Seven wonders from 'Swan Lake' to 'Andrew Jackson'

Forgive the list, please. But seven big and smaller-but-not-lesser events are percolating around the theater this week, and it would be unfair to let the big Broadway ones burst all the bubbles from the others. So, chronologically, here they are. 

A LIFE IN THE THEATRE

If you only know David Mamet from the carnivorous dazzle of "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "American Buffalo," or (poor you) from such lazy recent letdowns as "November" and "Race," the author of this wise and almost sweet little comedy might be hard to guess.

It premiered in Mamet's hometown of Chicago in 1977, just after the playwright, not yet 30, had seemed to barge, fully grown, onto the New York radar screen. The play - basically, backstage conversations between an older actor and a younger one - had the identifiable Mamet patter, plus an idealism about the theater that was brutal, but unexpectedly touching. Patrick Stewart plays the elder in this revival, with T.R. Knight as the hungrier kid, a role created by Joe Mantegna.

Opening on Broadway Tuesday at the Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 W. 45th St., $76.50-$121.50, 212-239-6200, telecharge.com.

MATTHEW BOURNE'S SWAN LAKE

When this played Broadway in 1998, Bourne and his producers practically did backbends trying to convince audiences that his male-oriented, modern-ballet version of "Swan Lake" was a musical and not a ballet. All the denials struck me as ridiculous, not to mention insulting to dance - as if whole new arts audiences could be built by promising they won't have to endure art.

Anyway, the splashy British production - with its corps of bare-chested male swans in shag-rug Capri pants - is back as part of City Center's dance series. Instead of women with intricate pointe work and tiny birdlike arm movements, expect men with rippling torsos and arms with broad wingspans. I wasn't a fan of the limited steps or the woman-hating subtext. But many around the world have loved it. It won Tonys for choreography, costumes and direction of a musical, so I guess it was a musical after all.

Opening Wednesday for a four-week run at New York City Center, 55th Street west of Seventh Avenue, $25-$110; 212-581-1212, nycitycenter.org.

BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON 

A big hit at the Public Theater last spring, this unlikely and audacious twist on rock-theater is both intentionally sophomoric and sophisticated, both earnest and irreverent, as goofy as it is educational. But does it belong on Broadway?

I hope so. This is a politically and historically flammable show about Jackson, on his way to becoming our seventh president. He is played by Benjamin Walker as a man who loves the fit of his tight jeans and the readiness of his large gun. The show is written and directed by Alex Timbers, who runs Les Freres Corbusier (the Off-Broadway troupe notorious for its award-winning "A Very Merry Unauthorized Scientology Christmas") and who also directs "The Pee-Wee Herman Show" on Broadway next month.

The music and lyrics by Michael Friedman both satirize and enjoy the style of emo-rock, which stands for emotional hard-core music, meaning people talk about their feelings a lot. Expect mainstream audiences to talk a lot about their feelings about the show.

Opening on Broadway Wednesday at the Jacobs Theatre, 242 W. 45th St., $51.50-$131.50, 212-239-6200, telecharge.com.

NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE 

This is the second season for the program that broadcasts live performances from the ever-adventurous stages of London's National Theatre to movie houses all over. Last year launched with Helen Mirren in "Phèdre," which brought the hot ticket to more than 200,000 people in 22 countries.

Season two begins Thursday with something equally heady, if less starry: "A Disappearing Number" (seen briefly here as part of the Lincoln Center Festival), by director Simon McBurney and the innovative Complicite theater. This is a multimedia collage - with two love affairs - that focuses on the 1914 collaboration between a great, untrained Indian mathematician and a brilliant Cambridge don.

The series continues through the spring with five more live productions, including Michael Grandage directing Derek Jacobi in a much-anticipated "King Lear" (Feb. 3) and Danny Boyle directing a new adaptation of "Frankenstein" (March 17).

Thursday, across America, including Kew Gardens Cinemas in Queens, 2 p.m. (live) and 7 p.m., $20, 718-441-9835; also Cinema Arts Center in Huntington, Oct. 22 at 7:30 p.m., $25; 631-423-7611.

LA BÊTE

For a comedy in rhymed couplets, by a young Oxford-educated American, in the style of 17th century France, "La Bête" has had its own high-drama story. In 1991, such judges as Edward Albee and Wendy Wasserstein awarded David Hirson's debut an Oppy Award, which Newsday used to give to first plays in New York. The production cost $2 million, said then to be the most expensive nonmusical in Broadway history, and the star, Ron Silver, bailed after the first preview, leaving the plum role to an understudy barely out of drama school.

I cherished the sly extravaganza about the struggle between style and content, but the thing flopped - big time - before being restaged in London and winning the Olivier. Battered and bedecked with prizes, the thing gets another chance, directed by Matthew Warchus and starring David Hyde Pierce and the unstoppable Mark Rylance as La Bête, "the beast," an obnoxious street performer who won't - perhaps can't - shut up.

Opening on Broadway Thursday at the Music Box Theatre, 239 W. 45th St., $76.50-$126.50, 212-239-6200, telecharge.com.

AS IS

It may be impossible to imagine today, but nobody was writing novels, making movies, shooting TV shows about AIDS in 1985. Nobody. Then suddenly, within weeks of each other, came Larry Kramer's furious docudrama, "The Normal Heart," and William M. Hoffman's heartbreaking relationship drama, "As Is." The play, about an HIV-positive man and his ex-lover, transferred from Off-Broadway to Broadway and, remarkably, was nominated for a Tony and a Pulitzer.

Twenty five years later, the Apple Core Theater lets us relive the moment when the theater broke the national silence about the then-mysterious plague. It was years before Hollywood dared.

Opening Thursday, The Studio Theatre at Theatre Row, 410 W. 42nd St., $15, 212-239-6200, telecharge.

THE LANGUAGE ARCHIVE

Five years ago, Julia Cho wrote a daring and haunting teen mystery, "BFE," that made me add her name to the list of young playwrights who make me hopeful about the future of serious theater. Less than two years later, the Korean-American writer confirmed her original voice with "Durango," a less surprising but still emotionally complex work about an Asian-American family whose American dream gets stuck in the dusty Durango Mountains.

Now she is back with a comedy involving a linguist who understands far-flung languages but doesn't know how to talk to his wife. I wouldn't want to miss it for most of the big guys on Broadway.

Opening Oct. 17, Laura Pels Theatre, 111 W. 46th St., $71-$81, 212- 719-1300, roundabouttheatre.org.