Jon Stewart (Getty Images)

It’s hard to believe Jon Stewart has time to spare before the presidential election, but for the fourth year running, he’s hosting his Night of Too Many Stars benefit, an apolitical gathering devoted to raising money for autism research. Funny people (Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan, Seth Rogen, Jerry Seinfeld) and, well, untraditional comedians (Julianne Moore, Bill O’Reilly, Katy Perry) are appearing to tape a live sketch show that will air on Comedy Central on October 21 ... Earlier in the day, the Public Theater invites neighbors citywide to an open house to showcase its revamped and refurbished (to the tune of $40 million!) Astor Place home, with sneak peeks at upcoming productions including the Alison Bechdel adaptation Fun Home. Anyone planning on cabbing it, beware: a stretch of Lafayette Street’s closing down for the party!

Night of Too Many Stars, Beacon Theatre, 2124 Broadway, 7:30pm, tickets and information can be found at comedycentral.com/shows/night-of-too-many-stars; Public Theater block party, Lafayette Street between Astor Place and East Fourth Street, 12pm-5pm, open to the public.

The audience, mainly female—go figure—responded with the obedient clinking, and subsequent sinking, of glasses that reverberated through Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater. And vagina was indeed the theme of the evening at These Girls, Glamour’s night of monologues by young ladies they’ve deemed the new generation of female voices.

It quickly became apparent that for all involved (Olivia Wilde, Leandra Medine, Rashida Jones, Zosia Mamet, Aubrey Plaza and Lauren Miller), this was a chance to have a real heart-to-heart—you know, girl talk—so far from their usual introverted selves.

“Tonight, these girls can be who they uniquely are fan-fucking-tastic,” exclaimed Gloria Steinem.

It was refreshing, we suppose, though The Observer did feel a tinge of sympathy for the few men in the audience. 

“I’ve had my fair share of interesting menstrual cycles,” read Ari Graynor, whose reading of Leandra Medine’s monologue was largely, and explicitly, preoccupied with periods (of the menstrual kind, we figure the grammar was spot on).

One in particular, nearly cost Ms Medine her place at college. The fact that Ms Medine did not perform the monologue herself suggested just how appropriate the title, Over Sharing is Underrated, was.

The guys shuffled awkwardly in their seats.

“Guys are raging against the independent woman machine,” read actress and Harvard graduate Rashida Jones, the next act to grab the men by the balls. Cue the high pitched whooping from the females in the audience.

There were more gender-neutral monologues, however. Actress and comedienne Aubrey Plaza recalled how she had spent her life running in front of the great wave of the establishment in A Million Life Opportunities, Zero Job Opportunities. She spoke about her inability to hold down a job when she was younger due to her only applying to the ones that sounded “funny,” like being the judge of a dog contest. She’d never owned a dog in her life.

Lauren Miller, wife of Seth Rogen, recalled entries from her teenage diary—a diary of self-loathing—in Don’t Talk Down to Me, I’m on My Way Up.

“I’m fat and ugly and have pimples—I will never be happy,” she read, before an entry admitting she wanted to move to L.A. and marry a movie star. Success!

We are a little less hopeful for Olivia Wilde, who, in “The Fabulous Olivialand,” proclaimed that everyone will stay married for only seven happy years, at which time his or her children will be ferried off to boarding school. After Ms Wilde briefly touched on her marriage, and recent divorce, from Tao Ruspoli (they married at the tender age of nineteen on a school bus), we began to understand her logic that love is better kept short and sweet.

But such is life and Ms. Wilde gushed over her new beau, funnyman Jason Sudeikis, who was in the audience.

“Seven years is too short,” Ms. Wilde decided.

Garfunkel and Oates, the mismatched duo, entertained us between monologues with their hysterical take on dating, before Alexa Chung appeared on the decks as Amy Poehler shouted “Vagina, vagina, vagina, vagina!” and the audience downed their drinks once and for all.

Meryl Streep (Getty Images)

Three-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep announced last night her donation of $1 million to the Public Theater, the company at which she got an early start on the New York stage. "I give this gift in honor of the founder of The Public Theater, my friend and mentor Joseph Papp, and in remembrance of one of the theater's Board members and greatest supporters, my friend Nora Ephron," Ms. Streep announced.

This summer, Ms. Streep took part in the 50th anniversary of the Public Theater by playing Juliet in a Shakespeare in the Park production of Romeo and Juliet. The company, which organizes the summertime performances outdoors, is set to unveil to the public the $40 million renovation of its Astor Place home with an open house on October 13.

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

Julian Fleisher and Kacie Sheik in "February House." (Courtesy Joan Marcus)

February House, a splendid new musical at the Public Theater, is set in that commune-like home, and among its many achievements is to remind us that, despite what we’ve been told by innumerable New York magazine covers, Styles section features, and Lena Dunham, Brooklyn-as-bohemia is not a recent invention. This creative home was a real one—a house, granted, not an illegal loft, in Brooklyn Heights rather than Bushwick—and in 1940 and ’41 it was occupied by W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Gypsy Rose Lee and others. They wrote, sang, drank, danced, slept with each other, avoided paying rent and sniffed cocaine in back bedrooms at parties. They worked on their art, and themselves; they talked about art, and themselves; and amid all the chaos, they didn’t seem to get very much done. As the Brooklyn-frequenting if not actually Brooklynite David Byrne might note: Same as it ever was.

Their stories unfold—loves and heartbreak, artistic failures and triumphs, arguments about the artist’s political obligations in a world on the brink of war—in a haunting, minor-key production propelled by the character of George Davis (Julian Fleisher, a bald, nebbishy leading man charismatically campy and wonderfully wistful), the flamboyantly gay editor and erstwhile novelist who has assembled the house’s residents and dedicated himself to their care and feeding. February House, as 7 Middagh Street was dubbed because so many who lived there were born in that short month, is his work of art, his masterpiece.

The musical February House is its own lovely work of art. Directed by Davis McCallum, with scenic design by Riccardo Hernandez and lighting by Mark Barton, it is an impressionistic, sometimes ghostly staging, befitting a special moment that came and went. There is a battered parquet floor, a suggestion of crown molding overhead and a black, brick upstage wall on which a spectral Brooklyn Bridge occasionally appears, outlined in LEDs. The six-piece band sits onstage. There is a handful of pieces of bulky Victorian furniture, shrouded under drop cloths as the show opens.

George welcomes us to the house and introduces us to his menagerie. Auden (Erik Lochtefeld), who has “married” his acolytic young lover, Chester Kallman (A.J. Shively), is studiously avoiding any comment on the war in Europe while collaborating on a dreadful opera about Paul Bunyan with his housemate Benjamin Britten (Stanley Bahorek), the composer who lives at 7 Middagh with his own, equally alliterative lover, the singer Peter Pears (Ken Barnett). McCullers (Kristen Sieh) is drinking her way through attempts at her second novel and being seduced by Erika Mann (Stephanie Hayes), an Austrian refugee and Auden’s wife of convenience, who is agitating to get the United States into the war. Reeves McCullers (Ken Clark), Carson’s husband and a lesser writer, shows up from time to time to try to get his wife back, and Gypsy (Kacie Sheik) has moved in to write her best-selling novel, The G-String Murders, under George’s guidance. (She also pays the bills.)

These odd, compelling characters, and this mesmerizing musical, grapple with the big questions: art, love, politics. They try nonconformity; they lean back toward conformity. They find they cannot escape politics.

The book, by Seth Bockley, is efficient, effective and often witty, if sometimes overly explicated. The music and lyrics, by the (of course) young Brooklyn composer Gabriel Kahane, are sensational. His melodies are both pretty and earthbound, combining orchestral sounds with plenty of folksy banjo. There is throughout, even in the happier moments, a tinge of sadness. But it’s his lyrics that have most stayed with me.

The very first words of the musical in “Light Upon the Hill,” a love song to the house, are a poetic evocation of being young and literary in New York:

“Here’s to the driver who took me Downtown/ When I got to New York I was glad for the ride/ How the buildings we passed were all gleaming/ I was dreaming a life I’d look out from the inside/ Here’s to the parties, the galas, the benders/ The gentle bartenders who drowned us in drink/ Here’s to the sailors, the tailors, the rent boys/ I meant, boys, to tell you your tip’s on the sink.”

Next up is “A Room Comes Together,” George’s tribute to the pleasures of assembling décor—or, for that matter, a group—with its interior-rhyming wordplay: “I grow weak over antique teak/ what I seek is a teacup of bone/ I get a thrill from an iron-wrought grill/ and I finger it when I’m alone.” And, in the same song is my favorite couplet: “Growing up gay in Clinton, Michigan/ Every day I’d wish and wish again/ For a place where I would belong.”

Elsewhere, some of the lyrics come from Auden poems. There’s a mini-aria about bedbugs. (There’s also, perhaps unavoidably, an intellectually pretentious strip tease for Gypsy, “A Little Brain,” that can’t help reading like outtakes from Rodgers and Hart’s Gypsy Rose Lee spoof, “Zip.”)

But, through all that fun, there’s always the sadness. Inevitably, this happy artists’ utopia, like all utopias, will come apart. These creators must move on, must create. McCullers went back home, and her husband eventually went to war. A lovestruck Auden followed Kallman to Ann Arbor. Britten and Pear went to California. Gypsy went back to the burlesque halls. You could also say February House succumbed to Hitler: The horror in Europe made this decadent life untenable.

George was left behind in the house in Brooklyn Heights. It, too, is gone now; it fell to Robert Moses and his Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. But creative Brooklyn lives on, of course, and that’s a good thing: It has brought us February House.

editorial@observer.com

GOODBAR. (Hassan E. Hussein)

As you enter the capacious quarters of the Public Theater in the East Village, you walk through a construction site: a grand building being torn out from the inside. The space is currently undergoing renovations, but still acts as the primary location for the eighth year of Under the Radar, New York’s downtown experimental theater festival, which runs through Jan. 15.

This feeling of restoration never seems to leave as you become privy to the rich, eclectic and fiercely original performances the two weeks has to offer. Experimental theater, by definition, avoids convention, often leaving audiences questioning the value of the genre. But doubters must make the trip downtown: the offerings are impressive and remarkably diverse, including media like video, music, dance and puppetry, produced by companies based in Europe and America.

German and U.K. theater troupe Gob Squad encapsulates the spirit of the festival. The company is showing two features through the two weeks—as well as holding a soup drive (tickets are reduced if you bring a can of soup with you)—and the highlight is undoubtedly the intensely funny Super Night Shot. It is a film about films, or rather, a play about a film about films and also a collaboration with the unwitting public.

The performance involves a video recorded for exactly one hour before the audience is seated: the play is put on before the play begins. Heading into the streets, four actors each take on a role and make a movie using the city as the landscape and residents as extras, in what they term their “War on Anonymity.”

Although resorting to contrived devices to push the feature on—the whole thing seemed a little too squeaky clean for an off-the-cuff production—the spontaneity of interaction between actor and audience, and then audience again, is wholeheartedly entertaining. This is made effective by the expert charm of the four actors, who lure their counterparts to … well … kiss a rabbit.

Italian theater company Motus reviews the idea of documentary. Alexis. A Greek Tragedy—a courageous production based on the 2008 shooting of a Greek teenager by a policeman—uses the events that followed to discuss the usefulness of documentary making.

Motus uses Brechtian techniques with, on the most part, clinical precision. For example, a line of red tape is stretched out of the theater, across the street and down the block (Brecht’s main aim was for the audience to take the ideas of the play out with them), while the performers compose themselves for the next installment (remaining on stage during a scene change is quintessential Brecht).

The show’s climax is a corny mustering of as many audience members as possible to come onto the floor and “see from a different angle.” Nonetheless, Alexis remains an exciting, harrowing and intelligent show that leaves you pondering all the right things. Its connections to Occupy Wall Street—with recent newspaper clippings displayed on screen and the recurrent theme of the many protesting against the few—means it’s sure to be a hard hitter among those interested in that cause.

The early journals of writer, thinker and critic Susan Sontag are brought to the stage in the Builders Association’s production of Sontag: Reborn. Two characters, young Sontag and old Sontag—both performed by Moe Angelo with the latter in the form of film—punctuate each other’s speech. The script was adapted from the journals along with Ms. Sontag’s own annotations on her writing and although this makes for flat dialogue, the premise is superb.

Joshua Higgason’s intelligent design is easy on the eye, but it’s the performance of Ms. Angelo that shines through. Her acting is astounding. One easily forgets that she is playing both roles as she draws you in with nuance after nuance, gently reminding us of the frailties of the growing mind. Her performance is especially impressive considering that Ms. Sontag is not an easy character to get a grip on. She, herself, believes artists should not be judged by their behavior but by their art.

The critic’s journals are self-indulgent and sometimes quite literally masturbatory, but director Marianne Weems’s gilded touch makes it a pleasure to watch this ambitious interaction. The Builders are a rare treat for the theatergoer: a company that satisfies both intellectually and aesthetically. For cheap.

Alexis. A Greek Tragedy. (Pierre Borasci)

It is not very often that a regular theatergoer is completely stumped, but Waterwell’s production of Goodbar accomplishes exactly that. The term “live concept album” is being attached to the production, but it is more than that. Goodbar embraces every convention of musical theater and then turns it on its head. It is a musical for people who don’t like musicals, and for that matter, for people who do. Some numbers resonate more than others, but as a concept it is electrifying, with performances from Waterwell’s collaborator Bambi to match.

The group excels in this original adaptation of the single-woman classic, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, with terrific energy. Even the volume transcends any preconceptions of performance (earplugs are provided on entrance). Kevin Townley and Hanna Cheek are left breathless as they push their lungs to the limit for the full 80 minutes, all the while supported by a delightfully macabre ensemble. The splendid costumes alone deserve a whole review.

Having said that, this brash, unforgiving production may not be to more conservative theatergoers’ taste.

Among the other noteworthy productions are Lick but Don’t Swallow, in which an angel comes from heaven to find she is a porn star, and The Table, which is theatrical puppetry inspired by Beckett, Ikea and the Bible, from award-winning British company Blind Summit Theatre.

Just about any performance at this festival—no matter how seemingly outlandish—is well worth a look. Providing consistently strong productions at interesting downtown venues, at a time when New York is filled with talent scouts from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, and thus attracting the best theater companies there are, Under the Radar deserves to be supported.

hkrempels@observer.com

Ms. Groff's protagonist is Sid Silver, and he's a stand-in for Meyer Levin, the now forgotten author who played a large role in bringing Anne Frank's diary to American popular consciousness. (Among many other things, Levin wrote a 1956 best-selling novel based on the case of Leopold and Loeb, which he titled Compulsion and which featured a fictionalized version of himself, a character named Sid Silver.)

Levin's was a fascinating and absorbing train wreck of a life. In his view, and in Sid Silver's (if not necessarily in precise historical fact), he was single-handedly responsible for bringing the diary to the United States, after discovering a French translation soon after the war and convincing Doubleday to publish it. He made it a success by lauding it on the front page of The New York Times Book Review (this last part is pure truth, though journalistically impure). In return, he wanted to adapt it into a stage play, and he believed Otto Frank had promised him permission to do so. When his script was rejected, and another, by a pair of Hollywood screenwriters (gentiles, notably), turned into the famous and Pulitzer Prize-winning hit, Levin became unhinged. There were suits and countersuits, bizarre conspiracy theories, vitriolic attacks on Otto Frank and a con pulled on-of all things-the IDF, in order to stage the play at last.

What makes Compulsion so compelling is that it's not—and thank God—about Anne, not yet another Feldshuh-ready Holocaust melodrama. Indeed, Anne is portrayed by a marionette, a girl with no voice of her own, constantly manipulated by others. Ms. Groff uses this remarkable tale to explore much less well-trod territory in a cleverly constructed and daringly theatrical drama.

Silver, in her telling, is legitimately convinced that Anne's diary is the best way to expose the truth of the Holocaust to the wider world, but he's also very much aware that it's his big chance to be a Broadway playwright. He's genuinely worried that the largely deracinated play undermines Anne's strong awareness of the Jewish people's unique struggles and unique obligations, but he's also paranoid that assimilated publishing-world Jews dismiss him as "too Jewish." He is dedicated to his wife, but he is powerless as his obsession with Anne and his play wreaks havoc on his marriage and home life.

Mandy Pantinkin plays Silver, as he did in out-of-town stagings at the Yale and Berkeley reps, and he's clearly dedicated to the role. It's tough to play an unhinged and unlikable character, and, though Mr. Pantinkin chews a bit too much of Eugene Lee's simple and effective scenery, he mostly succeeds. He's the ferocious heart of this play, and, as directed by Oskar Eustis, the Public's impresario, he remains magnetic even while being unbearable. You see the toll his obsessions take on him, and you see that he sees it, too.

More subtly shining is Hannah Cabell, who plays both the blond Jewish editor at Doubleday with whom Silver spars (based on Barbara Epstein, who would go on to co-found The New York Review of Books) and his aggrieved wife, who is forced to compete with a dead saint for his attentions. Matte Osian does fine work as the interchangeable series of WASPs who Silver is convinced are cheating him, and also as the Israeli director who finally stages Silver's script.

But just as the best lines in Ms. Groff's generally brilliant script go to Anne-not just the famous ones from the diary but also some very clever meta-theatrical observations-she's also the most eye-catching character, a lovely life-size doll (designed by Matt Acheson) manipulated with amazing expressiveness by puppeteers overhead. They remain visible above the stage, letting us see, for a change, the people controlling her words. Silver would like that transparency, but he'd like it more if he was the one pulling the strings.

editorial@observer.com

We’re happy here, for the most part, in our coastal bubble. We know, or at least we’re repeatedly told, on the cable-news stations and in political dialogue, that the rest of the country isn’t like us and doesn’t like us. We joke about how we sometimes visit “America,” in which we certainly don’t live, and we think we’re being ironically clever, appropriating and re-purposing what’s intended as a slur, like gay people adopting “queer,” asserting our own not-like-them identity.

But doing so also means we’re accepting that we’re not like them. We dismiss the Glenn Becks and the Sarah Palins; but we also know, or think we know, that on some level they’re right, that we tolerant, progressive, cosmopolitan, European-vacationing urbanites are not, really, real Americans. We don’t watch Fox News; but, deep down, we know that real Americans do.

The great argument and great pleasure of Ragtime—both E. L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel and the 1998 Broadway musical interpretation of it—is that in fact we’re just as American as they are, and perhaps more so. The affecting revival of the Terrence McNally–Stephen Flaherty–Lynn Ahrens musical, which opened Sunday night at the Neil Simon Theatre, leaves us Blue Staters with an often unfamiliar sense of emotional patriotism. (It’s perhaps no coincidence that this production originated in Washington, at the Kennedy Center, in the early days of the Obama administration.)

Ragtime is set at the start of the 20th century, and it tells the story of three American families: One a well-off brood of Westchester WASPs that sees the world changing around it, Father warily and Mother enthusiastically; another headed by an immigrant Jew on the Lower East Side who has dreams for his daughter’s future and reinvents himself as someone who can make those dreams come true for her; and the last a proud and gifted African-American jazz musician in love with a domestic servant who loudly—and ultimately tragically—demands his government treat him with the rights and respect to which he’s entitled.

Their stories intertwine, and also intertwine with those of real historical figures—J.P. Morgan, Emma Goldman, Harry Houdini among them—making fictional histories integral to the actual history. The black man demanding equal treatment, the immigrant creating a new life, the repressed suburbanite discovering her own ideas—they, Ragtime reminds us, are who made modern America.

I don’t remember much about the original production, but I remember being underwhelmed by it—which is something hard to say about a staging that featured not just Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Marin Mazzie but also a full-size Model T onstage and fireworks at its finale. Marcia Milgrom Dodge, in her first Broadway effort, directs and choreographs this simpler revival, and by paring back the overwhelming stagecraft, she allows Ragtime to deliver a much bigger emotional punch.

She’s helped in that by Quentin Earl Darrington’s powerful performance as Coalhouse Walker Jr., the wronged jazz musician, whose climatic “Make Them Hear You” echoed in my head for the next few days, and Christiane Noll’s beautiful singing as the increasingly liberated suburban matron, Mother. (She’s also helped, of course, by Mr. Flaherty’s memorable score.)

There is essentially a single set (by Derek McLane), an enormous, tri-level, metal-framed edifice that evokes New York’s old Penn Station. (Stanford White, its architect, is among the historical cameos.) Other bits of scenery that come and go within that big set—the house in New Rochelle, that Model T, a piano, J.P. Morgan’s famous library—are similarly simple evocations. It’s a sort of lush minimalism, and it’s lovely. (Santo Loquasto’s costumes are more lush than minimal.)

The weakness of Ragtime is, unavoidably, Mr. McNally’s adaptation of Mr. Doctorow’s epic novel. Such a project must inherently leave large chunks of its source material on the adapting-room floor, but much of the genius of Mr. Doctorow’s work is the serendipity with which his fictional plots brush up against each other and against the actual history; Mr. McNally’s book, while smartly minimizing the role of the historical characters—even with the novel’s sprawl streamlined, there remains a cast of 40—ends up often leaving them as awkward and slightly comic intrusions. (In a novel full of historic-figure run-ins, it makes sense to learn in the epilogue that Father went down on the Lusitania; in the musical it lands as a joke.)

That ending is almost cloying—the three families have coalesced, leaving one happily multiculti Brady Bunch of black, Anglo and Jewish children—and yet somehow it’s not.

With 20th-century U.S. history splayed across the big stage, with one of Mr. Flaherty’s anthems, with the whole story so confident in the promise of the future, us not-quite-real Americans are happy and hopeful and, at least for the moment, ready for our new century, too.

THE BROTHER/SISTER Plays, which opened at the Public Theater last night, are about yet another America, one alien to both Fox Newsers with their tea parties and New Yorkers with their cocktail parties: Tarell Alvin McCraney’s trilogy takes place among poor African-Americans in the Louisiana bayou.

A very strong cast of mostly young, mostly black actors perform the three plays in repertory, portraying a group of neighbors, relatives, friends and lovers in the fictional town of San Pere, Louisiana, at a somewhat mystical time the Playbill describes as the “distant present.” Together, the three paint an impressionist portrait of coming of age in that world, whether female and alone (“In the Red and Brown Water”); a man bound to his brother (“The Brother Size”); or young, gay and confused (“Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet”).

(The trilogy is performed as two evenings, which becomes confusing when you consider that two of the titles contain conjunctions. “In the Red and Brown Water” is one play, directed by Tina Landau, performed alone. “The Brothers Size” and “Marcus; or, the Secret of Sweet” are two plays, performed together, directed by Robert O’Hara.)

Mr. McCraney, also an actor, is just a few years out of Yale School of Drama but already the recipient of a range of accolades, and the writing in the trilogy is spectacular, a fascinating, haunting mix of the mystical and the vernacular, of dialect and standard speech, of dialogue and (oddly but very affectively) recitation of stage directions. The stories are grounded and earthy; they also unfold as fables. And they’re not happy stories, but they’re profound.

These three leave you thoughtful, not hopeful.

editorial@observer.com

There’ve been lots of Frank Zappa cover bands over the years, but none, presumably, as faithful to Frank’s strange muse as Zappa Plays Zappa—the project led by his son, Dweezil. After squirreling himself away to study Frank’s more than 80 albums in chronological order for two years, the guitarist emerged in 2006 to recruit musicians capable of capturing Frank’s bizarre—and dizzyingly technical—genius. (If you can’t speak personally to the wonders of a tune like “Peaches En Regalia,” we’re sure you have an uncle who will gladly testify.) Not only does Dweezil star in ZPZ, so too does long-time Zappa collaborator Ray White. The eight-piece band is in the middle of a three-night engagement at the Blender Theater at Gramercy. Friday’s show is sold out, though tickets for tonight’s performance are still available. [Tickets on sale now]

THEATER

Back in 2001, Stephen Daldry’s Billy Elliot received three Oscar nominations, including best supporting actress (for Julie Walters) and best director. The film focused on a young Brit whose love for ballet helped him rise above his working class roots and the miners’ strikes shaking Northern England in the mid-1980s. Seven years later, the movie has been turned into a musical at the Imperial Theater featuring many of the same talent—there’s Daldry as the director, as well as choreographer Peter Darling and lyricist Lee Hall. Though Daldry has no intention of recreating the film, despite its success. “We only decided to go ahead with the musical because we felt we could make it better than the film,” he told the Times. “I feel like it lives much more happily on the stage than on the screen.” Plus he managed to snag the services of Sir Elton John to write the music. Nice. “Billy Elliot" is currently in previews, and opens on November 13. [Tickets on sale now]

And finally, “If You See Something Say Something” opened at the Public Theater at Joe’s Pub on Monday. Riffing off the hated MTA slogan, Mike Daisey’s monologue constructs a super-critical history of America’s national security structure running from the creation of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico to today’s bloated Department of Homeland Security. All in all, a timely, though not entirely pleasant, reminder of our president's failed administration. Here’s to the next one! [Tickets on sale now]     

Mr. Hamingson, 45, will replace Mara Manus, who held the post for six years and helped the Public rise from financial doldrums. She's leaving in September to become executive director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, according to the New York Times. Mr. Hamingston will officially start the job in October and be in charge of all administrative and financial matters, including a $20 million budget that rose from $11 million in the past five years (Thanks, Mara!).

Oskar Eustis, the artistic director, told the Times: “He is a fantastic combination of an inside and outside guy,” Mr. Eustis said. “He really has demonstrated strong management and internal leadership skills and ability in fund-raising. Being able to do both of those was an important part of the package.”

A little more on his background: