http://www.washingtonpost.comNews (www.washingtonpost.com)en-us14020http://www.washingtonpost.comhttp://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/hp/image/wp_web.gifhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51162-2003Dec9.htmlWed, 10 Dec 2003 10:06:52 GMTBALTIMORE -- In "a.m. Sunday," Jerome Hairston's intriguing new play about a troubled mixed marriage, the phone rings and no one answers. The two sons in the family, Jay, a teenager, and his younger brother, Denny, stand by the kitchen table in guilty silence until the ringing stops. What is it that prevents them from picking up the receiver? Have they been warned? Are they indifferent? Do they already know who's on the other end? By Peter Markshttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47730-2003Dec8.htmlWed, 10 Dec 2003 10:06:52 GMTAn actor with a faulty accent is as distracting as one with his toupee askew. When you should be concentrating on other things, all you can really hear are the misshapen vowels. This, unfortunately, is a debilitating defect in Studio Theatre's mounting of "The York Realist," a tender story of tentative gay romance set in the rural north of England. By Peter Markshttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44307-2003Dec7.htmlWed, 10 Dec 2003 10:06:52 GMTWho better than Suzanne Farrell to speak about the ways in which George Balanchine put sex onstage? For 20 years she was his goddess. Their romantic liaison may have been, for the most part, private, but their artistic infatuation was gloriously public. His devotion to her, and hers to him, was made clear in the dozens of his ballets that she dominated while she was the New York City Ballet's leading ballerina. By Sarah Kaufmanhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35299-2003Dec4.htmlWed, 10 Dec 2003 10:06:52 GMTTHE REHEARSAL ROOM is bile green, hot, cramped with assorted chairs and props, a piano in one corner, a worktable across one wall. It's the type of room that after a long, hard day could make a person cranky. But not Baayork Lee. She burbles with enthusiasm, her magenta, multicolored blouse a fluorescent ray of sunshine in this windowless space tucked away in a creepily empty shopping mall in Southwest Washington, a few blocks from Arena Stage. "Okay," she says to a cluster of singer-dancers working out a maypole scene for Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith's production of "Camelot." "One more time." And there they go, weaving a complex pattern of ribbons and bodies in a circular swirl of movement until . . . someone crashes. But Lee doesn't flinch, for she's as much traffic cop as choreographer, braiding the dancers into an elaborate filigree of steps and ribbons. By Lisa Traigerhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35300-2003Dec4.htmlWed, 10 Dec 2003 10:06:52 GMTA STIRRING moment resonated in MetroStage's recent staged reading of Noel Coward's one-act play "Still Life" when Lee Mikeska Gardner ponders her fate as a married woman falling in love with a handsome doctor. By Ronn Levine