Tonight I could see a show, catch a movie or simply plow through a bucket of ice cream while catching up on season two of Californication (so dirty, so funny). Instead, I’m headed to East 28th Street for a panel organized by Stony Brook University’s Department of the Arts and Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA). It’s called “Elevating the Discourse: Artists, Critics and Audience” and I will be joined by Newsday’s Linda Winer; playwright/blogger Jason Grote; Andy Horwitz of Culturebot; director/dramaturg Mallory Catlett; and TONY contributor Paul Menard. Here’s the description: “The paper press is on the wane and professional critics’ voices are being minimized by dwindling column space. With the advent of personal web pages, blogs, and Twitter, a great many opinions are now available and attracting an audience, and is affecting the quality of the discourse. In this time of transition, what is the role of the expert in society? Where is the place for accountable, intelligent cultural journalism? Also, is this an opportunity for artists to take an active part in elevating the discourse? Is it possible to recast the relationship between artists and critics in a way that maximizes the complexity and depth of the culture? And what are strategies—including harnessing digital media—to preserve and enrich critical discourse?” The roundtable is tonight from 7-9pm. Come on down, whether you think this humble editor/critic/blogger is capable of holding forth on elevating the discourse or, er, not.

Tonight I’m off to see the Manhattan Theatre Club’s revival of The Royal Family. This 1927 showbiz comedy by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber was last seen on Broadway more than 30 years ago in a much-lauded version directed by Ellis Rabb. (The production is available on DVD—thank you, Netflix!) I must admit to not being terribly familiar with the work—it’s basically a screwball lampoon of the Barrymore acting dynasty—but I’m doing my best to catch up. You may have heard that suave stage vet Tony Roberts (whom I had the pleasure of meeting in May at the 2009 Audie Awards) suffered a seizure during Sunday’s matinee and had to be taken to the hospital. He’s feeling much better, apparently, but probably won’t be appearing tonight as crusty agent Oscar Wolfe. Too bad. Although my redoubtable colleague Adam Feldman is reviewing the production for TONY, I’ll be seeing it for NY1’s On Stage. Naturally, we wish Tony continued fast recovery. In the meantime, for Kaufman fans, here’s a little video I dug up on YouTube. Fast-forward to 2:25, where Kaufman shares his thoughts about critics.

Should a theater critic be left in a room with eight playwrights? Sans taser or bulletproof vest? I will hazard it tonight at 7:30, when I moderate a panel of dramatists (plus a composer) convened around Playwrights Horizons’ 2009–2010 season. There’s Annie Baker (Circle Mirror Transformation), Bruce Norris (Clybourne Park), Melissa James Gibson (This), Kia Corthron (A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick), Daniel Goldfarb (The Retributionists), and the trio of Mariana Elder, Chris Miller and Nathan Tysen (The Burnt Part Boys). The panel is entitled “New Plays, Tough Times,” and in it I will ask the writers about form, content and how to make plays in the current tricky environment. Come on down to 92Y Tribeca, won’t you?

I’m not a dance critic; I’ve only caught tacky flashes of Dancing with the Stars as I surf to the Sci Fi channel (sorry—ick—Syfy) or BBC America. And the only terpsichorean training I lay claim to is Drunken White Guy Freestyle. So should I be allowed to review Burn the Floor, the ballroom-dance attraction currently in residence at the Longacre Theatre? I lack firsthand knowledge about living in Oklahoma with a pill-addled granny; that didn’t stop me from covering August: Osage County. But when it comes to special events such as BTF, I regret not being able to distinguish a samba from a rumba, savor a well-executed paso doble or parse the finer points of the perfect fox-trot. (Yes, I just googled all that.) However, I get the sense that the producers of BTF are not really interested in educating the viewers on dance history, more likely they just want to turn them on with scantily clad hot bodies in furious motion. Fair enough. My +1 bagged on me, but I can vicariously view this as a date show. And some other time, if those BTF hoofers want to check out my moves at a local bar, I’d be happy to oblige.

When I moved here in 1992, a friend offered me an extra ticket to Ariane Mnouchkine’s Les Atrides at BAM. Despite the amazing things I’d heard of this French auteur and her village-sized troupe of actors, designers, musicians, technicians and children, I couldn’t make the performance. Today I don’t remember what the hell prevented me, but all I know is I regret it. In 2005, my jaw dropped and stayed dropped for the six-hour duration of Le Dernier Caravansérail (Odyssées), Mnouchkine’s awesome tapestry of hope, pain, struggle and betrayal among refugees around the world. Now she’s back and you bet I’ll be there. Tonight and tomorrow night I’ll be reviewing the two-part, seven-hour Les Ephémères, another grand mosiac of scenes, this one about fleeting memories. On the Theater main page and here on Upstaged, we’ll have extended coverage of Mnouchkine & Co. Tomorrow check in for Helen Shaw’s preview of Les Ephémères and a slide show of Théatre du Soleil’s previous New York visits. Also, I took the opportunity to blog over at The Guardian about NYC and world theater (sorry, theatre, if you’re a Brit). My Guardian piece is here. For tickets to Les Ephémères go here. Bound to sell out fast.

Tonight I’m off to the Music Box Theatre to see August: Osage County for the fourth—count it, fourth—time. I can’t remember visiting a show that much when I wasn’t writing a book about it. But Tracy Letts’s massive bad-family tragicomedy can endure repeated viewings, I think. We critics have been reinvited due to the casting of Phylicia Rashad, pictured, as venomous matriarch Violet Weston. She’s no shrinking violet, that Rashad, and here on Upstaged we raised an eybrow at the casting, but I’m jazzed nonetheless. The redoubtable Amy Morton has rejoined the cast as pill-raiding daughter Barbara. Plus, I get to see John Cullum play the father, Beverly, in that deliciously creepy opening scene. How lovely that Phylicia and her daughter, Condola, are starring  in two of New York’s finest dramas at the same time.

In 2005 I visited London for a bit o’ theater tourism. I stayed in a cute but crummy youth hostel, ate plenty of fish-and-chips, and joyfully crossed Waterloo bridge multiple times to visit the National Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe. The trip wouldn’t have been complete without a visit to the Donmar Warehouse, which was presenting Mary Stuart. It was a treat for a number of reasons: to enjoy a show in that great intimate space; to see the rarely produced historical drama by Friedrich Schiller; but mostly, to watch a pair of world-class stage divas doing battle as Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I (Janet McTeer, pictured, and Harriet Walter). Tonight I get to see them again. The Donmar production, which went to the West End in 2006, has finally made the leap to Broadway. The leads are the same, but the supporting cast is American. I’m boning up on my Schiller and very much looking forward to seeing the fur fly tonight.

Tonight I’m off to see The Wooster Group try something completely different: Baroque opera (at St. Ann’s Warehouse). Well, it’s not a traditional version of an opera, as if you hadn’t guessed. The Group has taken La Didone (1641) by Cavalli, and collaged it with a reenactment of the 1965 Mario Bava sci-fi thriller Terrore nello spazio. As you can see from the production shot, the design is very space-age. There’s method to this madness: The opera concerns the Trojan warrior Aeneas seducing the Carthaginian Queen Dido in Africa, then abandoning her, while the movie follows a bunch of astronauts who touch down on a planet of zombies. Hmm… cultural contamination, exploration, imperialism, Cold War, Trojan War? I can sorta see why Wooster matriarch Elizabeth LeCompte thought to shuffle these Italian cultural artifacts. But I’d like to ask the music purists out there: Is it still opera? Can anything be an opera? Banana Bag & Bodice is presenting a rock opera based on Beowulf. New York performance group Object Collection will bring its experimental opera Problem Radical(s) to P.S. 122 later this month, which is derived from pedestrian movement and layered sound. Lord knows that ever since Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thompson shared a piano bench, the boundaries of this mongrel form has been stretched and tested. Still, something tells me persnickety patrons of the Metropolitan Opera won’t be driving their Bimmers out to Dumbo. Recently, perceptive cultural critic Claudia LaRocco shared her thoughts on WNYC and at her related blog, The Performance Club, regarding opera-performance hybrids.

Oh, you darling Upstagers. You always want to know what I’m up to, right? Well, tonight I traipse off to the Schoenfeld Theatre to review the new play Impressionism. It stars Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen and it’s being directed by Jack O’Brien (The Coast of Utopia). Fancy pedigree, eh? Sure, but in this business you’d have to be blind or deaf not to notice the grumblings that the show—by the virtually unknown Michael Jacobs—has been having a rough time of it. I already blogged my confusion about how Impressionism got to Broadway in the first place. So, perhaps you’re wondering: Can a critic, having read advance negative buzz, sit in his seat and impartially judge the work? To which I say: Of course I can. Grind though the gossip mill may, I’m pretty sure I can divorce myself from any bias and simply, honestly, seriously, evaluate what’s happening in front of me. That is my job, after all.

Hey there, loyal Upstagers. So in the next couple of weeks a whole bunch of shows are closing, several of which I have Post-It noted to my Mac. What, oh what, should I not miss? So far my list includes: This Beautiful City, Chautauqua!, The Savannah Disputation and Soul Samurai. All those suckers shutter March 15. Mabou Mines DollHouse closes even sooner: this Sunday. Given that I have to review two or three shows a week already, and keep up the pretense of having a life, how can I make them all? How can I not?!? So I turn to you, dear reader, for guidance. Which ones are the must-see events? Which other ones have I, in my ignorance, not even mentioned? Help!

(For the record, tonight I head out to the Eugene O’Neill Theatre to see Jane Fonda unravel the mysteries of Beethoven in 33 Variations.)