'ORIGINAL CAST RECORDINGS'If those three words make your heart skip a beat, you're probably already on your way to Lincoln Center, where the New York Public Library is unveiling a major exhibition devoted to "the history and artistry" of capturing original Broadway, Off-Broadway, and London casts from the era of Bert Williams and Lillian Russell onward. Try not to let the rare album-cover art overexcite you, and please don't use the word "soundtrack." Live theater is never pre-recorded. (League of Off-Broadway Theatres, please note.) OPENS THURSDAY, THROUGH JUNE 7, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, 212-870-1630. (Feingold)
'OUR LADY OF 121ST STREET'A nun beloved and feared by her neighborhood dies, her body vanishes from the funeral home, and everybody gets wildly excited—"everybody," in the case of Stephen Adly Guirgis's new play, including the critics who reviewed its Off-Off performance by the LAByrinth last fall. Thanks to their excitement, Philip Seymour Hoffman's production has moved Off-Broadway, with its workshop cast largely intact. Those who missed the earlier go-round and want an advance peek can find the complete text in February's American Theater. IN PREVIEWS, OPENS THURSDAY, Union Square Theater, 100 East 17th Street, 212-505-0700. (Feingold)
'STRING FEVER'The thorny feminist issue of having it all takes on a new wrinkle in Jacquelyn Reingold's play, the centerpiece this year of E.S.T.'s annual "First Light Festival," spotlighting performance works that deal with science and technology. As her title indicates, Reingold's heroine has to grapple not only with single momhood and unrequited love, but with a highly contested theory of the universe. If this sounds awfully abstract, Mary B. Robinson's cast, which includes Cynthia Nixon and Evan Handler, should be able to provide plenty of specificity. THROUGH MARCH 23, Ensemble Studio Theatre, 549 West 52nd Street, 212-206-1515. (Feingold)
'VINCENT IN BRIXTON'Back when he still had two ears and the bulk of his sanity, the young Vincent van Gogh spent some time in a rooming house in the shabby South London district of Brixton. Add the young widow who kept the house and her daughter, let your imagination run away with you, and you might have a play if Nicholas Wright hadn't beaten you to the punch. His speculation on this thickly impasted triangle, lauded in London, arrives here under the same director, Richard Eyre, with its London stars, Jochum ten Haaf and Clare Higgins, re-creating their roles. Arles you ready for it? IN PREVIEWS, OPENS THURSDAY, Golden Theatre, Broadway and 45th Street, 212-239-6200. (Feingold)
GARY SHTEYNGART AND PETER CONSTANTINEIn his debut novel, The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Shteyngart posits his young hero as a wayward victim of failed assimilation, both as a would-be hipster American immigrant, and back "home," mixed up with the Mafia in Eastern Europe. And he does so tragicomically, with the innate earnestness and knowing of one who has traveled that line himself. Fittingly, Shteyngart will read with Peter Constantine, the translator of The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, on the occasion of Amnesty International's campaign in defense of human rights in the Russian Federation. THURSDAY AT 7, KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street, 212-505-3360. (Snow)
'TRANSFERRED TO CELLULOID'Which is better, the book or the movie? Hear the writers' take, as the real Susan Orlean (author of the Adaptation-inspiring The Orchid Thief) joins The Hours novelist Michael Cunningham and About Schmidt creator Louis Begley to reveal the gripes and gratification attending their respective novels' respective forays into film. Motherless Brooklynauthor Jonathan Lethem moderates. MONDAY AT 7, Housing Works Used Book Café, 126 Crosby Street, 212-334-3324. (Meyer)
