The first thing you see is a Ben Shahn–like collage of the face of Queen Victoria with a swastika in one earring and an eye and mustache that might very well belong to Adolf Hitler. The stage is instantly, startlingly set for the three hours of music and melodrama that follow. Arrogantly but amusingly based on John Gay's 18th-century The Beggar's Opera , Brecht and Weill radically compared the moral decay of Depression-ravaged pre-Nazi Berlin in 1928 with the sinister moral decadence of Victorian England in 1836, using the catwalks, bridges, pipes and ladders of the Industrial Revolution as a backdrop for a libretto with references to the St. James Club, Albemarle Street, the slums of Whitechapel and other London locations they knew only from books and maps. The result was a bawdy form of Zeitoper , a mixture of opera and music-hall entertainment for the masses created to reflect the spirit of the times-a style Weill followed throughout his career, even in his American works, with continued success. In 1928 The Threepenny Opera , known to the German masses as Die Dreigroschenoper , captivated everyone except the Nazis, who denounced the show as hysterical Communist propaganda, closed it down, and forced Weill and his wife, the legendary Lotte Lenya, to flee for their lives. But The Threepenny Opera would not die. Since the world thinks every new generation tops the list in the historic context of moral corruption, audiences always find fresh relevance in this creaky old war-horse. Countless revivals through the decades-including Marc Blitzstein's famous 1954 adaptation in Greenwich Village (the version that is appearing in Williamstown), in which Lotte Lenya reprised her original role of Pirate Jenny; a version in 1966 featuring Swedish marionettes; the well-received Lincoln Center revival with Raul Julia; and a catastrophic Broadway version in 1989 starring the pop star Sting-always manage to reinforce public fascination with The Threepenny Opera and meet with the same mixed reactions of analysis, skepticism and controversy as the first New York production in 1933, which closed immediately after the powerful drama critic John Mason Brown denounced it as "appallingly stupid".

Well, here it is again, through July 6-uneven and a bit of a jolt to the beatific summer repose of the Berkshires, but worth another look. While the band plays cabaret-style above the proscenium, the stage below surges with the impoverished underworld of the dying Weimar Republic, singing raucously about a British coronation that took place in a previous century with accents and costumes that clash comically from both time periods. When the show isn't overwhelmed by a teeming mob of blind beggars, hyperactive black nuns, undulating brothel floozies and Keystone Kops, all overacting madly without much cohesive or purposeful group movement, the action centers on Mr. and Mrs. Peachum (David Schramm and Randy Graff), venal exploiters of the miserable and oppressed who profit from their poverty, and their daughter Polly (beautiful, crystal-voiced Melissa Errico), who scandalizes them by marrying their archenemy Macheath, the lying, thieving, murdering leader of a gang of sewer rats who terrorize the slums. Macheath (immortalized by Louis Armstrong as "Mack the Knife") is faithful to nobody, and before the exhausting evening ends, he must deal with both the law and the women who crave and betray him-a whore named Jenny (Betty Buckley), the policeman's daughter Lucy Brown (Karen Ziemba), his own wife Polly, and the frustrated, neurotic Mrs. Peachum, who secretly wants him, too, but devotes her life to sending him to the gallows. The ladies are first-class. Betty Buckley has learned a lot about subtlety, reducing her usual shrieking to measured, beautifully articulated doses of sensuality on "Pirate Jenny." Karen Ziemba's "Barbara Song" is memorable. To assure a generous showcase for the talents of his diverse female stars, Mr. Hunt has even transposed Kurt Weill's haunting "Surabaya Johnny" from the score of Happy End for Ms. Errico to sing to Macheath's den of thieves. This great song is a staple in the repertoires of throaty nightclub singers everywhere, but in the context of The Threepenny Opera , it makes no sense at all. Why is the oversexed, newly married and deliriously happy Polly delivering a tragic, heartbreaking dirge in the underground hideout of a gang of thugs while dressed in an elegant white wedding gown?

Worse still, this production suffers from one fatal flaw-Jesse L. Martin, one of the original stars of Rent and a regular on Law & Order , in the pivotal role of Macheath. It's a piece of disastrous miscasting that deals the show a mortal blow from which it never really recovers. I admire the determination to be politically color blind (if not correct), but equal-opportunity casting does not always serve the best interests of the material creatively. As a stud who reduces all women to puddles of palpitating lust, Macheath must be big, dangerous, sexy and irresistible. Lacking energy and charisma, Mr. Martin seems no more viable as a denizen of the London underworld than Sammy Davis Jr. He probably cuts a fine figure in the right role, but without any sign of direction, he seems tentative, weak and frankly lost. No match for the women circling around him in showstopping turns who overpower him vocally and dwarf him physically, Mr. Martin just disappears. Woefully, he's less Mack the Knife and more Jelly's Last Jam.

More stylized German Impressionism in the concept would have made this a better (and more coherent) interpretation of the Brecht-Weill oeuvre . Still, there is much to admire, and when I glanced at my watch in the third act, I was surprised to realize I had been sitting for three hours already without boredom. One of the abiding truths in Williamstown is that there is no time to yawn. The Threepenny Opera will be followed by John Guare's Landscape of the Body with Lili Taylor, as well as new productions of plays by Dylan Thomas, Tom Stoppard and Henrik Ibsen, while the smaller Nikos stage will host the pre–New York tryout of a new play by A.R. Gurney; Nicholas Martin will direct Estelle Parsons in Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros' Mother of Invention , starring Estelle Parsons, Bob Dishy and Matt McGrath; and the Nikos season will end in mid-August with a distinguished week-long cycle of all-repeat, all! -the great plays of Chekhov, with all-star casts yet to be announced. (Blythe Danner will be in one of them.) Are you getting the message? From the picture, is it clear why the Williamstown Theatre Festival is no longer just a summer happening for tourists, but a required destination circled on the maps of the cultured and wise.

Feel the Love

If you're stuck in the city, one of the most sophisticated and musically refined cabaret engagements of the year awaits you at the Algonquin's Oak Room, where the widely admired song stylist Sandy Stewart is appearing in an exclusive visit through Wednesday, July 9. Accompanying her unique interpretations of classic American songs with brainy and stylish arrangements that obviously reach from the heart is the sensational jazz pianist Bill Charlap. In case you no longer believe there is magic in the right gene pool, his father was the late Moose Charlap, the sensitive and talented Broadway composer whose shows included Mary Martin's Peter Pan . In case you are new to the music scene or just blossomed from the pistil and stamen of a Casablanca lily, Sandy Stewart is Bill Charlap's mother. Together, they make the kind of music you only hear about once every 10 years, if you're lucky. At the Algonquin, where they opened Monday, June 30, I know devoted diehards who plan to hear it for 10 nights in a row.

In the days when quality singing wasn't as rare as it is now, Sandy Stewart was a regular on television's long-running Perry Como Show and toured with Benny Goodman. Now that her sons Bill and Tom, both musicians, are grown men with careers of their own, she has resumed her singing with a wonderful family CD that features sons Bill and Tom on piano and bass and husband George Triffon on trumpet and flugelhorn. Bill Charlap grew up immersed in jazz and show tunes and toured after his second college year with Gerry Mulligan, Tony Bennett and others. Stardust , his recent CD of Hoagy Carmichael songs, is one of the most heavenly jazz collections I've heard in the past decade. Fast becoming New York's most critically acclaimed young pianist, he is already being touted as the one to take over where Bill Evans left off.

So why are they so special? Many of today's singers concentrate on technique. The results are often technically proficient yet emotionally chilly. Ms. Stewart never distances herself from the listener. She can sharpen the blurred lines between imagery and reality on a standard like "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" and reveal hidden elements in Cole Porter's lyrics so boldly, bravely truthful they startle you into paying closer attention, even though you think you've heard the words before. Her certainty and confidence make fresh, pensive, underexposed ballads like Arthur Siegel's insightful "Where Is Me?" shine with the luster of impeccable phrasing, while Moose Charlap's devastating "I'll Never Go There Anymore" always leaves me emotionally shattered. But this lady can also swing. Her time shifts on jazz evergreens like "It All Depends on You" and "I Concentrate on You" rise like syncopated smoke rings nourished by neon. And she still sings "My Coloring Book," the hit song by Kander and Ebb which she introduced and kept on the Top 10 list for aeons, better than anyone else. Bill Charlap's clean lines and gorgeous chords rock his mom's voice as gently as cradles, and his improvisational riffs never fail to take my breath away. The fans who flock to Sandy Stewart's engagements on her increasingly rare trips to New York from her home in Florida are enthralled by her voice. They're here for the music, not the photo ops. Don't expect hair the color of raspberry Jell-O, throat tattoos, pierced tongues or freak contestants from reality shows buried under bling-bling in tacky Jimmy Choos. So drift into the Oak Room with ease. There is some love going on here, and it rubs off, in spades.

Fun in the Sun

For pure fun in the sun, Legally Blonde 2 is a cloudless way to spend 95 air-conditioned minutes with the delectable Reese Witherspoon. From the waif in movies by Robert Mulligan and Robert Benton to a power player worth $15 million a picture, she's surpassed the phonies to come a long way in a short time. For once, the overrated learns and talent earns. This time she's back as Elle Woods, the blue-eyed, twinkle-nosed Bel-Air bimbo turned Harvard Law School graduate, engaged to her dreamboat law professor (Luke Wilson) and invading Washington, D.C. All fired up after discovering that the birth mother of her miniature Chihuahua, Bruiser, is being held captive in an animal-research lab, Elle heads for Capitol Hill to pass a law against using animal testing for cosmetics. "I taught Bruiser how to shop online," she says. "I think I can handle Congress." Dressed in her best pink, two-piece Jackie O. knockoffs, she tackles D.C. the Elle Woods way, appealing to dog lovers and fellow sorority sisters, but gets out-maneuvered by a brittle, deal-making Massachusetts Congresswoman (Sally Field). Silly, harmless fun, with candy-floss style the color of Pepto-Bismol. Without the enormous skills of Reese Witherspoon, who also acts as executive producer, you could send this one straight to Blockbuster. With her, it is a blockbuster. The cast includes fine work by Bob Newhart, Dana Ivey, Regina King and Jennifer Coolidge, the direction by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld is tongue-in-cheek yet respectful of women, the script by Kate Kondell is hilarious without being idiotic. And there is an old-fashioned message. In the end, it's Elle who turns dirty politics upside-down in the style of Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , addresses both houses of Congress, and proves what a difference one inspired Barbie doll can make appealing to a woman's pocketbook in the land of the "free gift with purchase." Yes, there will be more: Elle's already got her eye on Hillary. At the end of Legally Blonde 2 , Elle's got her eye on the White House.

There are two Steven Spielbergs. One is the cinematic historian who instructs, informs and shapes a universal consciousness that makes us aware of our stake in the human race in masterpieces like Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan . The other is a 12-year-old comic-book collector weaned on sci-fi and stuck in the twilight zone of his own nursery, who turns out polished but moronic time-wasters about dinosaurs, space ships, Indiana Jones and Peter Pan. Quel doppelgänger . I always have a hard time believing the same man capable of both greatness ( The Color Purple ) and trash ( Jurassic Park ). Occasionally, a film like E.T. or Raiders of the Lost Ark emerges to meld the technical proficiency of the craftsman with the passion of the storyteller. Bloody, violent, cold and preposterous, Minority Report is not one of them.

Despite an astronomical budget and a gallimaufry of twists and turns enhanced by special effects, Minority Report has a boring, one-dimensional story line you could write on one page of Big Chief tablet paper with a No. 2 lead pencil. Derived from a story by sci-fi spinmaster Philip K. Dick (the man responsible for Blade Runner ), it's set in Washington, D.C., in 2054. Crime has been wiped out thanks to an experimental Pre-Crime Unit called a "priori," developed by wacko scientist Max von Sydow, that can predict murders before they happen. Tom Cruise plays Detective John Anderton, the futuristic cop in charge of preventing homicides with the aid of three psychic visionaries called "Pre-Cogs" who float around in a liquid wading pool wired, drugged and having nightmares. Waving his arms like Leonard Bernstein in the orchestra pit, Anderton can download images of clues, suspects and crime scenes, then lead his futuristic crimebusters to the killers before they pull the trigger. With beady eyes, flexed jaw and a buzz cut, he's a man whose life is already so haunted by the abduction and murder of his only son that he looks and acts creepier than the Pre-Cogs.

The world has apparently survived John Ashcroft, because the Justice Department thinks the Pre-Crime Unit is too controversial a concept to go national. In a subplot that goes nowhere, Irish hunk Colin Farrell is wasted as the dull F.B.I. investigator from the Attorney General's office who covets Anderton's job. The lulling narrative drones on until the tables turn and Anderton is named by the Pre-Cogs as the next murderer. From here, the movie turns from a whodunit into a who'll-do-it as the flawed hero (he's hooked on drugs) has 36 hours to solve his own case and clear his name by breaking into the Pre-Crime lab and downloading the info from the Pre-Cog who predicted it-and Mr. Spielberg sweats it all out, stretching the film's playing time to two hours plus. Mr. Cruise, who barely survived Vanilla Sky , one of the worst movies ever made, bares his teeth and pecs in a variation of the same role he played in that fiasco-a man driven insane by a technological bad dream. Not much of a stretch there, and the techno-gibberish about "Pre-Cog echoes" and "prevision data bases," spouted with a terminally pained expression from the ludicrous script by Scott Frank and Jon Cohen, almost flattens him.

Meanwhile, Mr. Spielberg pours on the gore. In one scene, the star has his eyeballs surgically removed because in the future, we are told, identity searches scan only eyes. (Gee, whatever happened to fingerprints?) Carrying around those Tom Cruise eyes in a plastic bag as a sentimental keepsake, he drops one retina through the cracks of a drain while the other one hangs by its bloody optical nerves. Not a movie for anyone considering corrective Lasik procedures, or even changing contact lenses. Also not a movie where acting counts. Samantha Morton, with a shaved head, has an out-of-body experience as the Pre-Cog who disagrees with the others (this is called a "minority report"). Tim Blake Nelson plays the fiend who contains all of the killers, rapists and psychos from the past in data pods. The marvelous Lois Smith, who steals her brief scenes with relish as a horticulturist who holds the secrets to the minority reports, is nutty as a pecan pie. But the characters aren't human enough to be real, or metaphorical enough to be comic caricatures. In the end, they are all upstaged by the macabre effects, created by production designer Alex McDowell, that make the whole movie look as though it was staged inside a stainless-steel paint bucket.

When in doubt, bring on the gimmicks. Mr. Spielberg complies, showing off the latest stunts, tricks and toys as distractions far more interesting than the movie itself. Futuristic subway riders reading digital newspapers in which the headlines change between stops. Cops flying through space between skyscrapers like Superman in magnetic-levitation cars. Angry trees that grab you like the nasty apple orchard in The Wizard of Oz , injecting a poison that can only be cured by a foul-tasting brewed tea. Animatronic spiders slithering through walls and floorboards to identify suspects by shining a light in their eyes. Loopily cinematic, Mr. Spielberg the practical joker even stages a chase scene in a Gap store.

Some things never change. Niche filmmaking will obviously still plague us in 2054, and so will the serious, unsettling questions it raises but fails to answer. Why is it that the visions of the Pre-Cogs never extend beyond Washington, D.C.? How will the Orwellian effect of the new technology invade privacy and affect civil rights? If the Pre-Cogs see different images, how can you prove a crime is going to happen beyond a reasonable doubt? In the ideological confusion, the film loses its credibility and raises more legal, social and political questions than it can handle. Mr. Cruise gets lost in the stew like a carrot. He looks like hell and goes through hell to earn his millions, but in Minority Report he's just a small black hole at the center of an even bigger black hole.

An Irresistible Romp in Williamstown

In the present confused national climate, the august and highly esteemed Williamstown Theatre Festival has kicked off its 48th summer season on the leafy campus of Williams College with a splendid production of Where's Charley? , a buoyant frolic with nothing on its mind but entertainment. From now to June 30, a stress-free environment is guaranteed that will put a smile on your face and keep it there. New Yorkers are flocking there in droves.

Where's Charley? , the first Broadway musical by Frank Loesser, won a Tony Award for Ray Bolger in 1949 and repeated its success in a 1952 movie that turned the song "Once in Love with Amy" into a national obsession. But where's Charley now? The movie has never, to my knowledge, been shown on TV, and the stage musical remains much revered but rarely produced. Williamstown has remedied all that with the kind of fun-filled romp that comes at a time when we're desperately in need of one.

The one-joke plot is about Charley, the popular but prankish Oxford rake who frantically dons the bombazine and graying curls of his millionaire aunt, Donna Lucia D'Alvadorez from Brazil ("Where the nuts come from!"), so that Amy, the girl of his dreams, will have a proper chaperone during her visits to his college rooms. Charley's roommate, Jack, is besotted by Amy's friend Kitty, and both girls think the boys are hiding an older woman when Charley's real aunt shows up, pursued by Jack's penniless father; meanwhile, Charley in drag is being stalked by the awful Mr. Spettigue, Amy's fortune-hunting guardian. Throw in some mistaken identities, quick changes in closets and behind ivy walls, and everyone dashing madly about trilling "Where's Charley?", and much chaos ensues. Even as dated college musicals go, Where's Charley? grows the corn higher than the proverbial elephant's eye.

George Abbott's book has been trimmed for the Williamstown production, which is staged with the speed of a breakneck burlesque by the brilliant director Nicholas Martin. And in the role of Charley, the legitimate stage has found a formidable new star in the rubber-faced clown Christopher Fitzgerald. He doesn't have Ray Bolger's libidinous legs, but he sings and dances with wild abandon and recreates Bolger's audience sing-along on "Once in Love with Amy" with showstopping charm. Camouflaging the corn with stylized characterizations, period costumes, nimble choreography and James Noone's trompe l'oeil sets of indigo skies and kelly green topiaries, director Martin has created a farcical cartoon of endless delights. This isn't easy with a stage that is in itself an obstacle course of trap doors and raked walkways, with the orchestra pit in a hole in the middle of the proscenium. It's a miracle the entire cast doesn't end up performing in leg casts and Ace bandages.

Was the world ever this innocent and carefree? Don't everybody answer at once. But even when your eyebrows rise with incredulity, you will find the Frank Loesser score irresistible. I had forgotten how much I missed "My Darling, My Darling," or the Sousa-inspired "New Ashmolean Marching Society and Students' Conservatory Band." It's a pleasure to rediscover the obscure Loesser ballad "Lovelier Than Ever" and Amy's hilarious comic aria, "The Woman in His Room," triumphantly performed by the enchanting Jessica Stone, who looks like Tweety Pie and belts like a cross between Betty Boop and Betty Hutton. For the bumbling seduction scene between the pompous old windbag Spettigue and the hapless, befuddled Charley in drag, an actual Betty Hutton song called "Why Fight the Feeling," from the Frank Loesser film score for Let's Dance , has been happily added. In the riotous tea-pouring scene where, to his horror, Charley uses his top hat as a cream pitcher, the veteran trouper Paxton Whitehead-who once enthralled audiences on the Williamstown stage as an unforgettable Sherlock Holmes -is a knockout as the greedy, malevolent Spettigue.

Distinguished by the customary high standards for which it was awarded this year's Tony Award for excellence in regional theater, Williamstown has opened its 2002 season with a fireworks display. In the smaller Nikos, adjacent to the main stage, I also saw a smashing production of the British import Under the Blue Sky , directed by John Erman, with electrifying star turns by Marsha Mason and Annabella Sciorra. The rest of the summer program, which ends Aug. 25, includes four world premieres by such established playwrights as Eric Bogosian, Cheryl L. West, Dan O'Brien and Alfred ( Driving Miss Daisy ) Uhry, as well as a new play from Canada starring Olympia Dukakis, a forgotten classic from the Yiddish theater by Sholem Asch, and established works by George Kaufman and Moss Hart, Joe Orton, and Tennessee Williams. If Where's Charley? is any indication, the tone is set for a bracing frozen cosmo of a summer.

The production itself, directed by Barry Edelstein, the artistic director of New York's Classic Stage Company who last season directed Uma Thurman in her first Molière, suggests more time was spent on the sets than the actors. Still, there is nothing boring or conventional about an As You Like It that includes bright green Granny Smith apples falling in a navy blue orchard, characters making entrances from trapdoors in the floor and ladders from the ceiling, music performed in the style of Dave Brubeck by an on-stage progressive jazz quartet, ballroom dancing in the Forest of Arden to Louis Armstrong's hit song "What a Wonderful World," and Lea DeLaria as a goatherd. I don't know what the Bard from Stratford-on-Avon would think, but he wouldn't yawn.

He might pray for a little less spin and a bit more substance, not to mention a leading lady with more stage experience and a wider range. Rosalind-feisty, lovesick, strong-willed and wise-is one of Shakespeare's riskiest cross-dressers, but in or out of drag, she needs more than a pretty face and a boyish physique. How can we forget the famous photos of Katharine Hepburn in the role, looking like Peter Pan and inspiring Dorothy Parker's oft-quoted laceration: "She ran the gamut-from A to B."

Ms. Paltrow plays it mainly for charm and swagger. As the distraught daughter of a deposed duke living off the hospitality of the wicked uncle who drove her father into exile, Ms. Paltrow makes her first entrance at court looking very much the way she did when she won the Academy Award for Shakespeare in Love , radiant in panels of billowing red satin. Every inch the movie star, she is greeted with applause for bringing glamour to the Berkshires that is loud and understandable. The test is yet to come.

Claiming her independence, disguising herself as a shepherd named Ganymede, and heading for the Forest of Arden in search of romance, freedom, justice and her long-lost father with her cousin Celia in tow, the transition is as abrupt as it is unsurprising. Ms. Paltrow is so flat-chested, the gender change seems effortless, but in knickers, suspenders and workboots, with a trendy baseball cap worn backward, she looks more like a character in the Peanuts comics.

With Shakespeare's comedy of sibling rivalries and mistaken identities now in full throttle, Rosalind falls for Orlando (Alessandro Nivola), who wears a windbreaker and khakis while plastering love poems on tree trunks with Post-Its, Celia (Megan Dodds) goes for Orlando's venomous older brother Oliver (Stephen Barker Turner), and Touchstone the court jester (Mark Linn-Baker) pursues the bovine goatherd played by Lea DeLaria in a vulgar burlesque camp that bludgeons the audience with 400 crude vaudeville sight gags when a more carefully chosen half-dozen would do. Amid the ham, some genuine caviar is provided by the excellent Michael Cumptsy's melancholy Jaques, lord of the forest, and by the gifted and versatile Angelina Phillips as the confused, baby-voiced peasant Phoebe.

Before they all sort out their tangled sexual deceits and find true love, the "All the world's a stage" speech has been delivered from a horizontal position and the "Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly" lament has been curiously sung as a jaunty jazz tune. When Orlando practices lovemaking on Ganymede, unaware that he is really Rosalind in disguise, there is no requisite sense of apprehension that he might be falling for the wrong sex. The villains pursue the innocents in black tuxedos with fuchsia shirts and vests, perpetually dressed for a Mafia ball. The Forest of Arden looks like a vacant lot in Canarsie. Under these flawed circumstances, I was grateful for Ms. Paltrow's charm, but Rosalind is so close to the role she played in Shakespeare in Love and her performance is in so much the same vein, full of bounce and posturing, there isn't much of a stretch to observe. I admire her for wanting to polish her craft like her mother (Blythe Danner is a Williamstown regular) but I wish she had chosen a fresher vehicle with a different kind of challenge.

As You Like It may be a financial blockbuster, but it can't hold a candle to the brilliant, inspired production earlier in the summer of The Taming of the Shrew . This randy romp, directed by and starring Roger Rees, was a rare example of revisionist Shakespeare with passion, purpose and synergy to spare. Mr. Rees' libidinous Petruchio crashed through the startled audience as a drunken intruder, raising so much hell the emergency exits were opened and the police summoned before order was restored. Bebe Neuwirth, as a tough lady cop brandishing a phallic nightstick, subdued him and forced him to watch the play, reappearing as Petruchio in his orange soccer shirt, backpack and track shoes in a breakneck series of tableaux in the style of a Vittorio De Sica film starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. Think Marriage Italian-Style with Fellini crowd scenes, sets designed as blowups of pasta boxes and imported cans of Italian tomato sauces, Bianca singing a song by the Carpenters,

bits of Cole Porter's Kiss Me Kate ad-libbed freely, and a factory of Petruchio's employees dressed like World War I aviators out of a Monty Python movie.

Bebe Neuwirth was a revelation as the fiery Kate, a lioness even when tamed, always letting you know the play could never happen in the 1990's. In the end, when she returned as the lady motorcycle cop, Mr. Rees' drunken spectator was so overwhelmed by what he'd just seen that he vowed to go home and tame his own wife, prompting Ms. Neuwirth to bring down the house with the evening's final line: "In your dreams, buster." This, for sure, was a vibrant, streamlined production ready for Broadway.

While long lines of eager theatergoers attuned to the artistic standards of achievement synonymous with Williamstown crowded into the 520-seat main theater this summer to see revivals of Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, the sold-out 96-seat Nikos Stage in an adjoining building has unveiled new, experimental premieres by John Guare, Irish playwright Frank McGuinness and Warren Leight, winner of this year's Tony Award for Side Man . Mr. Leight's new play Glimmer Brothers is in some ways better than Side Man , continuing and expanding the theme of relationships among jazz musicians from the big band era and how they affect the lives of their children 40 years later.

David Schwimmer, a popular television icon from the sitcom Friends who has never impressed me, starred with great conviction and honesty as a New York trombone player who has devoted much of his adult life to caring for an elderly trumpet player who was a colleague of his father's. When the elderly musician is diagnosed with a terminal illness, the young man is forced to reunite the older man with a twin brother from whom he has been estranged for four decades, discovering in the process dark secrets that unlock the mysteries of his own twisted legacy. The ghosts of the past once again encroach on the lives of a younger generation as a riveting play engulfs the viewer with richly detailed characters and shocking revelations. Mr. Schwimmer triumphed as a lonely-boy-lost who is trying to cope in the body of a grown man. The play needs tightening, but it has already been scheduled for a New York production this season at the Roundabout.

The summer began with a gutsy, profound and colorful Camino Real under the juicy direction of Nicholas Martin, with screen star Ethan Hawke giving a tender, lyrical and utterly heartbreaking performance as Kilroy, Tennessee Williams' all-American boy in hell, and a superb cast that included Blair Brown, Hope Davis and Richard Easton. The first revival of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun starred Gloria Foster and Kimberly Elise, the incandescent young actress who played Oprah Winfrey's daughter in the ill-fated film Beloved .

And it's not over yet. You can still see Arthur Miller's The Price , directed by James Naughton, from Aug. 18 to Aug. 29, and the world premiere of The Waverly Gallery , directed by Scott Ellis, which runs Aug. 11 to Aug. 22. This is the new play by Kenneth Lonergan, who took New York by storm with This Is Our Youth . His latest stars the great Eileen Heckart as the spirited owner of a Washington Square art gallery who is hellbent on leaving this world with a bang despite her rapid and inconvenient disintegration from Alzheimer's. You can expect this one on a New York stage soon, but you may have to get up to Williamstown to see the remarkable Eileen Heckart in it.

No wonder this 11-week summer marathon has become a magnet for the most illustrious actors, directors and designers in the American theater. Since I have been driving up to the ivy-covered campus I've seen Julie Harris, Christopher Reeve, Richard Thomas, Tammy Grimes, Stockard Channing, Cherry Jones, Joanne Woodward, John Sayles (in an acting role, yet), Kate Burton, Marian Seldes, Olympia Dukakis, Christopher Walken, Sigourney Weaver, Campbell Scott, Stephen Collins, Karen Allen-the list goes on. They use the stages and rehearsal halls as a gym working for less than scale, living in college dorms, polishing their craft. What began 45 years ago as "chic summer stock" has evolved into the East Coast's leading bastion of civilized theatrical culture. Under the creative guidance of Michael Ritchie, show business glitter has also arrived this year. (I've spotted Paul Newman, Meryl Streep and Brooke Shields, and they were just in the audience!) But this is as it should be: the natural result of so many talented, celebrated people pooling their resources to accomplish so much with so little. The annual budget for 10 full-scale productions is only $2 million, sets are assigned for $5,000 and the highest-priced tickets sell for $37. It's pretty much a goddamn miracle, if you ask me.