Act Ii

WASHINGTON - Act II in the Supreme Court's constitutional drama over the undecided presidential election played out in a distinctly subdued manner yesterday. It was more a seminar than a grand affair of state. With some of the political and legal celebrities seated in the same seats they had occupied for Act I - the court's hearing on the same dispute 10 days earlier - the justices showed more fascination with legal technicalities than with broad constitutional philosophy. It was as if they had become well-prepared students of Florida election law and yearned to test their homework on three lawyers who have been spent many of their waking hours for a month arguing about that subject.

Good or bad, we could see an all-SEC BCS title game. LSU and Alabama have shown why they are the two best teams in the country. The Tigers dispatched Arkansas 41-17, while Alabama trounced Auburn 42-14 to set up what looks like one of the most talked-about rematches in BCS history. Trent Richardson is ready for his Heisman close-up. The Alabama running back has been a top candidate for college football's top award, and he used the Iron Bowl on Saturday as his final audition tape, burning Auburn for a career-best 203 yards and making a spectacular touchdown catch.

A CHORUS of determined Republicans sang President Bush's praises last week as they passed the biggest part of his tax-cut plan with little Democratic support. So much for ending the bitter partisan battle in Washington. The first act of this drama played out just the way conservative House Republicans wanted it: No compromise with Democrats, no inclusion of their ideas, no deviation from Mr. Bush's across-the-board tax-rate cut. Such an approach won't work in the Senate, where Democrats and Republicans share power.

Letters to S.A.N.T.A. has a North Pole setting, a missing-Santa mystery, dancing reindeer, singing elves, a glamorous Mrs. Claus and a mean mother-in-law. It also has 29 contributing writers. The play, running weekends, tonight through Dec. 17, at Howard Community College, is the latest original production by the school's Student-Alumni Arts group. As with four previous productions, the actors spent several weeks doing improvisation to develop characters and scenes. But unlike previous shows, this one started with some central themes regarding Christmas.

Fries in minutesMaybe you could call it "Act III." Golden Valley Microwave Foods Inc. of Minneapolis, the developer of the popular "Act II" microwaveable popcorn, has turned its technological skills to french fries. The fries come in one-serving packages of 24 fries, ,, ready to pop into the microwave and specially formulated to be brown and crispy when they come out.The secret to Act II Microwave French Fries is the package, says Sara J. Risch, a Ph.D food scientist, who is responsible for product development, process engineering, package design and quality assurance for Golden Valley.

I'm not sure there's a tougher musical to bring off these days than Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim's bittersweet take on the not-so-happily-ever-after endings of the classic fairy tales we thought we knew. The score's rhythmic demands are relentless, and while Sondheim's spiky melodies are singable to a fault, they can be deucedly hard for performers to pull out of the air. Most difficult is the balance that must be struck between the ups of Act I and the downs of Act II, when Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack (of beanstalk fame)

The relationship between the Christmas season and children grew even closer last weekend when the Children's Theatre of Annapolis presented a cute, charming, funny production of "Snow White Goes West" at the Pascal Theater of Anne Arundel Community College.In this version of the Grimm brothers' tale, Snow White leaves Disney behind and heads to California with her Pappy to cash in on the gold strike of the 1840s.When Mr. White marries the dubious Queenie and dies suddenly, his daughter is left in the clutches of that devious saloonkeeper.

This is the Year of Mozart, the 200th anniversary of his death. More by accident, it's also the year of "The Masked Ball," Verdi's aria-packed opera staged by about every company in sight, including the Met and the Baltimore Opera.Tonight at 8 p.m. on MPT's channels 22 and 67, the Met's 2 1/2 -hour version taped Jan. 26 brings a solid performance of the 1859 opera romanticizing events leading to the assassination of the popular Swedish King Gustav III at a 1792 court ball.James Levine conducts and F. Murray Abraham is the host.

Bonnie Kreamer is performing double dinner theater duty tomorrow and Saturday.First, she is cooking with the dinner crew. Then she has a meaty part in "The Scheme of the Shiftless Drifter.""This is a play where everything goes wrong," said Ms. Kreamer, who plays a scrubwoman more interested in cleaning the theater than watching "the mixed-up melodrama" unfolding on stage.When she is not emoting, she will stay in character -- or at least in costume -- while supervising in the kitchen.Of course, dinner will be perfect, she said, although she may have a little difficulty scurrying around the stove in her cumbersome construction boots.

The central problem in casting Verdi's "La Traviata" is that of the central character herself. In Violetta, the composer created a role that tests a soprano's voice, style and dramatic range. She needs technical brilliance for Act I, lyric beauty in Act II, and the powers of a tragedian in the final scene. One hardly needs to add that she must also be musician and actress enough to find the thread of vocal and dramatic continuity that unites all of these elements.It is, therefore, a shame that Zvetelina Vassileva is not singing every performance in the Baltimore Opera Company's current production of this great and popular opera.

I'm not sure there's a tougher musical to bring off these days than Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim's bittersweet take on the not-so-happily-ever-after endings of the classic fairy tales we thought we knew. The score's rhythmic demands are relentless, and while Sondheim's spiky melodies are singable to a fault, they can be deucedly hard for performers to pull out of the air. Most difficult is the balance that must be struck between the ups of Act I and the downs of Act II, when Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack (of beanstalk fame)

It seems impossible that something called the Patriot Act could manage to get a bad name for itself. But that's exactly what has happened to this legislation hastily passed in the weeks after Sept. 11, 2001. The act has had no more effective critics than America's librarians who, under its provisions, can be required to tell federal officials what books people are checking out. Their rising ire tripped up the recent pro-Patriot Act speaking tour by Attorney General John Ashcroft, forcing him to go public with information he had classified saying federal law enforcement had not used these powers to go snooping in any libraries.

JUST WHEN we thought the Bush administration's assault on our constitutional protections had begun to subside comes news that Attorney General John Ashcroft is prepared to go even further. The Justice Department over the last several months has prepared draft legislation - the USA Patriot Act II - that expands the war on terrorism in dangerous ways. It enlarges many of the controversial provisions in the first USA Patriot Act, which passed Congress in the shocking days after Sept. 11. Overnight, that bill weakened constitutional safeguards that took us decades to build.

Pointillist artist Georges Seurat painted large canvases using tiny specks of complementary colors, forcing the eye to connect the dots. Making connections is the central theme of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's musical about Seurat, Sunday in the Park with George. And director Eric Schaeffer's Kennedy Center production not only connects with the audience, it achieves another important connection as well. More than the original 1983 production, more than the 1997 revival Schaeffer directed at Washington's Arena Stage, this new production links the disparate elements of the show's two acts, making them feel inextricably connected at the same time that it increases our understanding of both parts.

A CHORUS of determined Republicans sang President Bush's praises last week as they passed the biggest part of his tax-cut plan with little Democratic support. So much for ending the bitter partisan battle in Washington. The first act of this drama played out just the way conservative House Republicans wanted it: No compromise with Democrats, no inclusion of their ideas, no deviation from Mr. Bush's across-the-board tax-rate cut. Such an approach won't work in the Senate, where Democrats and Republicans share power.

WASHINGTON - Act II in the Supreme Court's constitutional drama over the undecided presidential election played out in a distinctly subdued manner yesterday. It was more a seminar than a grand affair of state. With some of the political and legal celebrities seated in the same seats they had occupied for Act I - the court's hearing on the same dispute 10 days earlier - the justices showed more fascination with legal technicalities than with broad constitutional philosophy. It was as if they had become well-prepared students of Florida election law and yearned to test their homework on three lawyers who have been spent many of their waking hours for a month arguing about that subject.

GIOACCHINO ROSSINI'S "Semiramide" has such florid and complicated singing the Metropolitan Opera Company hasn't produced it since 1894 and then with the famed Nellie Melba in one of the four key roles. In the intervening century, Rosa Ponselle and Ezio Pinza were once considered, but another vital singer asn't found so the project was scrapped.Friday night the Met in New York found all three plus more and produced a smash four-hour hit before a sold-out house. Leading the way as she's led the recent revival of Rossini was a terrific Marilyn Horne, in the male role composed for a deep contralto, the army commander Arsace in Mesopotamia (nowadays Iraq)

In opera, as in the laboratory, chemistry is everything.When the leads mesh musically and dramatically, melodies soar, emotions bubble over, and the passion of grand opera leaps off the stage to enfold and dazzle the audience.And when they don't, you get a production like the "Carmen" presented last weekend by the Annapolis Opera.Yes, there was color.Most of the leads could sing.There were snappy interludes such as the marvelous Act II quintet in which Carmen professes her love for Don Jose, the hapless soldier about to be destroyed by his passion for the fickle Gypsy girl.

Campus and community theater groups have long known that you can't beat "You Can't Take It With You." The student/alumni group at Howard Community College staged the play barely two months ago, and now the Columbia Community Players are presenting the 1936 comedy through this weekend at Slayton House in Wilde Lake Village Green. The two productions couldn't be more different. The HCC show took a go-for-broke approach, finding ways to insert Marx Brothers madness into the action. On the other hand, director Marla Blasko's staging for the Community Players takes the eccentricities of the play's characters for granted.

The plot line hasn't changed much in two weeks.For the second time in 15 days, the Washington Redskins play a struggling Philadelphia Eagles team led by rookie quarterback Donovan McNabb.The oddsmakers have listed the Redskins, who have the home-field edge this time around, as 10 1/2-point favorites.All they have to do is handcuff McNabb the way they did two weeks ago, when he threw for only 60 yards against them in his first NFL start.After all, McNabb turned the ball over six times -- including four fumbles -- last week in a 44-17 thrashing at the hands of the Indianapolis Colts.