Al Pacino

“We have a Shakespearean, Elizabethean temper,” Al Pacino informed a seated crowd Monday evening in Central Park. As part of its 50th Anniversary Gala, the Public Theater was honoring Mr. Pacino with an award, in the form of a prop rapier he had once wielded on stage, “I’m a little nervous,” he laughed. “I wish I had water, but I have a sword,”

While the audience of hundreds listened to Mr. Pacino with rapt attention, a secondary scrum gathered across the fence. What appeared to be backup pitchers on a hapless softball team abandoned their game to listen to the famed thespian. Soon, a quintessentially New York amalgam of dog-walkers, skateboarders and bright-eyed Broadway hopefuls paused their iPods, essaying to hear Mr. Pacino over the Central Park din.

Earlier, as guests arrived, many seemed to materialize suddenly from the Where’s Waldo-esque ether of the park. From the throngs of sunglassed and unknowing denizens, Julianna Margulies and husband Keith Lieberthal appeared, followed by Chelsea Clinton and Mac Mezvinsky, Kathleen Turner, Julia Stiles and Lily Rabe.

The red carpet, positioned on the West side of the theater, was situated atop a blind hill. With clipboard in hand, one unlucky PR staffer was tasked with running up and down the escarpment, alerting her superiors when the VIPS arrived—the Public’s own Paul Revere. (Listen, dear readers, and you will hear, her stage-whispering celebrity arrivals from far and near!)

Returning to the Delacorte theater was a sort of homecoming for Ms. Rabe, who acted alongside Mr. Pacino last year in The Merchant of Venice. “Working with Al Pacino was one of the great privileges of my life,” she told The Observer. “He’s a wonderful human being, and being able to spend a year of my life, a very complicated year of my life, with him through all of that was something that I’m very grateful for.”

She insisted she wasn’t nervous when she first met the actor, however, and made no special preparations for the occasion. “I didn’t do anything. I probably, I don’t know, I rolled out of bed and took a shower,” she laughed. (Such élan!) While meeting her idols does not make her ill at ease, other things certainly do: “You know, snakes. Snakes not for me. People, more for me.”

As Ms. Rabe headed toward dinner, Steve Martin appeared wearing a fedora. He rushed towards his seat, and declined to be interviewed, with an unconvincing half-apology. “But I like The Observer!” he called over his shoulder, “It’s a great paper!” God bless you Mr. Martin! Don’t worry, we’ll talk next time.

Bob Balaban, however, proved perfectly chatty when asked which of the Bard’s characters he most identifies with. “Easily Caliban, because no other Shakespearean character is almost my name. It’s the only one!” he exclaimed gaily. “What could it be, Richard III? No. That doesn’t sound like Balaban.” The actor went on to describe his busy summer, which includes a book tour for his upcoming title The Creature from the Seventh Grade. “Its completely autobiographical,” he said. “But in this case the boy turns into an eight and a half foot reptile, which I didn’t do.” Describing himself as “shortest, skinniest, most-incompetent boy in his class,” Mr. Balaban professed that he has “fabulously good and fabulously horrifying memories of the seventh grade.”

At dinner on the Delacorte’s northeasterly lawn, guests toasted the Public’s half-century of free plays. White lanterns bobbled in the slight breeze as Christine Quinn saluted the organization.

As the main course was being served, Tony Kushner shared his favorite Shakespearean play. “For various reasons, Midsummer, because I think its about theater itself. So it seems like to me it’s sort of at the center of things.” Sadly, we didn’t have the opportunity to press him further, as we were overwhelmed by hundreds of passing chicken breasts.

After the meal, the crowds sought their seats for the evening’s reading of Romeo and Juliet. Attempting to avoid the clogged corridors, full of chatting and meandering guests, many attendees hoofed it across the lawn, only to find they had to mount a thigh-high fence to access the stage. Revelers young and old, spry and not so spry, heaved legs over the railing in an show of theatric acrobatics. Several sets of unmentionables were unwittingly flashed.

Before finding our seat, we ran into Cynthia Nixon, whose fire-red hair is growing back after her stint as a cancer-stricken professor in the Broadway show Wit. The actress, however, doesn’t know if she will keep her tresses short. “People keep asking me that. I’m getting a lot of positive reinforcement about the length,” she said, pulling at the still downy strands.

Inside the theater, guests rose for a standing ovation as the cast took the stage. Meryl Streep larked a lighthearted vision of Juliet, while Kevin Kline read opposite, as Romeo. Christopher Walken earned the most laughs as a sometimes Queens-inflected Mercutio, and Christine Baranski appeared as the nurse. Throughout the reading, flashing, fluorescent underbellies of passing planes reminded viewers they were sitting beneath the midsummer Manhattan sky.

After the performance, we found Ethan Hawke. Asked what he would ask Shakespeare if he had one question, Mr. Hawke thought for several moments, before offering a response. “What happens when we die?” he concluded. Genius or cheeky (or both), we have not yet decided. We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

After the reading, guests returned to the Delacorte’s front lawn, and enjoyed dancing, desserts and drinks. “Can I get champagne and wine? Is that bad?” one guest asked her friend guiltily.

The clock neared midnight. The softball team had long since packed its bats (after yet another loss, it seemed), and the Great Lawn was quiet once more. The party at the Delacorte continued, however. With glasses in hand guests danced into night, ill-chosen spike heels sinking into the new summer sod.

editorial@observer.com

Oleanna, David Mamet’s tense two-hander about student-professor gender politics and power dynamics, was arriving in theaters only three years after Anita Hill testified against Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court. And it was just two years after Oleanna’s successful stage-play debut Off Broadway. But in those heady early-Clinton years, as the post-p.c. era was dawning, the Reagan- and Bush-era campus culture wars seemed far away, at least to those then on campus. Another 15 years later, with the Broadway revival of Oleanna opening at the Golden Theatre Sunday night, its sexual-harassment standoff feels as historic an artifact as Justice Thomas’ can of Coke.

In Oleanna’s first scene, Carol, a student who doesn’t understand what’s been going on in class, comes to her professor’s office to ask for assistance; John, the professor—distracted, as-yet untenured and attempting to be compassionate—offers to help. In its second scene, Carol has filed a report with the tenure committee, accusing John of sexual harassment, and John is attempting to find out why. In its explosive final scene, he has been denied tenure, and Carol has accused him of rape.

That first scene is meant to be ambiguous—whose interpretation of the events is true, or at least more true?—but at the Golden it doesn’t play that way. This is partially because its culture-war language is today so unconvincing. (“I saw you, Professor. For two semesters sit there, stand there and exploit our, as you thought, ‘paternal prerogative,’ and what is that but rape,” Carol says at one point, sounding ridiculous to our 2009 ears but not, I think, meant to read as self-parody.)

But it is also because Julia Stiles, the lovely film actress, is so miscast as the student. She gives a good if inevitably mannered performance in her Broadway debut. (The always-mannered Rebecca Pidgeon, Mr. Mamet’s wife, originated the role.)

“You have no idea what it cost me to come to this school” is simply unbelievable coming from a poised, confident Wasp. She never seems harassed, only commanding. Bill Pullman, who plays John, is on the other hand shamblingly professorial from the first scene. Which means that the audience is automatically wondering only to what extent, and to what end, Carol has manipulated her professor.

During the two scene breaks, director Dough Hughes has automated Venetian blinds along the upstage wall of John’s office raise and lower themselves, with the hum of their motor amplified through the theater. That amplified hum grows obnoxiously louder, especially leading into the final scene, presumably to convey building frustration and anger. What’s left—and there is something—is an interesting portrait of interpersonal power dynamics, rendered in dexterously handled vintage Mamet dialogue.

OLEANNA IS A mere adolescent alongside The Royal Family, George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s satire of the Barrymore family, which debuted on Broadway in 1927 and returned last week to the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre in Manhattan Theatre Club’s latest revival of an aged script that was in no particular need of reviving.

Granted, if you must revive The Royal Family, this is the way to do it. The cast is near uniformly excellent: Jan Maxwell plays Julie Cavendish, the reigning star of a legendary family of stage actors, and Rosemary Harris, who was Julie in the 1975 revival, plays her mother, Fanny, the aging Cavendish matriarch. They share a sprawling East Side duplex with Julie’s daughter, a promising ingénue played by Kelli Barrett; an overburdened butler and housekeeper; and, finally, when he returns from Hollywood with press and perhaps police giving chase, Julie’s brother, the womanizing bon vivant Tony Cavendish.

Jon Lee Beaty’s set is decadent and commanding, a huge Edwardian living room filled with overstuffed furniture, a grand piano, tchotckes on tables, stagebills on walls, and plenty of doors and hallways to be run in and out of. And the period costumes by Catherine Zuber are—pun intended, but unavoidable—exuberantly handsome.

The basic question of the night is whether these to-the-stage-born actors can be happy as normal people, folks who, for a change, value their romances and real-world commitments over their devotion to their craft. And in the second act, when Ms. Harris and Ms. Maxwell sing the praises of their profession with ardor and enthusiasm, when director Doug Hughes moves his many actors on and off the stage with farcelike speed and precision, bringing them together at center stage in perfect tableaux, everything comes together, and the audience is delighted.

But, alas, you’ve got to sit through a lot to get to those moments of delight. The boring first act is heavily expository—though one suspects it would be funnier if today’s audiences had a finer appreciation for Barrymore jokes—and the third is dull and maudlin. And, of course, we all know the answer to that main question from the moment the curtain first rises:

There’s no business like show business; there’s no people like show people; and of course all the Cavendishes will remain onstage.

I just saved you—well, Irving Berlin and I just saved you—three hours.

WHILE NEW YORK’S major institutional theater companies are keen to gaze wistfully at the past—whether that early-20th-century acting dynasty at MTC; Elvismania and the putting on of a happy face, starting tomorrow night at Roundabout; or the eternal question of whether one can in fact spend an enchanted evening with a man who has two half-Polynesian children, for a solid year and a half at Lincoln Center Theater—the Second Stage Theatre has the odd habit of confronting with the present.

Let Me Down Easy, Anna Deavere Smith’s new one-woman show, which opened there last week, takes on current, pressing, real-world issues—life, death and the health care system—and it’s spectacular.

Ms. Smith is best known for her technique, performing monologues of real peoples’ words, mimicking each speaker, often with the aid of small props—glasses, a hat. The result is a series of impressive, uncannily realized performances. But it’s also something of a parlor trick, Rich Little in a legitimate theater.

Ms. Smith’s true genius lies in the editing. She is a wonderful actress, but she is an even better journalist. Let Me Down Easy uses the words of 20 different people, from whom Ms. Smith has elicited fascinating, moving, sad, funny and gut-wrenching stories. She knows how to ask questions, and she knows how to assemble the answers, well-crafted testimonials shaped into a well-crafted play.

Lance Armstrong talks about the body as a machine, one that must be kept in proper operating condition. Brent Williams, a rodeo rider, has a Westerner’s skepticism of big plans and big government but speaks admiringly of the care he received at a military hospital, where doctors are all government employees and work together, for a salary. Hazel Merritt, a poor woman in New Haven, Conn., tells of her daughter’s disastrous dialysis—the machine malfunctioned, blood spewed on Merritt, her daughter, and the room, but no medical staff was nearby to hear their cries for help. Finally, nurses shut down the machine, told Merritt to bring her daughter back another day and sent them home in a taxi, Merritt’s blood-soaked daughter wrapped in a sheet.

And Kirsta Kurtz-Burke, a doctor at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, talks of the dawning realization during Katrina that her poor patients were being ignored and forgotten.

“You just see the desperation of being poor in this country, and in some ways the distrust, I mean the deep down—this is not the first time this has happened to people,” she says. “I’m privileged, and this is the first time I’ve ever been totally abandoned by my government. But this wasn’t the first time for my patients or the nurses.”

The Kurtz-Burke monologue is devastating, but each one is profound and meaningful. (A few of the celebrities could have been excised; Eve Ensler and Lauren Hutton, for example, add little.) Together, they create a deeply thought-provoking look at life and death and a powerful and necessary reminder that the health care debate isn’t just about reimbursement rates and CBO scoring and Olympia Snowe but about real people, who sometimes get sick and who eventually die.

It’s the best theatrical experience I’ve had this season.

MEANWHILE, DOWN AT the Public Theater, artistic director Oskar Eustis is busy trying to convince the world that his current (and excellent) cash cow, the Broadway transfer of 1968’s “American Tribal Love-Rock Musical,” Hair, is actually about modern gay-rights protesters. (It’s not.) But on Monday night, as the Hair cast returned from Washington and a gig at the National Equality March, Lemon Andersen’s entirely up-to-date one-man memoir, County of Kings—a production not of the Public but of the Culture Project, plus high-profile backers including Spike Lee—opened in the Public’s Newman Theater.

County of Kings begins with Mr. Andersen onstage at the Tony Awards; Russell Simmons’s Def Poetry Jam, in which he performed, has won for special theatrical event. (“When they say this is the Great White Way,” he says, “man they sure ain’t playing.”) It flashes back from there: He grew up in a Brooklyn housing project with a loving but heroin-addicted mother and a loving but heroin-addicted and car-stealing stepdad. Mom died of AIDS; Mr. Andersen dealt drugs and did two stints in prison. Behind bars a second time, he discovered books and words. And, when released, he stumbled upon an open-mike night at the El Puente community center in Williamsburg. Words—poetry—saved his life.

The play suffers from some of the standard pitfalls of biographical solo shows. (There’s a bit too much of “And then I remember my neighbor, Mrs. Judy,” followed by a stylized portrayal of crabby Mrs. Judy.) But that’s a small matter. The thrill Mr. Andersen gets from language, from massaging it, finessing it, delivering it, is palpable and delightful. His script is impressive, his delivery better. And Elise Thoron’s direction (she’s also listed as a “developer” of the show), combined with Jane Cox and Lily Fossner’s lighting and Robert Kaplowitz’s sound design, give impressive texture and dynamism to what could otherwise be one guy standing onstage talking.

Most important, County of Kings is unmistakably a piece for today. And it has brought an audience of actual New Yorkers—my fellow theatergoers were much younger, and far more diverse, than usual in New York, especially at a Sunday matinee—to the theater. Their exuberance at the show’s end was cathartic—and infectious.

editorial@observer.com

Between camera flashes we found Julia Stiles in the V.I.P. section. She was wearing a black sleeveless dress with what seemed to be tiny black feather embellishments. What did she think of Fashion Week so far?

"Um, it's really funny to me," she said, spinning to face us. "Because it's like, I'm sort of relieved that I don't work in fashion! Everybody seems stressed out all the time."

The actress Tatum O'Neal agreed. "The hectic-ness of the whole thing is a little more than I can bear," she said. "Unless I had a job at a magazine and I had to go [to another show], I dont think I could. I have to leave to go to L.A. to work tomorrow. I'm done. This is it. My friend Hunter was trying to get me to go to William Rast, Justin Timberlake's show. But not even that."

Ms. O'Neal continued: "And i think with the economy the way it is, I want to see clothes that are American made. I want to see organic fabric. I don't necessarily want to see us spending money on clothes. I want people to be eating, I think that's my thing this year."

The film’s screening on Main Street and the after-party at Cittanuova were attended by designer Calvin Klein, actress Kerry Washington, socialite-decorator Celerie Kemble and hubby Boykin Curry, photographer Bruce Weber­—surrounded by handsome men—as well as magazine editor/self-described “Bourne freak” Dave Zincezenko. (“What is it you edit—Men’s Journal? Men’s Health?” someone was overheard asking Mr. Zinczenko, who gamely explained that it was the latter, adding: “I have a blog.”)

Ms. Washington, who starred with Ms. Stiles in Save the Last Dance, was holding court at the bar. “My mother is the biggest Robert Ludlum fan on the planet,” she said. “When I watch these movies, it makes me think of her. I’m not really into spy fiction myself. Not really my thing.”

Another Bourne co-star, Joan Allen, was looking approximately 32 (she is 50) as she ate dinner, very tan and blond in a floor-length red gown. “With the surveillance, with the C.I.A. and our government, with everything going on in our world these days, I think it’s very relevant,” she said of the film. So are there really cameras all over New York City, as Bourne suggests? “I interviewed a couple women who are in the C.I.A., or were in the C.I.A.,” she said. “I think they’d say the answer to that would be classified!” Well, alrighty, then!

At the end of the night, a trim, very sober Jay McInerney was among the last standing. “It’s my wife’s birthday,” he said apologetically, retreating to the table where Anne Hearst waited, alone in her black frock. Then he nodded wearily towards the Transom’s half-eaten cup of gelato. “It’s good, isn’t it?” Indeed it was.

This new romantic fairy tale, directed by Martha Coolidge, is not exactly patterned after la princesse de Philadelphie , but Paige Morgan, the all-American blonde played by Julia Stiles, looks peachy in a king's ransom worth of crown jewels. She's a girl from Wisconsin whose friends are engaged, getting married and relinquishing their independence. She rebels by going to med school. Meanwhile, way off in some castle in Elsinore, blond, blue-eyed Prince Edward Valdemar Dangaard of Denmark (camera-ready Luke Mably) is no Hamlet, although he is always in trouble with fast cars and even faster peasants. Eschewing family tradition, he figures that what he needs is a year in Wisconsin to meet foxy American college girls, see. So he passes himself off as an ordinary guy named Eddie and moves into a cramped dorm with his valet/guardian/baby-sitter/best friend Soren (Ben Miller). When the campus gets a look at the valet, who irons his shirts and makes him eggs Benedict on a hot plate, everyone thinks that Eddie is gay. A new infatuation with Paige, his lab partner in chemistry class, eases the tension, and when he accompanies her home to her family's Wisconsin dairy farm for Thanksgiving, the friendship heats up even more. Nothing like milking cows to set a crown prince's hormones raging. Her skeptical brothers are still suspicious, until he shows them how to soup up the engines on their riding mowers for the local tractor race. What a sport: the future king of Denmark, wearing yellow hats shaped like wedges of cheddar cheese and racing the local rednecks on riding lawnmowers. Now everyone's in love with Eddie, even the cows. They still don't know he's a prince hiding out incognito-until, that is, the ink-stained wretches from the tabloids charge onto the campus and blow his cover. Now it's Ms. Stiles' turn to house-guest. In Denmark, she rides through the golden gates of the royal palace on her dreamboat's royal stallion. Overnight, she turns from a Purina Feed ad into Princess Di. Now it's the king and queen of Denmark (James Fox and Miranda Richardson) who raise their eyebrows condescendingly. But nothing can deter the prince. This is the kind of love that Hans Christian Andersen and Walt Disney dreamed about, and Ms. Stiles is all set to produce royal babies. But then the screenwriters get a dose of royal guilt and bring Paige to her senses. Who can stand all those trips on the royal yacht, picnics on the royal riverbanks, couturier gowns for the royal ball and seven-course dinners on gold china in the palace dining room when you can go home to dissect frogs in bio-science class? You can hear the groans of girls from 9 to 19 all the way to Copenhagen. But wait! Miraculously, Paige's American ingenuity, pragmatism and unselfish influence on the prince turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to the monarchy. Cue trumpets. Fade to Cinderella finale. Get that big farmhouse foot into that glass slipper, girl. This movie is going for a happy ending even if it kills everybody on the payroll.

The situations in The Prince and Me never delve beneath the surface of contrivance, so the characters are never truly believable. But Julia Stiles is such a fetching actress that her sincerity camouflages make-believe better than anything you can buy at Bergdorf's. Director Martha Coolidge has flexed her feminist muscles on many occasions, but this time the material offers her no edge at all. Mostly, she just lets the pretty Ms. Stiles and the even prettier Mr. Mably do their stuff while the film keeps rolling, and she's wise enough to get out of the way. The resulting confection is so sweet it could give you diabetes, but how can you get tough with a movie that wears its heart on its sleeve like a smile button?

Swinging Sisters

It must be in the genes. You've heard about sisters named Andrews, brothers named Smothers, families of Fondas and assorted Baldwins, Arquettes and Gabors. Now here come the Callaways! One of New York's cabaret treasures, Ann Hampton Callaway, is a jazz high priestess, and her sister Liz is one of Broadway's most talented but underrated stars-in-waiting. Together, they are knocking them dead at Feinstein's at the Regency with a high-flying show that embraces all of the styles they have mastered in their separate careers. It's nothing short of terrific. In the arid territory that signifies what's left of the dying swank supper-club scene, they already made a blinding impact nine years ago with an act called Sibling Revelry . (You can buy it on CD.) Relative Harmony , the clever new act they're unveiling now, is a sort of star-spangled sequel in which both sisters polish off the art of what they do best, together and apart, when somebody shows them a piano and says, "Go, girls, go!" The results are sophisticated, humorous and intensely, relentlessly musical.

Ann wraps her celebrated chops around the contrapuntal chords of the jazz riff "Cloudburst," then Liz meets the ultimate challenge of absurd meters, unpronounceable syllables, daunting modulations and shifting tempos from Stephen Sondheim, singing "Another Hundred Lyrics Just Flew Out of My Brain" to the tune of you-know-what tongue-twisting classic from Company ! When Ann good-naturedly interrupts Liz's applause to show off her awards for her singing-songwriting accomplishments, Liz holds up her Emmy. (Both have been Tony-nominated, too.) If Liz warms the cockles with the kind of 11 o'clock numbers she has perfected in shows like Baby and Cats , then Ann stops the heart with a powerful, throaty and adrenaline-pumped torch arrangement of Jerry Herman's "If He Walked into My Life" from Mame that makes you wonder why she isn't starring on Broadway in a show of her own. If Ann electrifies with jazz pyrotechnics, Liz demonstrates how adaptable she is in her sister's milieu with some hot licks of her own. When the versatility and harmony of their two styles blend on an awesome Harold Arlen juxtaposition of "Stormy Weather" and "When the Sun Comes Out," the craft, musicianship and pure beauty of their voices is as good as it gets. Doubling your pleasure like the Doublemint twins, they are all of the King Sisters rolled into one and cut in half to go around. If there were any more like them at home, it would be too much for the neighborhood.

With so many jazz, swing, pop and show tunes to cover, there's only one thing left to do. Yes, there's a killer medley that leaves no stone unturned, no style unexplored and no customer underwhelmed. On 18 songs, from "Bosom Buddies" to "Ohio" to "Happy Days Are Here Again," their voices blend and soar and intertwine like two colorful balloons in the breeze over Central Park. Most cabaret acts amount to nothing more than misinformed, misguided amateurs grinding through all the wrong songs in mewling agony. After what I've suffered through lately, it is not only gratifying to hear real, genuine, supersonic talent on a cabaret stage, but downright miraculous as well. Get hip to the Callaways and learn what a great cabaret act is all about.

Pardon Me, Please

Into every popular and successful theater tradition, some rain must eventually fall. But in the case of "Encores!" at City Center, the second production of the 2004 season, George and Ira Gershwin's 1933 musical flop Pardon My English , was more like a monsoon.

One of the pleasures of this series of staged concerts of shows that haven't been seen for decades is trying to figure out why they weren't better appreciated in their own day. In the case of Pardon My English , the question on a number of minds was why this paralyzing farce was ever produced in the first place. I could name a dozen shows worthy of a slick "Encores!" refurbishing without pausing for a comma. Pardon My English would never be one of them. There's no dishonor in failure, but this show was such a catastrophe from the beginning that even Ira Gershwin has gone on record as hating every minute of it. Writers and directors came and went, cast members were replaced, the original star (Jack Buchanan) walked out during the out-of-town previews, and what New Yorkers finally saw on Jan. 20, 1933, was a dismal mess that folded after 46 performances. In his famous book Lyrics on Several Occasions , Ira Gershwin wrote: "Opening night in New York, I stood among the few standees, but only for the first twenty minutes. A bad cold and a lukewarm audience had me home by 9:30."

No wonder. The show made audiences nervous from the overture on, for good reason. Here, at the height of the Depression-at the same time that Hitler rose to power in Germany-was a show set in a Dresden speakeasy that opens with German customers and waiters singing "Drink, drink, drink … to the dear old Fatherland!" (According to historian Gerald Bordman's American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle , published by Oxford University Press, the show's German setting was disturbing to many in light of the daily headlines; the night it closed, Berlin's Reichstag burned.) Between what Ira Gershwin called "the worst lyric I ever wrote" ("I gave up pie and ice cream / 'Cause your lips make better desserts / You'll pardon my Polish / But you're the nerts!") and dialogue like "Oh, my pulchritudinous parlor maid from Potsdam!", the muddled plot is about six addled psychiatrists examining the case of a split personality, one of whom is an English secret agent with a passion for American gangster films, and the other a German bootlegger named Golo Schmidt who is also the criminal ringleader of a gang of thieves who rob the home of a Dresden police commissioner, who is also the sauerkraut king. (The alter egos were both played with a large helping of ham and sung with accompanying relish by Brian D'Arcy James.) There is also something about a pair of Americans who are wrongly arrested for the robbery and a 40-pound liverwurst. This is quite enough, thank you-an assessment with which the appalled looks on the faces of the first-nighters around me at this "Encores!" fiasco seemed to agree. Under the circumstances, it is worth noting that three notable songs emerged from the otherwise awkward and brainless score. "My Cousin from Milwaukee" and "The Lorelei" were both turned into showstoppers by the always splendid Emily Skinner. Stealing the show as buxom Polish chanteuse Gita Gobel, "the Knightengale from Kracow," she was as guttural and too-Teutonic as Madeleine Kahn impersonating Marlene Dietrich in Blazing Saddles . And "Isn't it a Pity" originated here, too. Would you believe that it was a duet between two lovers-a world-traveling British agent who can't speak German and a non-English-speaking daughter of the sauerkraut king? Which finally explains the beloved lyric, "You reading Heine / I, somewhere in China." You learn the darnedest things at "Encores!"-some of which are better left unknown, if you ask me.

When that I was and a little tiny boy

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

A foolish thing was but a toy,

For the rain it raineth every day.

Well, that's certainly true. The tradition of Shakespeare in the Park comes every year with hey, ho, the wind and the rain. All agree-that is, nobody I know disagrees -that you do not go to see the Public Theater's Shakespeare productions without a tremor of doubt in your heart. We always hope for the best. But I'm afraid that experience has taught us to fear the worst.

The productions have always varied in excellence. But of late, they've become notoriously potluck, as if casting untrained TV "stars" and romping celebs is enough to sell the "product." What are they selling ? (It's free!)

People will go anyway. People will travel through fire to go to the theater-provided you offer them the chance of experiencing something remarkable. Does the Public Theater currently have the will?

Due to cutbacks, its Shakespeare in the Park season has gone from its customary two summer shows to the single production of a starry Twelfth Night . There was no alternative, it seems. But it's a worrying sign. However hit-or-miss the productions are, the most important work the Public could do is its free Shakespeare. The tradition is the magnificent legacy of Joseph Papp, the Public's founding father. Papp saw the possibilities-insisting on the right of the people to experience the greatest of all dramatists without paying a dime. Without Shakespeare in the Park, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers might never have had the opportunity of even going to the theater.

And then there's the artistic reality of the productions themselves, which we often sentimentalize and usually forgive, because even bad Shakespeare is somehow a good thing . What exhausting effort they make to popularize the most popular playwright in the world! They're the ones who induce psychological rain dances.

It so happens the Twelfth Night production-whose unusual design concept is surfing, as in "hang ten"-was rained out the night I was due to see it. The relief! (I must confess); then the conscience .... The Twelfth Night cast is led by Jimmy Smits (of L.A. Law and NYPD Blue ) as Orsino, and the hot young movie star Julia Stiles as Viola. Ms. Stiles, who's still a student at Columbia, has very little stage experience. She's appeared in The Vagina Monologues , but then, haven't we all? She's also the star of three hip Shakespeare films, including her Ophelia to Ethan Hawke's Hamlet.

Unfortunately, the next night I was due to see the production there was a storm watch. It had nothing to do with me, I assure you. I heard the news on the Accu-Weather Forecast delivered by Sam Champion, who is soon to play King Lear at Lincoln Center. But, alas, the rain raineth in buckets. By this time, I was feeling deprived of Shakespeare, and so dashed at the last minute to see the highly regarded Aquila Theatre Company's production of The Comedy of Errors , which takes place indoors. It's similar to Twelfth Night : storm scene, twins, gender confusion, happy ending.

If near-lunatic energy made great Shakespeare, the small, talented Aquila ensemble would win hands down. True, The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare's silliest play, but let the play speak for itself. The frantically clowning, miming, mugging, rolling, wildly gesticulating, feverishly jesting cast adds lots of boisterous cartoon sound effects to the lines: "Grrrrr! Grrrrr!" "Swish!" "Zyup!" The line "I say nay to that" is thus accompanied by neighing. And to that I say, "Tush." Or, "Tush, tush."

Yet for all that, the language itself-the bits between all the business -is well spoken. If only the Aquila troupe would calm down and illustrate the text less. But I'm not sure they want to. Their credo is to communicate with visceral power. As they put it in a scholarly note in their Playbill : "It was, of course, the Greeks who first used the term 'theater,' meaning 'seeing-place.' With this in mind, to study only the textual influences on drama is to discredit the very reason why audiences choose to go and see a play."

Yes, but Shakespeare asked audiences to hear a play. We see a play, of course. But the text and the poetry conjure up the magic. Theseus speaks for Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night's Dream when lovely Lion and Moonshine et al. perform their little play for him:

I will hear that play;

For never anything can be amiss,

When simpleness and duty tender it.

And so, at last, under clear skies to the Public's Twelfth Night , where there's duty enough. But "simplicity" is not a word in its Shakespearean universe. Text is secondary; text is always feared. The amazing surfing production by Brian Kulick, in tandem with his scenic designer Walt Spangler, is to be seen, not heard.

They've taken Shakespeare's subtitle "What You Will"-whatever!-literally, and swamped the proceedings with the bold, mad concept of a precariously steep slope down which Viola surfs into the action along with other brave, wobbly souls. They whoosh and wobble down the blue cardboard wave as if shooting the tube while lying face-up on mats. But not always. To a thoroughly deserved burst of applause, David Harbour's spirited pirate Antonio conquers the tsunami standing up. On his perfect, soft landing, Mr. Harbour, one of the best actors in the production, takes a bow, as if to say: "Radical, dude!"

It was at least a sensational beginning. Less Illyria, more Hawaii. The storm scene itself-and where would Shakespeare be without storms ?-isn't, well, stormy. It's jolly . But then, the entire focus throughout the production is on the wave and a shipwrecked galleon we've already seen at the start. For, once there, they can't get rid of them. And once we've seen them-once we've seen the trick-what then?

And so there they sit, like patience on a monument-the wave and the ship-waiting inertly for something to happen. Until, that is, another character comes surfing merrily into town, to the by now more muted response of the audience. And the play?

Oh, that . The play is the most perfect of Shakespeare's romantic comedies, and it's his last. Twelfth Night was written just before Hamlet . It's the bridge to the tragedies. But the muddled emphasis of Mr. Kulick's production is on the clownish. The romance is muted, the darker notes unplayed. Good old belching Sir Toby Belch and his half-witted companion, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, have their moments here, no doubt. But Oliver Platt and Michael Stuhlbarg are low, slow comics, and Twelfth Night is nothing if not fast.

The assured Ms. Stiles' Viola has no stage poetry in her, I regret to say. The flat, downward inflections of her voice are earnest, her performance as a whole played on the same unmysterious note. We must fall in love with the wonder of Viola, if we can. The mature Mr. Smits' Duke of Illyria is too fussily blah even for the narcissistic Orsino. Michael Potts' Feste sings beautifully (but to the wrong music). Kathryn Meisle sparks as Olivia, but then Christopher Lloyd's Malvolio is a deadly kind of Puritan. The surprising mean-spirited dimension to Malvolio's downfall-his pathetic, even tragic undertow-is fatally absent. Special mention, though, of Zach Braff's Sebastian, Viola's twin brother. This practically unknown actor possesses the speed and musicality that delight us.

But strip away the set- the wave -and what are we left with? And the answer is, the wind and the rain. Hey, ho! At least with theater, there's always a new beginning.

But that's all one, our play is done,

And we'll strive to please you every day .

At her hotel, Julie encounters the young employee whom she brusquely fired earlier for being late with the visual aids for the disastrous presentation. Both women are seen trudging around with their wheeled baggage as figures on a new urban landscape. Paula Murphy (Julia Stiles) seems far from crushed by Julie's abrupt action, which intrigues Julie somewhat, particularly after she has received firsthand news that, far from being fired, she's been made the new C.E.O. of her company. At last she's reached the top of the mountain, and her first reaction is panicky confusion. Suddenly realizing how lonely she's been during her single-minded quest, Julie is more anxious than ever to make contact with another human being, especially a young woman she may have possibly wronged. Paula accepts Julie's offer to rehire her over a conciliatory drink at the hotel bar, and the two women spend the entire evening together, virtually double-dating with an assortment of itinerant businessmen. Their conversations become a clash of generations in which neither party gives any ground.

When Julie introduces Paula to Nick, the younger woman seems strangely disturbed and rushes to the ladies' room. Paula says Nick date-raped her friend in college and now pretends not to recognize her. Julie is shocked and disgusted by Nick's action and agrees to help Paula get revenge. The denouement takes place in Julie's suite, where things get rapidly out of control. After a borderline-violent final half hour, we are left with a series of ambiguities, the harsh termination of Julie's relationship with Paula and new uncertainties in Julie's relationship with Nick. Actually, the voyage is more satisfying than the destination.

Mr. Stettner's debut production evolved spiritually from his 15-minute thesis film at the Columbia School of the Arts. The film was called Flux and featured Allison Janney, who currently plays the press secretary in The West Wing . He subsequently developed the script for The Business of Strangers at the Sundance Screenwriters and Directors' Labs. The feelings of older women, apart from marriage and parenting, are a strange area of dramatic inquiry for a young male filmmaker, particularly in this male- and youth-oriented period in movie marketing.

The performances of Ms. Channing, Ms. Stiles and Mr. Weller reach a level of drunken melodramatic intensity that is not fully consummated in the anticlimactic narrative. But the film is not exactly a tease; it's more a spasm of reality and probability. The important thing is that Ms. Channing and Ms. Stiles are evenly matched in their generational duel, with no time taken off to be winningly charming. There is a reversal of sorts, with Julie starting off vulnerable and ending up charitably wise, and Paula starting off wise-ass and ending up wistfully vulnerable. In the process, Mr. Steller has displayed an admirable flair for repartee devoid of malice and misogyny. That alone makes The Business of Strangers worth seeing.

Afghanistan: The 20-Plus-Year War

Jung (War) in the Land of the Mujaheddin was produced by Italian filmmakers Alberto Vendemmiati, Fabrizio Lazzaretti and Giuseppe Petitto, and had its North American premiere at the 2001 Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, where it received the festival's Nestor Almendros Award for courage and commitment in human-rights filmmaking. Filmed over several months from 1999 to 2000, this understandably chaotic film focuses on an Italian surgeon and a war correspondent who join forces to set up an emergency hospital in northern Afghanistan, a country engulfed in war for more than 20 years.

The Taliban took over the country in 1996, and they seem to be on their way out in 2001. Yet Jung is nothing if not timely, relevant and resonant in its heroic humanism in the face of the seemingly endless suffering of the people in this war-ravaged land, and one cannot find much political enlightenment in this often gruesome depiction of the victims of war. How a nation should be fed and governed is not the first priority of the film's hospital-enclosed humanitarians. What is actually accomplished here is truly Herculean, but it is only the beginning of the huge task that remains. The film takes place before Sept. 11, 2001, but it's shocking that we have known and cared so little about Afghanistan's travails during the last two decades.

To Mamet or Not to Mamet?

David Mamet's Heist , from his own screenplay, can be liked or disliked because of David Mamet or in spite of him. Then again, it may depend on how tired you are of caper films. I find the two robberies here too complicated as cinematic spectacles to generate any suspense. Gene Hackman can sell me just about anything he wants, but Mr. Mamet inflicts extra burdens on him as the unflappable thief who gets the big payoff at the end at the cost of his young wife (Rebecca Pidgeon) and a loyal confederate, Don Pincus (Ricky Jay). He also kills his mob nemesis, Bergman (Danny DeVito), and retains the respect of his sidekick, Bobby Blane (Delroy Lindo). I couldn't believe any of it on any level, though it could be described as "fun."

Waking the Dead

Linda Yellen's The Simian Line , from a screenplay by Gisela Bernice, based on a story by Ms. Yellen and Michael Leeds, begins on a Halloween night in Weehawken, N.J., where four couples are gathered in a festive spirit at the home of Katherine (Lynn Redgrave) and her younger lover, Rick (Harry Connick Jr.). The party is first enlivened and then disrupted by the surprise entrance of Arnita (Tyne Daly), a fortuneteller whom Rick has impishly invited for "entertainment." The evening ends badly, with Arnita's prediction that "one couple will be finished by the end of the year."

Thanks to Ms. Yellen's casual mise en scene , we don't immediately realize that two of the guests are ghosts: Edward (William Hurt) is Katharine's grandfather, who died 80 years ago, and Mae (Samantha Mathis) is a flapper from the Roaring 20's who has chosen to live her afterlife as spiritedly as she lived her candle-burning-at-both-ends existence in the house next-door to Katharine's.

The other guests–unfortunately less interesting than the ghosts–are Sandra (Cindy Crawford) and Paul (Jamey Sheridan), a two-career couple yearning for the big break that will land them both in Manhattan, and Marta (Monica Keena) and Billy (Dylan Bruno), Katharine's Generation X rock 'n' roll lodgers who are forced to grow up when Marta has to take custody of her son, little Jimmy.

In the end, Arnita's dire prediction applies only to Edward and Mae, who were never a real couple anyway. Yet Mr. Hurt and Ms. Mathis achieve a more poignant rapport to the end than any of the other couples. It's partly the characters and partly the performers who are responsible for generating more feelings in the afterlife than the film's Weehawken Six achieve in here and now.

"This is not a Washington party," said Lawrence O'Donnell Jr., a former top aide to Senator Daniel Moynihan who is now a producer of the NBC drama, The West Wing . "It's mostly Washington people, but there's more New York people here than ever. It's spiritually not a Washington party."

It was true: This party felt more Lotus than Lincoln. Big bucks had been spent; there was a sushi bar, a vodka bar, a dessert bar and more than a few bar bars, too. There was a New York D.J., Mark Ronson, spinning soul music as a gaggle of avant-garde go-go dancers bobbed and twisted in slow, rhythmic motions. There were a few celebrities–Rob Lowe! Julia Stiles! There was the dapper host, Mr. Bloomberg, who may or may not be running for Mayor of New York City.

Still, there was the unshakable sense all night that this kind of party was dead, that this town is no longer entranced by New York players, their celeb parties, and least of all their mighty media. It was clear that after eight giddy years of unchecked influence during the Bill Clinton era, the media's lengthy reign had come to an abrupt halt with the arrival of President George W. Bush–a man who managed to succeed without giving a damn about the media, period.

And that gave this year's correspondents' night–in the Clinton years, a festive, guilty-pleasure collision of Hollywood glam, Washington power and media might–a decidedly gamy scent, like an anniversary party for a baseball team that won a World Series decades ago. Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, appeared to be the only delegate from the Bush administration to show for the Bloomberg party, and there was a handful of Congressmen on hand, but that was about it. The Hollywood celebs were largely represented by Rob Lowe and his West Wing actor pals–and despite their continued success in the ratings, they, too, had a dated, Clintonian odor.

"Ninety-nine percent of official Washington is not here," Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. said, surveying the crowd. "They do not give a shit about the White House Correspondents' Dinner. They do not give a shit about this party, and they certainly don't give a shit about the cast of any television show."

Mr. Bush, of course, had long since gone to bed, and he probably wouldn't have minded napping through the entire evening as well. The White House Correspondents' Dinner may be many things–a tacky display of media decadence, the most evident sign of the shortening distance between the news media and entertainment, a queasy festival of self-congratulation or, simply, a relatively nice way to spend an evening–but this year it was definitely not the mutual back-scratching society it once was.

Earlier that night at the Washington Hilton, at 6:30 p.m.–a half hour after the bars had opened at a multitude of pre-dinner cocktail parties–the Correspondents' Dinner was still looking for a center. There was no sweet spot yet. At first people clustered at the entrance to the Hilton, where the paparazzi were getting antsy with the slim pickings of celebrities trundling out of black limousines. Why, there was Wendie Malick looking tall and beautiful. What show is she on? Just Shoot Me! Of course! Ms. Malick posed for the photographers just before Survivor Richard Hatch–talk about your fading influencers–got out of his limo. Mr. Hatch wandered around unnoticed before his picture was finally snapped. And, yes, the man in that white suit over there really was M.C. Hammer!

Much of the celebrity-wrangling duties of the evening had gone to Mr. Bloomberg. And if Julia Stiles and Rain Phoenix, who Ms. Stiles brought along, are to be trusted, booking Hollywood names is a bit more difficult when Bill Clinton isn't at the dais.

"All I know is that my girlfriend Julia invited me, and I was in the middle of nowhere and I said O.K.," said Ms. Phoenix, the sister of Joaquin and the late River and an actress herself. She added she was worried that she was somehow going to be showing support for Mr. Bush. "I was frightened by that."

Ms. Phoenix added that she only went "because I asked my press agent if it was O.K. to a) not be a Republican, b) not like President Bush. I was going anyway, just to be with Julia."

Ms. Stiles, who had been tied up with a fan, turned back to the conversation warily. "You have diarrhea of the mouth," she said to Ms. Phoenix. "You've gotta like"

"All I was saying was that there were hardly any famous people at one time, and now suddenly it's become a cluster fuck of famous people," Ms. Phoenix protested.

"It's intriguing," Ms. Stiles added diplomatically.

"It is, it's so beautiful to watch all these dorks walk around," Ms. Phoenix said.

A middle-aged woman pulled Ms. Stiles away: "I have to say," the woman said, "you could probably be the daughter of my roommate in college …."

Later, as the 2,000 dinner attendees ate their petit filet mignon and grilled salmon steak, a crowd formed toward the front of the room, just in the aisle next to Mr. Bloomberg's A-list table, which included The Sopranos ' Lorraine Bracco, Senator Fred Thompson, Susan Molinari and Charlie Rose. Gawkers gathered for a while, but the crowd eventually moved a couple of tables up to the velvet rope across from the dais, where they try to yelp questions at Mr. Bush, who was now nestled on the dais. Mr. Bush largely just smiled back and made nice noises.

Far away in the ballroom, at Table No. 243 (effectively the nosebleeds), the devilish Business Week managed to land both Ralph Nader and Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris for their table. The two, sitting on either side of a young brunette, were passionately discussing something over their grilled shrimp appetizer. Journalists spotting this unholy dinner alliance began to dub No. 243 the "Kill Al Gore" table.

When he finally came to the podium, George W. Bush was fairly charming. The digs he took at the press were gentle–"Laura and I are delighted to be here with all the major leaguers"–and he was self-deprecating, his usual media tack. His 10-minute speech took the form of a slide-show presentation–old family snapshots that furnished the punch lines for Mr. Bush's deadpan set-ups. "Somehow the press has gotten the wrong idea, that I was a smart-aleck party guy," the President said, just before a picture cued up of a young Dubya, a drink in his hand, sneering at the camera while his father peered in, aghast, from the corner of the screen. "This is an unfair perception," he continued. "See, in college, I actually did a lot of independent reading." Up came a picture of a college-aged Mr. Bush looking intently at a copy of Playboy .

Hardy-har. Mostly, Mr. Bush's 10-minute routine revolved around family: funny pictures of his mother and father, and–the hit of the night–a politically charged jab at Mr. Bush's brother Jeb. "Some people have asked me … if the vote recount left any hard feelings between my brother Jeb and me. Not a bit. In fact, here's a picture of the Governor of Florida." And on the screen came a full-frontal shot of a 5-year-old Jeb Bush. The media crowd ate it up, but this was the sort of thing that you expect at a wedding reception or family birthday party.

Saturday Night Live 's Darrell Hammond followed Mr. Bush. Though comics have been known to go a little hard on Presidents sitting at the dais– ahem, Don Imus–Mr. Hammond proved to be a softy, going as gentle on Mr. Bush as the President was on himself. This would not be a repeat of the 1971 dinner, when Richard Nixon wrote to chief of staff H.R. Haldeman that he would never go back. "The dinner, as a whole, was probably the worst of this type I have attended. The audience was drunk, crude and terribly cruel," Nixon wrote.

But no … Mr. Hammond stood up and, following a theme of the evening, expressed his awe at standing next to Mr. Bush. "Despite what I do for a living and where I do it, it's an honor and a privilege to perform for the President of the United States," he said by way of introduction.

"That said"–he paused and then laid into an old target, Mr. Clinton–"I would like to momentarily revisit the former Presidency. I feel if nothing else, it was a fun Presidency. Like, really fun. Like. every day he'd be in a different jam. And not a fender-bender. The kind of stuff James Bond can't get out of. You know what I mean? He gets caught on camera lying–and not a camera, but by all cameras. On Planet Earth. How does he get out of it? By debating the meaning of the word is ."

The audience burst into laughter. From there on out, Mr. Hammond primarily stuck to impressions and material he had already done for Saturday Night Live . He did only two jokes about Mr. Bush, and one of them was during his impression of Jay Leno. Said Mr. Hammond: "I did this night show a few weeks ago and Leno said, 'You know, apparently he's a very interesting man, George Bush, but if you think about it, all he really did was move back into his parents' old house.'"

It was a pretty gentle jab, and Mr. Bush, grateful for the comedic pardon, laughed like a good sport. Then Mr. Hammond moved on to (where else?) Al Gore and two of the more memorable bits from SNL 's Presidential-debate sketches–a high-water mark for the show. After a long monologue on Mr. Gore and his "lock box," the audience and Mr. Hammond and Mr. Bush–leaning back with his hand to his forehead–all cracked up in unison.

"Can I do some more of him?" Mr. Hammond asked. "I like doing him. I worked a year to do the damn guy and then you beat him. I'm sure you don't mind."

Mr. Hammond also did the bit about that now-infamous 94-year-old woman from Sparta, Tenn., who was inflicted with soo-oo many diseases that her prescription-drug bill reached $113 million per week. "Under my plan, her prescription drugs would be covered. Under my opponent's plan," Mr. Hammond said, gesturing over to Mr. Bush, "her house would be burned to the ground."

The only semi-current joke about Mr. Bush came towards the end, when Mr. Hammond began reading some phony "telegrams to the President."

"The Chinese crisis is dying down, Mr. President; you did an admirable job of bringing those brave men and women back home, Mr. Cheney," Mr. Hammond said. "But I did hear a rumor that the first time you met with the Chinese ambassador, you brought your laundry. That's not true, is it? That's not right."

Then Mr. Hammond got lost in his notes and started off on a set of women-and-men jokes. It was a strange performance.

Later that night, up the hill at the Bloomberg party, Mr. Hammond was standing behind a railing smoking a cigarette while fans walked up.

He said he walked up to the podium not knowing exactly what he was going to be doing. "I wrote more material than I needed, because it's really unnatural to have the power structure of Planet Earth in a room, and then you've got to make them laugh even though you never met any of them," Mr. Hammond said in a voice–if it is his normal speaking voice–that sounds very close to his Clinton impersonation. The plan, he said, was to move around among topics and see what went over well. "I got lucky early on with the Clinton stuff and then the rest of it, I had an idea of who they were."

The consensus of the post-dinner chattering was that Mr. Hammond had gone way too easy on Mr. Bush. Mr. Hammond admitted that, indeed, he'd been scared about going too far.

"I was afraid of George Bush," he said. "He's the new President. I have no relationship with him at all; I don't know him yet."

An enthusiastic fan walked up to Mr. Hammond. "Excellent job! Awesome!" he said.

"Thank you, sir. God bless you," Mr. Hammond responded in an Alabama accent.

Ms. Stiles, with Ms. Phoenix in tow, came up next.

"Hi, Julia," Mr. Hammond said.

The two young beauties said they had been working hard to get people to dance. They had been out on the floor for an hour or so, going back and forth to Mr. Ronson–who Ms. Stiles, star of Save the Last Dance , described as "cute"–to request OutKast and the Notorious B.I.G.

Pretty soon, the place was teeming with dancing journalists–and yes, that phrase is just as scary to watch as it is to write, believe us–stretching and sweating and staining tuxedos and cocktail dresses. Even CNN correspondent Bob Franken went for a spin on the dance floor.

Ms. Stiles, who got the chance to meet Wolf Blitzer of CNN (who she says mistook her for Kate Hudson), was pretty proud of her handiwork. "I want credit for starting the bar mitzvah!" she said.

At 3:30 a.m., with the music off, the lights on and the bartenders packing up the bar, Off the Record gamely tramped back down the hill to the Washington Hilton for an after- after-party in a suite with about a dozen of the attendees. Room service was closed for the night and there are no minibars at the Hilton, so a box full of beer and vodka was smuggled out from the Bloomberg bars. Everything was sociable until about 5 a.m., when just six or so people were left in the room, including Mr. Hammond, MSNBC anchor Ashleigh Banfield, the New York Post 's Richard Johnson and party photographer Patrick McMullan.

Sure enough, that was when the cops showed up. The two officers stood holding open the door to the room, making it clear that this party was over. (In fairness, they were very patient, considering the scene inside the room resembled a gaggle of teenagers busted on prom night for sipping vodka out of Snapple bottles.)

At that point, Mr. Hammond had had enough with Washington, D.C. He announced to Ms. Banfield that he was going to hire a car to drive him back to Manhattan right then and there. She, however, was having trouble finding her trademark glasses. Standing out in the hall, Mr. Hammond begged her to just leave the specs behind.

"Ashleigh, I'll buy you another pair in Manhattan," he said in his Southern voice that again veered into his impression of Mr. Clinton. "Ashleigh, the law is here. It's time to go ."

This week, as the New York Post gloatingly celebrated its circulation gains in print–a week after owner Rupert Murdoch canned Xana Antunes for reasons including his belief that she hadn't driven circulation up enough– fear settled in at the Daily News. Over in Mort Zuckerman's neighborhood, word spread that layoffs were in store for 2 percent of the newspaper's work force, estimated to be from 1,500 to 2,000. That would translate to between 30 and 40 jobs cut.

A spokesman for the News said the layoffs were being spurred by "slowing economy and rising newsprint costs," but there isn't a newspaper in the land that hasn't known about increases in both of those costs for months. Coincidentally or not, the news of the layoffs at the News comes on the heels of new Audit Bureau of Circulations figures for the six months ended March 31, 2001, figures that show the News lost 2 percent of its daily circulation since the year before and is down to 716,095 copies a day.

The New York Post , meanwhile, reported a 50,675 gain, to 487,219 copies a day.

The New York Newspaper Guild sounded the alarm about the News cutbacks first, publishing an announcement on April 30 on its Web site that around 20 positions in its bargaining group would be eliminated. How much say the Guild will have in all that–if any–is unclear. The Guild, which represents editorial, circulation and advertising employees, has not had a contract with the News since Mort Zuckerman purchased the paper in 1993. This past January, the Guild and the News reentered contract negotiations.

"It's pretty grim," said union shop steward and News columnist Juan Gonzalez. "You have to be concerned, since there are no clear determined criteria, like seniority, other than who they decide they don't need. So everyone's worried."

According to Mr. Gonzalez, the ax could fall haphazardly, from recent Daily News Express hires to reporters with a 20-year seniority. "We're urging them to do voluntary retirement, but we don't know whether they'll listen to us," he said. "The fair thing would be to first offer anybody who wants to leave, rather than just pick people." This, he said, was less than likely. "Maybe lightning will strike."

According to a spokesman for the paper, the News will begin laying people off later this week.

–Elisabeth Franck

These are particularly glorious days to be a Columbia guy, because this year, the usual male hormonal stew in Morningside Heights is blessed not just by girls bearing tank tops but by movie stars , and two of them: Julia Stiles, star of Save the Last Dance and a recent Rolling Stone cover girl, and Anna Paquin, a 1993 Oscar winner for The Piano , who recently appeared in the hits Almost Famous and X-Men. Both Ms. Stiles and Ms. Paquin are members of Columbia's freshman class; and if that duo weren't potent enough, Dawson's Creek star Katie Holmes was supposed to be here, too, but she deferred her enrollment.

This Hollywood invasion has made the men at Columbia–like the boys at Yale who went ga-ga for Claire Danes and the guys at Harvard who dreamed of Natalie Portman–starstruck and a little bit nervous. Back in high school, these guys probably fantasized about these actresses, watching them 10 feet tall at some suburban multiplex, and now they're sitting next to them in class, in the library, in the dining hall ….

Of course, they're still guys, and so they try–rather unsuccessfully–to play it cool, all Fonzie and Fight Club , like it's not such a big deal to see Anna and Julia around.

"People crowd around them, but that's all the dorks , man," said a Columbia men's soccer player named Brian as he sat on the steps of Low Library with his friends, most of them soccer players, too. "You got so many dorks at this school who want to go up and touch them and smell them. Us, we don't really give a shit , to tell you the truth."

Brian's buddies looked at him blankly.

"At least I don't," Brian said.

A brawny Asian guy on the steps named Dave reported that Ms. Paquin was in his French class. How's her French? "Alright," Dave said. "She's an actress. She likes to embellish ." He pronounced "embellish" with a fancy-pants cadence.

The guys on the library steps recognized one of their posse crossing the quad in the distance. "Jason!" they called out. Jason Colombo, a dark-haired sophomore in a DKNY sweater, loped over.

Mr. Colombo was unabashed about his interest in Ms. Stiles. He said he met her one night late in the fall semester at the West End, the popular campus watering hole on Broadway.

"She was pretty cool," Mr. Colombo said. "She's always there … I talked to her for, like, 45 minutes ."

Suddenly, Mr. Colombo's soccer pals–some of whom had professed ambivalence about Ms. Stiles just minutes ago–were hanging on his every word. It was like that scene in the beginning of Grease where John Travolta returns to high school and tells a rapt audience of T-Birds about his summer fling with a beauty named Sandy.

"I made fun of her a little bit, and she was cool with it," Mr. Colombo continued. "I told her that when she smiles, her lip is weird. I seriously said that to her! She told me that her father told her that, too. She has a really good face, so I told her that …."

You could almost hear the T-Birds singing "Summer Nights." Tell me more, tell me more / Was it love at first sight?

"It was pretty good," Mr. Colombo went on. "I talked about all the things I didn't want to talk about, like her being famous."

Mr. Colombo said he made a lot of new friends because of his courage that night. "There were people coming up like the whole time, talking to me while I'm talking to her," he said. "People that I'm friends with, but not really friends with, just 'cause I'm talking to her–like, ' Yo, Jay! What's going on? ' and tapping me on the shoulder."

Alas, Danny–er, Mr. Colombo–didn't manage to get Ms. Stiles' telephone number.

"I was expecting to, but no–like, everybody kept jumping in and out," he complained. "I got tired of everybody coming up talking to me while I was talking to her, so that was that. I gave her a kiss on the cheek and left."

I gave her a kiss on the cheek. You could practically hear a pin drop.

"That was a long time ago," Mr. Colombo said. "She's in one of my classes now, and we like give each other the head nod now, but not like anything else."

Talking to young men at Columbia that afternoon, it became clear that, despite some mild pooh-poohing of their movies, there is, in fact, a great deal of speculation about the campus lives of Ms. Stiles and Ms. Paquin. Some of it is cute. Some of it is mean. Some of it is creepy. Some of it is just … speculation.

A few consensus observations emerged, however:

1. Anna Paquin smokes like a chimney, frequently enjoying cigarettes right outside the doors of her no-smoking residence hall.

2. For a while, Julia Stiles dated Joseph Gordon-Levitt, another freshman at Columbia, who played Tommy Solomon in Third Rock From the Sun and also had a part alongside Ms. Stiles in her film 10 Things I Hate About You .

3. Ms. Stiles and Mr. Gordon-Levitt are no longer an item.

4. Anna Paquin is–or at least until recently, was–dating a fellow Columbia freshman named Alex. Alex was described by a fellow Columbia male as a "total urban hipster."

5. Ms. Stiles created a little campus brouhaha when, during a recent appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien , she apparently referred to the cafeteria workers at John Jay Hall as "mole people."

But generally speaking, the Columbia boys seemed kind of flummoxed about how to deal with these celebrity classmates. After all, these are 18-, 19- and 20-year-old men, many of whom have trouble talking to the opposite sex, period, never mind a pair of movie stars. Still, a few had taken a page from Jason Colombo's book and swooped in to make a bold approach.

"At the beginning of the semester, I was actually nice to Anna Paquin," said a sophomore named Will Murphy. "I complimented her on her movies, on winning an Oscar at 11. She was just sort of reaching over and taking the cherries [from behind the bar] at the West End. I said, 'You can't do that,' and we started talking. I was just trying to give her a hard time, but she was cool about it."

Mr. Murphy pretty much bombed with Ms. Stiles, though he tried to put a favorable spin on the story. "It's so awful," he said. "Me and one of my roommates were at [the bar] Jake's Dilemma, right? I had heard that she was there, so I sort of got up and started screaming her name … and she was having none of that."

Mr. Murphy continued. "Jake's Dilemma has an upstairs and a downstairs bar, and we were downstairs doing all these shots, and so I walk upstairs and she's standing right there, and I give her a tap on the shoulder and I say, 'What's your name?' and she says, 'Julia,' and I say, 'Julia what ?' Then–this is what I was told, I don't really remember the conversation–but she wanted to talk more, and I sort of blew her off."

As Mr. Murphy's wild tale showed, even when the Columbia boys try to profess detachment or even distaste for Ms. Stiles or Ms. Paquin, they end up sounding a little like, well, college boys. Later that afternoon, The Observer encountered two 19-year-old freshmen, Richard Rosenblum and Patrick Luhan, and a friend of theirs, Josh Clark, who was visiting from the School of Visual Arts. They were smoking cigarettes on their way to get a bite to eat.

Mr. Rosenblum, who said he had met neither Ms. Stiles nor Ms. Paquin, nevertheless offered that Ms. Stiles was known for talking to the "nerdiest, ugliest kids" in the student dining hall. Mr. Luhan said that he, too, had seen Ms. Paquin puffing away on cigarettes around campus and at bars.

Then Mr. Rosenblum launched into a long impression of Ms. Paquin in a Columbia dining hall. "You see her out and hear her saying, 'All I've had to eat today was these fava beans , but I wish I could have the pizza ,'" he said, trying to imitate Ms. Paquin's Kiwi accent. "I'm like, 'Why don't you have the pizza?' And she's like, 'I don't eat cheese .'"

Then Mr. Rosenblum and Mr. Luhan proceeded to say some flatly awful and unprintable things about both Ms. Stiles and Ms. Paquin, most of them plainly untrue.

But then, when asked if they might be interested in hooking up with either Ms. Stiles or Ms. Paquin–as if that was ever the faintest of possibilities–both Mr. Rosenblum and Mr. Luhan said that yes, of course they'd be interested. (Mr. Clark, the School of Visual Arts student, said that he, too, would be interested, except that instead of "interested" he used a rather unfortunate turn of phrase.)

Mr. Rosenblum then launched into another impromptu fantasy sequence. "I'd love to be in the paper with [either Ms. Paquin or Ms. Stiles] talking about how she met this fantastic guy, Richard Rosenblum of Florida, math genius , and she'll have a quote saying, 'Yeah, Richard changed my life, the way his face spoke to me when I met him, and I was just more intrigued with him than any of my directors.'

"If they hit on me, I would be either one of their boyfriends."

But if there is an epicenter of weird Julia Stiles emotions on the campus of Columbia, it is a junior named Benjamin Letzler. Mr. Letzler, a self-appointed "smear-job artist" who writes occasional editorials for the Columbia Spectator (in his prouder moments, he has called Professor Edward Said "fat" and boasts about labeling a handful of university administrators "drunks" in print), got all bent out of shape when he heard that Ms. Stiles had dissed Columbia men and the cafeteria workers on Conan O'Brien's show.

Mr. Letzler responded with a piece in the Feb. 20 Spectator in which he referred to Ms. Stiles as a "sloe-eyed Hollywood wench." That column prompted Ms. Stiles to pen a retort in a subsequent op-ed column in the daily, in which she pretty much apologized for her cafeteria-staff quote on Conan but accused Mr. Letzler of mudslinging. "Even lunch ladies and Hollywood wenches have feelings," Ms. Stiles wrote.

Mr. Letzler, a somewhat nervous and cerebral young man with glasses, was still upset with Ms. Stiles nearly two months later. He explained his enmity over a beer at the West End.

" She complains that I'm insulting her to get in with people," he said. "Am I insulting her and saying horrible things about her to make friends? At some level I surely am, because I can't just make a teeny-bop comedy and have no end of teenage boys who admire my body. Those avenues just aren't open to me. It's probably some sort of complex I have from being a short, bespectacled Jewish man."

Mr. Letzler said he hadn't met Ms. Stiles personally, and he confessed that when he did catch sight of her in J.J.'s Place, a campus eatery, he ran away.

"I'm honestly a little afraid of her," he said. "For all I know, she'll slug me, or use her jujitsu chop to crush my liver or something." Mr. Letzler said he has now become a big Anna Paquin fan in reaction to the outcry.

Somehow, however, it seems that Julia Stiles–a young woman who's kissed both Heath Ledger and Ethan Hawke on-screen–has managed to get over Mr. Letzler. In a brief e-mail exchange with The Observer, Ms. Stiles wrote that her Spectator piece pretty much spoke for itself.

As for the college guys at Columbia University, Ms. Stiles sounded like she was pretty well-adjusted to them, too.

"I have no problem with them, and I don't really know why they have a problem with me," Ms. Stiles wrote. "Probably those who do have a problem with me have never actually talked to me."

heard once. Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan resolve not to behave as their errant mates

have done, but the strange thing is that Mrs. Chan actually means it. Besides,

the degree of stylization achieved with an unseen husband and an unseen wife

makes it unlikely that Mrs. Chan will ever remove her ornamental dress or allow

it to be torn from her by Mr. Chow-even when they virtually spend nights

together collaborating on a martial-arts serial for Mr. Chow's newspaper.

Indeed, they seem terrified that their relationship, platonic as it is, will be

discovered by their landlady and the other tenants.

But without any direct confrontation with their respective

spouses, there can be no resolution of their mutual dilemma. The most lyrical

passages of the film are of Mrs. Chan walking alone on her various errands. She

rehearses with Mr. Chow what she will say to her husband, but she never does

it. In the margins of the romance are the upheavals of history that transformed

Hong Kong and all of East Asia. The film ends on a mystical note in a Cambodian

temple, the last resting place of a broken heart. In the Mood for Love is ultimately a work of brilliance that

expresses more than it communicates.

Dance Fever

Thomas Carter's Save

the Last Dance , from a screenplay by Duane Adler and Cheryl Edwards, based

on a story by Mr. Adler, touches on many provocative, once-taboo issues without

plunging too deeply into any of them. Still, when all is said and done, I must

confess that I liked the movie as a form of well-crafted good-bad

entertainment. Much of it is flimsily contrived, sentimental and toothlessly

melodramatic. Its central premise, of a single, beautiful white teenager

becalmed in an all-African-American inner-city Chicago high school, is

completely unbelievable. But what can I say? The awesomely talented Julia

Stiles as the Caucasian cutie makes me want to believe, and the equally

talented African-American performers-Sean Patrick Thomas, Kerry Washington,

Fredro Starr and Bianca Lawson-are disciplined enough to take the fantasy plot

seriously, to the point of playing its climaxes full throttle (and without

snickering facetiously).

Ms. Stiles plays Sara, a budding suburban ballerina who is

traumatized by the death of her devoted mother, who perishes speeding

recklessly to her daughter's audition for Juilliard. Ms. Stiles is clearly

being doubled in the more difficult pointe positions by increasingly obtrusive

cuts to the feet, with occasional full-bodied long shots thrown in to

complicate the illusion. But how Ms. Stiles can strut when she enters the world

of hip-hop, fakery and all. Fortunately, her acting doesn't need to be dubbed.

Sara's steamy romance

with Mr. Thomas' Derek is a long way from the days when Joan Fontaine received

reams of hate mail for holding hands with Harry Belafonte in Island

in the Sun (1957). On a

television show of the same period, a musical number in which Mr. Belafonte

held hands with Petula Clark was censored in the South for fear the Confederacy

would rise again to protest the slightest physical contact between the races.

(Even now, we have the Bush-and-Ashcroft-blessed Bob Jones University to keep

the faith.) Curiously, the shoe is now on the other foot, with African-American

women objecting to white women allegedly stalking the few maritally eligible

black males in circulation. Ms. Washington's Chenille, a single mother and

student who has to deal with her child's ne'er-do-well father hanging around uselessly,

tells Sara off, more in sorrow than anger, because she has befriended the

isolated Sara from the outset. Her words of bitter criticism thus carry more

weight for Sara than they would if they had been motivated by jealousy. Derek,

after all, is Chenille's brother and has been accepted at Georgetown.

In the middle of this brouhaha is the beleaguered Derek, who

not only has to cope with the shifting moods of Sara and Chenille but also the

debt he owes to Malakai (Fredro Starr), a street-smart friend headed for a life

of crime and violence, who took the rap years ago for a robbery he and Derek

committed together. Torn as he is, Derek refuses to accompany Malakai on a gang

rumble.

The sociology here is paper-thin, and the congested dance

delirium of the hip-hop events comes perilously close to a contemporary form of

minstrelsy. Yet Ms. Stiles' rising star remains in the ascendant, even without

what are normally considered breakthrough parts. Except for her jailbait role

in the otherwise grown-up State and Main ,

she has remained with her peer group both on and off the screen, while

projecting an intelligence and sophistication worthy of the young virgins of

Shakespeare and Austen. After bursting out last year as an updated Katharina in

10 Things I Hate About You (loosely

based on Shakespeare's Taming of the

Shrew ), Ms. Stiles suggested that the many amusing ways she could say "no"

suggested that she could do anything. Now she has convinced me.

I have almost forgotten Terry Kinney's thankless role as

Sara's estranged father Roy, whose gigs as a jazz musician force him to live in

the inner city and send his daughter to an inner-city high school. Mr. Kinney

conveys a hapless decency as Roy, though his marriage to Sara's mother probably

collapsed because he couldn't make a decent wage. My heart went out to him as

he or Sara-I can't remember which-asked Derek if he liked jazz, and Derek

sheepishly replied no. I suddenly had an image of Roy playing jazz for slumming

white folk, while all around him the local inhabitants were ignoring his art.

Not that the film goes very deeply or very seriously into hip-hop, either; it

just stabs at the atmosphere. Save the

Last Dance won't make my 10-best list at the end of the year, but it is

probably not the worst movie I will see this year-not by a long shot.

Unspecified Husband

Wanted

Chen Kuo-Fu's The Personals , from a screenplay he

wrote with Chen Shih-Chieh, based on a story by Chen Yo-Hui, takes an

unpromising subject and transforms it into a consistently sparkling entertainment

and, eventually, a moving experience. Rene Liu, a mesmerizing actress in any

language, plays Dr. Du Jia-Zhen, a hospital optician. One day she quits her

job, places an ad in the paper indicating that a "Miss Wu" is looking for a

husband, and waits for what turns out to be a flood of applicants. The

filmmakers have availed themselves of a variety of narrative strategies, mixing

inner monologues with apparent interviews later in time and, of course, the

candid comments of the mob of men who have answered Du's ad. At first the tone

is comic, as if the filmmakers have chosen to begin with the bottom of the

barrel. As Du tells an academic confidant, she ends up feeling like a voyeur.

She is amazed at how much her suitors tell her, and she is somewhat ashamed as

well inasmuch as she is hiding behind a false name, "Miss Wu" rather than Du.

When she is finally unmasked, it is by a blind former

patient who has recognized her voice on the telephone and comes to the coffee

house to confront her. He asks her why she has chosen a false name to interview

the applicants for her hand. Du doesn't answer, but we've come to suspect

there's some hidden part of her life that's expressed in mysterious phone calls

to the answering service of her former lover. She asks the blind man how he

lives, and he replies that he plays his musical instrument under tunnels and

begs for contributions. Eventually Du leaves him under a tunnel practicing his

craft while she continues her quest.

The applicants themselves range from the outrageously

lecherous and presumptuous to the poetically pathetic and poignant. At times,

the spectacle resembles an audition for actors who are not sure what part they

are expected to play-and even less what the unexpectedly attractive "Miss Wu"

wants them to play. The sheer psychological, sociological and physical variety

of the applicants is impressive enough, but the changing reactions of Du are

more impressive still. The Personals

is a real gem of a movie. Don't miss it.