THEATER
Charles Isherwood
Fidel Castro is not a figure generally associated with smooching, but in EDUARDO MACHADO'S new play, "KISSING FIDEL," a Cuban-American in a forgiving mood announces to his surprised - indeed, disgusted - family that he plans to head back to the homeland to give the cigar-chomping Cuban dictator a benevolent embrace. Plans for this quixotic journey are announced by the estranged family misfit, a novelist, at the funeral of the clan's matriarch in Miami. Mr. Machado, in his second year as artistic director of the Intar Theater, dedicated to producing the work of Hispanic playwrights, opens the season with this world premiere. Previews begin Sept. 6 at the Kirk Theater on Theater Row, 410 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 279-4200.
A dramatic announcement is also at the crux of W. Somerset Maugham's 1931 play "THE BREADWINNER," which is being revived by the KEEN COMPANY. The idle, tennis-anyone happiness of a well-to-do British family is upended when Daddy has a particularly bad day at work. Worse still, he uses the occasion to question the course his life has taken. All this before teatime, too! The production, directed by the company's artistic director, CARL FORSMAN, provides another helping of Maugham for fans still basking in the afterglow of the Roundabout's "Constant Wife." Begins performances Tuesday and opens Saturday at the Connelly Theater, 222 East Fourth Street, East Village, (212) 868-4444.
Drama, and trauma, are the stuff of everyday existence in the high school years lovingly lampooned in ROB NASH's HOLY CROSS ...!" Mr. Nash is a one-man John Hughes movie here, playing a half-dozen assorted misfits struggling through the harrowing humiliations of adolescence in the 1980's. JEFF CALHOUN, a Tony nominee for his work on the recent revival of "Big River," directs. Opens Friday at Ars Nova, 511 West 54th Street, Clinton, (2i2) 868-4444.
FILM
Sharon Waxman
The Toronto International Film Festival has become Hollywood's vehicle of choice for a first peek at the fall films (JODIE FOSTER'S "FLIGHT PLAN," scheduled to open Sept. 23, is having its press junket in town), and this year the auction block will be full of films financed by Hollywood's new wave of post-dotcom, pay-as-you-go producers, including DAVID SACKS and SIDNEY KIMMEL. Among the 109 films to have their premieres at the festival, which opens on Thursday and runs through Sept. 17, will be "HARSH TIMES," the first foray into directing by DAVID AYER, who wrote the powerful drama "Training Day"; MARTIN SCORSESE's much-anticipated documentary "NO DIRECTION HOME: BOB DYLAN," and TOMMY LEE JONES's directorial debut, "THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA," in which he also stars.
The writer-director LODGE KERRIGAN takes the audience on a nerve-jangling journey into the psychological life of a destitute father (a young, Redfordesque DAMIAN LEWIS) who is looking for his abducted daughter in "KEANE," which was filmed up-close with a hand-held camera, largely on the streets of New York. (This is another new film paid for by post-dotcom, self-financing producers, this one from MARK CUBAN and TODD WAGNER; STEVEN SODERBERGH is an executive producer.) Keane, who teeters on the edge of sanity, meets up with a mother and her daughter, also down on their luck, and befriends them. Mr. Lewis, a virtual unknown in film, carries the movie with his tightly wound character study. Opens on Friday at the Sunshine Cinema, 143 East Houston Street, Lower East Side, (212) 330-8182 (Sept. 16 at the Sunset 5 in Hollywood).
TELEVISION
Kate Aurthur
It's hard to pinpoint precisely what went wrong with "THE O.C." in its second season. Among the culprits were flavorless plots, flat new characters who failed to grab the audience's interest and too many guest appearances by indie rock bands. Whatever the reasons, Season 3 is starting (FOX, Thursday at 8 p.m.), and Ryan (BENJAMIN McKENZIE), Seth (ADAM BRODY), Summer (RACHEL BILSON) and Marissa (MISCHA BARTON) will be seniors in high school - and JOSH SCHWARTZ, the show's executive producer, will try to lure back the zeitgeist. The teen soap's first order of business: sort out the fact that Marissa shot Ryan's brother, Trey (LOGAN MARSHALL-GREEN), in the final moments of the May season finale.
The series premiere of "REUNION" follows "The O.C." Last season, Fox tried "NORTH SHORE," "POINT PLEASANT" and "TRU CALLING" here, but they all flopped in the 9 p.m. death slot opposite CBS's unstoppable "CSI." "Reunion" follows a group of six friends who graduated from high school in 1986; 20 years later, one has been murdered. Each episode flashes back to a different year in their lives, giving the audience pieces of the mystery. With "CSI" still in repeats, perhaps viewers will sample this innovative series.
As the fall shows begin, the summer ones must conclude. "ENTOURAGE" (HBO, Sunday at 10 p.m.) and "THE COMEBACK" (HBO, Sunday at 10:30) both bring their comic critiques of Hollywood to their seasons' end. And another Los Angeles story, "THE CLOSER," also has its finale. The KYRA SEDGWICK crime show, which has been the most successful cable series of the summer, has a slightly supersized 70-minute finish (TNT, Monday at 9 p.m.).
Meanwhile, "THE ELLEN DeGENERES SHOW" promises to get out of Los Angeles as often as possible in its third season. The premiere (Tuesday, check local listings) will find Ms. DeGeneres doing her signature dancing in a surprise setting.
DANCE
John Rockwell
There are ebbs and there are flows, and right now in New York dance we're still in the late-summer ebb. Looking up that dry desert gully, we can see signs of the onrushing torrent that will mean the start of the fall season. In the meantime, down south (but only 90 miles down south), there is the annual LIVE ARTS/PHILLY FRINGE festival (through Sept. 17), which brings an interesting clutch of dance attractions along with its offerings in other fields. It should amuse Philadelphians and any New Yorkers who feel like venturing there. Most of the performers are local, especially on the Fringe side, but there is a nice sprinkling of New York, national and international artists as well. Philadelphia Live Arts Festival/Philly Fringe, various days, times and theaters, (215) 413-1318 or www.livearts-fringe.org.
In New York, the annual DANCENOW/NYC festival (Wednesday through Sept. 17), traditionally a downtown affair, is establishing a beachhead at DANCE THEATER WORKSHOP and venturing more extensively uptown. The festival will get under way at the workshop on Wednesday with a program called "40UP: A TOAST," celebrating the 40th anniversary of the workshop with a smorgasbord of 11 "highly talented and mature dancemakers." Thursday through Saturday will offer programs devoted to younger artists and Saturday afternoon a bunch of "first-time" artists. The festival continues next Sunday in the MARCUS GARVEY PARK AMPHITHEATER in Harlem, with further offerings next week at the CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE, JOE'S PUB AT THE PUBLIC THEATER (part of the season-long dancemOpolitan series; somebody likes oddball typography) and a drained outdoor pool in Washington Heights. Dance Theater Workshop programs at 219 West 19th Street, Chelsea. Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., $25; Thursday through Saturday at 7:30, $15; and Saturday at 2, $10, (212) 924-0077 or www.dtw.org. General festival information at (718) 850-2488 or www.dancenownyc.org.
CLASSICAL MUSIC
Allan Kozinn
This is the slow moment in the world of classical performance: the festivals have all packed up, and the main concert season for the most part has not yet gotten under way. There are, of course, a few organizations that see an opportunity here, not least among them the NEW YORK CITY OPERA, which is beating all the other major organizations to the punch - and giving itself a few weeks virtually clear of competition - by opening its season on Wednesday.
Its opening-night drawing card is a new production of "CAPRICCIO," Strauss's 15th and last opera. This warm-hued neo-Classical gem explores a question that has been at the heart of operatic debate since the form was created at the turn of the 17th century: whether the music or the words are primary. The production, by the inventive director STEPHEN LAWLESS, stars PAMELA ARMSTRONG as the Countess Madeleine, with RYAN MacPHERSON as the composer Flamand and MEL ULRICH as the poet Olivier, the rivals for the countess's affections. The cast also includes ERIC HALFVARSON, CLAIRE POWELL, GEORGE MOSLEY, LISA SAFFER and BARRY BANKS, and GEORGE MANAHAN conducts. Wednesday at 6:30, Saturday at 1:30, the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 870-5570.
City Opera is also unveiling a second new production this week, the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta "PATIENCE," in a staging by TAZEWELL THOMPSON first seen at Glimmerglass last summer, with the theater singer MICHAEL BALL as Reginald Bunsthorne, KEVIN BURDETTE as Archibald Grosvenor and TONNA MILLER in the title role. Saturday at 8 p.m., New York State Theater, (212) 870-5570.
If opera's not your thing, there is always BARGEMUSIC, the city's most intimate chamber music hall, housed on a barge moored on the Brooklyn side of the East River. There you can hear piano trios by Beethoven and Niklas Sivelov, with Mr. Sivelov at the piano (Sunday at 4), piano music of Albéniz, played by José Ramos Santana (Thursday and Friday at 7:30), and more piano trios, this time by Beethoven, Mozart and Dvorak. Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Bargemusic, Fulton Ferry Landing, Brooklyn, (718) 624-2083.
POP/JAZZ
Jon Pareles
Fans of prolific, maverick, self-guided musicians have a tough choice on Tuesday night, when the songwriter JANDEK plays an exceedingly rare live date at ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES and the Japanese noise improviser MERZBOW headlines the KNITTING FACTORY. Both have released dozens of albums since the 1970's; both have devoted followers who enjoy music that others would consider an endurance test. Where Merzbow has made himself loud and ubiquitous, Jandek has made himself scarce.
Jandek may be named Sterling R. Smith, and since 1978 he has operated his label, Corwood Industries, via a post-office box in Houston. Most of his albums are solo recordings, with Jandek unsteadily strumming a barely tuned guitar and singing - or mumbling, or declaiming, or sighing, or occasionally shouting - songs that evade melodies while the lyrics contemplate desolation and estrangement. A female singer or a drummer sometimes joins him.
Jandek did not perform in public, it is believed, until 2004, when he appeared at a festival in Glasgow. Now he is playing a handful of American dates, including this New York concert. 32-34 Second Avenue, at Second Street, East Village, (212) 505-5181.
Since the 1970's, Merzbow, the stage name of Masami Akita, has made hundreds of albums and EP's; he recently released a 50-CD boxed set, and he tours the world collaborating with noise-loving peers like Mike Patton of Faith No More and Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle. Much of Merzbow's music is a vertiginous, thrilling, full-spectrum barrage of sound that he might generate with electric guitars, a laptop or tape loops. At the Knitting Factory, he is headlining a night of experimental music that also includes the Finnish group CIRCLE and the duo of JIM O'ROURKE (from Sonic Youth) and CARLOS GIFFONI. Don't expect toe-tapping or sing-alongs. 74 Leonard Street, TriBeCa, (212) 219-3132.
ART
Michael Kimmelman
Labor Day, the annual nadir of the art season, is at least a chance to ponder the art we mostly speed by to get to the blockbuster shows when the year starts humming. The other day I turned left at the top of the steps in the METROPOLITAN MUSEUM, into the long hallway that usually funnels the tourists toward Impressionist paintings (it is temporarily shut at the end), and suddenly caught sight of a classic HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON photograph, his cubistic masterpiece shot from inside a bullring in Valencia, Spain, in 1933.
It's the one in which the arena's double-door is ajar. The number 7, within a bull's-eye painted across the doors, is split into half-circles. A chubby, mustached man in a hat, with spectacles, chomping absently on a stogie, peers through a rectangular slot in the door, off to the side. Beyond the open doors, a second, thin man, wearing the same hat (they must be attendants at the arena), stands in the middle distance, turning from the camera toward a pair of matching slots in the doorway behind him.
Cartier-Bresson's pictures are ingenious Chinese boxes: humane miracles of rhyming form and surreal happenstance that beg to be unpacked. The two round lenses of the man's glasses - one of his lenses opaque from the sun, the other transparent - uncannily echo the half circles of the bull's-eye and also echo the two slots in the rear, which are like eyes in the door. The man's glance, three-quarters to the right, is reversed by the man behind him, who becomes his virtual mirror image.
Depth collapses. Space explodes into a jigsaw pattern, and Cartier-Bresson demonstrates, as only he so rigorously and elegantly can, that the world is an astonishing and mysterious sight if we are alert enough to notice. All it takes, his pictures remind us, is that we stop and look. Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, (212) 535-7710.