If you're looking for a traditional, all-American musical, Tommy is not for you. That doesn't mean it's not worth seeing- it's a musical of a different formula, resembling Mamma Mia more than Aida.

Tommy is a musical by Pete Townshend (yes, that Pete Townshend) based on a concept album by The Who in 1969 of the same name. Tommy is a young boy, rendered deaf, mute, and blind by a tragedy from his past, who rises to fame for his skill at pinball (no other way to fit "Pinball Wizard" in the score, Bwog presumes). Like Rent, this is a "rock opera," and according to Wikipedia, Townshend wants it to be a giant metaphor for...something.

Bwog has noticed that over the next week or so there will be a smorgasbord of learning opportunities for those who are not going home to spend their magnificent four days of fall break. Whether you are interested in theater, bioethics or academic freedom, there's something going on that's right up your alley.

Human Genetic Complexity: What We Know--Legal, Historical, and Evolutionary Perspectives
October 29th at 8 pm
417 IAB

This talk features philosophy professor Phillip Kitcher, biology professor Robert Pollack and NYU law professor and Nation columnist Patricia Williams (who is no stranger to this campus). While the discussion supposedly will center around themes from the Core, expect philosophy more contemporary than CC and science more general than Frontiers.

Reports of KCST's (apparently successful!) advertising methodology have been numerous. According to a Bwog tipster embedded in Butler, around 11 PM "some guy just walked into a reading room on the third floor to stump about KCST's one acts in a booming voice. He carried on for about a minute, students looked confused, rolled their eyes. He stopped, people went back to work."

Later, men wearing what Bwog informant Emily Wilson characterized as "uncomfortably sheer tights" wandered into tonight's ESC meeting, also for advertising purposes.

Photo by Emily Wilson

Looking for some student theater in your life? Bwog reviews the latest production from the CU Players.

Having had only a month to put the production together, the CU Players (or "CUPS," better-known for the plastic cups handed out during the activities fair) did a more-than-credible job of mixing the Bronx with the Bible Thursday night.

It was tentative and cliched in the beginning, complete with the awkward hand gestures of nervous actors. However as the performance went on and the audience warmed to the cast, the characters quickly fleshed out and captivated the viewer.

Congratulations to this year's creative team of the 115th Annual Varsity Show, which was announced via email mere minutes ago.

Director: Thomas Anawalt CC'09
Producer: Rebecca Lewis CC'11
Producer: Darcy Zacharias CC'10
Writer: Erica Drennan CC'11
Writer: Rachel Leopold CC'10
Writer: Sam Reisman CC'10
Composer/Lyricist: Becky Greenstein BC'10
Composer/Lyricist: Matt Stauffer GS'09
Choreographer: Claire Halberstadt BC'09
Art Director: Cayle Pietras CC'09

Friends, bestow upon these talented individuals your accolades, and then your goodbyes, as you will not be hearing from any of them until May.

Also, for those of you who missed last year's show, or are new to the concept of the Varsity Show, last year's show is available to stream on the Varsity Show's website.

Bwogger Mariela Quintana attended yesterday's Bloomsday on Broadway celebration at Symphony Space. Here, she explains what to expect from a seven hour performance of two episodes of Ulysses.

Last night, literati, and admirers of Eire convened on the academic megaplex that is Symphony Space to celebrate the 104^th anniversary of Bloomsday. Each year the venue hosts "Bloomsday on Broadway", a commemoration of the day Leopold Bloom traversed through Dublin in Ulysses, James Joyce's epic and famously esoteric novel, one of the few canonical works left off the Lit Hum syllabus for the welfare of both freshmen and their professors. How could a work that could not be encompassed by our august Lit Hum be circumscribed in single, public event?

Dressed in a sharp white summer suit and a royal blue button down, emcee and co-founder of Symphony Space Isaiah Sheffer introduced the reading with the cavalier familiarity that only twenty-seven years of tradition could afford. In his opening remarks, Sheffer discussed the enduring relevance and accessibility of Joyce's work in New York City street culture and in the mix and flow of voices on Broadway. The night, Sheffer explained in his sedate, NPR timbre, would consist of a multi-voiced reading of the entire "Ithaca Episode," a musical interlude and then the reading of the final episode, "Penelope," performed by Fionnula Flanagan. As the final two episodes in the novel, "Ithaca" and "Penelope" are collectively known as the "Homecoming" and detail the culmination of Bloom's day (after he has returned home with Dedalus) and Molly Bloom's final address, respectively.

Bwog's resident theater expert Michael Molina managed to weave his way through the large, metal, bleacher-like sets to review KCST's As You Like It, and was kind enough to send us his review.

The King's Crown Shakespeare Troupe's performance of "As You Like It" brings laughter and general amusement despite rain clouds, graduation bleachers, and a three-hour performance. While Shakespeare seems to be at it again with his "Oh, shit, he doesn't know that's not her even though it is" and the typical "Why did that guy do that? Now he's ruined everything!", the members of the troupe bring jovial glee to this complicated comedy of silly proportions. Although this piece of student theater is not the most groundbreaking interpretation or presentation of Shakespeare, the profound talent of the cast and the mostly insightful direction of Priyanka Choksi creates a general mood of merriment that can be seen for two more nights outside near the steps.

The play begins with low energy and stagnant blocking, but it's immediately jump-started once Kris Wiener and a wrestling ring of Christmas lights ascend upon Low Steps. Throughout the play Kris does a fantastic job of moving the show along with a carefree, cocksure nature. And the Christmas lights foreshadow the imaginative elements of what's to come.

Catch the final performance of Twelfth Night at 8 o'clock tonight in Barnard's Minor Latham Playhouse.

Rebecca Guy and Ralph Zito's interpretation of Twelfth Night may be traditional, but it offers an entertaining showcase of some of Barnard and Columbia's finest acting. The play is full of scrambled genders, intricate love triangles and drunken debauchery — themes that too often lend themselves to overacting. But, the current production does not suffer from these common pitfalls.

Thanks to many of the actors' eloquent intonation, the audience easily comprehends Shakespeare's meaning and wit. But Jill Usdan's deliberate elocution unfortunately comes off as haughty. Her dry performance as Olivia is demure, but uninspired and misses the silliness and vanity essential to her character. With lines as blatantly promiscuous as "Love sought is good, but giv'n unsought is better," it's clear Usdan could do more with the material.

Adding a hint of melodrama, Kara Feely dresses the cast in luxurious costumes — a mix of Spanish lace, gaudy rosary beads and billowy genie pants. Set against Betsy Adams and Elizabeth Noth's colorfully designed stage, Zito and Guy's vision of Twelfth Night comes to life in a flourishing courtyard.

There's a whodunit buried in the premise of Will Snider's Trees Like Nails—the body of a young girl, beaten nearly to death, is discovered in the woods. But what unfolds isn't an open-and-closed investigation into the particulars of the crime; a mood, not a mystery, infects the characters connected to the body and drives the engine of the play. It's a remarkable piece of original student theater, finely written with an ear for caustic humor and quiet sadness, superbly acted by an ensemble of strong performers, and directed by Deanna Weiner with an energy and inventiveness that breathes thrilling new life into the old Lerner Black Box, where the production played last weekend.

Michael Snyder, Bwog's resident off-campus theatre critic, serves up his thoughts on the Broadway rendition of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming.

Now that Harold Pinter has been awarded the Nobel prize, his plays have officially entered the canon, and yet a play like The Homecoming, now in a wonderful revival at the Cort Theatre on 48th Street, in many ways feels far more modern than most new plays you're likely to see on Broadway.

The story of The Homecoming is simple: the curtain opens on an ordinarily unpleasant day in the blue-collar, north London home of Max, his two sons Lenny and Joey, and his brother Sam. The drama really begins when Max's oldest son Teddy returns for a surprise visit from America where has been a philosophy professor for nine years. He brings with him his wife Ruth, about whom he has told his family nothing.

Needless to say, Pinter did not become famous as a master storyteller. Eschewing exposition, Pinter allows us only the most vital details of his characters lives, presented intermittently throughout the play's spare two hours. Thanks to Pinter's brilliant and meticulous craftsmanship, it is in piecing things together after the play ends that you realize just how much information he has given you and in so few words.

While you were celebrating the last day of classes in Butler or 1020, Bwog theatre critic Ginia Sweeney attended the late viewing of XMAS 2: The Secular Spectacular. Although the show's run began and ended last night, Ginia shares her thoughts. Photos by Lydia DePillis.

I've been so wrapped up in the end of the semester that I almost forgot how quickly Christmas is creeping up on us. You can bet that the cast and crew of XMAS 2: The Secular Spectacular, which showed twice last night in Roone Arledge Auditorium, haven't forgotten. The student-written, directed, and produced musical seeks to reveal the origins of that blockbuster holiday, as Judy Maccabee (Madeleine Stokes C'08) tells her children the story of a shake-up back in her teen years at Polar High School.

I went to the later showing and considering it was 11pm on the day classes ended, it was unsurprising that much of the audience members had already commenced their Monday night drinking. This would explain the loud guffaws at almost every attempted joke.

Some amount of kitsch is always appreciated, but XMAS was campy to a fault. It was filled with too many lackluster performance and musical numbers. It's clear a lot of work went into this production, and some of it paid off: there were several hilarious lines and well performed characters. Overall, though, the show was no where near as clever as it thought it was, and was irritating and uneven.

Too old for fairly tales, eh? The Columbia Musical Theatre Society presents Into the Woods' long, jaunty ride through Mother Goose's canon. Bwog's theatre correspondent Ginia Sweeney reviews the play and wonders how much shorter it could've been.

I'm going to try to keep this review short because I've just had to sit through an absurdly long musical and I don't want to subject you to the same tedium. Someone should have told Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine that a mash-up of classic fairytales with a few extra plot twists can only sustain an audience's attention for so long. I'm not sure how long that is, but it's something less that two hours and forty-five minutes.

Perhaps I'm being too harsh. The Columbia Musical Theatre Society has pulled together a rather impressive and large scale production of Into the Woods, and Thursday night's performance will be followed by two more—at 3 and 8 p.m.—on Friday, in Roone Arledge Auditorium. I have few complaints besides the sheer length of the show.

A review of yesterday's performance of Book I of the Iliad. Because Bwogger Kurt Kanazawa apparently didn't get enough Homer in Lit Hum.

Yesterday in Low Library, The Aquila Theater Company, which was invited to Columbia by the Center for Core Curriculum and the CU Arts Initiative, presented a staged reading of the first book of the Iliad, and gave an innovative, dramatic interpretation of the book that has helped define Columbia College since the Core's inception. The realities of ancient Greek war were performed upon a bare stage with only seven actors, seven scripts, four empty bins, minimalist lighting, and a booming stereo system. The audience of Lit Hum and CC students and faculty encircled a large cloth mat in the center of the Rotunda — and while there were a few chairs at the periphery, students with pillows and cushions watched from the edge of the stage.

While the actors held scripts for the entire performance, this didn't detract from the intense and gripping effect of the show. The first word of dialogue wasn't spoken until 5 minutes into the performance--as soon as the lights dimmed, 4 soldiers, symbolically dressed in World War II uniforms, marched in a slow-motion formation onto the stage, all while a low pitched battle horn sounded in the background. Four bins were set up to create a low doorway through which soldiers and civilians entered the space, crawling onto the "battlefield." A riveting charade--involving a burly Agamemnon, the Briseis and other Lit Hum faves--came to a climactic conclusion as the actors screamed "RAGE!"at the top of their lungs. They picked up their scripts at the edge of the stage, introducing Homer's verse to a World War II-era setting.

Bwog reviewer Michael Snyder is back - and so quickly! - to report on what he peeping-tommed in somebody's Hogan suite.

"The Sublet Experiment" is, according to its posters and playbills, "a romantic comedy about mis-taken identity," and, as per its title, it delivers some solid laughs, some not-so-solid writing, and a happy ending. The CU Players production, which went up on November 9th, and goes up again next weekend on the 15th and 16th, is graced by a an outstanding four-person cast and a creative team that takes the play beyond its gimmick.

Sublet's central feature, you see, is in its staging: real apartments (or in this case, real suites). The play, by Ethan Youngerman, repeatedly asks to what extent our surroundings determine who we are, and engages with that question repeatedly by changing its surroundings several times, from a suite in Hogan this weekend, to an East Campus suite next Thursday and to ADP next Friday. It is certainly a cool concept, but the play itself stumbles when it comes to stepping outside that concept. The play's best moments are those that most closely approximate real conversations, and the charm of the quick banter early on can't quite stand up to a rather facile plot that seems to have been written largely to accommodate the concept rather than the other way around.