Mini Reviews

* LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST

(At the Shakespeare Theatre through July 30)

Michael Kahn's Beatles- and Rolling Stones-inspired rethink of this classic proves to be a frisky mingling of Elizabethan wit and Nehru-jacketed satire. Kahn has transferred this Shakespeare high comedy, with its multiple pairs of standoffish lovers and sly juxtapositions of foolishness and wisdom, to an ashram in India, where the King of Navarre (Amir Arison) is now a mystic. The young lords are world-famous rock-and-rollers, and their love objects are dishy, miniskirted coquettes. Composer Adam Wernick turns Shakespeare's lyrics into rock ballads for the lovesick members of the band -- pleasingly played by Hank Stratton, Erik Steele and Aubrey Deeker. The long-haired rockers grab electric guitars and drumsticks to sing about their puppy-dog crushes. Although they begin the play as recruits to Navarre's brand of asceticism, swearing off women in favor of study, all of them, Navarre included, succumb to attraction. By play's end, they're not merely besotted, though. They've all come to a more mature understanding of love, one worthy of the type of strong commitment they initially sought just as adamantly to avoid.

-- P.M.

MONTY PYTHON'S SPAMALOT

(At the National Theatre through July 9)

Jews, gays, cows, amputees, monks, Finns, historians, bunnies, bed-wetters, socialists, the French, the English, the Scots, the runs, the dead, the Apostles, the Bible and Andrew Lloyd Webber all find their places on the smorgasbord of rib-tickling targets in the silliest romp to hit these parts since Wilbur Mills played the Tidal Basin. The new touring version of the Tony-winning musical, is of absolutely, positively no redeeming social value. It leers, it taunts, it panders, with the selfsame mix of highbrow and lowbrow lunacy that made Monty Python one-of-a-kind funny. The gags, many recycled from classic Python sketches and, principally, from the group's 1975 film, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," don't all go over uproariously. But far more than enough of its rampant shamelessness survives here -- thanks to director Mike Nichols and the daft Python alum Eric Idle, who wrote the script -- to ensure that you feel you've successfully taken the outrageous-comedy cure.

-- P.M.

THE NEW WORLD ORDER AND OTHER PLAYS

(By Scena Theatre at Warehouse Theatre through July 9)