Theater is great! We've got reviews for you, regional news from both coasts, praise for amazing theater actors who did the TV thing this week, and word of the gorgeous Rachel Weisz.

  • Joe Turner's Come and Gone, August Wilson's favorite of his ten-play American history cycle, won a rave this week, which is awesome. That poor, forgotten Belasco theater over there, on the mysterious east side of Times Square. They get some good, overlooked shows. Go see it. It's a beautiful play.
  • Also earning a hearty blowjob this week was new musical Next to Normal, which... (biting tongue) is... interesting. I will say on the good side: Aaron Tveit is hot as balls, even with his silly Rent mannerisms fully intact, and child musical theater prodigy Jennifer Damiano is just that. She's fierce and wonderful in a show that's not quite... urgh.
  • The 24 Hour Musicals charity thing happened this week, and you didn't go. Because you're not cool or awesome or connected and you're also poor and the tickets were really expensive so, better luck next year, New York. (I am talking to myself.)
  • Hair is doing really well in the ol' ticket sales department. Which is great. I wish the show was great—it's not, it's smug and annoying—but this is still great. Theater could use the sunshiny boost.
  • Brian Kulick has made a hash of the Oresteia. Do you hear me? A hash!!!
  • I also saw Desire Under the Elms this week, that stuttering O'Neill play about love and rocks and New England. Carla Gugino is a marvel, as is Brian Dennehy. And it's such a shame that Pablo Schreiber isn't attractive. I mean I just wish that he was a good actor and had an outstanding ass and I wish you saw it in this play, but you know... these are just wishes. Desires, even.
  • Man oh man, don't you just wish you lived in London sometimes? Rachel Weisz, who was supposed to be doing Miss Julie in New York—this is a true fact!—but probably won't because of stupid Sienna Miller, is going to be raggedy old Blanche DuBois in a Donmar production of O Streetcar!, a musical written by Jon Lovitz. No, just playin'. She'll be in regular Streetcar. Want to see so bad.
  • The OBCR of Chess not enough? (In case someone who doesn't know theater is reading this, Chess is: a musical about chess written by the dude from Abba. Seriously). Chess in Concert will air on PBS in June. Diny Menzel's in it, as are Adam Pascal and Josh Groban. OMG, "One Night in Bangkok" is gonna be off the hizzzayyyyyy.
  • Oh gloryoski I just love the theater. Diane Paulus? She directed that smug and annoying but successful Hair revival? Well she's the artistic director of the ART in foggy Bostontowne and hoo boy a change has come to Beansburg. Two musicals are scheduled for next season. Two! The weirdo Polish director reign of terror ushered in by Bob Woodruff has ended. Now we get Elevator Repair Service's Gatz and an R&B reimagining of A Winter's Tale and a songer called Red Sox Nation. Plus The Donkey Show! Oh Diane, you minx.
  • Weren't Kerry Butler, Mary Catherine Garrison, and the otherworldly Elizabeth Marvel awesome on 30 Rock on Thursday? Yes they were. That is the correct answer.
  • The Chorus Line documentary came out. Go see it.
  • Do you live by the lake? Go see Abbie Spallen's Pumpgirl at A Red Orchid. It sounds dynamite!
  • Go see "magical" and "overwrought" Lydia at the Mark Taper Forum, if you're unfortunate enough to live in Los Angeles. The staged telenovela sounds like an exciting tiptoe into the vastly unexplored world of Latino theater.