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If the one-act play form is an endangered species, the folks at Applause Theatre & Cinema Books don’t seem to know it. They’ve just released The Best American Short Plays 2008-2009, the latest annual edition of their invaluable long-running series. Edited by Barbara Parisi, this reasonably priced ($18.99) collection includes sixteen works by playwrights both well known (Neil LaBute, David Ives, Murray Schisgal) and obscure.  While not every piece is a winner, there are enough gems here to make one wonder why so few theaters—the Ensemble Studio Theater’s annual one-act play marathon being a notable exception—are willing to take a chance on producing short works.

The same publisher has also issued three new installments of their Applause Libretto Library Series, comprised of trade paperback versions of notable Broadway and Off-Broadway musicals. Designed for general reading rather than production purposes, these versions feature the complete dialogue and lyrics to each show, plus (in most cases) an introduction by a notable theater expert, and a selection of color photos.

The current crop includes two Rodgers & Hammerstein classics, Oklahoma! and The Sound of Music (the latter with an introduction by Timothy Crouse, son of co-book writer Russel Crouse) and the rather more contemporary Avenue Q, the long-running Tony Award-winning musical featuring hilariously profane puppets and such irreverent musical numbers as “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” and “The Internet is for Porn.”  

The Best American Short Plays (Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, $18.99)

The Sound of Music, Avenue Q, Oklahoma! (Applause Theater & Cinema Books, $16.99 each)

The Metropolitan Opera’s determination to dust off its cobwebs is in further evidence with its new production of Verdi’s 1853 masterwork La Traviata. Willy Decker’s modernistic staging, which premiered to great acclaim five years ago at the Salzburg Festival, couldn’t be more different from the lavish Franco Zeffirelli warhorse it has replaced.

Featuring a sterling dramatic and musical performance by Russian soprano Marina Poplavskaya in her Met debut, the production is a highly visceral and theatrical rendition that emphasizes the work’s emotional complexities in often striking fashion.

Performed on a mostly bare set dominated by a massive curving white wall and a giant clock that all too symbolically emphasizes the short time the Parisian courtesan Violetta has left to live, the staging will no doubt provoke the usual debate between traditionalists and those who want the Met to go off in new directions.

The work is performed in modern dress, in accordance with the composer’s (unfulfilled) wish that it not be performed as a period piece. In the first act party scene, Violetta is clad in a glamorous red cocktail dress, while the male characters are in dark business suits.

The director has choreographed the production with exacting detail, often positioning the massive Met chorus in stylized fashion, such as when they peer over the wall overlooking on the action as if an overpopulated Greek chorus.

There are other striking touches. The heretofore minor character of Doctor Grenvil (Luigi Roni) now hovers nearly constantly on the stage as a visual representation of Violetta’s impending doom. When her lover Alfredo (Matthew Polenzani) angrily confronts her, he doesn’t throw money at her feet but rather stuffs it into her cleavage and up her skirt. And Alfredo’s confrontation with his father (Andrzej Dobber) turns physical, culminating in a slap that sends the young man reeling to the floor. There is no intermission between the second and third acts, with the result that the evening’s second half (or more accurately, two thirds) possesses a strong dramatic momentum.

Although she has to strain at times to reach her high notes, Poplavskaya delivers a powerful vocal turn, and certainly cuts a dramatic and sexy figure. Polenzani handles his romantic arias beautifully, and Dobber sings and acts superbly in the powerful scene in which the father asks Violetta to abandon his son.

The directorial conceits thankfully never become oppressive, although at times there is a distracting self-consciousness to the proceedings. But whatever the flaws or merits of this production, it’s hard not to admire the Met’s willingness to take chances on even its most cherished staples. 

Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center

212-239-6200

www.metopera.org.

Unless you’re planning a trip to Italy anytime soon, you might want to head over the Park Avenue Armory, where filmmaker Peter Greenaway (The Cook, the Thief, his Wife & Her Lover, The Draughtsman’s Contract) has installed his massive recreation/deconstruction of Leonardo da Vinci’s classic painting The Last Supper.

Entitled Leonardo’s Last Supper: A Vision by Peter Greenaway, this high-tech multi-media installation is ultimately more impressive on a technical rather than aesthetic level. But it does provide the opportunity for visitors to feast on a perfect replication of da Vinci’s masterpiece, which is currently rapidly deteriorating in its home inside the Santa Maria delle Grazie monastery in Milan.

Greenaway has made a late career specialty out of elaborate digital explorations of classic artworks, most of them presented in the same venues housing the original works. This traveling installation actually combines two of his previous efforts, the other being a treatment of Paolo Veronese’s late-Renaissance work The Wedding at Cana.

Upon entering the armory’s cavernous drill hall, visitors are first regaled with a giant-screen video and music montage featuring scenic footage of various Italian locations and digitally enhanced shots of a ballet dancer leaping about.

From there, we enter the main area, which includes a three-dimensional re-creation of the Last Supper dining table, rendered entirely in white. On the opposite side is a life-sized duplication of the iconic painting, which anyone who’s seen the original knows has aged badly.

Greenaway compensates for this with digital enhancement that restores the once vibrant colors. For the next 20-30 minutes, different sections of the painting are highlighted in ways that call attention to details that might otherwise be missed. Projected images of small sections from the painting, rendered in close-up, are seen on large screens surrounding the space. It’s all suitably accompanied by religious music.

The overall effect is undeniably arresting in a high-tech way, if ultimately rather repetitive and gimmicky. The piece might have been better served by a little less visual trickery and the addition of some narration that might have provided some historical and artistic context. 

And the addition of the similar treatment of Cana seems less essential to the overall experience than an attempt to justify the rather high $15 admission charge.

Still, this represents an intriguing idea, one that its creator apparently aims to use in exploring other masterworks in the future. Despite this piece’s limitations, the overall goal, which is to make us see classic works of art in new and unexpected ways, is one to be encouraged.

Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave. 212-616-3939. www.armoryonpark.org. Through Jan. 6.

Not since James Brown’s Christmas Album has there been a Yuletide-themed collection as funky as this latest release from Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter/actor Everett Bradley (Broadway’s Swing). Featuring mostly original songs as well as very loose adaptations of Tchaikovsky, “Frosty the Snowman,” “Little Drummer Boy” and the like, Holidelic is a relentlessly fun and joyful disc that recalls the glory days of George Clinton’s Parliament/Funkadelic.

Bradley and his cohorts will be performing music from the CD at a series of five shows at Joe’s Pub on Dec. 17-20, including a family matinee on Dec. 19 at 2:00 pm that will surely have the kids dancing in the narrow aisles.

For more info on the shows, go to www.joespub.com or call 212-967-7555.

The television theme music swells, the video montage begins, and the audience delivers the predictable swooning response. But the glamorous star onstage is quick to remind us of one important fact.

 “There was life before Dynasty, announces Joan Collins at the start of her one-woman show One Night With Joan at Feinstein’s at the Loews Regency.

Delivering the sort of autobiographical evening that such stars as Gregory Peck and Cary Grant, among others, have performed late in their careers, the still glamorous 77-year-old reveals herself to be an engaging raconteur, delivering the dish if not quite the dirt.

She looks stunning, clad in costumes designed by Nolan Miller that included tight spangly pants with an off-the-shoulder blouse and a gorgeous sequined dress. And just to prove that she’s still limber, she does a split.

“I was born in the second third of the 20thcentury,” she begins, signaling that the evening will be truthful if not quite fully informative. In the course of the following hour or so, she regales us with her life story, including her early days in Hollywood as a young starlet signed to 20th Century Fox; her five marriages (after each husband is discarded, an “X” crosses his face on the video screen); her encounters with such celebs and co-stars as Marilyn Monroe, Bette Deavis, Joan Crawford and Gene Kelly; her erratic film career, which includes such camp classics as Empire of the Ants; her triumphant resurgence with Dyansty; and her high-profile and ultimately triumphant legal battle with Random House.

Convivial without quite losing the haughty demeanor that has marked so many of her screen performances, she also displays a winning self-deprecating humor that gives the evening a fun breeziness.  

Feinsteins at Loews Regency, 540 Park Ave. 212-339-4095. www.Ticketweb.com.