Great White Way

A great white shark has surprised scientists by swimming more than 12,000 miles from South Africa to Australia and back in a journey that sheds new light on the ocean's most feared predator. The journey of the tagged female shark -- named Nicole after Australian actress Nicole Kidman -- was the first transoceanic and longest recorded trip by a shark. Experts reckon she did it for love.

Dressed in her tattered rags, the forlorn beggar woman looks suitably earnest as the piano breaks into the opening bars of "I Dreamed a Dream" from "Les Miserables." Yet instead of the expected tugs at our social conscience, what we get is a yearning ode to Broadway in its prime: I dreamed a show in days gone by, Where all the scenery looked so pretty, I didn't sing one song then die, And all my costumes weren't so gritty . . . It can only mean one thing.

On the morning of the opening of his newest, most personal work -- an opening that happens to coincide with Game 6 of the World Series -- playwright Nicky Rogan (Michael Keaton) sails Homerically through New York on a fleet of cabs, trying to fend off mythical monsters and skirt bad omens. The Mets are playing the Red Sox, and Nicky, a lifelong New Yorker, is a Red Sox fan. The reviewer assigned to his play is the famously acerbic and hard-to-please Steven Schwimmer (Robert Downey Jr.

Gerard Alessandrini can't wait for Oscar night. While millions of Americans are sitting at home, waiting to see who wins what, Alessandrini will coil in front of his television, watching for gaffes that rank among the truly memorable. Moments like the streaker dashing past David Niven, Sally Field crying to the audience, "You like me, you really like me!," and Jack Palance doing one-arm pushups.

When David Henry Hwang's version of "Flower Drum Song" opens in New York this week, it will be the first musical about Asian Americans on Broadway since, well, "Flower Drum Song." No one doubts that Asian Americans have had trouble reaching the Great White Way. Hwang is the only writer to have made it, with three plays and two musicals including his "re-imagination" of Rodgers & Hammerstein's 1958 tale about San Francisco's Chinatown.

Most tourists come to Valdez for the outdoors. But each June the town is overrun by hundreds of people who spend their time inside. They don't bring fishing rods or flotation vests, and they all but ignore the beauty of the snow-flecked Chugach Mountains, the grandeur of Prince William Sound and the chance to walk up to a glacier. They're theater people, and they come north to hobnob with some of the country's greatest living playwrights at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference.

Scientists have long thought that California's great white sharks spent their lives patrolling the chilly waters off the central coast, venturing only as far as Southern California to breed and deliver their young. Nothing, it seemed, could coax these relative homebodies to stray far from their coastal hunting grounds, where they love nothing more than making a quick meal of blubbery seals and sea lions. Now new research has shattered the image of the hardened predator with the photogenic jaws.

Remember those dismissive jabs from New Yorkers about Los Angeles not having a downtown? No more. Anyone who mentions rolled-up sidewalks has not walked Broadway on a weekend, when crowds and a mix of sounds and smells stir memories of Lower Manhattan or Mexico City. Before World War II, Broadway was Los Angeles' version of the Great White Way -- in this case, the world's largest concentration of movie theaters. The grandiose style of its film palaces spilled over to nearby office buildings and stores, still resplendent in gargoyles and rococo trim.

Let's blame Reba McEntire. The country music star scored a big hit on Broadway in "Annie Get Your Gun." Maybe she inspired other practitioners of other pop styles to sing Broadway songs too. That they want to do so is the theory behind "Broadway's Best From Bravo," on the cable network Monday and March 9 at 8 p.m. But some of the singers on this show are not ready for Broadway--or even for a local civic light opera. Let's start with the others, however.

The musicians and their woodwinds, keyboard, cello and other instruments have set up camp in the tight quarters of a windowless bungalow at the local Jewish Community Center. There's kiddie art taped to one of the walls--a reminder of the facility's day job--and a card table with cookies and coffee in the corner. It's a low-luxury setup, even by the standards of not-for-profit theater. Yet no one seems to mind as they work through the score of a passionate number called "Threnody."