Taylor Mac

• Here is something I almost never do: tip my hand about a review that I have not yet written. But because this particular show is so wonderful, and because seats are so limited, I will make an exception. Go here right now and buy seats,  if you can, to Taylor Mac’s spectacular ramshackle epic The Lily’s Revenge at HERE. Yes, it is nearly five hours long; yes, it is full of weird performers from the downtown scene; yes, it includes nearly a whole act in verse. Purge all fears from your mind, and go see it. I will explain more later in the week. For now, just trust me. This is what downtown New York theater is all about at its very best. If you do not see this, you should kick yourself for years to come; if you need help, I will come over and kick you. [UPDATE: The full review is now up here.]

Paula West

• Another artist well worth your while this week is not technically theater, but since she’s singing Cole Porter songs—and putting a decidedly dramatic stamp on tunes by the likes of Bob Dylan—I think she qualifies. The superb jazz singer Paula West is back in town for her annual run at the Oak Room at the historic Algonquin Hotel, and if you have any taste for the great jazz-pop singers of old (Ella, Sarah, Dinah, Billie), then you simply must go check her out. She stamps her own distinctively contemporary sound on the old-time swing, and I have never sent anyone to to hear her who hasn’t come back singing her praises to the sky.

• Finally, a realistic tip. I am not a huge fan of Finian’s Rainbow; it is the kind of show (i.e., often great score, mostly ridiculous book) that I think is better suited to an Encores! staging than a full Broadway revival. Most of my colleagues raved about the current production, but this strikes me one of those cases (and I have been on the other side more than once) in which the average professional critic is simply out of touch with the average Broadway theatergoer, for whom Finian’s Rainbow—treasured by aficionados though it may be—is liable to seem very dated indeed. Even aside from the balderdash about leprechauns and wishes, and the paper-thin characters, and the empty romance, and the once-daring, now-facile antiracist messaging: This is a show in which the heroes are looking for endless easy credit to finance their tobacco farm. (There is a reason this show has not had a major Broadway revival since 1947.) Nonetheless, I fully grant that the current production has many merits, including a very fine cast and a lush orchestra to bring out Burton Lane’s appealing melodies. And if these are sufficient incentives for you, I urge you to see Finian’s Rainbow right away. For if the deeply saddening Brighton Beach Memoirs fiasco—and a real heartbreaker it was, since that production was a great success from an artistic standpoint—teaches us anything, it is that good reviews cannot save a production that audiences just don’t want to see. Finian’s Rainbow is currently playing to 73.7 percent capacity, at an anemic average ticket price of $36.98. These are not the kinds of figures that keep a show this big and expensive on the boards. Now, those numbers will probably pick up a little as the reviews sink in—but not, I would bet, by much. For unlike Brighton Beach Memoirs, which might have found an audience in time, Finian’s Rainbow is at this point a connoisseur’s confection. And in this economy, those don’t stay on the market long.