Michael Mayer

MICHAEL MAYER threads his way into a Chelsea restaurant, having just come from the orthopedist. During the summer, he had been walking on what he thought was just a sore ankle. Turns out, after diagnosis, to be what the doctor called a broken navicular. "The doctor said to me, 'You've been walking on this for two months? You must have a very high pain threshold,' " recalls the 46-year-old Mayer. "And I said, 'Honey, I'm a director of Broadway musicals.

Michael Mayer tried to contain his growing frustration. For more than nine hours at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre over two recent afternoons, Mayer's creative group was laboring to fix the glitches that were making a mess of a key sequence in the world premiere rock opera "American Idiot." Progress was fleeting. For the two days of technical rehearsals, director Mayer and his team were stuck revising just three minutes of the show -- an elaborate fantasy dance passage in the adaptation of the pop-punk band Green Day's Grammy-winning 2004 album of the same name.

Farther down on 7th Avenue, some 20 blocks south of this coffee shop in Michael Mayer's quasi-Chelsea neighborhood, gay men are already crowding the areas around Christopher Street for tomorrow's parade. The influx is palpable; the restaurants seem busier this weekend. Mayer, still partly soaked from his one-block dash through today's thunder showers, mentions that tomorrow, June 27, is also his 44th birthday, falling on the anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion.

John Gallagher Jr., who won a Tony Award in 2007 for his performance in "Spring Awakening," will play the lead role in "American Idiot," the new musical from the rock band Green Day. The show, based on the band's Grammy-winning 2004 album of the same name, is opening in September at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. The production is being directed by Michael Mayer, who directed "Spring Awakening" on Broadway. Mayer collaborated with Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong on the story for the musical.

Michael Mayer tried to contain his growing frustration. For more than nine hours at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre over two recent afternoons, Mayer's creative group was laboring to fix the glitches that were making a mess of a key sequence in the world premiere rock opera "American Idiot." Progress was fleeting. For the two days of technical rehearsals, director Mayer and his team were stuck revising just three minutes of the show -- an elaborate fantasy dance passage in the adaptation of the pop-punk band Green Day's Grammy-winning 2004 album of the same name.

John Gallagher Jr., who won a Tony Award in 2007 for his performance in "Spring Awakening," will play the lead role in "American Idiot," the new musical from the rock band Green Day. The show, based on the band's Grammy-winning 2004 album of the same name, is opening in September at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. The production is being directed by Michael Mayer, who directed "Spring Awakening" on Broadway. Mayer collaborated with Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong on the story for the musical.

In regards to Michael Mayer's letter, I have two observations which I think need to be made. The first is that I find it hard to comprehend how Mr. Mayer could make such a critical commentary while he was 300 miles away from the game site. It would seem to me that anyone making such a sharp criticism of how a team played in a tournament would at least do the participants the courtesy of viewing the event. Without this first-hand perspective, Mr. Mayer has no idea what took place in Las Vegas.

When news got out that the most pursued young director of the moment, Michael Mayer, was taking on a Broadway revival of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown," a proportionate amount of incredulity--you know, the theatrical equivalent of "good grief"--went murmuring across the community. But we were amused. Then we learned that Anthony Rapp, who created the character who documented his downtown friends dying of AIDS in "Rent," had been cast to play sweet, hapless Charlie himself.

The father of an 18-year-old man who died at a UCLA frat house has accused the fraternity and his son's friends of negligence, saying they essentially left his son to die after a night of heavy partying. Glen Berlin Parrish was pronounced dead Saturday afternoon after consuming alcohol and possibly prescription medications, authorities said. "They found my son hunched over, in the back, and no one had the … decency to call the paramedics," his father, Glen Parrish Sr., told The Times.

NEW YORK - It may be the understatement of the theater season when the choreographer Steven Hoggett, says, in the quiet British way, "It's a very interesting time for me. " But understatement is not actually his thing. The emphatic flailing and ecstatic flying he devised forGreen Day's"American Idiot" are pumping up audiences at the Ahmanson Theatre through April 22. The stamping, stomping, full-out dancing actor-musicians of "Once," the downtown hit based on the 2006 indie film of the same name, have been rapturously received on Broadway.

MICHAEL MAYER threads his way into a Chelsea restaurant, having just come from the orthopedist. During the summer, he had been walking on what he thought was just a sore ankle. Turns out, after diagnosis, to be what the doctor called a broken navicular. "The doctor said to me, 'You've been walking on this for two months? You must have a very high pain threshold,' " recalls the 46-year-old Mayer. "And I said, 'Honey, I'm a director of Broadway musicals.

Farther down on 7th Avenue, some 20 blocks south of this coffee shop in Michael Mayer's quasi-Chelsea neighborhood, gay men are already crowding the areas around Christopher Street for tomorrow's parade. The influx is palpable; the restaurants seem busier this weekend. Mayer, still partly soaked from his one-block dash through today's thunder showers, mentions that tomorrow, June 27, is also his 44th birthday, falling on the anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion.

When news got out that the most pursued young director of the moment, Michael Mayer, was taking on a Broadway revival of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown," a proportionate amount of incredulity--you know, the theatrical equivalent of "good grief"--went murmuring across the community. But we were amused. Then we learned that Anthony Rapp, who created the character who documented his downtown friends dying of AIDS in "Rent," had been cast to play sweet, hapless Charlie himself.

In regards to Michael Mayer's letter, I have two observations which I think need to be made. The first is that I find it hard to comprehend how Mr. Mayer could make such a critical commentary while he was 300 miles away from the game site. It would seem to me that anyone making such a sharp criticism of how a team played in a tournament would at least do the participants the courtesy of viewing the event. Without this first-hand perspective, Mr. Mayer has no idea what took place in Las Vegas.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak underwent successful back surgery, Health Minister Mohammed Awad Afifi Tag Din said in a broadcast on state television. Din said doctors in Munich, Germany, had operated on Mubarak, 76, to correct a slipped disk. Michael Mayer, the head surgeon on the team that performed the operation, said there were no complications.

— In the second episode of the new NBC series "Smash," a hard-driving Broadway producer played by Anjelica Huston throws a drink in the face of her ex-husband and former business partner at a midtown Manhattan watering hole. "Would you get out of my booth?" she snarls. "I'm not giving you Bond 45 in the divorce, Jerry!" Bond 45 is the buzzy restaurant in Times Square where many major Broadway deals go down over oysters and martinis. It's a place where people bark "Get me Bernie!"