Hedy Weiss

What happens when the choreographic torch is passed to a new generation? The answer was on display Saturday evening as the New York City Ballet presented a brief gala performance -- the concluding program of its weeklong engagement at the Harris Theatre for Music and Dance.

It has been two decades since the Merchant-Ivory film "A Room with a View" reconfirmed the belief held by all true romantics (particularly the female of the species) that a trip to Italy -- with its gorgeous light, its layers of architectural history and its overwhelming treasury of artistic masterpieces -- has a unique power to stir the heart and tripwire the senses.

There were at least two distinct choreographic masters dancing around inside George Balanchine. And while both of them live on in the vast repertoire of his New York City Ballet (NYCB), it is the raging modernist who most clearly retains the power to dazzle and amaze. "Super Vision," the ingenious, bitingly funny, richly provocative multimedia piece you shouldn't have missed this weekend during its stop at the Museum of Contemporary Art Theater, draws in its audience from the word go.

In her post-performance champagne toast Saturday night -- a celebration of the opening of the Biograph as Victory Gardens Theater's new home and the world premiere of Charles Smith's play, "Denmark" -- a beaming Marcelle McVay, longtime managing director of the company, noted that she admired playwrights who dealt with complex ideas. "The place to explore those ideas is here," she added, "in the theater." A swirl of water, a sweep of black ink, the sudden burst of a punctuation mark.

The clap of a wood block, the clang of a gong, the hard breath of sheer physical exertion. It all began with a letter addressed to Alain Boublil, the lyricist who collaborated with composer Claude-Michel Schonberg on such gargantuan musicals as "Les Miserables" and "Miss Saigon." The letter came from Moya Doherty and John McColgan, the Irish team responsible for "Riverdance," an epic stage spectacle of a different sort that also easily merits the description of "megahit.

" Now playing at Theater Building Chicago is a little world premiere musical called "Kama Sutra: The Musical." And while two other stages in this complex house fine productions -- Vitalist Theatre's "Mother Courage" and Griffin Theatre's "Dead End" -- I'll give you one guess which of the three shows is selling the most tickets. Frank Galati, director of "The Pirate Queen," has shepherded scores of plays and operas to their openings over the years, but there is something particularly unnerving about overseeing a Broadway musical.

In fact, when he discusses the process, he speaks in terms of "storms." There has been no shortage of terrific contenders for "top-of-the-ticket" in this fall's highly competitive local theater campaign. But this particular delegate from Chicago is proudly and unequivocally casting her ballot for the spiky, savage, wonderfully sophisticated Remy Bumppo Theatre Company revival of "The Best Man.

" Gore Vidal's clipped, cutting, brilliantly insightful evocation of the American political scene -- and the array of flawed creatures who buzz around it -- is a winner on every level. Now here's a recipe for madness, murder and more: Take three generations of women. Put them under a kind of house arrest for eight years as part of an involuntary period of mourning and moral protection.

Place a single available man (or, more accurately, the illusion of one) just beyond the collective reach of these potentially marriageable women. Then stir with longing, frustration and a growing sense of suffocation. What is the ideal way to approach a classic?

As Court Theatre's artistic director Charles Newell has demonstrated so often in recent years -- most notably in his X-ray-like take on "The Glass Menagerie" last season -- one good way is to strip it bare and expose its bones and sinews. Stories within stories within stories. And who can say which of them, if any, are to be believed?