Emerald City

SEE The Wizard of Oz at North Carroll High School tomorrow, Friday or Saturday and you'll probably feel a part of something extraordinary. Drama teacher Roberta Gore has created a three-dimensional quality for the production, with part of the action taking place in the aisles. The dog-snatching neighbor coasts a bicycle down the aisle and the screaming flying monkeys run and jump past. Dorothy Gale, played by the inspired Jenny Spears, brings vivid memories of the Judy Garland movie of 1939.

When politics and culture satirize themselves, what is there left for satire to do? This is the problem faced by War, Inc., a broad lampooning of political corruption and war profiteering co-written by John Cusack (who also stars and produces) with novelist Mark Leyner and screenwriter Jeremy Pikser, who deal with it by putting their thinly veiled Dick Cheney stand-in on the toilet and the video phone at the same time. War, Inc.'s laudable antecedents are many, but then, once upon a time, it was possible to watch a movie like Dr. Strangelove and have an eye-opening, revelatory, even epiphanic experience.

There's a long tradition of writers writing about writing and there's a tradition at least as long of stories about the seemingly good-and-noble selling their souls to the devil. For Australian screenwriter David Williamson, "Emerald City" is the magical land where the two traditions meet.The play, which is receiving its Baltimore premiere at Theatre Hopkins, is heavy on chat and short on action. Nor does it help that the primary issue being chatted up is the definition of success -- not the most dramatic of subjects.

Theatrical superstition holds that green is an unlucky color, but in Wicked -- the musical about a green-skinned girl and the Emerald City -- green is definitely the color of luck, as well as money. Wicked seems to mint money in every town it plays and, judging from the slick touring production at the Hippodrome, Baltimore should prove no exception. Wicked runs through Feb. 18 at the Hippodrome, 12 N. Eutaw St. Tickets are $36-$82. 410-547-SEAT or BroadwayAcrossAmerica.com

There's a long tradition of writers writing about writing and there's a tradition at least as long of stories about the seemingly good-and-noble selling their souls to the devil. For Australian screenwriter David Williamson, "Emerald City" is the magical land where the two traditions meet.The play, which is receiving its Baltimore premiere at Theatre Hopkins, is heavy on chat and short on action. Nor does it help that the primary issue being chatted up is the definition of success -- not the most dramatic of subjects.

Even before Thursday's House vote refusing a debate on the crime bill, conservative ''law-and-order'' Republicans were expressing raw contempt for the social and community-based initiatives written into the measure.The conference committee had barely revealed its $30.2 billion compromise measure July 28 when Utah's Sen. Orrin Hatch damned it as ''a big-spending boondoggle.'' Illinois Rep. Henry Hyde disparaged ''soft'' portions of the bill -- money for drug courts, to fight violence against women, to give ghetto kids an alternative to debilitating street life -- as ''the whole Emerald City of Oz.''In these Republicans' view, social spending equals wasted dollars.

This summer, Chesapeake Music Hall is a magical place where Dorothy dons ruby slippers and travels to the Emerald City, home of the wonderful Wizard of Oz. She's joined by a Scarecrow in search of a brain, a Tin Man who wants a heart and a Cowardly Lion lacking courage. The CMH ensemble, it turns out, is up to the challenge of bringing new life to such a familiar tale. "It's a fine line to walk when you put together a show that is so well-known for its movie version," director Sherry Kay Anderson said.

It's about as subtle as Jimi Hendrix smashing a Fender Stratocaster guitar, this undulating mass of metallic blues and reds, purples and golds. F From the outside, Experience Music Project, Seattle's high-tech, $240 million tribute to American popular music, even looks like pieces of a smashed guitar all mashed together. Or maybe a hallucinogenic dream, a great blob of molten metal about to melt into the base of the Space Needle. Seattle's newest attraction combines the financial backing of Paul G. Allen -- Microsoft co-founder, guitarist and lifelong fan of native son Hendrix -- with the surreal brilliance of architect Frank Gehry and enough technological extravagance to make interactive exhibits elsewhere seem outmoded relics of the last century.

A collection of short stories, "Emerald City" by Jennifer Egan, that came out in January. She's just great. I read her novel, it came out last year, "The Invisible Circus."I'm also reading "Playing the Bones," by Louise Redd. (to be published by Little Brown in May). She graduated from Hopkins undergrad. It's really fun.Ben Neihart, author of "Hey, Joe" (to be published by Simon & Schuster in April), is a graduate of the Creative Writing program at Johns Hopkins and currently working at the Columbus Center and Johns Hopkins' Eisenhower Library.

Theatrical superstition holds that green is an unlucky color, but in Wicked -- the musical about a green-skinned girl and the Emerald City -- green is definitely the color of luck, as well as money. Wicked seems to mint money in every town it plays and, judging from the slick touring production at the Hippodrome, Baltimore should prove no exception. Wicked runs through Feb. 18 at the Hippodrome, 12 N. Eutaw St. Tickets are $36-$82. 410-547-SEAT or BroadwayAcrossAmerica.com

SEE The Wizard of Oz at North Carroll High School tomorrow, Friday or Saturday and you'll probably feel a part of something extraordinary. Drama teacher Roberta Gore has created a three-dimensional quality for the production, with part of the action taking place in the aisles. The dog-snatching neighbor coasts a bicycle down the aisle and the screaming flying monkeys run and jump past. Dorothy Gale, played by the inspired Jenny Spears, brings vivid memories of the Judy Garland movie of 1939.

Tom Tykwer, the prodigious German director who scored an international sensation with the emotion-charged pyrotechnics of Run Lola Run, tries for a literal change of pace with The Princess and the Warrior. This languorous contemporary fairy tale centers on a psychiatric nurse (Franka Potente) who for one very good reason becomes obsessed with a scruffy, handsome thief (Benno Furmann): He saves her with a makeshift tracheotomy after she is hit by a truck. Actually, the two are already connected in ways that won't be uncovered until the end. But Potente's insistence that they belong together and her determination to stick by him are what drive the action to its vivid yet ultimately unsatisfying conclusion.

This summer, Chesapeake Music Hall is a magical place where Dorothy dons ruby slippers and travels to the Emerald City, home of the wonderful Wizard of Oz. She's joined by a Scarecrow in search of a brain, a Tin Man who wants a heart and a Cowardly Lion lacking courage. The CMH ensemble, it turns out, is up to the challenge of bringing new life to such a familiar tale. "It's a fine line to walk when you put together a show that is so well-known for its movie version," director Sherry Kay Anderson said.

It's about as subtle as Jimi Hendrix smashing a Fender Stratocaster guitar, this undulating mass of metallic blues and reds, purples and golds. F From the outside, Experience Music Project, Seattle's high-tech, $240 million tribute to American popular music, even looks like pieces of a smashed guitar all mashed together. Or maybe a hallucinogenic dream, a great blob of molten metal about to melt into the base of the Space Needle. Seattle's newest attraction combines the financial backing of Paul G. Allen -- Microsoft co-founder, guitarist and lifelong fan of native son Hendrix -- with the surreal brilliance of architect Frank Gehry and enough technological extravagance to make interactive exhibits elsewhere seem outmoded relics of the last century.

NEW YORK -- Two guys dressed like prison inmates are standing on the corner of 15th Street and Ninth Avenue in the Chelsea district of Manhattan smoking cigarettes. They look familiar."Excuse me, can you guys tell me where they're filming the new HBO series, 'Oz?' " I ask.They look me over."You want to go to Oz?" one asks back. "You ain't from Kansas by any chance, are you?"This kills both of them.I smile, reminding myself that when God gave actors all that attitude and good looks, he sometimes skimped on brains.

A collection of short stories, "Emerald City" by Jennifer Egan, that came out in January. She's just great. I read her novel, it came out last year, "The Invisible Circus."I'm also reading "Playing the Bones," by Louise Redd. (to be published by Little Brown in May). She graduated from Hopkins undergrad. It's really fun.Ben Neihart, author of "Hey, Joe" (to be published by Simon & Schuster in April), is a graduate of the Creative Writing program at Johns Hopkins and currently working at the Columbus Center and Johns Hopkins' Eisenhower Library.

'Emerald City' opens Friday at Theatre Hopkins"Emerald City" -- a semiautobiographical play by David Williamson, author of the screenplays of "Gallipoli" and "The Year of Living Dangerously" -- opens a five-weekend run at Theatre Hopkins on Friday.Harry B. Turner plays an Australian screenwriter who strives to remain true to his artistic vision. Curtain times are Friday and Saturdays at 8:30 p.m. with matinees Sundays at 2:15 p.m. Tickets are $7.50 and $10. Theatre Hopkins performs in the Merrick Barn on the Johns Hopkins University campus.

THEATER'Emerald City'"Emerald City" is the largely autobiographical account of Australian screenwriter David Williamson's triumph over temptation. The script is long on talk and short on action, but hTC Williamson -- whose credits include "Gallipoli" and "The Year of Living Dangerously" -- writes with wit and intelligence, and Theatre Hopkins' production does justice to both. Performances are at 8:30 p.m. today and 2:15 p.m. tomorrow in the Merrick Barn on the Johns Hopkins University campus.

A visit to Grimaldis' summer group show brings back the past with such a rush that it's almost like an exercise in escape. Not that we're talking nostalgia here; these artists are not that kind. But their works do recall other eras.Grace Hartigan, who often mines art history, gives us "Ask Me No More," a painting that features a hefty couple who might be a Venus and Adonis borrowed from Rubens. They face John Van Alstine's sculpture "Implement XXV (River Arc)," whose components include half of a stone mill wheel and a curving bronze element inspired by a scythe handle.

Even before Thursday's House vote refusing a debate on the crime bill, conservative ''law-and-order'' Republicans were expressing raw contempt for the social and community-based initiatives written into the measure.The conference committee had barely revealed its $30.2 billion compromise measure July 28 when Utah's Sen. Orrin Hatch damned it as ''a big-spending boondoggle.'' Illinois Rep. Henry Hyde disparaged ''soft'' portions of the bill -- money for drug courts, to fight violence against women, to give ghetto kids an alternative to debilitating street life -- as ''the whole Emerald City of Oz.''In these Republicans' view, social spending equals wasted dollars.