Center Stage

Wallace "Wally" Henry Coberg, a theatrical designer and filmmaker who was at work on a new Edgar Allan Poe documentary, died of an apparent heart attack Nov. 18 at his Bolton Hill home. He was 63. Born in New York City, he lived in Edison, N.J., and Perrysburg, Ohio, before moving to Bel Air and graduating from Bel Air High School in 1966. He attended Boston University and Towson University, and earned a degree at the Maryland Institute College of Art . In a 1974 interview with The Baltimore Sun, he said he made a construction paper set at age 8 after watching Mary Martin play "Peter Pan" on television.

Set designer Daniel Ettinger and technical director Bill Jamieson spent months painstakingly constructing a world accurate down to the tiniest detail, from the wallpaper pattern to the electrical sockets. And they weren't one whit less meticulous, even though they knew that in four short weeks, their hard work on "Private Lives," the current Everyman Theatre production, would be ripped apart and tossed in the trash. "Creating a set is like making music," says Jamieson, who has worked at the Charles Street theater for the past decade.

Taped to the side of the counter in the junk shop that forms the set for David Mamet's "American Buffalo" at Center Stage is a vintage sign: "People who advocate violence should be shot. " Most people in the audience will never see that sign, or hundreds of other items crammed on and around the stage to recreate in painstaking detail the 1970s junk shop Mamet specifies. But all of those objects have a part in creating the uncomfortably real world of dark humor and dark prospects for the three edgy characters who animate this theater classic.

Whenever Ray Lewis got the opportunity this past week, the Ravens' middle linebacker and vocal leader approached one of his younger teammates and delivered a message he learned long ago. "Whatever opportunity you want to leave, whatever legacy you want to leave, these are the nights you leave it," Lewis told his teammates about the Ravens' coming game. "Not that you don't play hard every other day, but these nights are special. So save the moment, man, and have a great time doing it. " During his 16-year career, Lewis has played on Monday night 13 times.

In the age when a 140-character tweet is about as literary as some folks get, and when the most obvious of observations or lamest of jokes can elicit a "LOL" response, there's something doubly refreshing about the opportunity to indulge in the long, luscious feast of language and humor currently on the boards at Center Stage . Richard Brinsley Sheridan's "The Rivals" follows in the daunting footsteps of Shakespeare's most sparkling and plot-thick...

The first time was the charm. Last season's smash at Center Stage , "The Second City Does Baltimore," enjoyed the element of surprise as it skewered a lot of those quaint little quirks that make us so, well, skewer-able. If the sequel doesn't feel quite as novel, "The Second City: Charmed and Dangerous," which has settled into the theater for another long run, still holds up well. It doesn't feel like a package of leftovers. The writers — Ed Furman and Tim Sniffen (he performed in "The Second City Does Baltimore")

With the NBA lockout dampening excitement for the league, various street games have taken center stage in the offseason. A few weeks ago Kevin Durant made headlines when he dropped 66 points in a game at New York's Rucker Park . This week Kobe Bryant hit the game-winning shot in a game in Los Angeles . Baltimore even got in on the fun, as St. Frances hosted a Carmelo Anthony Pro-Am game featuring Durant, Josh Selby and Brandon Jennings....

For most of the year, Alex Gray can't skateboard anywhere in Ocean City . Not on sidewalks, alleys or on the streets. Definitely not on the famous boardwalk. A town ordinance forbids it from April to October. You get caught, as the 17-year-old Ocean City native did a week ago, and police give you a $100 ticket. "Laws are laws," he said they told him. But since Thursday, the Dew Tour, the internationally recognized skateboarding, BMX and surfing competition, has set up shop on the south end of the pier for four days of games and free concerts.

Kwame Kwei-Armah has a way of pulling others into his gravitational field, whirling them around and then depositing them in a place at some distance from where they started out. People leave an encounter with Center Stage 's incoming artistic director staggering a bit and with their hair mussed, but visibly charged up. The 45-year-old Kwei-Armah, who takes over leadership of Maryland's largest regional theater on July 1 from Irene Lewis, was...

The novel "Crime and Punishment" is a gripping, modern psychodrama, a masterpiece of tension and suspense. A police detective seeks to solve a brutal double homicide without a shred of evidence — and sets himself the task of touching the conscience and saving the soul of the tormented young killer. It's a riveting story that probes the nature of good and evil and the sometimes blurry distinctions between enemies and allies. Why, then, in the stage adaptation currently running at Center Stage , does there seem to be so little at stake?