THEATER
BESIDE HERSELF. If you were an off-Broadway producer who had hired movie star William Hurt, would you cast him as a crude, subliterate UPS deliveryman who has little to do, and less to say, in a fantasy piece centered on a pathetic and prematurely old widow? If so, you would disappoint audiences as keenly as New York City's Circle Repertory is doing.
AUGUST SNOW. Novelist Reynolds Price proves a born playwright in a poignant trilogy (the other plays: Night Dance, Better Days) about thwarted hopes in a small North Carolina town; superbly staged by the Cleveland Playhouse.
MASTERGATE. The President...