HubArts.com

Van The Man, you're beautiful!

LiveNation will have the great Van Morrison at the Opera House on March 8 - "at 7:30 p.m. sharp," don't keep The Man waiting - for $68.50-$150. Also, James Blunt - whose single "You're Beautiful" is playing 24/7 on either the River or WBOS - will be at the Orpheum March 18 for $25. Tix for both Saturday at 10 a.m. at the appropriate box office, Ticketmaster or www.livenation.com.

Theater: Toga party postponed

"A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" won't be the Huntington Theatre Company's season-closer after all. The production was intended as a showcase for Brooks Ashmanskas, who has landed a Broadway role, so instead the company will tackle "Love's Labour's Lost" under the direction of artistic director Nicholas Martin. It's the company's first Shakespeare since 1999. The comedy opens May 12. Casting will be announced later.

My shoes were tied

Yesterday I visited the Museum of Fine Arts and walked through the subterranean lair of curators and conservators, feeling a little bit like a character in "The Da Vinci Code." Reading this story today, I realized what a close call the museum had.

Morning reading

Web site of the New Bedford Standard Times has a review of a new show at the BCA, a one-man effort about Antarctic explorer Tom Crean, who ran with Scott and Shackleton. ... The Globe hips up page one with a good story about Berklee joining Essence magazine's campaign for a more conscious, less thuggish hip hop. ... Both the Globe and Herald review Berklee's star-studded 60th birthday concert on Saturday. I would like to have heard that Esperanza Spalding/Michel Camilo/Steve Gadd version of "Autumn Leaves," or Herbie Hancock playing piano behind Paul Simon on "Graceland." ... The picture to the right is my shameless attempt to get you to scroll down and read the next item, about my unforgettable Saturday afternoon at the Moscow Cats Theatre. I mean, wooo.

Moscow Cats Theatre: Kitty bizarre

Connoisseurs of strangeness, get thee down to John Hancock Hall today for the last Boston performances by the  Moscow Cats Theatre, because otherwise you'll have to go to New York. Have to. We went to the matinee yesterday and I still can't quite believe what I saw. And not because of the cat tricks, although those of you who go just for the cute kitties won't be disappointed. If it was just for the felines, though, the $56 ticket would seem steep. But this experience had so much more to give.

"It's like _____ on acid" is a terrible cliche in journalism these days, lazy writing even when it's updated to reference, say, crystal meth. But honestly, the only way to get close to this experience would be to drop some LSD, lock yourself in a room with a bunch of hungry cats and a couple of mimes, then flip on a DVD jukebox with a random shuffle of "Bozo the Clown," "Teletubbies" and 1950s Soviet children's programming. It's that weird.

There are these four happy clowns, see, two men and two women, and they don't speak, although occasionally they emit a sub-verbal mutter or  exhortation for applause. They live in a strange dreamworld decorated with giant children's blocks, where many cats - and one very confused little dog - run free. Also on hand are two big fuzzy green Teletubbies with trombone-like protruberances where their mouths should be. Space aliens? Some Russian children's-TV icon? Who knows.

For 80 minutes, these characters indulge in hard-to-decipher antics and intrigues that seem to involve frequent cycles of dreaming and waking. The set and props are cheesy, and the music is a combination of pulsating Russian disco and utter schmaltz. The slapstick gags are so broad and simple they seem aimed at two-year-olds. But then there's a bizarre scenario near the end in which the clown princess turns up pregnant, and the two male clowns point the finger at each other before deciding a guy in the audience is the father. At which point the princess gives birth - to the still very confused little dog.

And this is not even mentioning the four-legged stars of the show.

Herding cats? These Russians do it, with a not very subtle mix of palmed kitty treats and much-practiced hand signals. There are a couple of show-stoppers - a cat that does handstands on lead clown Yuri's outstretched palm, and another one that scoots up poles and jumps down to Yuri's shoulder from great heights. Just the fact that the cats mostly run in and out on cue is impressive to anyone who knows the species. They cooperate with that distracted ennui that is their trademark. One of them sat atop a prop house and calmly washed his face for 10 minutes in mid-show, despite the chaos around him.

Even the PETA member with me was unfazed by most of it, and in one case, when a "cat" is treated badly, it is actually a doll. But I'm not sure the dozens and dozens of little kids in the audience, laughing as if they'd been huffing ether, were conscious of how carefully the animals were actually treated. It seems like there should have been some nice English-speaking clown to come out at the beginning and end of the show to tell the kids, DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME.

And the gag about the little dog munching on the broken lightbulb just wasn't funny at all.

Seeing it all in the simple, classic deco confines of the Hancock made it that much weirder. And the business end was deeply strange too. While literally hundreds of people were lined up at the Hancock's will-call window, traffic at the walk-up sales window was very slow - in part because there were two older Russian people sitting at a folding table, also selling tickets. And then there was the third ticket that just showed up in our envelope.

I even got an on-street parking space practically across the street. The meter was out of order, but - after nearly three hours on a Saturday afternoon, in the middle of the Back Bay - I didn't get a parking ticket. I'm tellin' ya, it was one strange afternoon.

"Idol" chatter

Those of you who think you're all PC and multi-culti-enabled, quick, tell me what you know about "Proyecto Fama!" I didn't think so. Well, you might want to check out this Globe article about the "American Idol"-style talent contest being run at a Lawrence nightclub by Telemundo Boston. ... And those of you who were quite confident we'd heard the last of "Idol" runnerup Constantine Maroulis had better check out this Herald article which says he has a tour, an album and a sitcom in the works.

The morning papers

Big takeouts on tomorrow night's Berklee 60th anniversary festivities in the Globe and the Herald. (I can't seem to connect to the Herald site this morning.) Bonus props to the Globe for the iPod playlist comprising Berklee-connected artists. ... The Globe's Names & Faces also tips what I think is a scoop, namely several signs that Madonna might be this summer's Fenway Park concert attraction. ... Interview with Rick Berlin about his new solo project, played on the late Mark Sandman's piano, in the Globe. He plays the Lizard Lounge this weekend. ... Also of note, in the Globe biz section, is word that the Hub Ticket Agency trailer at the corner of Tremont and Stuart Streets will be replaced with "a colorful gateway structure with nine floors of housing over a restaurant."

'Make Way for Theo' would be catchier

The Boston Landmarks Orchestra conducted by Charles Ansbacher has commissioned a narrated work for children called "Lifting the Curse: The Story of the Boston Red Sox" to premiere at a free concert this summer. The music will be by Boston-educated composer Julian Wachner, the words by Bill Littlefield of Curry College and NPR's "Only a Game." The work follows in the footsteps of the Landmarks' "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" (music by Wachner, based on Longfellow's poem) and "Make Way for Ducklings" (by Daniel Pinkham, based on Robert McCloskey's children's classic). Despite the title, the work is to dispute the existence of the curse, ascribing the 86-year drought ended in 2004 to more mundane factors like bad decisions and bad luck. Thank Christ for the happy ending, or I'd have to say the story is way too freakin' dark for kids.

Malden, dude, seriously?

I'm a hundred pages into the new Stephen King, "Cell," which is set in New England, and well, he's baaaack. In the bravura opening scenes outside Boston's Four Seasons, necks are bitten, a Duck Boat careens out of control, people go all zombie. A small band of crafty heroes laboriously make their way to safety. The road to salvation runs through Malden, I kid you not. So if I don't post much the next day or so, you'll know why. But I do have to say that Steverino has a couple of geographic booboos that will throw off local readers. He says it's the Common across from the Four Seasons, when really it's the Public Garden. And in a confusing paragraph about the progress of a fire, he seems to put the Wang Center east of the N.E. Medical Center, when in fact it's a block west. (The last time I saw King in the flesh, he was getting into a chauffered Town Car in front of the Roxy, across the street from the Wang, after a benefit performance with Dave Barry, Roger McGuinn and the rest of the Rock Bottom Remainders.) No one in the rest of the country is going to care, though, because this is the best King writing in at least a decade. The highest compliment I can give is that I feel a little funny now every time I pick up my cell phone. And I'm only a hundred pages in.

Morning reads

At Bostonist.com, Sandouri Dean Bey amusingly compares the architect's rendering of the new Boston Museum Project on the Rose Kennedy Greenway to a "gigantic smiling earthworm" emerging from the Big Dig. Close. Now every time I look at the picture (above), all I can think of is "Dune." ... In the Globe, Richard Dyer reviews an opera production that's part of Lincoln Center's Golijov festival, but there's also the news that the Newton composer won't finish his latest work in time for its scheduled March premiere by Yo-Yo Ma and the BSO. ... Jacob's Pillow unveils its 2006 lineup. ... And Geoff Edgers explains what Live Nation is and how it has assumed the duties of Clear Channel's concert business. No one, however, can explain those $7.75 per ticket "convenience charges" to my satisfaction. ... The Herald has the Golijov news in Hotline, along with the better headline on the Pillow item: Dancing By The Stars.