Bite-sized reviews of things we like. Or not.

Usually new plays by renowned American playwrights open on Broadway, have a respectable run, then are performed by playhouses in cities and towns all over the US. But that's not the case if the content is too controversial. Right now, Arthur Miller, the granddaddy of American theater, has a new play running--but nowhere near New York City, our so-called "cultural capital." The play is simply too political. Arthur Miller's newest Resurrection Blues opened recently at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, of all places. Miller, whose classic Death of a Salesman is studied in high schools and colleges all over the world, has long been disenchanted with Broadway's commercialism and its glitzy revivals of old, hackneyed musicals. Resurrection Blues is set in a civil-war-torn Latin American country run by a drug-fueled dictatorship. It poses the question: what would happen if a leftist, revolutionary Christ were to reappear among the beleaguered peasantry? Ironic, funny, full of biting political satire, it includes a scathing critique of US TV news and advertising media, who all vie for the million-dollar rights to broadcast the Crucifixion. Keep an eye out for Resurrection Blues; sometime in the next year or two a Seattle theater company may decide to stage it. I hope so.--Maria Tomchick

Meanwhile, Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia has been playing at the National Theater of London. A trilogy of three-hour plays about 19th century Russian revolutionaries, it will probably enjoy a healthy run in Europe, then fall completely off the radar screen. The first play in the trilogy is Voyage. Considered the best of the three, it focuses on Bakunin, the anarchist, and Belinsky. The second play, Shipwreck, the weakest of the three, follows a group of traveling Russian intellectuals, including the libertarian socialist Alexander Herzen. Salvage rounds out the set with a look at London's Russian emigre community from 1853 to 1865. In liberal Seattle, a theater company might produce this trio, but I doubt it. Your best bet would be to order printed copies of the plays and read them. While reading plays is a whole different experience from seeing them performed--many nuances are lost when simply reading the text--it can still give us a taste of what we're missing in the culturally narrow confines of the US.--M.T.

My favorite fiction author is coming to town! Well, one of my favorites, anyway. Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, Shame, and The Ground Beneath Her Feet will be reading at Town Hall on September 24th at 7:30 PM. Last year, Rushdie's book tour for Fury, his novel about New York and our advertising driven pop-culture, was interrupted by September 11 and worries that he would again become an active target of Islamic fundamentalists. After the 1988 publication of The Satanic Verses, a fatwa--a sentence of death--was issued against Rushdie and his publishers. He lived for years in isolation in a safe house in England, his Norwegian publisher was shot, and the Japanese translator of his books was murdered. In short, Rushdie knows what it's like to live in fear, yet he still maintains a sharp and critical eye. He'll be reading from a new book of his nonfiction essays Step Across This Line. Highly recommended.--M.T.