It's a small world after all

Young Jean Lee's exploration of the white-black dialectic, The Shipment, is the show of the moment in New York, and I'm ready to bank on it returning later this year on a stage bigger than the Kitchen's. How hyped is it? Stephen Sondheim himself braved frigid temperatures to see it Friday night, and he stoically got crushed in the lobby, like everybody else, as we were waiting to be let in. Personally I feel The Shipment is merely pretty good—it's the first seriously overrated show of the season. Hedda Gabler, on the other hand, is getting a bum rap. It's far from being as disastrous as some would have it, and Mary-Louise Parker actually gives an interesting, far from obvious performance.

Neither over- nor underhyped, Room for Cream—a live soap presented weekly by the Dyke Division of the Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf company—is your typical downtown cult hit: It's packing them in (not that La MaMa is that big) yet remains somewhat under the radar. I could see myself becoming somewhat addicted to the show's rough-hewn charms…