Helen Mirren To Play D.C. In National Theatre’s Phèdre

“In something of a glittery coup for the Shakespeare Theatre Company, Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren will be featured this September at the troupe’s Sidney Harman Hall, in a visit by the Royal National Theatre’s new production of ‘Phèdre.’ … Officials of the Shakespeare Theatre say that Mirren’s D.C. appearance, which will follow a three-month run of the play in London, is at this point the only U.S. engagement of the Jean Racine tragedy.”

Art Moscow Postpones, Hoping Things Will Perk Up By Fall

“Art Moscow, one of Russia’s biggest contemporary-art fairs, has been postponed to September to tap a crowd headed for a larger exhibition, as falling oil prices and squeezed credit quell art purchases among the nation’s rich.” The director of the company that puts on Art Moscow, which was to have opened May 14, put it this way: “By September, everyone will have gotten used to the new reality of the crisis.”

The Dangers Of Advancing Technology

Ge Wang, a Stanford professor and director of the university’s Laptop Orchestra (“Imagine a rave at a Trappist monastery”), has co-created “a mesmerising application for the iPhone, which turns the mobile phone into an ocarina – a palm-sized, flute-like wind instrument that sounds like pan pipes.” More than 600,000 copies have been sold.