LONDON -- Scheduling a one-week blitz of London theater could mean concentrating on stars, classics, playwrights or theater companies. But this time, I opted for the Chinese menu approach -- one of these, one of those, a couple of that.

That gave me a couple of stars (Derek Jacobi, Kevin Spacey) and a couple of classics (Schiller, Strindberg, but no Shakespeare), a few major playwrights (Andrew Lloyd Webber, Caryl Churchill, Alan Bennett) and theater companies (Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre, Old Vic) and even a couple of big musicals, which are rarely my first London choice.It came to nine shows in six days, and as I look back, it was a very good haul.

But there's a lot that I missed, even without leaving the West End (London's Broadway) and getting into the extensive Fringe. That's London theater: Whatever you choose, you will barely sample the riches, and something you most wanted to see will have closed just before you arrived or will open the day you leave

Four shows I saw have already been reviewed: Derek Jacobi in Schiller's "Don Carlos"; Kevin Spacey in "National Anthems"; and Alan Bennett's wonderful "The History Boys" and Caryl Churchill's rewrite of Strindberg's "A Dream Play," both at the National Theatre. (The Royal Shakespeare Company's Spanish Golden Age series has closed, but two reviews are appended, below.)

The following shows are still running -- starting with two big musicals that we are bound to see one of these years in New York.

"Mary Poppins"

Michael Le Poer Trench Laura Michelle Kelly as Mary Poppins. Click photo for larger image.

Last year I returned from London to pour disdain on a weak, treacly stage adaptation of a movie musical, "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," and it wouldn't have surprised me if "Mary Poppins" had been a similar one-trick rip-off. (Let's hope they've re-written it for this spring's Broadway opening.) But "Poppins" turns out to be a different matter entirely, a family musical of humor, melody, charm and even a certain dry wit.

Most important, it refuses to stir in too many spoonfuls of sugar. Laura Michelle Kelly's Mary Poppins has a starchy rectitude and prim posture that make it all the more entertaining when she loosens up to dance with chimney sweep Bert. Indeed, she's a potent combination (in mythic terms) of maiden, mother and crone, tartly mixing magic with order, autocracy with misrule, and it is the wisdom of this adaptation not to try to penetrate her mystery.

The setting is that Edwardian London familiar from "Peter Pan," but "Mary Poppins" doesn't sentimentalize the children, Jane and Michael, who have life lessons to learn just as much as their distracted father and nonassertive mother.

The book is by Julian Fellows, based on the Disney movie and the stories of P.L. Travers (1899-1996), who lived long enough to bless Cameron Mackintosh with the rights that have led to this musical. (I'm pleased to discover that in 1977, Travers was given an honorary doctorate by Chatham College, since when she delighted in calling herself Dr. Travers.)

The score combines the movie songs by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman with new ones by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe, talented composers of "Honk!" Of theirs, none (except perhaps "Practically Perfect") is the immediate equal of the Shermans' "Chim Chim Cher-ee," "A Spoonful of Sugar" and "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," which have the advantage of fond familiarity.

The absence of gratuitous sugar owes much to director Richard Eyre, former head of the National Theatre, and co-director and choreographic innovator Matthew Bourne, who brought that electric "Swan Lake" to Broadway. I particularly like his twirling ballet of sign language, spelling out Supercali ... etc.

Bob Crowley provides a rising and falling, multilevel set that glows with gaslight. Kudos to the technicians who make it possible for Bert to tap-dance horizontally up one proscenium, upside-down across the arch and down the other side. Gavin Lee's cheery, limber Bert nicely balances Kelly's tart Mary. David Haig is rather broadly hang-dog as the father, but Linzi Hateley's mother has the ditziness of a young Maggie Smith, and I love the dour cook, played al dente by Jenny Galloway.

The day the Post-Gazette tour saw a matinee, the original Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews herself, attended the evening show, and great was the media coverage thereof. I hope she was pleased. This is one musical that won't take much work to transfer quickly to Broadway.

At the Prince Edward Theatre, Old Compton Street.

"The Woman in White"

	Alessandro Pinna Michael Ball as Count Fosco. Click photo for larger image.

A lonely railway shack at the end of a dark tunnel, a distraught woman in white pleading for help and a young man on his way to tutor two young women at a lonely mansion: That's the start of "The Woman in White," a musical adaptation of Wilkie Collins' 1860 novel of the same name.

From the first strains of the mysterioso music, you know it's Andrew Lloyd Webber returning to a gothic mode, as in his "Phantom of the Opera," after the relative disappointments of "Whistle Down the Wind" and "The Beautiful Game." He is here reunited with director Trevor Nunn, former head of both the RSC and National Theatre and director of "Les Miserables" and four Lloyd Webber musicals, right back to "Cats."

Although there is some banality about "The Woman in White" and much that will gladden the gleeful parodists at "Forbidden Broadway," it is a viable entertainment that should make it to New York. When it does, it will owe a lot to the innovative production and video design of William Dudley, which should be much copied, and to the comic/sinister role of Count Fosco and a very plump white rat with which he performs gratuitous (but welcome) comic routines.

Less gripping is the story itself, as told by librettist Charlotte Jones, a better playwright on her own ("Humble Boy"). The young tutor is loved by both tutees, but the one he loves is promised to the immeasurably more eligible Sir Percival Glyde, who turns out (surprise!) to be the epitome of villainy and not a very nice man, to boot.

The rejected young woman, Marian, is a real piece of work who imagines herself the heroine and is unfortunately supported in this by the musical, which doesn't seem to notice what a self-dramatizing, selfish heroine she is. And who is the woman in white and what is her secret? It turns out there are really three women in white, as each ingenue adopts the victim role in turn.

It's all very melodramatic, for which Lloyd Webber's score is an atmospheric accompaniment. What's more surprising and fun is Fosco's comic side plot. In his sprightly songs "A Gift for Living Well" and "You Can Get Away with Anything," the lyrics by David Zippel, who elsewhere succumbs to the banality endemic to Lloyd Webber shows, rise to the wit we expect of the lyricist of "City of Angels." The expository "I Hope You'll Like It Here," sung by the passive uncle, is equally deft.

Michael Ball, playing Fosco in replacement of the ill Michael Crawford, is deliciously effulgent, and I cheered each lavish sneer and pirouette. Edward Peterbridge is drily precise as the fastidious uncle. The young people bear up under all the earnest melodrama, especially Maria Friedman as Marian.

The mesmerizing video scenery is projected on circling sections of cyclorama. It swoops around us as if we were flying over the Constable-like countryside and grand estates, now gliding down to an exterior, now circling inside. Sometimes the rooms spin like works by Escher -- those prone to motion sickness may need to adjust. Flat and sepia-like, the projections feel digitally ersatz, but they enhance the threat of the Hardy-esque countryside, with its menacing peasant dances. And if a mournful lament wails on too long, the technique is intriguing in itself -- just try to figure out where the projections originate.

At the Palace Theatre, Cambridge Circus.

"Festen"

From left, Paul Nicholls and Stephen Moore. Click photo for larger image.

The long-running "Festen" (which translates as "The Party" or "The Celebration") is dramatized by David Eldridge from the 1998 Danish Dogme movie of the same name . To celebrate the 60th birthday of Helge, head of a family of hoteliers, nine family members from four generations, a business associate and four servants gather to eat, drink, toast, reminisce, argue and spill long-buried secrets.

The triggering event is the suicide of one of Helge's daughters; the long-planned party follows directly on her funeral. It isn't the wild son or the repressed daughter but the coolly successful son, Christian, who comes to dig up the past. Others, including Helge's wife, brother, father and business associate, don't believe him, but the servants (who, in democratic Danish style, seem family members themselves) wish him well.

Initially, Christian is ignored, while the party takes its preordained way through speeches, songs and games, the roistering gradually turning ugly, even demonic. But eventually the dead sister's voice is heard and the truth is faced, leading to an anticlimactic ending that doesn't match the claustrophobic power of the rest.

"Festen" opened at the Almeida Theatre a year ago and moved to the West End in September. It's a hit, but it doesn't quite live up to its reputation. Perhaps the replacement cast I saw lacks some ferocity or depth present in the original.

On the whole, bareknuckles Danish camaraderie is well represented, without being flattened as can happen in England into generic middle class British reserve and rebellion. But the play just doesn't have the edge of David Mamet or Martin McDonagh; it doesn't even have the awful glee of the dinner-party-from-hell-play of last year, Moira Buffini's "Dinner."

At the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue.

"Tropicana"

Tristram Kenton "Tropicana, A Shunt Event." Click photo for larger image.

Produced by a collective called Shunt, "Tropicana" is a site-specific event on the Fringe. Presented in a series of dark, echoing 20-foot stone vaults adjacent to London Bridge railway station, it's a spooky/funny mix of mystery, carnival and macabre comedy.

Entering through a work door into a janitor's closet, then through a metal locker, we find a mysterious laboratory. Conducted by a Charon-like figure, we descend by elevator to the dank stone vaults, where we're led forward through the misty gloom by waifs and feathered show girls, reflected in mirrored columns. Percussion throbs in the dark; we hear cascading water and trains (perhaps real). The dark gets darker. In a spotlight, a pineapple is assaulted. In the distance, we hear volleys of laughter -- maybe our own. A guitar player parades by with wailing women, then a hearse filled with flowers.

Since this is London, drinks are available at the break. Then we sit on risers for a mock lecture/sermon/autopsy, complete with a dummy realistic enough to occasion giggling shock at what is done to it. The girls provide aerial display.

It's a trippy 75 minutes, a mild provocation, an enigma and a site that Pittsburgh's Quantum Theatre would die for -- plus a chance to talk with the performers over shots of tequila when the show ends.

Schedule varies; go to www.shunt.co.uk.

Spanish Golden Age

Two years ago, the RSC came in from Stratford, took over the Gielgud Theatre and gave London an ensemble company doing a cluster of five lesser-known plays by Marston, Massinger, Fletcher and others of Shakespeare's contemporaries that proved eye-opening and popular. We already knew these were worthy playwrights -- we just didn't know how much fun they could prove in production.

This year, the RSC did it again, this time taking over the cheerily plush Playhouse with four plays from the voluminous Spanish "golden age" (roughly late 16th to mid-17th century), which includes such major names as Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Cervantes and Calderon. The RSC chose plays by the first three, going somewhat further afield for the fourth, a comedy by a Mexican nun first performed in 1683.

The limited run of these four in repertory has now closed, leaving behind a vivid reminder that there remain forgotten treasures in the great ages of world drama.

"House of Desires"

	John Haynes From left, Rebecca Johnson as Dona Leonor, and Katherine Kelly as Celia. Click photo for larger image.

Whatever your preconceptions may be for a play by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (1651-1695), a Mexican sister of the Order of St. Jerome, they are unlikely to match the elaborately plotted and very funny comedy of punctilious honor and amatory entanglement the RSC found in "House of Desires." Doubtless much of the humor is due to the lively new translation by Catherine Boyle, the stylish direction by Nancy Meckler and the spirited performers, but the playwright is a real find.

The story concerns a sister and brother, each trying to arrange a marriage with an object of desire who is also desired by another -- or, in one case, two others. All five young aristocrats find themselves hiding in different parts of the same house, telling different stories to different people in order to avoid the appearance of scandal. But there is also a witty male servant who is mistaken for one of the desired women, so there are really six people in evolving combinations dancing this gavotte of amatory confusion and folly.

The confusion is abetted by a simple device: candles keep being blown out to preserve reputations in darkness. (Honor is the great standard of behavior, and this is a culture that can parse honor in subtle ways, sometimes to a ludicrously comic extent.) This works very simply: When someone blows out a candle, the stage lights come on full, and we watch the actors mime the dark. It's a comic device that provides lots of fun.

Much of the spirit of the play comes from the fact that the women characters are the chief movers, while the men are generally so bound by honor and self-consciousness as to be fools. There is also a constant sense of dramatic conventions being gently mocked -- it's a play that includes itself among its objects of parody.

Director Meckler honors the playwright's spirit by adding a small frame in which we watch her writing the play and then joining in her own creation by playing one of the principle women. What a delightful discovery "House of Desires" is -- like a cross between a chaste Restoration comedy and a modern sex farce, but with a touch of romantic sentiment at its heart.

"Dog in the Manger"

Review by Monika Kugemann

Using a new translation by David Johnston, director Laurence Boswell skillfully brought to life Lope de Vega's drama of honor in which social law struggles with natural desire. When Countess Diana finds out that her secretary Teodoro is seducing her favorite maid of honor, she is torn between jealousy, love and social obligation. Brilliantly realized by a gifted cast, the play was at the same time hilarious and psychologically acute.

The countess, played by Rebecca Johnson, visibly trapped in her high birth by a tight-fitting period costume, developes a violent love for her unreachable secretary, alternately punishing and encouraging him with a dazzling repertory of female seduction. Teodoro, portrayed by Joseph Millson as a poetic nature taken in by the "purity" of the other sex, increasingly loses his wits in a downward spiral of dependence, conflicting emotions and blissful suffering.

Teodoro's servant Tristan becomes the mediator between his master's awakening aspirations and Diana's incomprehensible changes of mood. Simon Trinder impersonated the cunning servant with great talent, adding a playful touch to many scenes by disguising as a Greek merchant or professional hit man, or by authentically presenting a piece of folk Flamenco dancing.

Special praise also goes to John Ramm as hopelessly over-confident suitor Marquis Ricardo, and to Claire Cox as a naive but headstrong woman who refuses to be crushed between the countess and Teodoro. Live chamber orchestra music, a heart-breaking duet about the pain of love (Claire Cox and Joseph Chance) and a dance for the grand finale provided extra dimension. The set and costumes by Es Devlin not only captured the historical epoch but realized the psychological dimension of the plot through a floor pattern resembling a giant spiderweb.