New musicals and new plays appear in the final months of the Broadway and West End theater season as they vie for the big awards -- the Tonys in New York and the Olivier in London. Among the impressive new works in both theater capitals are musicals, new plays, and revivals, and on Broadway, a bevy of British imports.

New Musicals on Broadway

“Curtains,” the new work John Kander and Fred Ebb left unfinished when the latter died, is a spoof of showbiz musicals and of noir thrillers of the fifties, with David Hyde Pierce as the stage-struck detective called upon to solve a curtain-call murder. As the cast of “Robbin’ Hood of the Old West” (a seventh carbon copy of “Oklahoma”) takes its final bows, it is discovered that the leading lady has been murdered. Enter (to fog) trench-coated police detective Lt. Frank Cioffi to resolve the whodunit while the cast remains in quarantine. When the “Robbin’ Hood” tryout is panned by the Boston critics, the producer (Debra Monk) asks, “Does ‘debacle’ have two meanings?” Trying to solve the mystery, Lt. Cioffi falls in love with the dead star’s chorine understudy (Jill Paice), and the two engage in a satiric Astaire-Rogers fantasy replete with white staircase and a fog machine. Book and additional lyrics are by Rupert Holmes, direction by Scott Ellis, and choreography by Rob Ashford. With the action moving from onstage to backstage, from orchestra pit to a fly bridge, and “Robbin’ Hood’s” lyrics rhyming words like “thataway” and “Piscataway,” “Curtains” is the new showbiz fun musical. (Al Hirschfeld Theater, 302 W. 45th Street, New York, N.Y., phone: 212-239-6200)

Off Broadway in venue and setting, “In the Heights” is an unpretentious, enjoyable valentine to Washington Heights, the area north of Manhattan’s West Side, populated mainly by Latin Americans. Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the score and plays the central role of Usnavi, who works at the local bodega. In the book by Quiara Alegria, we meet the local inhabitants, including Abuela Claudia, Usnavi’s grandmother who daily buys a lottery ticket, her next-door neighbors, Camila and Kevin Rosario, who operate a gypsy cab company, their daughter Nina, who returns from her freshman year at Stanford, and Daniela, who runs a beauty shop where the local gossips gather. Although their problems are the common ones of money and romance, they all share an affection for their neighborhood, given voice by Mr. Miranda in the Latin-American score.

Originally Puerto Rican, the inhabitants of the Heights now encompass those from other Latin countries, like Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Having fled those locales in search of greater economic stability, they now find themselves again considering escape from the neighborhood in search of wider opportunity. And some may be forced to flee as prices increase with gentrification of the area overlooking the Hudson. But the darker side of life in “Heights” is overlooked – no drugs or muggings in this production – while the joy is contagious. The cast are excellent singers and dancers, with choreography by Andy Blackenbuehler. 37 Arts Theater, 450 W. 37th Street, New York, N.Y., phone: 212-307-4100.

“LoveMusik” is a Manhattan Theatre Club production suggested by the letters of German composer Kurt Weill and his Viennese wife, musical star Lotte Lenya. Their romance is an epic one, spanning 25 years in the lives of the couple, and set in Berlin, Paris, Broadway, and Hollywood. As Weill was Jewish, the couple fled Nazi Germany, after Weill’s success with such satiric works as “The Threepenny Opera,” “Seven Deadly Sins” and “Mahagonny,” written with Bertolt Brecht. In the United States, Weill’s musical style adapted to Broadway, where his work included “I Married an Angel” and “Lady in the Dark”( both of which became motion pictures), as well as “Street Scene” and “Lost in the Stars.” Meanwhile, Miss Lenya achieved stardom when she appeared in Marc Blitzstein’s adaptation of “The Threepenny Opera,” which debuted off-Broadway at the DeLys Theater, where it settled into a long run. Fortunate members of the audience not only heard her as Jenny, but she also on occasion substituted for the ballad singer and delivered “Mack the Knife.”

The book is by Alfred Uhry (“Driving Miss Daisy”) and the score includes a full range of Kurt Weill’s songs. Musical staging is by choreographer Patricia Birch, and Harold Prince directs. Tony award winners Michael Cerveris and Donna Murphy play Weill and Lenya, while David Pittu is Bertolt Brecht, and John Scherer appears as George Davis, Miss Lenya’s second husband after Weill’s untimely death in 1950. Biltmore Theater, 261 W. 47th Street, New York, N.Y., phone: 212-239-6200.

A Frank Loesser Tribute on DVD

“Heart & Soul: The Life and Music of Frank Loesser” has just been released on DVD after appearing on PBS stations around the country. Loesser, the composer/lyricist of Broadway’s “Guys and Dolls,” “Where’s Charley,” “How to Succeed in Show Business,” and “Most Happy Fella,” during Broadway’s golden age, also wrote such song classics as “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” “On a Slow Boat to China,” and “Heart and Soul,” featured in 60 Hollywood film scores.

Born in 1910 of musical parents who emigrated from Germany, Loesser grew up in New York City as the unfavored second son in a family that was dedicated to classical music, while Frank concentrated his eye and his ambitions on tin pan alley. His adaptation of American idiom to his music distinguishes his songs, especially his Runyonesque lyrics for “Guys and Dolls,” with a richly varied score that includes the comic “Adelaide’s Lament,” the gospel “Rockin’ the Boat” and the hymn-like “ Oldest Established Permanent Floating Crap Game.” The DVD includes performance clips and stills from the original Broadway productions, interviews with performers including Robert Morse, Charles Nelson Reilly, and widow Jo Sullivan Loesser, plus songwriters Jerry Herman and Stephen Schwartz. Loesser’s children Susan, John, and Emily also share recollections. Feisty, short, temperamental, always seen with a cigarette, Loesser died of lung cancer in 1969 at age 59. DVDs available at www.loessermovie.org.

New Plays on Broadway

Continuing the British invasion of Broadway (see What’s Hot) are three outstanding new works transported from London’s West End, “Frost/Nixon,” “Blackbird,” and “Coram Boy.” What makes for the sheer theatricality of Peter Morgan’s “Frost/Nixon” is the brilliance of the actors, Frank Langella as Richard Nixon and Michael Sheen as David Frost, and of the director, Michael Grandage, artistic director of the Donmar Theatre, where the production originated. Through deft selection from the many interviews Frost conducted with Nixon, Mr. Morgan highlights the drama in the series of encounters as well as the contrasts between the two men. Frost is a dandy, a playboy, a talk-show host who needs the television series of interviews to bolster his failing popularity, just as Nixon needs and agrees to them in hopes of winning not only the hefty cash inducement, but also the sympathy of the American public after his earlier disgrace.

A third star is the enormous television screen that forms the backdrop and allows these fine actors closeups that expose every nuance of the dialog. Although Frost starts slowly while Nixon craftily turns his screen time to lengthy, sentimental discourse, the youngish, nattily-dressed interviewer finally manages to achieve what no one else had done before him – an admission of guilt from Nixon. Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, 242 W. 45th Street, New York, N.Y., phone: 212-239-6200.

New Plays in London

At the Tricycle Theatre, it is the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who is being “Called to Account,” the title of the play by Richard Norton-Taylor. Its subtitle is: “The Indictment of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair for the crime of aggression against Iraq – A Hearing.” Directed by Nicholas Kent, a judicial hearing is staged, based on actual, verbatim testimony from eleven witnesses cross-examined by prosecution and defense counsels, with actors playing all the roles. Every word of dialogue is drawn from what was actually was spoken. The first witness (Raad Rawi), a Kurdish exile, describes Iraqi torture and declares that “Saddam Hussein was our weapon of mass destruction.” Neocon administration adviser Richard Perle insists on the validity of regime change, an approach it seems Blair had committed himself to in 2002, while continuing to insist that no decision had been made.

The prosecution (Thomas Wheatley) sets forth four major issues to be considered:

What was Blair’s purpose in using force against Iraq? When did he commit himself to using force? Did he manipulate the presentation of the evidence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, including a claim that they could attack Britain in a matter of minutes? Did he disregard evidence that would not help his case? And how were the legal sanctions secured for going to war? Regarding the last point, Attorney General Lord Goldsmith had first stated in March 2003 that “strong factual grounds” had to exist, but ten days later he gave legal authorization for the war.

Originally, the intent had been to ask the audience to vote on indicting Prime Minister Blair, but this was abandoned in favor of adhering to the matter of fact tone of presenting the actual existing evidence, allowing the audience to hear it, and then to decide on their own. Paul Taylor of The Independent declared of the ending, “Ironically, the man who acted as if he was above the law just about escapes. But the moral victory belongs to the prosecution.”

(Tricycle Theatre, 269 Kilburn High Road, London NW6 7JR. Phone: 020 7328 1000)

The Royal Court specializes in new plays, and two recent ones are outstanding. “The Wonderful World of Dissocia” by Anthony Neilson is a play in two halves, reflecting its subject: the mental illness bipolarity. In the first half, Lisa (Christine Entwisle) travels to the land of Dissocia to retrieve the hour she lost while flying between continents. While there, in a slanted landscape, she encounters some Alice-in-Wonderland-like characters, including a Lost and Found office that has lost itself, and a Scapegoat bemoaning the fact that no one has falsely accused him. Black Dog King (depression) terrorizes the land. The second half, white and sterile, represents a psychiatric hospital, where Lisa is locked behind glass doors and forced to take medication. Lisa’s fear is palpable: fear that she is losing control, and fear of deception.

“That Face” at the Royal Court is by Polly Stenham, who wrote it when she was 19, as a graduate of that theater’s Young Writers Program. In the well-to-do family of the play, the financier father has abandoned his wife and their son and daughter, and moved to Hong Kong. His wife Martha (Lindsay Duncan), who is a chronic alcoholic, has traumatized their son Henry, a teenager for whom she has incestuous feelings. He has had to drop out of school to take care of her. The action begins in an upper-class girls’ boarding school where the family daughter, Mia, is indulging in a sadistic hazing initiation that takes a wrong turn. The legal matters that ensue mean that the father must return home to handle them. Lindsay Duncan vividly portrays Martha, who is reminiscent of the possessive mother in “The Vortex,” Noel Coward’s first play. (Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, London SW1W 8AS. Phone: 020 7565 5000. www.royalcourttheatre.com)

The National Theatre has been presenting three impressive new dramas and one comedy transposed from the original. Joe Penhall’s “Landscape with Weapon” considers the dilemma of an inventor of a potentially dangerous weapon, “Rafta, Rafta” is a delightful domestic comedy about an Indian family by Ayub Khan-Din, author of “East is East,” “Philistines,” by Maxim Gorky, treats revolution in a household and political unrest beyond, and “A Matter of Life and Death” is a romantic fantasy presented with song, dance, and spectacle.

In Joe Penhall’s “Landscape with Weapon,” Ned, to his family’s horror, reveals that he is the brains behind a new military technology that will revolutionize the nature of warfare. He is unaware of its implications until the Ministry of Defense demands ownership. Then he begins to question himself and to resist the might of the weapons industry, with frightening consequences. Tom Hollander plays Ned and Roger Michell directs.

“Rafta, Rafta” is based on Bill Naughton’s comedy “All in Good Time,” concerning a young white couple who cannot consummate their marriage while having to live in the small house of the groom’s parents. Now Ayub Khan-Din has changed the characters to an Indian family, with Eeshwar Dutt (Harish Patel) leaving his native village for Bolton in the U.K. When his son marries another English-born Indian, they move into his parents’ cramped home. The wedding is splendid, with dancing, singing and drinking by the young couple (Ronny Jhutti and Rokhsaneh Ghawam-Shahidi), their friends, and family. But the problems begin soon after. On their wedding night, chatty Eeshwar enters their room just as they begin to undress. Then the bed collapses, thanks to the groom’s trick-playing younger brother. So it goes for six weeks, with Eeshwar padding by nightly on his way to the bathroom, the marriage still unconsummated, and the new husband in trauma. “The more you worry about it, the harder it’s going to get,” complains the bride, before noticing her inappropriate word choice. All works out as it should, in this delightful comedy, directed by Nicholas Hytner. Performance schedule and tickets: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

Revivals – U.K. and U.S.

Tennessee Williams and Harold Pinter have become the favorite playwrights for those seeking to stage revivals, and why not? Top productions of their plays reveal new depths in works that grow stronger and more meaningful as time progresses. Theater goers in London can enjoy two early major Williams works, and some of the later minor ones. To demonstrate how a director can make or break a production of “The Glass Menagerie,” consider that the play is enjoying considerable success in London, while the Broadway production, with the same star, Jessica Lange, was a dismal failure. In Rupert Goold’s direction of the work at London’s Apollo, the work regains its aura as a “memory play dimly lighted…sentimental…not realistic” in Williams’s words. Miss Lange’s interpretation of the main character, Amanda, is more restrained and deeper, less fluttery. And most important, the curtains (“portieres”)dividing the living room and dining room do not swing back and forth interrupting the scene and obscuring the view. Ed Stoppard is a great improvement on Broadway’s macho Tom, and Amanda Hall is a moving Laura.(Apollo Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1V 7HD. Phone: 0870 890 1101)

Zoe Wanamaker, who played Amanda in a memorable “Menagerie,” is now playing the heroine of “The Rose Tattoo” at the National Theatre. As Serafina, she combines the unconscious humor of the character with sexiness and poignancy, in an excellent production directed by Nicholas Hytner. When Serafina is widowed by the truck-driver husband she adored, she goes to seed, walking about in a dirty slip and refusing to believe the truth, that her husband was unfaithful, until another truck driver, Alvaro (Darrell D’Silva), crosses her path. See Must See: London for more. Performance schedule and tickets: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/.

Trafalgar Studios has been an excellent venue for small, worthwhile plays like the three Tennessee Williams one-acts that recently held the stage there. “Lovely and Misfit” is the title of the trilogy, two of them written before “Menagerie,” and one in the late 1950s. “Mister Paradise” concerns a young woman student (Jennifer Higham) visiting an old and forgotten poet in the French Quarter of New Orleans. His name is Anthony Paradise, and she is hoping to bring him and his work to the attention of the public once again. But he believes that his reputation cannot be revived; oblivion he says is his natural habitat. Ted van Griethuysen plays the title role. “Summer at the Lake” tells the story of Mrs. Fenway, a complaining, neurotic mother (Diana Kent) vacationing with her put-upon, frustrated son (David Hartley). She scolds him for wanting “to go on being a child,” and wonders if he might need “one of those special schools where they give individual attention or something.”

“And Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Queens” (1950s) is a line from Shakespeare’s “Richard II,” with “Queens” a camp substitution for “Kings.” It deals with Candy, a transvestite interior decorator who picks up a sailor in a bar and takes him back to his New Orleans apartment. When Candy excuses himself and reappears in full drag, the sailor’s reaction is comic but also fascinated. As Candy is lonely after being deserted by his lover, it seems as though the couple might relate, but understanding is not to be. Candy is played with wit and understanding by Edward Hughes, and Matt Ryan is memorable as Karl, the dangerous sailor. Anna Ledwich directs.

In Hartford, Connecticut, the Hartford Stage will present in spring of 2008 a production of “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore,” a late Williams work, starring Olympia Dukakis. Ms. Dukakis will play the elderly Mrs. Goforth, who is trying to complete her memoirs before her illness overtakes her. As she recounts the details of her rich and flamboyant life, a young artist named Christopher Flanders arrives at her Italian villa. Is he the angel of death?

Harold Pinter’s “Old Times,” “The Caretaker,” and “The Dumb Waiter” recently held the stage in the U.K., and “Betrayal” is at the Donmar in London. In Richmond, “Old Times” focuses on the tensions between film-maker Deeley, his wife Kate, and Anna, a friend of Kate’s who comes to visit from the past. Deeley feels threatened by their visitor, who knew his wife earlier, and a duel emerges between him and Anna as to which of them has an emotional claim to Kate. Reinventing the past and the power of memory are employed as weapons as Deeley and Anna view Kate as their battleground, while she lazily tantalizes both. Neil Pearson is Deeley, Susannah Harker portrays Anna, and Janie Dee is Kate. Peter Hall directs, and the production, after its appearance in Richmond, tours to Windsor, Bath and Malvern.

“The Dumb Waiter” is one of Pinter’s earliest plays and is still a dramatic masterpiece, with the rhythmic language, pauses, and menace that characterize the later works. At the Trafalgar Studios, two contract killers wait in a basement in Birmingham for their instructions as to whom they will hit that night. The more experienced gangster, Ben (Jason Isaacs) quietly reads his newspaper, while his neurotic assistant Gus (Lee Evans), runs off at the mouth when he is not going to the bathroom. Suddenly a dumb waiter crashes into the room, adding to the tension, before it is discovered that it contains an order for two dinners. That the menace is real and imminent cannot be denied, although it is unexpected.

“The Caretaker,” one of Pinter’s greatest plays, has just finished a run at the Tricycle, with David Bradley as Davies, the homeless man who attempts to take over the household of two brothers by setting them against each other. The brothers, however, Mick (Nigel Harman), a menacing gangster, and Aston (Con O’Neill), a gentle retard, close ranks and Davies again finds himself on the streets. Bradley is a many-faceted Davies, never sentimentalizing the character, but exercising his cunning, especially in his manipulation of his precarious position and his taunting of Aston, as well as his haughty dissatisfaction with hand-me-down shoes. And he is truly affecting as a portrait of isolation.

Pinter’s “Betrayal” is a hit at the Donmar Theatre, running to 21 July, with Toby Stephens and Samuel West as the friends and Dervia Kirwan as the woman in a three-way intrigue that is related in reverse, that is, the play begins in the present, and travels backwards to trace the events as they occur, going back to the beginning of the wife’s betrayal of her husband, and his betrayal of his friend. Brilliant performances by all three actors make this the outstanding drama in the West End. Based in part upon Pinter’s affair with Joan Bakewell in the 1960s, the love triangle ends in disillusionment as the play begins, and moves back to the ecstasy at the beginning as wife Emma and Jerry, a literary agent (Stephens), begin their affair. Jealous husband and publisher Robert, played by Sam West, discovers the intrigue, and in a vivid scene over lunch with Jerry reveals this knowledge by attacking the prose style in which his friend specializes. Emma’s despair is apparent as she realizes her lover’s growing disinterest, and her husband’s delight in humiliating her. (Donmar Warehouse, Seven Dials, London WC2H 9LX. Phone 0870 060 6624)

“Equus,” Peter Shaffer’s play revived at the Gielgud Theatre has finished its West End run and embarks on a twelve-week tour of the U.K. beginning at the Theatre Royal in Bath on August 28. In the spring of 2008, “Equus” comes to Broadway with its original stars, Daniel Radcliffe as the troubled stable boy who inexplicably blinds six horses, and Richard Griffiths as the psychiatrist who helps him, but who has problems of his own. Mr. Radcliffe, who enacts the title role in the Harry Potter films, has become an idol of teen-agers who nightly flock to the stage door after witnessing his excellent performance (sans glasses) as the seventeen-year-old Alan Strang.