Theater

Tim Robbins jokes that he could've given the title "While Rome Burns" to his new festival at the Actors' Gang. Times are tough, people are angry, "and they have every right to be," says the Oscar-winning actor and artistic director of the Culver City-based theater company. "There've been really bad decisions made that we're paying the bill for now." Like most cultural entities, the Gang, one of L.A.'s most accomplished theatrical institutions, has been scorched financially by the economic crisis.

Lighting up for dramatic effect is a no-no on Colorado theater stages. The Denver Post reports that the Colorado Department of Public Health is taking a hard line against the smoking of tobacco products or tobacco substitutes on indoor stages, following legislation enacted in 2006, now under appeal. "You simply cannot make unprotected conduct protected by dumping it into a theater context," the paper quotes assistant attorney general Lisa Brenner Freimann as saying.

A million free theater tickets to people younger than 26? American producers will no doubt be green with envy over the British government's largesse. But reports about the Department for Culture, Media and Sport's initiative, designed to spark a love affair between Shakespeare, Shaw and Stoppard and a generation that has spent its youth blankly gazing at screens, made me wonder if there might not be another, less politically correct reason for the program. For years, there have been whispered complaints among unpensioned theatergoers about the "gray menace" -- you know, the invasion of cumbersome canes and aisle-blocking walkers at matinees, the crinkling of lozenge wrappers during pivotal plot points and that unignorable combination of listening devices and hearing aids that tend to explode just as opening numbers start getting good.

Long before the digital revolution -- I believe it might have been the Neolithic period -- theater criticism was actually published in book form. Anthologies of reviews, monographs on artists and essays on theatrical developments would sit proudly in stores that carried such not-yet-antiquated things as poetry, histories and novels. "The American Theatre Reader: Essays and Conversations From American Theatre Magazine" is a refreshingly unexpected throwback to such a literate age. Defiantly unglossy in its look and flagrantly retro in its defense of intelligent theater discussion, the collection is also a reassurance that, despite all the countervailing economic and cultural forces, there continues to exist a small battalion of theater writers fighting the good fight.

The Bixby Park Bandshell in Long Beach was renovated more than a year ago to serve as a venue for concerts, celebrations and picnics, but it's mostly been used as a makeshift homeless shelter and a skateboarding haven for teens. The next two weekends, however, will see it transformed into a free children's theater, part of the Long Beach Sea Festival, a summer series of beach events. On Saturday, the Long Beach Shakespeare Company will perform a condensed version of William Shakespeare's "The Tempest" for kids of all ages at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. The 45-minute story revolves around magical sorcerers and sea monsters on a deserted island.

Americans ARE suckers for teams. The prospect of talents blending into a collective heave ho of inspiration turns us into giddy school kids at recess. Sports fans know better than anyone the joy of watching the gifted spur one another to new heights. Want to see a grown man cry? Wait for the next bottom-of-the-ninth grand slam. Want to make him sulk for weeks? Fill him in on how those supposedly chummy superstars really feel about each other off the field.

MUCH AS one would like to join Edith Piaf in a duet of "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien," a critic can't help having occasional regrets after passing instantaneous verdicts on scores of plays and musicals, usually in the space of a few morning hours after a deadline-spoiled night's sleep.

A RUMPLED Jason Alexander looks out from the video window, his signature sheepish grin beaming across the Internet. The former "Seinfeld" star is about to pitch a new series of shows, but these titles sound nothing like sitcom material. The online video is the trailer for the upcoming season at Reprise Theatre Company, where Alexander is artistic director.

Behold America's theater capital, twinkling, preening, clanging, stoking ambitions and devouring tourist dollars. Now behold the drama students of Verdugo Hills High School, their parents ferrying them from the San Fernando Valley to LAX, their jet nosing eastward, their headphones tuned to the Broadway channel. There are 14 of them, 14 to 18 years old, and this is their biggest field trip ever, a five-day blitz of Broadway shows and Manhattan landmarks. Their jet zooms into Newark, N.J.

The AUDIENCE for live classical music, theater and dance is, like, dying -- OMG! They're sitting in the dark in the concert hall or theater, aging so fast that their gray hair will be white by intermission. And someday soon, the last of the bunch -- a doddering sourpuss who writes letters to his local newspaper with a fountain pen -- will keel over in his velvet seat, done in by the effort of yelling "Brava!" at a plus-sized soprano.