Adaptation

Evolution Species adjusting with climate As the planet's climate warms, scientists are discovering more species that are expanding their ranges northward. Others are adjusting their migrations, reproduction or other behaviors to accommodate the earlier arrival of spring. Scientists call such adaptation to new conditions "phenotypic plasticity." A report this week in the journal Science describes evidence from a variety of studies that some species may also be undergoing genetic changes that are helping them and their descendants cope with shifts in the seasons.

Like Shakespeare, Graham Greene tried first to entertain the crowd, to feed his family and pay the bills. Any profundity he might have harbored, any rumination on evil and guilt and forgiveness and sin, any outrage with power and its abuse, any sense of human failure, flowed from that.This ambiguity of popular and literary intent undoubtedly denied the incredibly durable English novelist the Nobel Prize for Literature. It just as certainly insured for him a place in the enduring body of important literature that will be denied some who won that prize on the road to obscurity.

Although movie critics like to mock multipart British literary adaptations for being slavishly reverential to their sources, let's just admit that at their best they provide actors with greater opportunities to develop complex characters than any other form of art or entertainment. Even mediocre bookish miniseries can make certain movies seem inadequate or superfluous. After decades of Masterpiece Theatre, a new adaptation of a classic needs a raison d'etre, whether it's Roman Polanski pouring his first-hand knowledge of threatened youth into Oliver Twist or Joe Wright having the fresh idea to rough up Pride and Prejudice and show just how economically desperate an unmarried woman in Jane Austen's England can be. Who can even remember the big-screen Nicholas Nickleby from 2002?

"Erin Brockovich," which opens today, represents yet another twist in a winding road recently taken by director Steven Soderbergh. In 1996, he released "Gray's Anatomy," a fanciful film adaptation of Spalding Gray's performance-memoir of his battle with a rare eye disease. The following year, Soderbergh came out with the adamantly quirky "Schizopolis," in which he played with notions of love, language and his own persona. Then came "Out of Sight," his adaptation of an Elmore Leonard thriller starring the high-voltage duo of George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez.

Halloween tends to bring out the kid in the adult - even for 6-foot-4, 340-pound Haloti Ngata. Dressed as a magician with a sharp tuxedo, top hat and wand Monday night, Ngata - at least for one night - was transported back to his childhood days, when he trick-or-treated through his family's neighborhood in Salt Lake City in search of his favorite candy, Reese's peanut butter cups. "This does take me back," said the Ravens' rookie defensive tackle, who was inspired by the film The Prestige.

Scads of hit musicals, from "Show Boat" to "Sunset Boulevard," have been adapted from novels and movies. But musicals based on classic plays are relatively rare.When you get past Shaw and Shakespeare, the list grows thin. And, even the works of these two masters have spawned some musical clunkers. Is there anyone -- besides collectors of such trivia -- who remembers the short-lived 1968 musical, "Her First Roman," based on Shaw's "Caesar and Cleopatra"? Or "Rockabye Hamlet," eight years later?

Capping a Broadway season without a clear front-runner, this year's Tony Award nominations produced some highly unusual competitors. Suzan-Lori Parks' Topdog/Underdog, a play so of-the-moment that it stars a hip-hop artist, will go head-to-head with Fortune's Fool, an adaptation of an 1848 play by Ivan Turgenev. (The 154-year-old Russian drama was deemed eligible for consideration as a "new" play because it had never before been produced on Broadway.) And though this was, at best, a mediocre season for new musicals, it's hard to turn up your nose at a race that pits a show called Urinetown the Musical against The Sweet Smell of Success.

Love, death, jealousy, obsession, violence - these are at the heart of Bizet's Carmen. Distill the four-hour opera down to its essence - as Peter Brook and his collaborators have done in their 80-minute adaptation - and presumably these core characteristics become more intense. But director Jim Petosa's production at Olney Theatre Center is surprisingly lacking in intensity. Despite a strong lead performance - powerfully acted as well as sung - by Stephanie Chigas, La Tragedie de Carmen has an almost clinical feel.

MOSCOW - The devil is back in Moscow, and he's got a lot of people rattled. Film director Vladimir Bortko and his crew took to Moscow streets this month to begin filming a 10-part television miniseries, an adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's celebrated Soviet-era novel, The Master and Margarita. And there was tension in the air - about doing Bulgakov's story justice. "Of course, I'm very fearful," said Anna Kovalchik, the slim Ukrainian-born actress who plays Margarita, standing in period costume between takes.

"Do I have an original thought in my head -- in my bald head?" -- Nicolas Cage's character in Adaptation It's an easy assignment: write about writer's block. Nothing to it. Story can write itself. There's no easier assignment for a writer than to write about any aspect of writing. This just happens to be about writer's block. Nothing to it. Story can write itself. Here goes. Here goes the story about writer's block. (Clever readers are asking themselves: Is this a writer pretending to have writer's block or a writer really having writer's block and stalling for time?