Nick Cave's equine Soundsuits amble along. (Photo: Matthew Kassel)

It’s kind of wonderful that Nick Cave’s art—like the work of Dr. Seuss and Maurice Sendak—is so accessible to children and adults alike. And it’s the reason, one might imagine, why Mr. Cave was chosen to present his wild and whimsical work in Grand Central Terminal as part of the building’s centennial celebration.

Mr. Cave’s “Heard NY,” a public art performance that ran twice daily last week, featured 30 horses frolicking through Vanderbilt Hall. The horses weren’t real, as some children who showed up had been led to believe; they were costumes—or Soundsuits, as Mr. Cave (not to be confused with the Australian singer-songwriter, who performed at the Beacon Theatre over the weekend) calls them. Each fit two people.

The horses were decorated with colorful strands of raffia, which rustled softy. They shuffled about as a harpist plucked out lilting notes, kicking out their legs, stomping their feet, shaking their behinds, bowing to the crowd and nuzzling up to the children. When a hand drummer began pounding out a beat, the people inside the horses, students from The Ailey School, separated and broke out into a planned dance routine; half of the dancers looked like Mardi Gras Indians with horse heads as they lumbered about, while the rest, covered entirely in raffia, resembled a small army of Cousin Itts run amok.

“It’s a choreography of movement, of people and of sound, which in some ways mimics the already existing activity of the station itself,” said Nato Thompson, the chief curator at Creative Time, which commissioned Mr. Cave’s project in association with MTA Arts for Transit. “I love when it’s unexpected, when it’s just like this ‘What’s going on here?’ Kind of like when you’re in the subway and people are doing the breakdancing.”

At the National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts the Friday before the “Heard NY” premiere, Mr. Cave, who is based in Chicago, explained how he came up with the horse costumes, which were originally shown about a year ago at the University of North Texas.

“As a kid, how did you create images?” he mused. “And how did you identify with characters?”

Mr. Cave told the Transom that he looked at early puppetry for ideas. Was Dr. Seuss an inspiration, we wondered? Yes, he said, and Haitian and West African dress. George Clinton, too, he added.

Mr. Cave made his first Soundsuit in 1992 in the wake of the Rodney King beating, which deeply disturbed him. His costumes are made of discarded materials; he spends a lot of time in flea markets and secondhand stores looking for items that “have a pulse,” as he put it.

“What does it feel like to be discarded?” he asked. The suits are big—they tower over you—and mask any signs of race, gender, age or class. Their anonymity can be quite terrifying, though Mr. Cave said that children are not usually afraid of them.

It was hard to find any somber traces in the “Heard NY” performances we saw. People snapped photos with their iPhones as a fugue of oohs and ahhs filled the room. Children gasped, reaching out to touch the horses as if at a petting zoo.

“She wants to see it again,” one mother said, pulling her daughter away from the crowd after the first performance at 11 a.m. on Tuesday.

Near the exit, a boy asked his parents, “Where are we going?” It was clear from the tone of his voice that he wanted to stay for the second routine, three hours later. That’s when we found Mr. Cave, who was quietly hanging out on the sidelines. We asked him if the performances had been meeting his expectations. They were, he said.

“As the days go by,” he explained, “the dancers get more accustomed to the routine.”

Mr. Cave seemed reserved—perhaps it was the nerves of an artist on display—but when we told him how much the kids seemed to be loving his creations, his eyes widened.

“Oh, my God,” he said, grabbing our arm with delight.

Today, National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET-CWA) Local 11, which represents several thousand employees at NBC Universal, announced that they are celebrating the holidays at NBC by launching a web site, http://NBCStoleChristmas.com, highlighting "the 'Grinch' within NBC" and  threatening to disrupt the network's 12th annual "Christmas in Rockefeller Center" telecast, which is set to air on Wednesday night.

The move, according to the press release, reflects the union's growing anger with the network over stalled contract negotiations.

"We can't let the Grinch at NBC steal another Christmas from thousands of honest working people," said union president Ed McEwan in the release.  "This charade must stop. Christmas is supposed to be a time of goodwill, but the network's management is trying to hide behind their fancy lights while leaving their employees in the dark."

In recent years, the holiday season has been riddled with anxiety for many employees at NBC Universal, who have come to expect annual end of the year payroll purges.

Last year, as The Observer chronicled at the time, a number of WNBC-4 employees were informed that they were being let go while at the same time the rest of their colleagues were taping a holiday sing along that for years has served as the station's local promotional holiday-season piece.

"Every Who/In the crew/Liked the Christmas tree lighting a lot," reads a Dr. Seuss-inspired poem on the union's protest Web site. "But the NBC grinch just didn't see/Without them, the lights would light not!"

What’s left behind didn’t fare much better. 10,000 B.C. (No. 2), in its second week, saw its total gross drop 55 percent. It had a slightly worse per screen average than The Bank Job (No. 3) at $17,650 (at 11 theaters). But those two movies, along with Horton, were the only movies to gross over $100,000. Last week, six movies managed that feat.

And The Other Boleyn Girl (No. 5) and Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (No. 7) continued to show signs of life. Perhaps this is because they’re the only movies that ostensibly appeal to women. At present, that seems like all it takes to keep them treading water and in the theaters.

List of theaters: Paris, Zeigfeld, Oprheum, East 85th St., 86th St. East, 84th St., Lincoln Plaza, 62nd and Broadway, Lincoln Square, Magic Johnson, 72nd St East, Cinemas 1, 2 &3rd Ave, 64th and 2nd , Imaginasian, Manhattan Twin, First and 62nd St., Angelika Film Center, Quad, IFC Center, Film Forum, Village East, Village Seven, Cinema Village, Union Square, Essex, Battery Park 11, Sunshine, 34th Street, Empire, E-Walk, Chelsea, 19th Street East, and Kips Bay.

Manhattan Weekend Box Office: How moviegoers in the multiplexes of middle America choose to spend their ten-spot is probably a big deal in Hollywood. But here in Manhattan, the hottest movies aren't always the ones making the big bucks nationwide. Using Nielsen numbers for Manhattan theaters alone and comparing them to the performance of the national weekend box office can tell you a lot about our Blue State sensibilities. Or nothing at all! Each Monday afternoon, we will bring you the results.

Should you not know the outcome of this foregone conclusion, let me keep you in suspense no longer. His name is Gerard Alessandrini.

And you thought it was me! If by chance you are murmuring to yourself, "Gerard who?"–do not pass go and proceed to jail immediately. The brilliant Mr. Alessandrini is the best and funniest Broadway critic there has ever been in history. He's the creator, writer and co-director of my favorite show on earth, the parody of Broadway musicals Forbidden Broadway , and I love him.

I always think understatement is a good thing, don't you? But every season, I find myself eagerly looking forward to each new edition of his revue as if my partial sanity depended on it. (It does. And so, I trust, does yours.) Let us not hold back, then. There's the Chrysler building, there's Elaine's and there's Forbidden Broadway . There might be other irreplaceable things in town. But I can't think of them right now. The good Mr. Alessandrini never lets us down. Come what may on Broadway, he always has us convulsed with laughter. He defines the irresistible higher lunacies of showbiz for us. He goes where no drama critic has dared to tread before. He slams everything ! With love and horror, of course.

He possesses both the affection of a true fan and the smile of an assassin. He likes what he skewers (sort of). He proves that all things can be parodied. But so much ? Everything is fair game in that oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York–but of late, they're handing it to him on a plate. Mr. Alessandrini cheerfully nails one and all, adapting his own witty, sometimes withering lyrics to the original show tunes. Thus, in the current edition, Forbidden Broadway 2001: A Spoof Odyssey , which has just opened at the Stardust Theatre on the fringes of Broadway itself, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Marin Mazzie from Kiss Me, Kate waltz onstage singing a lusty new version of "Wunderbar": "Would be stars / Would be stars! …" And the startling appearance of Cheryl Ladd as Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun inspires a lethally new lyric to "There's No Business Like Show Business": "I've no business in show business …."

There's the ritual, wired appearance of Liza Minelli. ("Can we be serious for a moment? Do the words 'Third Reich' mean anything to you? Because they do to me.") There's the ever-modest Patti LuPone ("I tour all alone / And sing monotone / Making you groan / Being LuPone"). And, as always, there's the beloved ghost of Broadways past, the old belter Ethel Merman, this time in duet with Sir Elton John, who admires her dress.

"Swell! Gee, but it's good to be back!" says the irrepressible Ethel, who was present at the birth of theater, when Broadway was a muddy swamp and chorus boys had to forage for sustenance. "Hi ya, everybody!" She then turns to say to Elton enthusiastically: "You know I love a good old-fashioned show tune, don't you?" And Elton replies, "Not really…."

To be sure, Mr. Alessandrini looks back nostalgically to the good old days of pre-Disneyfied Broadway, before the Great Corporate White Way became over-cute, over-miked, over-sold and under-age. An inspired, lunatic silliness is one of the revue's appealing calling cards–from crashing toy helicopters to the endlessly revolving dizzy cast of Les Misérables , to the "show as old time / Worn as it could be"–the now-downsized Beauty and the Beast :

Just a little change

Says the Disney beast

Profits growing thin

Downsizing is in

Beauty 's been decreased.

This season, the send-ups that had me on the floor with laughter were a frantic Aida ("Cheesy" and "Elaborate Sets"), Les Miz ("Ten Years More") and a Lion King with its cast of elaborately costumed lions and giraffes wearing neck braces ("Can you feel the pain tonight?"). As we invariably think at Forbidden Broadway , the immensely talented cast of four appears on the postage-stamp-size stage to be more gifted–and more fun–than anyone on Broadway. All thanks to trusty Christine Pedi, to Tony Nation and Danny Gurwin, and to Felicia Finley in her super debut with the company.

This much I know. If it's time for Forbidden Broadway , all's well with the world–nearly. Which brings us, reluctantly, to the opening of Seussical, The Musical at the Richard Rodgers. Or as Mr. Alessandrini puts it in his spoof of The Music Man :

Oh, we got trouble!

Right here in New York City

Right here in New York City

With a capital T

And that rhymes with D

And that stands for DULL!

IS THERE A DR. IN THE HOUSE?

Seussical hadn't yet opened when I saw Forbidden Broadway , and Mr. Alessandrini made only a passing, prescient reference to it: "Now the Cat in the Hat's here / Validating your worst fear…." But I'm afraid that "dull" would be putting it quite kindly for this most troubled new musical.

The bad word of mouth before its opening–the numerous firings and departures, including the loss of its director, Frank Galati, whose name still appears in the program although he left the show in Boston–weren't the healthiest sign. But flops have been salvaged at the last minute before. In fact, you find yourself wishing Seussical well–hoping those fixed, desperate, beaming smiles glued to the faces of the game performers could make all the problems, all the charmless, ill-conceived Technicolor Munchkinland goo of it go away.

But it won't. Based on the works of Dr. Seuss, and conceived by lyricist Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty (with Eric Idle of Monty Python), the piece turns out to be less Seuss, more low-rent Disney. Forget that the vulgar costumes by William Ivey Long actually make rent boys out of monkeys. We may wonder from the outset whether adults would wish to see a musical involving a love affair between a cute little bird and a wan elephant. And if so, why? The children at the performance I attended seemed pretty unexcited by the mild, token story cobbled together from Seuss' Horton the elephant and naughty Jo-Jo and the invisible Whos et al.

We may wonder, too, why they would cast a mime as the star of a musical. David Shiner is without question a wonderful mime, but one feels for him and his Cat in the Hat here. His genius resides in his untamable risky anarchy, like the Cat's. But they've gone and shackled him! They've reined in his joyful, subversive free spirit–in the name of what?

Sweetness is all, harmless, unimaginative and cheap–like the relentlessly bouncy tunes, the cheesy, blindingly lit jungle that scarcely suggests a jungle at all, the familiar, dated disco choreography, the modest, intelligent Seussian statements now writ large and blatant and patronizingly "child-like" for unhappy families on Broadway.