as personal as if you were spending an evening in her own living room while she pulled favorite tunes from her piano bench. I have never heard that magical voice more mercurial or sparkling with so much musical magic. 

The material is mostly new (she’s singing 11 of the 16 songs for the first time) and it ranges widely in mood and text, from a bouncy “Let’s Fall in Love” to a pensive “I Hadn’t Anyone Till You” to a tender, thoughtful reading of Hoagy Carmichael’s “The Nearness of You.” I don’t know why she hasn’t spent more time investigating the pastoral splendors of country boy Hoagy. His songs fit her voice so elegantly. She takes his “Georgia on My Mind” and gives it a down-home, gingham-skirt quality Ray Charles never thought about. Small wonder. You can take the girl out of Atlanta, but ... Even the overdone Eddie Cantor evergreen, “Makin’ Whoopee,” is delicate, lightly swinging, and highly listenable. The silver sparkle of midnight neon mixed with the violet tinges of unrequited love makes “When Sunny Gets Blue” a special favorite. This is a stunning song so goosebumpy that it’s a shame more singers don’t do it. Singing the subtext, she moves into the lyrics like a sinuous masseuse, reaching for notes that make you hold your breath with fear—and always landing them squarely in the middle. Carefully supported by Ted Rosenthal on piano, Warren Odze on drums and the polished, unpredictable Jay Leonhart on bass, she’s got a hazy, lazy musical hammock to swing in. Still, she never abandons her sense of humor. Confessing an addiction to YouTube that keeps her up until 4 a.m., she reduces the audience to roars sharing some of the country-western songs she’s discovered. Are you ready for “If My Nose Was Runnin’ Money, I’d Blow it All on You?” That’s an actual song title, not a Henny Youngman joke. One highlight in an eclectic, harmonically integrated repertoire is a new tune by Dan Hicks (say who?) called “I Don’t Want Love.” The antithesis of the overall mood in an evening that includes “Lover Man” and the gorgeous, forgotten 1933 classic “If I Love Again,” “I Don’t Want Love” is about food and passion and priorities. It’s also Babs’s way of spoofing her own girth: “If love makes you give up ham and greens/Chicken pot pie and lima beans/If love makes you give up onion rings ... Then I don’t want love.” The audience was in stitches.

Don’t let this one slip away. Pensive, her eyes full of pain and joy and wisdom and loss, this is Barbara Cook in a sweet new light. She’s always as good as it gets, but this time she’s better than ever.

rreed@observer.com

Cook and Feinstein.

Among the things the cherished soprano Barbara Cook and the cabaret saloon singer and pianist Michael Feinstein possess in abundance—aside from the pleasure of singing, sharing the stage with other respected artists and spreading joy—is an undiminished passion for preserving the classics in the Great American Songbook. Their annual holiday shows at Feinstein’s at Loew’s Regency no longer have a seasonal bent. They’re just a welcome excuse for some favorite songs, served up in tinsel and holly. It’s not until the encore at the end of the evening that they examine their first and only nod to the festive season of eggnog and mistletoe, with Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.” Still, if you can afford the outrageous prices, the show will leave you with a Yuletide glow through the end of December.

Fresh from her triumph at the Kennedy Center honors, Ms. Cook is fresh as a daisy as she opens with two other Berlin sunflowers from Annie Get Your Gun, “I Got the Sun in the Morning” and “I Got Lost in His Arms.” Mr. Feinstein, who acts as gracious host and tour guide through a program of year-round delights, takes advantage of the new age of sexual freedom of expression to turn Marilyn and Alan Bergman’s passionate lyrics to “Fifty Percent of Him” into a declaration of same-sex love. It stops the show all over again, just like it did every night when Dorothy Loudon sang it in the Broadway show Ballroom, only with a different slant. Together, they feed each other like kids sharing an ice cream cone on bouncy duets like “Deed I Do” and “Do Do Do.” Caveats? Mr. Feinstein’s blends “Let Me Love You” with “Let There Be Love” as a tribute to mentors Bobby Short and Mabel Mercer in an arrangement that seems a bit rushed, and I wish Ms. Cook would ditch the ossified “Here’s to Life” as her new theme song. Overdone, oversung and overexposed on every CD by every singer of the past decade, it’s a tune that has been wrung dry. On the plus side, neither performer is a jazz singer, but with the great Mike Renzi at the keyboard (don’t forget he was the accompanist of choice for Mel Tormé, Lena Horne and Peggy Lee and currently works with Jack Jones) even Ms. Cook swings her way through the Duke Ellington classic “I’m Beginning to See the Light” with the best big-band pluck since Kitty Kallen made the song famous with the Harry James Orchestra. A nod to Fred and Ginger follows with no dancing on the postage-stamp stage, which is good, but a warm, sharing kind of sweetness on “The Way You Look Tonight” is even better. For a finale, you can almost see children everywhere counting the hours until the arrival of Santa on Christmas Eve as their vices meld exquisitely on the Beatles’ lovely lullaby “Good Night.” And that’s exactly what it is, this mutual admiration society of charm, music and artistry that is rather like folding in the egg whites in a Christmas soufflé.

rreed@observer.com

Short of canonization, I can think of no headier honors than the ones that have already often been bestowed regularly on Barbara Cook. From the reviews of her new three-week engagement at Feinstein’s at Loew’s Regency, where she is appearing through May 2, it is clear that the critics have already run out of adjectives. And why not? Despite the worst sound I have ever heard in a nightclub—opening night was so muffled the waiters were louder than the star, a betrayal that I hope has now been rectified—this is one of the legendary soprano’s best acts in years.

She calls it “Here’s to Life,” a song done so many times it has grown moss, but she’s so fresh and appealing that even that tired evergreen takes on new sparks. Her directness has not changed, but I detected a new emotional subtext to songs like Alec Wilder’s great “Goodbye John” (which she learned from one of her mentors, the incomparable Mabel Mercer) that salted my eyes with tears. This might partially be due to Lee Musiker, a jazzier pianist than her late accompanist, Wally Harper. His arrangements are warmer and juicier than the formal charts of days gone by, and they bring out a richer feel in the singer that sometimes sounds like a flashlight on the soul. With Peter Donovan on bass, James Saporito on drums and Lawrence Feldman on horns and woodwinds, the program explores a full range. From a bouncy “I Want to Be Happy,” with added lyrics about the economy and a whimsical jaunt through E. Y. Harburg’s lyrics, to Harold Arlen’s “Buds Won’t Bud,” there is abundant humor. I hadn’t heard the jazz romp “Chicken Today and Feathers Tomorrow” sung by anyone since the great Carmen McRae. And the lush ballads Ms. Cook is famous for are bountiful: Harold Arlen’s moody “It Was Written in the Stars,” the Vincent Youmans classic “Time on Your Hands,” and Sondheim’s “One More Kiss” from Follies are enough to make you think it’s spring even if you’re still wearing fur earmuffs. As always, there’s quite a bit of Sondheim (“No One Is Alone,” “Goodbye for Now”) and even the tiresome “Send in the Clowns” sounds newly minted. Every visit with Barbara Cook is a master class in vocal technique, mining harmony and interpreting lyrics. No “Ice Cream,” “Glitter and Be Gay” or selections from The Music Man this time around. Just purity and heart and a unique sound that only ripens with age. Singing much the same way she did when she was Broadway’s favorite ingénue, Barbara Cook must keep her voice in a drawer with Shirley Temple’s old socks.

rreed@observer.com

Meanwhile, everyone loves Barbara Cook, including the critics. Trouble is, we’ve run out of laudatory adjectives. She deserves them all, but no matter how loud and sustained the applause, describing what she does is beginning to read like a thesaurus. In her present six-week run at the Carlyle, the spotlight once focused on Bobby Short is centered on a warmer, more romantic set of love songs. She performs them flawlessly.

Opening with the Al Jolson evergreen “There’s a Rainbow Round My Shoulder,” she brings back the F. Scott Fitzgerald glamour and sound of a big-band party floating across the Sound in the 1949 Alan Ladd version of The Great Gatsby. Rodgers and Hart’s “Where or When,” Irving Berlin’s “I Got Lost in His Arms” and an a capella “For All We Know” remind us of the greatness of the Great American Songbook and why we never tire of hearing more. But Barbara also touches the heart with the work of a talented new writer: Once you hear John Bucchino’s “If I Ever Say I’m Over You,” you’ll know why this critical discovery is heading for the reverie of the masses. A handful of people are still alive who can write songs with beauty, meaning and soul. Mr. Bucchino is one of them. For a hip-swinging change of tempo, dig what she does with “Sooner or Later,” a showstopper that was introduced by the one and only Hattie McDaniel in the Disney classic Song of the South. Clever? Been there. Unforgettable? Said that. In a class by herself? I think I printed that the last time. You can see the problem. One likes to encourage new kids on the block, but there’s safety and security in the presence of the old pros. Barbara Cook seems to be singing somewhere every night. I have the feeling she sings in bed while watching Law and Order. She does it better than anybody else, and all you can do is smile, be grateful for her ageless perfection and genuflect when she passes by.

When the current season ends, so will the legendary Café Carlyle. The furniture will move to the basement, and a golden era will vanish from the diminishing world of Manhattan after dark. No better time to catch Barbara Cook’s final appearance in the room that Bobby Short made famous. I don’t think she knows how lucky she is. While everything else goes to the dogs, Barbara always stays the same. Almost everyone from her age group and musical persuasion is gone. She carries the torch where Mabel Mercer and Sylvia Syms left off, and she lights it with her own gas and gusto. Celebrating the songs and highlights of her 25-year career as a headliner at the Café Carlyle, from a playful “I Got the Sun in the Morning” right through a stunning tribute to one of her favorite singers, Dick Hayes, with plenty of the obligatory Hammerstein and Sondheim, she is in wonderful shape, and there is something here for everyone.

It’s a thrill to see what so much talent and preparation can accomplish. “You Could Drive a Person Crazy,” usually performed by three women simultaneously, is an acting class. She crystallizes the notes, but she also acts the words. On a hilarious romp introduced a zillion years ago by Ukulele Ike called “My Dog Loves Your Dog,” she even barks like a terrier. (“I love you bow-wow-wow, and how-how-how!”) She can be dark and contemporary (John Bucchino’s sad lament for hustlers who meet in a bus station, “Sweet Dreams,” is musical film noir at its best), or flip and frivolous (“Hard Hearted Hannah” rocks). But songs are always playing in her head. Something is always dancing in her eyes. This sensitive and articulate interpreter of lyrics refuses to compromise her artistry for gimmickry or fads. She always chooses songs that have something to say and makes every phrase wonderfully clear and audible. As a result, she never fails to establish a rapport with her audience that is admirable and true.

I have never seen or heard Barbara Cook so radiant, relaxed and reckless. In one hour of reasons why she is the Queen of Cabaret, she rules from her own unique and exclusive cloud. For the entire month of March, become her willing vassal. She takes you to a brighter, sunnier, more graceful and superior world, and—take my word for it—you’ll feel richer in life for taking the trip.

Damn Sox

A lot of unlucky people who can’t roll two sevens in a row strike out again in the fatally confusing Game 6. Michael Keaton is a reliable actor who hasn’t made a good movie in years. Michael Hoffman proved to be a director of range, texture and discipline with The Emperor’s Club, a film I loved more than most of my colleagues. And novelist Don DeLillo is a writer admired by many. Game 6 is a disaster of such dimension I fear it will disappear before anyone can say, “Gee, fellas, we hardly knew ye.”

The day is Oct. 25, 1986. Mr. Keaton plays playwright Nicky Rogan, a writer who has devoted his career to turning out Neil Simon–like plays that have pleased the audiences but not the critics. Tonight is the opening night of his first serious work, the best play he’s ever written. But it is also the sixth game of the World Series, and his beloved Boston Red Sox are poised to win. Nicky starts off for the theater with nothing in mind but getting a haircut.

Then he gets the first crippling round of reports that will change his life: His wife (Catherine O’Hara) is divorcing him after 19 years. His mistress (Bebe Neuwirth) informs him his leading actor has a brain disease and can’t remember his lines. A cynical writer (Griffin Dunne) scares his socks off with horror stories about a new and powerful drama critic named Schwimmer (Robert Downey Jr.), a man so venomous he turns writers bitter and self-destructive. This monster is so hated he goes to the theater every night wearing disguises, carrying a loaded gun. He has no phone and no friends, and he has driven the entire population of Broadway into a state of paranoid schizophrenia. Will it be the opening night, or the Boston Red Sox? Miserable and stricken with terror, Nicky heads for the stadium and spends the whole day in New York traffic, trapped in the back seats of gridlocked taxis driven by foreigners who speak every language except English.

As the curtain rises, Nicky ends up in a trashy saloon pretending to be a gangster, with a lady cabdriver who is like Dr. Phil in drag and says things like “Life is good because faith is rewarded” and “Take a risk—it is humanizing.” Of course, the Red Sox play their most humiliating game and blow the series, and Nicky becomes so unhinged that he stalks his way to the critic’s apartment to kill him, only to find him in bed with Nicky’s own daughter! There’s more, but why go on? This movie is D.O.A.

In a movie of many mistakes, the biggest mistake of all was hiring Don DeLillo to write the screenplay. How do you know if Game 6 is meant to be a fantasy, fable, comedy, farce or deeply, intensely personal drama about neurotic failure? I mean, when the radio warns that the Apocalypse is just around the corner and a man isn’t just a man, he’s someone “who sits in a small, dark apartment eating soft, white bread” … you sort of give up on the hope that logic will arrive and just start laughing. Game 6 talks itself to death before it can find its way to Blockbuster. It’s like a janitor searching for the keys to all the doors after the locks have been changed.

Scary Teens

Kinetic and suspensefully charged with the underlying themes of societal abuse and ignorance of teenage angst, Evil is an excellent new Swedish import, masterfully directed by Mikael Hafström, which reminded me in many ways of Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause. Based on a scandalous best-selling autobiographical novel by Jan Guillou from 1981, it focuses on Erik Ponti, a handsome, 16-year-old student whose life has been plagued by violence. Constantly tormented by an abusive stepfather (in the opening scene, Erik is slapped across the dinner table and then dragged from the room and beaten with a double-folded belt while his mother plays the piano to drown out the noise), the boy hits back the only way he can: by giving a good thrashing to anyone in his way. Labeled “evil” and expelled from public school, Erik is told he has one last chance to make something of himself and is sent to Stjarnsberg—a prestigious private school where he is determined not to mess up again.

Steeped in traditions strange to this wild but decent kid, Stjarnsberg has strict rules—coats and ties, prayers before meals, lights out after study—but Erik welcomes some kind of sane discipline in his life. He quickly bonds with his roommate—a shy, bookish introvert named Pierre who loves James Dean movies. Initially, Erik is overjoyed to escape his unhappy home, but he soon discovers he has merely substituted one prison for another.

The school is, in fact, run by a rigorous and unjust code, enforced by senior students rather than the faculty. The teachers (including an unregenerate Nazi who even spouts anti-Semitic tirades in class without fear of recrimination) prefer to ignore what goes on among the students, passing off severe beatings and a wide variety of humiliations as harmless “hazings.” Standing up for his rights and refusing to be bullied, Erik incurs the wrath of the upperclassmen, but he also wants to avoid the violence that landed him there in the first place. Refusing to knuckle under or apologize, and unfairly punished with detentions and hard labor because he refuses to fight, he’s nicknamed “Rat.” To make matters worse, he wins the school swimming championship, which makes him untouchable. That forces the seniors to change tactics and take out their resentment, jealousy and cruelty on his weak roommate, Pierre.

This is the story of a decent boy faced with a dangerous decision: confront his oppressors and risk expulsion, or ignore them and suffer humiliation at their hands—or, worse, let his friends suffer for him. No matter what choice Erik makes in order to graduate, it is bound to be the wrong one. Evil caused a sensation in Sweden, where distinguished private academic institutions have always been considered above reproach. This book and film led to many reforms in the private-school system, and echoes of the same kind of “hazing” are deeply felt at home, where new scandals are revealed on an annual basis. Director Hafström skillfully incorporates many 50’s flourishes—the school cafeteria is as cold and somber as a leftover set from a Troy Donahue picture—and gets a memorable performance out of newcomer Andreas Wilson.

But the most touching thing about Mr. Hafström’s writing and directing is the way he shows the mixed-up emotions of youth: Erik’s anger and ferocious sense of outrage is a resentment of class and privilege, but at the same time he longs for the respectability and acceptance that same sense of class and privilege also brings. Before the novel was published, Jan Guillou was best known as a writer of pop mysteries. The movie has the same kind of incendiary power.

An Oprah Movie

Matthew McConaughey, who can’t act, and Sarah Jessica Parker, who’s been doing entirely too much of it lately, are forced upon each other in more ways than one in Failure to Launch. Has there ever been a worse title? It writes its own review. They talk a lot of crap on Oprah. One of the things they talk about is the new trend among lazy college graduates who can’t find a job to move back into the nest for free meals, laundry and car keys. Presto: an Oprah movie, condensed-book-club-excerpt division. He’s a boat salesman who is practically 40 and doesn’t look a day under 50. He lives at home with his cranky pop (Terry Bradshaw, replete with nude scene for people on antibiotics) and doting mom (Kathy Bates, at what point was your career ambushed?). His friends all live at home freeloading, too. Enter Sarah Jessica, a professional “interventionist” hired to trick him into moving out of the house to raise his self-esteem, which is higher than the Himalayas already. These people have names like Tripp, Ace, Demo and Kit. By the time somebody wisely puts an end to the agony, it is no wonder they are all high as Goodyear blimps. Silly, obvious, hokey, predictable and funny as a knee replacement, Failure to Launch is a 30-minute sitcom pilot stretched over one hour and 37 minutes. It’s being hocked off as a date movie. True enough, if your date is a raisin.

Ladies in Lavender, carefully written and superbly directed by the actor Charles Dance, is a film of unusual elegance and artistry, set in the years leading up to World War II, about two elderly sisters whose comfortable but dull lives on the coast of Cornwall are interrupted by a shipwreck that sweeps overboard one sole survivor-a mysterious young man who washes up on the beach below their cottage. Awkwardly nursing their guest back to health with the aid of their fat, crusty housekeeper (Miriam Margolyes), the intrusion of life from the outside world in the form of a handsome, smiling stranger with a broken ankle who speaks only Polish and German opens old wounds, revives old resentments and rekindles rivalries long resigned to mothballs. For Janet (Dame Maggie Smith), the logical, pragmatic one who was briefly married as a young woman to a man who died in World War I, the boy symbolizes the son she never had. But the spinsterish and childlike Ursula (Dame Judi Dench) develops an affection for the lad that is far from maternal. Doting on his every need, placing a flower on his breakfast tray, teaching him English, she makes him the surrogate of everything she never had-brother, lover and the Prince Charming she has waited for all of her life to rescue her from her prison tower.

As their castaway is slowly welcomed by the local farmers and fishermen who are suspicious of anyone from outside the village, the sisters overcome the language barriers and learn that their visitor is a Polish Jew named Andrea (played with wonderful honesty and naturalism by the appealing German actor Daniel Brühl, who captivated audiences last year in Goodbye Lenin). Andrea was escaping the Nazi anti-Semitism of Krakow on a ship bound for New York when he was washed into the sea. More thrilling still, he is an accomplished violinist. Janet and Ursula now have a fresh drive in their efforts to make Andrea a permanent part of their little family; they will encourage his talent and fuel him with the ambition to make a career. But their dreams are short-circuited by a vacationing artist (Natascha McElhone) whose brother is a famous musician with important connections on the concert stage. Before the summer ends, Andrea is abruptly whisked away to London with no time to say goodbye, leaving the old women desperate with worry. The loss is unsettling for Janet but devastating to Ursula, and as the season turns to autumn and the coastal chill settles in on the Cornish coast, the events that wedged the two women apart also bring them closer together when the days shorten and the nights grow long. Then, in a finale that will quicken your pulse and touch your heartstrings with a miraculous lack of sentimental manipulation, Andrea makes his debut on the BBC. For once, the war news of storm clouds over Europe is replaced by the beauty of music. Janet and Ursula invite the whole village to their house to listen to the broadcast. But in a momentary decision of rare impulsiveness, they travel to London instead to burst with pride in person at the concert hall. For a moment, Andrea is reunited with the little family that saved his life, but the tears of gratitude and joy quickly fade as he is swept away by the famous conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham. Ursula and Janet walk away, less lonely than before, having learned at last the importance of letting go, and disappear in the throng of Andrea's admirers, to begin the next chapter in a continuing story that has found new value.

Lush, sun-dappled photography by the distinguished cinematographer Peter Biziou, the honesty of village life, the human elements that embellish maps of experience in the faces of the actors, a multitude of authentic period details, and gorgeous music by Nigel Hess and the Royal Philharmonic, with violin solos by the internationally acclaimed Joshua Bell, add up to an idyllic, impeccable, enriching and amazing cinematic experience. Above all, there is the rapture of watching the energy and concentration of two of the world's most accomplished actors. The passion in their glances, exchanges and closeness-like two bookends on a library shelf-is exhilarating. Watching them thrust and parry and feed each other with crumpets of the English language the way it should be spoken has an effect I can only call enriching. To find this many exemplary elements in one movie in 2005 is a miracle. Get to Ladies in Lavender fast.

In a time of micro-minute trends, I'm not naïve enough to suggest that a movie graced by Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith might pave the way for a future where timeless legends take precedence over fly-by freaks, but it sure is transforming to have them around for a visit, no matter how brief.

Lovely Ladies

Spring will be a little late this year. In fact, we might just skip the whole thing and move right into summer. To that end, a lovely flotilla of female singers has arrived, bringing their own heat. Barbara Cook has moved into the august throne room at the Carlyle that Bobby Short used to call home, and from now through May 27 she's making the kind of music the recently departed king of cabaret would have been proud to share. Since Barbara recently lost her own longtime pal, arranger, musical conductor and pianist, Wally Harper, this excursion at the Cafe Carlyle, appropriately called Tribute, marks a new page for her, too, and from the top-rung celebrities she's attracting, it looks like everyone is dropping by to help her turn it. Tribute showcases a new Barbara Cook-softer, more subdued, poetically etching her way through a new program of songs she's never sung before. The room and the mood seem perfect for a celebration of Bobby Short with a thrilling, beautifully modulated "Bojangles of Harlem" and a sensual "Nashville Nightingale"-two songs she would never have touched in the past. And her own homage to the songwriting talents of Wally Harper reveal a marvelous gem he wrote with David Zippel called "Another Mr. Right Left" that makes me wonder why she hid them in her piano bench for so many years. Her voice of Tiffany gold is unlike anything on the planet, but sunny ("I've Got the World on a String") or torchy ("Make the Man Love Me"), the diversity of it in this song recital is doubly mesmerizing. Example: Singing two gorgeous songs that Arthur Schwartz and Dorothy Fields wrote for men in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, she phrases them differently, in a softer and more reflective mood than usual. It's Actors Studio phrasing. It's a different can of peas. But her new pianist, Michael Kosarin, is a peach. His chords give her ample room to snuggle in. Barbara Cook doesn't need a shoulder to lean on. She's her own muse, her own vocal coach, and every time she sings, the rest of us learn something. Hitchhike, power-walk or cab it to the Carlyle immediately, and get to know what perfection is.

Nobody in what Jimmy Durante used to call "the show business" is more beloved than the Broadway gypsy. Donna McKechnie is one of the most popular, and in Gypsy in My Soul, her aptly titled act at the chic new boîte on East 58 Street called Le Jazz Au Bar, she dances a little, sings a lot and spreads joy like marmalade. She ran away from home and arrived on the scene in 1959, when juicy, pre-Disney 42nd Street was Oz with garters ("Hookers and hustlers and pimps, oh my!" she croons), a new kid named Streisand was singing down in the Village, an unknown named Cy Coleman was playing in the piano bars uptown, Tito Puente held mambo contests at the Palladium, and you could buy a balcony seat to any show on Broadway for $1.50. This act is about her times, her songs, her shows and her dreams. Dramatic ballads requiring subtle lyric readings are not her forte, and the material doesn't always fit the format. (One minute she's doing all three voices on "You Could Drive a Person Crazy," the Sondheim trio number she performed in Company; the next minute, in comes "But Not for Me" from nowhere.) But when she talks about her ups and downs as a dancer, recreates her Tony-winning role in A Chorus Line, stops the show with a great song like Ed Kleban's "Better," or tells affectionate but hilarious stories about working with Ann Miller in Follies, her passion triumphs. Her heart is as big as her love for the stage, and a swell time is had by all.

The big-band sound of Vegas in the good old days is always a welcome tonic, and Vegas '58 ... One More Time, the title of Keely Smith's show at Feinstein's at the Regency (through May 7), says it all. Wailin', jivin' and celebrating the 100th anniversary of the town where music, money and neon go together, the indefatigable Keely and her nine-piece orchestra are a workout without a gym. She's so nonchalant and relaxed that on opening night, she already reached the tag of "Autumn Leaves" before she realized that she'd forgotten to take the chewing gum out of her mouth. From the old Louis Prima catalog to timeless arrangements by Billy May and Nelson Riddle, it's one hour of midnight at the Sahara Hotel when Sinatra and the Rat Pack stood and cheered, and on the dust-kicking "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You," the band stands up and rocks and sways from side to side like syncopated elephants. These are the sounds you hear coming out of every door on Bourbon Street. When Keely Smith comes to town, she doesn't just polish the Apple. She gives you the whole cobbler.

On Oldboy

Finally, a word about Korea. A few weeks ago, in my broadside against the gory Korean movie schlockfest Oldboy, I apparently raised the hackles of several readers who objected to the way I mentioned the Korean film industry and the fermented Korean national dish called kimchi in the same sentence. I'm not an admirer of political correctness in first-person byline opinion writing, but that doesn't make me a racist, so if I inadvertently offended anyone who misinterpreted my humor, I apologize. I like Koreans. In truth, I have probably spent more time in Korea than any of the irate letter-writers currently bombarding me. I even lived there for several months while making a movie called Inchon! with Laurence Olivier, Jacqueline Bisset, Ben Gazzara, Richard Roundtree and Toshiro Mifune. We had many happy times, admired the lush landscape and liked the friendly people. We all hated the kimchi.

Is it? Is chaos a good thing?

It depends how good the chaos is. Ms. Maleczech–a founding member of Mabou Mines with Philip Glass and JoAnne Akalaitis–is a wonderful, warm actress, and she plays, among much, a South Indian Holy Cow named Sri Moo Pahamahamsa. Consider this pronouncement of Sri Moo:

"Remarkably," the cow announces at the start, "here at the shrink's swan song, I.S.S. [Institute for the Science of Soul] has hammered out the first new synthesis of scholastic philosophy since Aquinas–the universal neo-neural Darwinist mind-only post-performative popular front. But which 'mind only'? Have we not a triune brain?"

All clear?

But then, it's not meant to be. We're in some kind of madhouse, or therapy institute for the soul, where a division of Animations Anonymous has a 12-step therapy program for people terminally addicted to performing. Would that there were one.

One of the leading therapy patients is a dog named Rose, who's played vocally by four actresses. The dog, a spaniel tuned into a Walkman, is a Bunraku rod puppet that's either a woman who's treated like a dog, or a dog who thinks she's a woman. Either way, we do not find the theme of Woman as Dog–which grows out of Mr. Breuer's previous doggy piece, entitled An Epidog –too fresh an idea in the first place. The dog Rose is infatuated by an imagined or real romance with a junkie named John Ham Jones, portrayed by another puppet and four actresses. Interspecies love is but one of the themes, as well as pseudo Dante-esque spiritual journeys, Disney, transgendered chickens, Marge Simpson, cosmic metaphysics, movie-making, drama therapy, subconscious projection, Jungian archetypes, the sinful ways of Hollywood, the joys of tantric sex, the adventures of an ant and Bodhisattva Quan Yin in her 2,113th incarnation.

But there's more (and more, and more … ). While the tragic stature of Mr. Breuer's leading actor, the 75-year-old Frederick Neumann, lends the pig-artist-hero a little conventional dignity, the Kafkaesque Porco also morphs into Truman Capote, Orson Welles and the Russian theater revolutionary Vsevolod Meyerhold, who also becomes, if you please–and if you can take it–a Hasidic W.C. Fields playing Joseph K. And where, pray, does that get us?

It gets us to the indulgent, chaotic mess of unintended parody and the lunatic fringe. I think, with regrets, that Ecco Porco takes us back to the future of pretentious avant-garde theater a generation ago, when psychobabble was in vogue, the tortured artist was a typical downtown theme along with camp, tantric sex was new (and sexier than here), and Warren Beatty–of all Mr. Breuer's tired targets–was taken seriously enough by some to be satirized.

The Bunraku puppets, each brought to hypnotic life by three puppeteers who are more like anonymous, manipulative gods, are the most troubling–and interesting–human beings onstage.

But too much of Ecco Porco is familiar and sloppily formless. This isn't good chaos. It's an unedited, arty muddle. There are long stretches when the piece wobbles indulgently on the private, as if an audience isn't even necessary. The multi-identities of the Nietzschean Porco–particularly in the case of the misunderstood, crucified geniuses Welles and Meyerhold–are nothing more than a neurotic self-portrait in art martyrdom of the ever-modest Mr. Breuer.

The director Breuer is also the dramatist, and he loves words as a narcissist loves his own reflection. Small wonder he could be seen sitting among the audience in the intimate studio space at P.S. 122, mouthing the dialogue of his own pretentious script as the actors spoke his words onstage. What rambling, nonsensical words they are! Here's our hero, Porco:

"The real thing about reality is it's whatever I choose to measure it by. Now suppose I choose to measure it by the cognitive neurobiology of the Christian Coalition. According to the Christian Coalition, the Creator is Father to the world. You are all my children, and now you have brought a class-action suit, naming among others me–that you have been abused …. Now let's be real. Is the creator of this whole divina caricatura guilty of child abuse, does our Father here need a good lawyer–"

Stop! Please stop! But there's reams and reams of this stuff–on and unstoppably on, until after four hours we were at last set free from Ecco Porco . As Samuel Beckett put it: "All's well that ends."

The best thing Mr. Breuer could do is peep outside into bright shining daylight and then go see Barbara Cook immediately. Mr. Breuer certainly possesses no snobbery toward popular culture. Nor did the greatest theater innovators. For all of Grotowski's naked simplicity, he was influenced by the circus; the austere Beckett's love of vaudeville is as well-known as Brecht's debt to cabaret. In his avant-garde way, Lee Breuer is trying to tell a love story with Ecco Porco , but he is unforgivably incoherent. Whereas Barbara Cook, in her inimitable way, is singing a love story, but she is simply and unpretentiously beautiful–the way certain spirits, singing to spirits, are always beautiful, clear and inexpressibly moving.

By now, you will have heard of Ms. Cook's triumph in her Mostly Sondheim concert at Lincoln Center. Her homage to Mr. Sondheim (including the songs he wishes he wrote) showed us why she's his preeminent interpreter. She makes it all look so easy! Her gifts appear effortless, her relaxed, motherly stage presence embracing the house. And, in turn, we gladly embrace her back. She's timeless.

At 74, she defies time. She might negotiate a few notes more carefully now, but she has it all–musicianship, of course, clarity, phrasing, a sure touch and feel for the mood of every lyric. She knows how to act a song, but she isn't theatrical. It isn't that she sings as well as someone half her age. (Other singers can do that, though they're few.)

Her secret is that she's completely and unpretentiously artless. Ms. Cook has found the highest peaks of utter naturalness. The air there isn't rarefied, but very pure. This supreme "artless art" goes beyond all we know. Some legendary dancers have had it, very few actors. It simply and purely is . It's why Ms. Cook is both timeless and miraculously ageless. And it's why she can still deliver an Irving Berlin romantic ballad with the swoon of a first big love, and a late Sondheim love song with the heart of one who still longs for it to mend.

She couldn't be arty to save her life.

Suffering through Never Been Kissed and The Out-of-Towners on the same day (or any day) is like eating bad clams–upsetting but not life-threatening, and eventually the pain goes away. Every time I ask "Does anybody know how to make movies anymore?" the answer is usually a fast "No," but I have one friend who recently replied, "I've come to rather like bad movies because bad is all there is." The question is, How bad does it get? In the case of the two alleged, brain-dead comedies I just mentioned, the answer is "intolerable."

In Never Been Kissed , another misfire on the artillery range of mentally challenged teenage flicks, we are asked to believe that Drew Barrymore might pass for a glum, 25-year-old virgin (Mistake No. 1 is the assumption that there actually is such a thing) who works as a copy editor at the Chicago Sun-Times . Bland and overweight, she was the dorkiest creep in high school, and things don't seem to be progressing. By day, her ideas get stolen by other reporters but she never gets an assignment of her own. By night, she needlepoints pillows for her bed and feeds her goldfish.

One day her big break arrives when her dopey boss (Garry Marshall, wildly chewing scenery as though on the verge of an aneurysm) sends her underground to enroll in her old school to get the scoop on teenage life. The gristle in this meatless stew centers on the problems of trying to be 17 again. Trading in her Buick LeSabre for a grungy hot rod, the once-rejected teen gross-out arrives, newly equipped in gaucho pants, marabou feathers and foxy curls, ready for a second chance to be campus jailbait, wearing a hidden camera so everyone at the Sun-Times can witness her every humiliation. Instead of reinventing herself as a popular new classmate, the poor geek attracts the sympathy of her dashing English teacher because she knows the difference between Troilus and Cressida, and learns to say things like "Completely rufus" and "Totally awesome." It's the kind of script that brings out the imbecile in everybody.

Somewhere about here you start wondering why, if she has only been out of high school herself for a few years, none of the faculty members remember her. She certainly hasn't lost any weight since her pitiful flashbacks as the most unpopular girl in school. (On prom night, her date even pelted her with raw eggs.) To further challenge credulity, her doofus brother (David Arquette) enrolls himself in the student body and tells so many lies about her sexual prowess that she suddenly captivates the Barbie dolls, the nerds and even the English teacher (Michael Vartan, a Matthew McConaughey lookalike)–all of whom are unaware she's setting them up for a tell-all story. I can't say much more because I slept through the part where she grapples with her conscience for a byline. When I woke up, the editorial staff of the Sun-Times appeared to have staged a strike, ignoring things like deadlines and applauding their closed-circuit TVs as Ms. Barrymore was elected prom queen, duded up as Rosalind in As You Like It . Oh, yes, my friends, we'll be paying for the surprise success of Shakespeare in Love for the rest of the year.

There isn't one believable minute to be found in this labored bore, and it isn't remotely amusing, either. Ms. Barrymore's glazed charms are ambushed by both a witless script and the kind of amateurish direction that encourages her to behave like a grinning, cooing, bumbling birdbrain. I doubt if there is anyone like her at the Sun-Times who would even be given the responsibility of answering Roger Ebert's phone. But before we cast her in the role of innocent, gullible Hollywood victim, please note the screen credit she assigned herself as "executive producer." Meanwhile, writers Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, and director Raja Gosnell give the impression that Never Been Kissed has been perpetrated by student hacks who got lucky in film school. They all have a long road ahead before they can qualify as professionals.

Neil Simon Should Sue

My weakness for Goldie Hawn is the only thing that got me through The Out-of-Towners , an unnecessary, hyperventilated remake of the 1970 Neil Simon movie that was never any great shakes to begin with. The second time around is no charm, either. Adorable Goldie and the too-intelligent-to-play-idiots Steve Martin can't compete with Sandy Dennis and Jack Lemmon in the original, but they've worked together long enough to develop their own special brand of chemistry, predictable as it is. So why is this movie so bereft of wit, originality and pleasure? For starters, nobody connected with it seems to believe one word of what is going on. The two stars act like village idiots and for whatever lame thread of credibility Neil Simon once had in mind, the hysterical direction by Sam Weisman serves as a wrecking ball.

Rewriting Neil Simon is a job for fools, but screenwriter Marc Lawrence plunges blindly ahead, eager for the label. As tiresome Midwesterners victimized by every contrived cliché New York has to offer, the misguided stars play characters who don't have the horse sense to get out of the rain. Their plane is rerouted to Boston, their luggage is lost, they miss their train, their rental car piles into a wall of fish crates at the Fulton Fish Market, they get mugged by a con man pretending to be Andrew Lloyd Webber, their credit card has been run up to the max by a daughter who is not at home, a mastiff chases them, they end up in an armed robbery and seek refuge in a group therapy session for sexual dysfunctionals, they're discovered having sex in Central Park by none other than Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. All this before they turn from mere slapstick robots into truly hateful people New Yorkers would love to send back home on the next Greyhound.

There's an amazingly inane bit in which Goldie pretends to be a sleazy hooker to steal the key to a man's hotel room so she can order an elaborate dinner from room service. Mr. Martin lands in jail, gets bombed on his cellmate's LSD and hobbles down the street in an homage to Chaplin. Then they climb out of the hotel windows and dangle from the clock in an homage to Harold Lloyd. By the time they blackmail the hotel manager for being a transvestite (an amusing bit by John Cleese who knows crap when he falls in it and never fails to let us know it), the weary audience has lost all respect and sympathy. Not to mention interest. It's not only dumb, but geographically impossible. One minute they're on Canal Street, the next minute they're in Times Square, and all on foot. At one point, they pass the Metropolitan Museum going the wrong way on a one-way street. But why torture you further? Mr. Simon is probably already on the phone with his attorneys.

The original was silly, but its snafus were rooted in plausibility. When Sandy Dennis whined " Oh, my God! " you wanted to say it with her. This time it's Steve Martin who does all the mewling and kvetching while Goldie–looking too trim, sexy and smart to act like a fruitcake–remains severely hobbled by antics her old producers would have rejected on Laugh-In . They're like Blondie and Dagwood gone berserk in a stupefyingly unfunny movie that is always 10 feet behind them. They've caused jubilation before and I hope they will again, but for The Out-of-Towners Ms. Hawn and Mr. Martin both swallowed a stupid pill. In the end, they decide to stay in town and live here, but what if we don't want them? Its detractors are always accusing New York of being a foreign country. This movie makes a good case for entry visas.

Cook's Tribute to Champion

There's a rumor that the voices of angels are dubbed by Barbara Cook. I'm prepared to believe it. In her flawless new act at the Cafe Carlyle (through May 1), she makes music that can only be described as heavenly. In this spring saunter down memory lane, she is rummaging through a trunk of tunes from Broadway shows associated with the late singer-dancer-actor-choreographer-director Gower Champion. Since she never appeared in any of them, it means learning an entirely new repertoire, but she performs every song superbly, with confectionary arrangements by her longtime pianist Wally Harper.

From a wistfully romantic coupling of "Before the Parade Passes By" and "It Only Takes a Moment" ( Hello, Dolly! ) to a beautifully rendered, sensitively felt "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" ( Irene ), she honors Mr. Champion's ability to turn an empty stage into a canvas of color, people, movement and life, bringing the songs alive as well as the characters who sang them. Turning perky, she makes daisies grow on "I Got the Sun in the Morning" and then, with her richly textured lyric soprano reduces her listeners to apt pupils with "I Got Lost in His Arms," both inspired by Mr. Champion's heralded Los Angeles production of Annie Get Your Gun with Debbie Reynolds.

Whether she is mining the luxurious vein of Al Dubin-Harry Warren songs from Mr. Champion's final show 42nd Street (he died on opening night, leaving behind a show that ran eight years) or proving that sometimes the most breathtaking songs get lost in obscurity by sailing passionately into Bob Merrill's exquisite "His Face" from Carnival , she leaves her inimitable stamp on everything she sings. Simultaneously warm and generous, before acting and singing the pants off "Look What Happened to Mabel," she toasts the original star of Mack and Mabel with "Bernadette Peters was so damn good she practically owns this song, but what the hell?"

For pure enchantment and God-given talent, there is no other angel like Barbara Cook. Somebody up there likes her. Somebody down here feels the same way.