Andrei Serban

Shakespeare's Juliet is one of theater's great tragic heroines, but she's also a teenager. She's a typical 14-year-old who defies her parents, dates the wrong guy and hangs out on the balcony way past curfew. The attempt to recognize the willful adolescent in Juliet is what led Sir Peter Hall to cast 23-year-old Lynn Collins in his staging of "Romeo and Juliet," which opened at the Music Center's Ahmanson Theatre Feb. 4.

Bearing enough black magic, violence and sex for several sequels to "The Devils," "The Fiery Angel" flies into town this week. Its arrival may come as a shock to those who know Sergei Prokofiev as the precocious, ironic "bad boy of Russian music." For, in this brooding, demonic and oddly neglected opera, the sunny, sardonic creator of such tuneful crowd-pleasers as the "Lt. Kije" Suite, the "Classical" Symphony and "Cinderella" displays his dark side. It's a Freudian dream come true.

What could be more quintessentially convivial than a Greenwich Village bartender chatting with a regular customer? That's how John Farmanesh-Bocca and Jack Stehlin came to know each other. Now, at a remove of 15 years and 3,000 miles, they've reunited to put on a play that is one of the least convivial dramas ever written: "Titus Andronicus. " With Farmanesh-Bocca as adaptor and director, Stehlin plays the titular Roman warrior as a traumatized American general back from fighting not the Goths but the Taliban.

Youth is served -- and nicely too -- in "An Evening With the Egos" at the Little Victory Theatre. Early on, Joseph De Rosa's world premiere comedy about two commitment-shy people and their tumultuous office romance bogs down in its own high concept. The gimmick here is that the young lovers' inner thoughts are articulated by their own "egos" -- cheeky personae who root the lovers on from the sidelines and keep the audience abreast of the true meaning underneath their awkward interchanges.

PLAYWRIGHTS try to emulate him, actors cut their teeth on his roles, and directors thrill to the challenge of staging his plays. Can there be any artist more inspirational to other artists than Anton Chekhov, the gentle Russian doctor with the knowing smile, distinguished pince-nez, and self-effacing body of work that's blessedly free of the phonebook-fat novels so beloved by his more egocentric literary countrymen?

Ned Romero sits forward in his chair in the living room of his daughter's Hollywood Hills home. Dressed in a black running suit with a red racing stripe, his long silver hair pulled back into a ponytail, he is gracious and soft-spoken yet undeniably commanding. He chooses his words carefully, as if to show respect when talking about the Oglala Sioux holy man he plays in the title role of "Black Elk Speaks," a Denver Center Theatre Company production opening at the Mark Taper Forum on Thursday.

Cherry Jones arrives for an interview just like one would expect her to: on a bicycle, her straight brown hair tucked under a helmet, her tall, athletic body attired in beige summer shorts and vest. The intensely blue-eyed Southerner may have received the most rapturous reviews of the 1994-1995 season for playing the meek yet defiant Catherine Sloper in the hit Lincoln Center Theater revival of Ruth and Augustus Goetz's well-worn 1947 drama "The Heiress."

It was a happy, sad, frustrating, exhilarating, discouraging, encouraging, soothing, frazzling, stimulating, depressing, uplifting, jolting, bracing, benumbing, painful, dull, exciting, hysterical, lackadaisical, exceptional, humdrum year. Just like 1986.

Once upon a time, opera was primarily a singer's art. The aficionado didn't care all that much about who happened to be waving the stick, or who was directing traffic. The opera fanatic listened first, and he listened primarily to the sounds emanating from the stage. He looked last, and then without much discernment. Intermission talk revolved around Caruso's "Pagliacci," Ponselle's "Norma," Melchior's "Tristan". . . .

There are few cities in the world that have such an enviable population of working actors as Los Angeles. From the hills and valleys to the beaches and beyond, the region is positively teeming with them. And they're not just congregating at the Ivy or the bar at the Chateau Marmont, or my high-octane West Hollywood health club, where I often feel surrounded by their killer abs.