• Almudena Crespo

It's the experimental theater piece from Argentina that opened last night, runs through Sunday, and sounds amazing.

From the OTB synopsis:

It’s 1999 in Buenos Aires. Mario, Laura, Pablo, and Vicky are in their mid-twenties and ready for careers, love, and adulthood. Over the next decade, Argentina’s economy will collapse and their lives will take a series of unexpected turns. In this fast-paced, multilayered “mega fiction,” director Mariano Pensotti deftly unfolds the lives of these 4 characters....Mariano Pensotti, a young director and writer based in Argentina, has become one of the most noted experimental directors throughout the world. His unique sets and depictions of life are told with a filmic sensibility honed in years studying cinema at the Dramatic Arts Instituto Universitario Nacional de Artes.

From the recent New York Times review:

The Argentine writer and director Mariano Pensotti sets multiple stories in motion in his smart and smartly staged play “El Pasado Es un Animal Grotesco." And they really are in motion: the circular plywood stage, divided into four compartments, revolves constantly (and slowly — you won’t feel seasick), as episodes from the lives of four characters are acted out. Their stories cinematically unspool and overlap as time moves onward and even occasionally backward....“El Pasado Es un Animal Grotesco” considers the way we talk about our lives, the way they become fictions, and then fictions become our pasts — and how alien that can start to feel.

Full info on the On the Boards shows here.

In The Bells at Erickson Theater Off Broadway until the 18th, "Drunks are drinking, the wind is howling, and a successful innkeeper counts his money and watches as his only daughter delicately comes into heat."

Cienna Madrid's review makes it sound irresistible.

• JOHN ULLMAN
• It doesn't look like that ax is going anywhere good.

...and violence and drug use and fog in Tommy Smith's new show, White Hot, playing through Saturday at West of Lenin.

Anna Minard's review makes it sound pretty much irresistible.

• And lighters!

Last summer, Intiman Theatre fell down after a rocky transition from longtime artistic director Bart Sher and longtime managing director Laura Penn to new artistic director Kate Whoriskey and new managing director Brian Colburn.

After the fall, Intiman decided to hire a new, young artistic director (Andrew Russell) and said if it raised $1 million by February, it'd mount a four-play summer festival with 12 actors in all the roles, repertory style.

February 1 came and went without meeting the goal (the theater had raised around $820,000 by then), so Intiman announced it'd wait until Friday, February 3 to make the $1 million. Then it said it'd wait until a board meeting on Monday to decide what to do.

As of a few hours ago, it has decided what to do. Intiman is going forward with the summer festival, which will include one Shakespeare play, one Ibsen play, one unnamed "American classic," and an unspecified new theatrical something by Dan Savage.

Congratulations, Intiman. We're all curious to see what's next.