Scandal-mongering reporter Augustine Early is an opportunistic parasite who'll do whatever it takes to get the scoop on a front page story—even if it means manufacturing the story himself. He's amoral, vindictive, and seemingly devoid of compassion. He's also, as it happens, a lot of fun to spend a couple hours with. In Ronan Noone's briskly entertaining one-man play The Atheist, the charismatic Campbell Scott brings a rakish charm and incisive wit to a role that, in the wrong hands, might have been simply repellent....

In early 2007, The New Yorker writer George Packer published an enthralling article about the desperate plight of Iraqis who had assisted the American effort in their country and were being hunted down as a result, with little or no U.S. protection. Betrayed, Packer's first play, is based on interviews conducted while in Iraq for the sixth time to research his article; the fictionalized account concerns three young Iraqis – two men and a woman......

MOVIE: BAM pays homage to the late Barbara Stanwyck tonight with a screening of Forbidden. The 1932 Frank Capra-directed film (which tells the tale of a librarian who has fallen for an unobtainable/married man) was supposedly influenced by his real-life affair with the leading lady. Critic and historian Elliott Stein will discuss the film after the 6:50 screening. 4:30, 6:50 and 915pm // BAM Rose Cinemas [30 Lafayette Ave., Fort Greene] // $11 Meanwhile, the......

Last Sunday and Monday a collective of activists, journalists, retired government officials and theater makers gathered at The Culture Project to begin mock impeachment proceedings against President Bush. The “trial by theater” arose in part out of frustration with Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi’s pledge to leave impeachment “off the table” when her party seized the House majority. The month long series, called A Question of Impeachment, is intended to spark debate and, participants hope,......

Nigeria is a so-called “developing” country saddled with a corrupt government, crushing international debt, appalling slums, guerilla warfare, malaria, kidnappings, environmental disasters and an average life expectancy of 47. It’s not as bad as other African countries; of course that’s not saying much. If you’re like me, it’s a place that’s just not very high up on your list of vacation destinations. Thing is, we go there just about every time we fill up the......

THEATER: The annual Soho Think Tank Ice Factory, arguably New York’s most impeccably curated theater festival, has been hosting an exhilarating array of new shows every weekend since July 4th . Starting tonight you can sink your teeth into Vampire University, in which “a struggling vampire family descends on an evangelical college in the Midwest, the dad’s mid-life crisis of immortality triggers a desire to come back to life and the gulf between first and......

EVENT: BKLYN DESIGNS 2007 kicks off today. The design expo will not only provide the latest trends and lots of fabulous things for your home - but all day panel discussions, interviews and of course parties, after parties and much more. All Weekend // St. Ann's Warehouse [38 Water St, Brooklyn] // $12 per day THEATER: Porn star-cum-performance artist Annie Sprinkle returns to the New York stage with her artistic and domestic partner Elizabeth M.......

Every show biz impresario knows that the best way to get to Broadway is not by waiting for Guffman but by stirring up a little controversy. Though it seems unlikely that’s what Connecticut high school students intended while developing a play about the Iraq quagmire, controversy is what they got when Principal Skinner Canty cancelled their little performance. After the ensuing uproar, which included public outcries from such heavyweights as Edward Albee and Christopher Durang,......

EVENT: Upstairs at the Square, the bookstores series featuring musicians and authors in conversation & performing their work, is happening tonight. This one will be featuring musician Badly Drawn Boy and author Dana Spiotta, with host Katherine Lanpher. 7pm // Barnes & Noble [33 East 17th St] // Free THEATER: The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by New Yorker scribe Lawrence Wright, was one of The New York Times Book Review's "Top......

Kevin Spacey is coming back to Broadway with the acclaimed London production of A Moon for the Misbegotten. (Spacey last appeared on the Stem in two other Eugene O’Neill plays, Long Day's Journey Into Night and The Iceman Cometh.) A Moon for the Misbegotten will begin previews on March 29th at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, which was recently befouled by the Twyla Tharp/Bob Dylan catastrophe The Times They Are A-Changin’. The incoming Spacey might bring......

THEATER: The Impact Festival and fall at the Culture Project get started in a big way with the world premiere of The Treatment, which starts previews tonight. Add together playwright Eve Ensler (of Vagina Monologues fame), stars Dylan McDermott and Portia, director Leigh Silverman, and a sharply topical play about a traumatized soldier who saw and took part in too much for his psyche to handle when he was a military interrogator, and you've got......

MOVIE ART: Young artists with wtf?-attitudes come together to bring us "Risky Business" - a showcase of mixed media, including video, sculpture, collage, painting, and photography. A parents-out-of-town themed art party will follow the opening. 6 to 8pm // Tonight through August 18th // PPOW [555 W. 25th St] // Free THEATER: It wasn't just the Fringe Festival opening this weekend. Waterwell's Marco Millions (based on lies), which is actually based on a not-very-famous play......

One of the more blatant examples of problems in recent New York City real estate development has been the so-called "Tower of Bowery" located above an old gas station on 3rd Street and the Bowery. When the building first started to rise up its developers used every trick in the book to build the largest building they possibly could (for instance claiming that they were going to have faculty housing they built extra tall.........

On Sundays Gothamist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in New York and reviews of recent books and performances. The judgments expressed below are entirely those of the author. “Ablutophobia” – the fear of bathing – sounds more like a joke to be played out over a few days in a comic strip than a potential centerpiece for a play that has at least some serious things to say. But in Naked Angels’ The Mistakes......

From the looks of the shows opening and already running, this is a good week for nontraditional, multidisciplinary theater around town. OK, so maybe just about every week is good for it, especially in comparison with cities where theater options are limited to high school plays and (maybe) traveling versions of Beauty and the Beast. But the eclectic quotient seems to be running particularly high at the moment. First, there’s InsideOut, a show by Live......

For a change of pace, this week we bring you a glimpse of the working process of a small New York theater company, a hint at the seams that underlie the shows we normally see from a plush chair in the house of the theater and then review for you. The company in question is LightBox, which is just about five years old now; the show is Ajax: 100% Fun, which opens on Wednesday at......

Maybe it’s just us, but the days and weeks seem to have slowed down to less than a crawl lately, as though they were molasses and this were actually a cold January. That’s what good theater’s for, though – to transport you to another place and make you experience time differently. This week there’s a motley assortment of shows on offer to help. The Narcissists, a two-year-old company that started in Chicago, take the idea......