Three months after the hurricane and flood, New Orleans is still in bad condition -- worse off than people in other parts of the country can imagine. The New Orleans theater community is in turmoil also. Some have complaints against people who have left New Orleans, such as Lane Savadove, artistic director of the acting company called EgoPo. (See separate Periodica story about the EgoPo troupe). EgoPo's stagings are intentionally disturbing. Unintentionally, its departure from New Orleans caused another sort of disturbance in the theater community there.

The Sixth Annual New York International Fringe Festival has come to a close, and descriptions of it as "fun," "saucy," "wild," "kinky," "funky" and "weird" were apt. Over 16 days that ended August 25, 2002, more than 200 theatrical presentations -- including outdoor performance art -- selected from 600-plus submissions made this year's Fest the biggest ever.

When Rosie O'Donnell ended her successful daytime TV show recently, watchers felt sad at the loss of an entertaining program. More particularly, theater-lovers bemoaned the loss of a showcase for Broadway performers. What I will miss most about Rosie is the irreverence she brought to the Tony Awards during her three stints as host of that telecast, two of which I attended.

The Producers has just entered its fourth year. This musical juggernaut, with music and lyrics by Mel Brooks and choreography and direction by Susan Stroman, starred the redoubtable Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. It received 15 Tony Award nominations, winning 12 - more than any other musical in theater history. [Ironically, in two categories three actors lost to their co-stars.] Brad Oscar was a Tony nominee in the Featured category, at that time playing off-kilter, pigeon-loving, Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind [you know, the nut who wrote "Springtime for Hitler"].

On London stages, Elaine Paige's reputation was heralded. Now that she has assumed the lead in Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black's Sunset Boulevard, a dream to play Broadway has come true. And this tiny dynamo delivers the goods.

Aside from her talent -- and, of course, that's a big aside -- the most impressive thing about Bernadette Peters is how she combines sex and innocence in her persona. Never has there been a performer who exudes such overt sexuality, with prominent bust and revealing necklines, while maintaining an innocent, little-girl character. This is most prominent in her concert appearances, but it also colored her portrayal of Annie Oakley. She certainly had more youthful vulnerability and sex appeal than Ethel Merman.

The critics and movie-going public -- and a legion of Michael Crawford fans -- are now weighing in on the fate of the $70-million film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera.Some pans have been especially vicious, so who knows if the piece will resonate with audiences around the world, capturing and enthralling them, making them wishing they were there -- or anywhere else -- again, driving them to the point no return or having them humming the dark music of the night?

In the summer of 2003 Philadelphia's Academy of Music became a venue for touring musicals. Extensive renovations modernized one of the nation's oldest concert halls, and a Broadway-style sound system was installed in a building once known for its pristine acoustics.

Publicists tell us that the Academy is entering a great new era where it will be home to theater, opera and ballet, and they remind us that this is a return to the original plan. That's true, but only on a technicality, because the Academy was designed before the proliferation of American symphony orchestras.

When Mark Fleischer became artistic director of Plano Repertory Theater in 1993, it was an all-volunteer community theater. As a graduate of Plano Senior High School in 1987 and Austin College in Sherman, Texas in 1991, and with a stint as intern at Dallas Theater Center in 1988 under the direction of Adrian Hall, Fleischer was recruited to take the reins at Plano Rep. In nine years he has taken the theater to the status of an SPT-Level 4 (Small Professional Theater) organization.

Roger Bart, Gary Beach and Brad Oscar of The Producers have bonded as if they were Broadway's three musketeers. The actors in the Mel Brook/Susan Stroman juggernaut are up against each other for the Tony Award for Featured Actor. Backstage, at the St. James Theatre, there's anything but an atmosphere of competition. It's all for one and one for all -- unless, of course, there's a tie. [Editor's Note: Ultimately, Beach won the 2001 Tony for Best Featured Actor in a musical]

Who is this guy Alan Alda is playing? Who is the hero of Alda's virtually one-man show, Q.E.D., playing at Lincoln Center til mid-December?

Physicist Richard Feynman, who won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 and was profiled on a PBS Nova program as "the finest mind since Einstein."

Audiences, young and old, absolutely adore him. A sentiment he quickly credits to his years starring opposite Jack Klugman, still a close friend, in TV's "The Odd Couple." So how does one of theater's most loved actors end up starring (at the Theater at Madison Square Garden) as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol? "I have to pay the rent!" laughs Tony Randall. Actually, he means the theater rent and actors and directors' salaries for his "first love," the National Actor's Theater, which this spring will revive The Gin Game.

Tony Randall loved theater -- "better than anything in the world," he said. After many years of success onscreen in Doris Day/Rock Hudson romps and series TV, he not only returned to his first love but also created the National Actors Theater (NAT). "The main reason I wanted to make a go of a repertory theater," he said, "was to provide work opportunities for underemployed actors, which, alas, happens to be the majority of us, and to give a break to those attempting to break into the business."

On its tenth anniversary, the Red Pear Theatre Company in Vieux Antibes, folded. It was the only production company on the French Riviera devoted to performances in the English language. Hilary King, President and Artistic Director, disbanded the theater she cofounded with husband Roy in January 1995, due to his illness. The last performances, January 21 and 22 2005, featured Kit and the Widow doing Tomfoolery, with Dillie Keane.

An impressive group of America's most celebrated playwrights, composers, and lyricists will be at New Jersey's professional stages this season to rewrite, improve, or—to quote one theater's artistic director—"tweak" old versions of their plays and musicals. Expect such notables as Sam Shepard, David Mamet, Arthur Laurents, and Stephen Schwartz, among them.

Chita's hot!

When many stars her age are sitting by the phone waiting for that call from their agent, Chita Rivera is in top form on Broadway, dancing an erotic tango with Antonio Banderas in the hit Roundabout Theater Company revival of Nine. And, now hear this: she's about to embark on a daring new musical by Kander and Ebb, The Visit, set to open in January 2004 at New York's Public Theater.

The music of Sigmund Romberg has faded into disfavor. His once-popular shows, The Student Prince, The Desert Song and The New Moon are rarely performed anymore, although Manhattan's Encores! series will revive The New Moon next season. When Romberg's works are reissued on disc, intelligent critics such as Steven Suskin are dismissive, saying "It was all the rage in 1924, but I think that even then I would have found it outdated...stodgy...old-fashioned."

Emanuel Sacks modestly said that he was "strictly a no-talent guy." He kept himself out of the public eye when he built the careers of big-name performers as a vice president at Columbia Records and, later, of RCA Victor and NBC. Despite his staying out of the limelight, Sacks was a very strong presence at both companies and in the lives of everyone who knew him. When he died at age 56 in 1958, a remarkable array of stars performed on a television memorial tribute.

All right, everyone. Get ready. We're going to do some wild things, says Jay David Saks to the crew assembled in the control room at The Hit Factory.