This sounds pretty dry, but it’s not. St. Germain knows how to create compelling conflict and his dialogue is often very witty. You won’t come away with your mind changed, but you will enjoy yourself if you go to this. Tyler Marchant’s direction is perfectly, subtly understated, and his two actors, Martin Raynor as Freud and Mark H. Dold as Lewis are terrific.

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The Transport Group’s musical at the Duke Theatre, See Rock City & Other Destinations by Adam Matthias (book & lyrics) and Brad Alexander (music), AT THE Duke Theatre, is basically a series of ten-minute plays about people visiting unusual tourist destinations in the U.S. All are ultimately about loneliness.

When you enter the Duke Theatre you are confronted by an empty space, save for a huge pile of lawn chairs. Just before the show begins, the cast members come out, disassemble the lawn chair mountain and set the chairs up in rows around the periphery of the room. This reinforces the themes of impermanence we are about to experience, but it also addS extra time to the event. It seemed to me an unnecessary contrivance.

I loved the little playlets, though; and the songs are lovely. The performers are are mighty fine. This one’s definitely worth a visit.

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The York Theatre Co. has on view a charming take on the Garden of Eden story, a new musical called Falling for Eve. Book writer Joe DiPietro imagines God as both male and female, and in his version only Eve is expelled from Eden for eating that apple. She wanders around the earth for many years before she persuades an angel to let her back into Eden to go fetch Adam.

The songs by Bret Simons (music) and David Howard (lyrics) are charming, and the performers are delightful. Jose Llana is a wonderfully hunky, rather dim Adam, and Krystal Joy Brown is delicious as Eve.

You might think, “Oh, no, not another anachronistic take on the Bible;” but go – you’ll have a good time.

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With Glee, at the Kirk Theatre, is my favorite of the Off Broadway musicals I’ve seen this summer. It takes place at a prep school for misfit boys, to which are sent kids to varying degrees too strange to make it anywhere else. One man and one woman played all the adults, but the young men in the cast were the Main Attractions, and all were excellent. John Gregor wrote the whole shebang and man, is he one to watch! Loved the music, loved the actors, loved Igor Goldin’s staging! This just in: The show has been extended until the end of the month. What are you waiting for?

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Irish Rep has brought back Frank McCourt’s The Irish and How They Got That Way, which they have produced twice previously, as a sort of memorial to McCourt, the author of Angela’s Ashes, who passed away last year and who was a much beloved New York character, particularly amongst the Irish in our midst.

McCourt’s script is a documentary which begins in Ireland but winds up in America. It’s the Cliff’s Notes edition of Irish/American History, made enjoyable by McCourt’s trademark wit and director Charlotte Moore’s charming cast, who sing snippets of scads of songs, from the inevitable “Danny Boy” and “The Rose of Tralee” to “No Irish Need Apply” and “Who Put the Overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s Chowder?”

It’s a darlin’ time in the theatre, even if you’ve seen it before.

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Leslye Headland’s Bachelorette looks to be the biggest hit Second Stage has had with its summer uptown series at the McGinn/Cazale Theatre. It’s been extended until the end of the month, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it resurfaces later this season in a commercial venue.

Although there are men in the play, Bachelorette is basically a horrifying/hilarious portrait of 20-something women. We are in a swank hotel room. The Maid of Honor has invited over two of her friends who, it turns out, are not exactly friends of the bride. While we wait for the bride-to-be to show up at the party, these three women let their hair down. All three are terrified that life is passing them by. The play starts out as a bitch-fest, moves quickly into a cat fight, and ends up as potential tragedy – all in the course of 90 minutes.

One of my favorite directors, Trip Cullman, has worked his usual seamless directorial magic, and his cast is wonderful – particularly, Tracee Chimo, Elizabeth Waterston and Celia Keenan-Bolger as three lost girls partying on down a road to nowhere.

This one’s a don’t-miss.

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Alas, the following have closed:

Delaney Britt Brewer’s Wolves, at 59 E. 59 Theatres, was a triptych of plays which also dealt with 20-somethings, a chilly scenes of winter sort of look at alienation and despair amongst the Next Generation, made watchable by excellent actors.

Richard Taylor’s In God’s Hat at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre was a trailer trash gothic sort of play about two brothers, one of whom is a convicted child molester who has just been released from prison. His brother picks him up at the prison gate, and on the way to Wherever they run into a couple of nasty skinheads. The play reminded me of Tracey Lett’s Killer Joe – and I mean that in a good way. The actors were wonderful – particularly the two guys playing the white supremacist skinheads, Dennis Flanagan and Gary Francis Hope, both of whom seemed like the Real Deal, instead of “just” actors.

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Finally, I caught the last of the three performances at the Delacorte Theatre of the New York Shakespeare Festival’s staged concert version of Paul Simon’s The Capeman, a Broadway flop of a decade or so ago. Director Diane Paulus stripped away most of Derek Walcott’s ponderous, overly complex book. What remained were Simon’s wonderful songs. Paulus’ staging was terrific, as was Sergio Trujillo’s choreography. I wouldn’t be surprised if this resurfaces somewhere in the near future.

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FREUD'S LAST SESSION Margery S. Deane Little Theatre, 10 W. 64^th St.
TICKETS: 212-352-3101.

SEE ROCK CITY. Duke Theatre. Alas, closed.

FALLING FOR EVE. York Theatre Co. Alas, closed.

WITH GLEE. Kirk Theatre, 410 W. 42^nd St.
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com 212-239-6200.

THE IRISH AND HOW THEY GOT THAT WAY. Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 W. 22^nd St.
TICKETS: 212-727-2737.

BACHELORETTE. McGinn/Cazale Theatre, 2162 Broadway.
TICKETS: 212-246-4422. Good Luck: it's SOLD OUT for the rest of its Run.

WOLVES. 59 E. 59 Theatres. Alas, closed.

IN GOD'S HAT. Peter Jay Sharp Theatre. Alas, closed.

THE CAPEMAN. Delacorte Theatre. Central Park. Alas, closed.

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"Who is this guy?"

For over thirty years Lawrence Harbison was in charge of new play acquisition for Samuel French, Inc., during which time his work on behalf of playwrights resulted in the first publication of such subsequent luminaries as Jane Martin, Don Nigro, Tina Howe, Theresa Rebeck, José Rivera, William Mastrosimone, Charles Fuller, and Ken Ludwig, among many others; and the acquisition of musicals such as Smoke of the Mountain, A…My Name Is Alice, Little Shop of Horrors and Three Guys Naked from the Waist Down. He is a now a free-lance editor, primarily for Smith and Kraus, Inc., for whom he edits annual anthologies of best plays by new playwrights and women playwrights, best ten-minute plays and best monologues and scenes for men and for women. For many years he wrote a weekly column on his adventures in the theater for two Manhattan Newspapers, the Chelsea Clinton News and The Westsider. His new column, “On the Aisle with Larry,” is a weekly feature at www.smithandkraus.com.

He works with individual playwrights to help them develop their plays (see his website, www.playfixer.com). He has also served as literary manager or literary consultant for several theatres, such as Urban Stages and American Jewish Theatre. He is a member of both the Outer Critics Circle and the Drama Desk. He has served many times over the years as a judge and commentator for various national play contests and lectures regularly at colleges and universities. He holds a B.A. from Kenyon College and an M.A. from the University of Michigan.

He is currently working on a book, Masters of the Contemporary American Drama.

"It requires a certain largeness of spirit to give generous appreciation to large achievements. A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day, when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry."

-----George F. Will

So, you may be asking how this relates to your main interest, acting. Let's begin in this way...

E.E. Cummings defined for us what I call "the maze". He says that, in fact, we become trapped in this maze as we think, believe and know. He also says that the path towards escaping from the maze is by "being". And, that when you are "being" you are "nobody but yourself." What do you think he means by "being"? Please take some time to write about that in your journal.

The truth is that this observation about "being" by E.E. Cummings is one side of the coin called "the most fundamental foundation in the craft of acting." We are talking about the ability to simply be who you are - no more and no less. I am saying that without the ability and the courage to be the expression of your truthful point of view in every moment, you are merely an imitation of what has all ready been done. This is always the cliché of performing and it has nothing to do with the art of acting. Of course, this is one of the things I love so much about the Meisner Approach, from the very first steps of the work; it is bolstering your courage and your abilities to be fully who you are!

The other thing E.E. Cummings wisely advises us is that the effort to be "nobody-but-yourself" is the greatest challenge we face in life and keep facing throughout our whole lives. He is talking about pressure from a world which is doing it's best to make us "everybody else!" Here again, I want you to write about this. What does this mean to you, specifically?

Here are the simple equations:

• When You Are Everybody Else = No Acting Possible
• The Moment You Are Being = Acting Becomes Possible

To close our session today, earlier, I told you that:

"This observation about "being" by E.E. Cummings is one side of the coin called "the most fundamental foundation in the craft of acting."

You see, I called "being", or "the moment-by-moment expression of your truthful point of view" one side of the acting fundamentals coin. So, here's my question for you! What's the other side of the coin?

Please send me your emails with your answer to that question and any comments you have about today's session. I will post your comments and you will truly take our conversation to where we will be going next. I am depending on you! Also, the first three teen actors to email me with a response will win a copy of my new book Meisner for Teens: A Life of True Acting as soon as it is available from Smith & Kraus! Again, my email is trueacting@actorscraft.com and you can visit me on my website at www.meisnerteacher.com.