All the art money can buy

Last week, Lincoln Center announced the lineup for this year's summer festival. My colleague Gia Kourlas has already expressed what she thinks about the dance component, but fortunately the theater offerings look more inviting.

At each of the last three Robert Wilson shows I've seen, I've told myself "never again!" only to get suckered into going just one last time. The familiar thought last popped up after seeing Quartett in the fall, but once again I'll go back to the trough since Lincoln Center is bringing over the staging of La Fontaine's fables that Wilson did for the Comédie-Française, complete with Français actors. I'm also totally psyched by the return of the Kabuki troupe Heisei Nakamura-za, whose last appearance at the festival in 2004 remains a great theater memory, and very intrigued by the prospect of a Taiwanese King Lear (the third major Lear of the year, with the Kline Lear currently at the Public and the McKellen Lear coming to BAM in September).

Also appealing-looking are the four Spanish-language plays, including Gemelos, an adaptation of Agota Kristof's amazing novel The Notebook (which is part of a trilogy but holds up on its own), and Proyecto Chejov, a deconstruction of The Three Sisters by Argentine director Daniel Veronese, whose Hamletmachine I'd quite enjoyed at BAM in 2000.

All in all, we have many reasons to looking forward to July.