First the snow, then the musicians' strike, then the war: New York theater box offices have been gasping this season, with the result that many shows have folded. One of them is August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (a big-name, big-ticket Broadway revival that was supposed to run through June 29, but closed April 6).

The production of Ma Rainey starred Whoopi Goldberg, who has neither the immense presence nor the singing voice for the title role, and Charles S. Dutton, who played Levee in the original production 20 years ago and reprised the role as his declared farewell to the theater. The production has all the flaws of a Big Broadway Show: a gigantic and unnecessary set, heavy-handed direction that plays to the lowest humor and the most vulgar members of the audience (people who find racist epithets and stuttering hilarious). If Goldberg is too contemporary and laid back for her role, Dutton is too old-fashioned for his, doing a kind of a grotesque Amos 'n' Andy version of Wilson's intense trumpet player who challenges God to a duel and loses. This early closing may well have itself rather than external events to blame.

Suzan Lori-Parks' Fucking A (Public Theatre, closed) is thrilling theater, and it will surely reappear, so look out for it. Parks' motto here, literally written above the set, as though engraved in the façade of a prison, is "Freedom Is Not Free," and the high price resonates loudly in her hideous vision of the future. Leading a powerful ensemble under Michael Greif's imaginative direction, S. Epatha Merkerson (the Lieutenant in Law & Order) is an abortionist (with an "A" branded on her chest that constantly bleeds and is thus scarlet). She has worked 20 years to free her son from prison, only to discover that he is the escaped Monster being hunted all over the country. In this small role, Mos Def is searing (he sings one of the show's 10 original songs with hair-raising intensity). Productions like this make you feel that theater can and must survive the worst man and nature can do.

Currently on the boards:

"Every cloud has a jet black lining" in this revival of Peter Nichols' play about a couple with a now 10-year-old severely damaged daughter, a "living parsnip." They struggle, sarcastically and unheroically, to deal with their dreary life and their disintegrating marriage. Eddie Izzard tends to throw away too many lines as he and Victoria Hamilton deliver their funny/painful monologues. Interesting but lacking in theatrical energy -- the play is composed almost entirely of asides -- this stylish production that transferred from London's West End becomes tedious before it's over.

Through May 25, Roundabout Theatre Co. at American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42nd St., 212-719-1300.

A sophisticated French sitcom about astrophysicists and dinner parties, this newest bit of fluff from Yesmina Reza (Art) is an enjoyable if pointless opportunity to see stars close up: John Turturro and Helen Hunt, most ably supported by Brent Spiner (Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation) and Linda Emond (the wonderful Homebody in Tony Kushner's Homebody/Kabul). A couple arrives a day early for a dinner party, and the hosts are unprepared. We watch three versions of this evening of faux pas, in varying degrees of tension, irritation, flirtation and nastiness, while people say things like, "There's a real wind of madness running through this place tonight."

"What kind of fuckin' world is this?" Stephen Adly Guirgis' terrific play leaves us open-mouthed at the answer: What a parade of out-of-control, self-deluded, heartbreaking crazies this is, where guilt and hurt and loyalty and love and rage compete for their souls every day. A bunch of people -- former pupils of the wild, alcoholic, child-rescuing Sister Rose -- have gathered for her funeral. But the corpse has been stolen, so everybody has to hang around all night until the crime is solved. Philip Seymour Hoffman directs riff after riff, finding a tone and pace so funny, so appalling that the series of fragments adds up as the answer to the question it began with. Guirgis is likely to become a Major American Playwright, so catch this while you can.

Winner of London's 2003 Olivier Award for best play, this lovely, subtle production transferred intact from the National. Nicholas Wright has imagined a biography for Vincent van Gogh's early years in England, before he started to paint, based on the now famous letters to his brother, Theo. Vincent's love affair with his landlady (the glorious Clare Higgins) as well as the mild family dramas involving a daughter, another boarder and Vincent's self-righteous sister are the plot but not the stuff of the play: It is deeply moving to know the future of characters who have not yet lived it -- and the starry night, the old boots, the empty chair and the pipe will all achieve their immortality. Jochum ten Haaf creates a van Gogh both stolid and adorably naive, while Higgins goes from depression to joy, from exasperation to the terrible "blackness of her soul," an abyss van Gogh recognizes with affinity. Ravishingly lit so that the plain English kitchen looks like an old Dutch master, Vincent in Brixton is a quiet production superbly directed by Richard Eyre.

Spring shows to look forward to: Humble Boy, a London hit starring Blair Brown;The Gem of the Ocean, August Wilson's new play; Writer's Block, Woody Allen's stage-directing debut of two of his own one-acts; Long Day's Journey Into Night with Brian Dennehy, Vanessa Redgrave, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robert Sean Leonard in a major revival of O'Neill's masterwork; Lanford Wilson's Rain Dance; Ingmar Bergman directing the Ibsen classic, Ghosts, at BAM; and a starry reading of Oscar Wilde's Salome with Al Pacino, Marisa Tomei and Dianne Weist.