A longtime bartender's fury at nearly everyone, from NYC health inspectors to an intrusive and homophobic landlady, recollected in tranquility and conveyed with measured energy and often at breakneck speed, delivers not bitterness but symphonic tension and release – and laughs galore.

Heather Massie resurrects the screen legend to gratefully address an audience that's finally asking "the right questions" – not about Hedy Lamarr's legendary beauty, her many marriages, the sex and nudity in her controversial 1933 film Ecstasy, or her post-career arrests for shoplifting, but about her mind.

Celebrated violinist Anne Akiko Meyers and pianist Akira Eguchi's program ranged from the 28-year-old Beethoven's teemingly imaginative first violin sonata to an evocative work for violin and electronics written in 2009 by the then also 28-year-old Jakub Ciupinski, inspired by the WWII wreck of an Italian ship.

The tale of Broadway's first lesbian kiss, nearly a century ago – and of one unique and strangely representative facet of the infinitely complex tale of the Jews of Europe and their migration to America.

A dominatrix, an android companion – an opera? 'Three Way' zeroes in on the now and the near future of power and sexuality. Ahead of its NYC premiere, we talk with the composer, and debut a video excerpt.

'It's always fun to get into an artist whose career, like hers, has stretched through different periods in popular music; there's something usually in every style to sample.'

What good's talk therapy if the patient won't talk? Ten-year-old Cindy has gone mute, and her desperate mother and stepfather have brought her to self-assured therapist Vera to try and get to the bottom of the mystery.

Performing music of Mozart, Richard Strauss, and 20th-century composer Jean Françaix, the four musicians played as one, like lifelong friends, with exquisite sensitivity and skill.

The English philosopher and aesthete reminds thinking people – and especially liberals – that despite rampant know-nothingism on today's political right wing, the conservative movement has always had an intellectual foundation.

This new comedy-drama tackles digital-age bullying, an issue we've heard no end of in recent years. But with a seamlessly talented and committed cast, 'Rare Birds' proves that talent and skill can make an 'issue' piece a compelling work of art.