Theater Review | 'Catch-22': Yossarian the Bombardier: Call Him Crazy...Please. Peter Meineck’s staging of Joseph Heller’s novel ultimately proves an uneven effort.

Father of the ‘Follies’. How Florenz Ziegfeld used comedy, sex, exoticism and style to perfect a whole new variety of musical entertainment.

Arts, Briefly: ‘Pal Joey’ Star Pulls Out. Christian Hoff has withdrawn from the coming Broadway revival of Rodgers and Hart’s “Pal Joey” and has been replaced by his understudy, Matthew Risch.

Arts, Briefly: Footnote. Disney is offering free children’s tickets to its Broadway productions of “The Lion King,” “Mary Poppins” and “The Little Mermaid.”

Arts, Briefly: ‘Inishmaan’ Revival Brings Irish Cast. The Atlantic Theater Company’s revival of the Martin McDonagh play “The Cripple of Inishmaan” will come to New York with its full Irish cast intact.

Arts, Briefly: New Guare Play Is Postponed. The Public Theater’s much-anticipated production of “A Free Man of Color,” a new play by John Guare, right, won’t be mounted this season after all.

Theater Review | 'Irving Berlin's White Christmas': Just Like the Ones You Used to Know: Song, Dance and Fluffy White Endings. You’d have to be in a desperately, even pathologically nostalgic mood to derive much joy from the stage retread of “White Christmas.”

Theater Review | 'Taking Over': Endangered Species in Gentrifying Brooklyn. Danny Hoch’s “Taking Over” is a fiery polemical portrait gallery of a play.

Broadway Is Dry-Eyed as Monster Falls Hard. The news about “The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein” shutting its doors Jan. 4 seemed to spark an unusual guilty glee among theater people.

Theater Review | 'Geometry of Fire': Father, Son and Issues Collide at Nexus of Iraq. An Iraq war veteran struggles to integrate back into a world that has no place for him in “Geometry of Fire,” a low-key drama by Stephen Belber.

He Relit Broadway: Gerald Schoenfeld Dies at 84. The chairman of the powerful Shubert Organization was one of the most influential figures in American theater.

William Gibson, Playwright, Dies at 94. Mr. Gibson was a playwright who had a gift for creating strong, popular female characters and wrote “The Miracle Worker.”

The Great White Way Tries to Turn Green. Broadway Goes Green is a new partnership between the city and Broadway that is meant to shrink the Shrek-size carbon footprint of the Great White Way.

Theater Review | 'Hillary: A Modern Greek Tragedy With a (Somewhat) Happy Ending': Aphrodite Plays Politics With Bill and Hillary. “Hillary: A Modern Greek Tragedy With a (Somewhat) Happy Ending” merges elements of Greek tragedy (including a chorus) with real-life events to create a screwball version of recent history.

How an Angel Came to Cultivate Martha Clarke’s ‘Garden’. “Garden of Earthly Delights” had a triumphant opening last week, but, as its creators explain, it came a hair’s breadth from not happening at all.

Theater Review: A Christmas Eve Turning Grimmer With Each Hand. The action in Conor McPherson’s “The Seafarer” takes place on a bleak Christmas Eve in North Dublin, and events soon turn literally biblical.

Wantagh Teenager Glides Onto Broadway Stage. Thirteen-year-old Trent Kowalik, a champion Irish step dancer, stars on Broadway in “Billy Elliot.”

Theater Listings. Selective listings from theater critics of The New York Times.

Theater Director With a Filmmaker’s Eye. Ivo van Hove is known in America for his bold, actor-centered stagings of classic dramas. But “Opening Night” will show a different dimension of the director.

Irving Berlin’s Snow Business. In almost a century’s worth of songs, Irving Berlin put our times to music.

Gotta Dance, Gotta Transcend. The Broadway triumph of “Billy Elliot” is in many ways a triumph of paradox.

Comeback With a ‘Z’. Liza Minnelli is returning to Broadway for the first time in almost a decade.

Theater Review | 'London Cries': The Beggars and Strugglers Have a Music-Hall Opera. “London Cries,” an Old Vic Theater commission, gets its Dickensian flair from its source material, Henry Mayhew’s classic survey “London Labour and the London Poor.”

Rosenbergs Seen as Puppets, Literally This Time. The Julius and Ethel Rosenberg atomic bomb spy case is the subject of a “musical tragedy” staged by the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theater.

Arts, Briefly: Bartlett Sher to Direct August Wilson Revival. Bartlett Sher’s next project for Lincoln Center Theater will be a revival of the August Wilson play “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.”

Campaign Spotlight: How Green Was My Musical. A new campaign for “Shrek the Musical” is taking over ad space the Times Square subway station and seeks to poke fun at musicals like “A Chorus Line” and “Evita.”

Theater Review | 'Parking Lot Lonely Heart': Escort-Hiring Millionaire Says Sex Is Not His Objective. An awful lot of scene changes and one overused plot device keep Colin McKenna’s play from achieving the escalating tension it’s going for.

Forget Citigroup, Puppet Show Needs a Bailout. California’s economy has taken a toll on a marionette show that is a staple of a Los Angeleno childhood.

Arts, Briefly: Trouble in San Jose. The American Musical Theater of San Jose, Calif., has laid off all of its employees and is likely to file for bankruptcy.

Arts, Briefly: More Guys, More Dolls. More guys and dolls have joined the cast of the coming Broadway revival of “Guys and Dolls.”

Broadway Gets ‘Hair’; ‘Hair’ Gets New Deal. The Broadway revival of “Hair” may serve as the basis for future deals between the Public Theater and commercial producers.