Orphans

Orphans - adapted by Alan J. Pakula but never adopted by movie-goers in its limited release last year - arrives here today as an orphan in its own right. Pakula's flawlessly judged and responsive version of Lyle Kessler's play opened to enthusiastic reviews in its Oscar-qualifying runs in New York and Los Angeles last fall. But for all its merits - chiefly a performance of Olympian skill from Albert Finney - the film failed to attract paying customers. It has been all but abandoned by its parent studio, Lorimar, and can be found on the doorstep of the Roxy Screening Room.

Bill Woodman came to town to stage Orphans for the Philadelphia Theater Company. Three days into rehearsal, a car knocked him down and broke his knee. An operation followed. When I inquired about his recovery, he sent along a nice note, saying he was ready to report on his summer in Yugoslavia directing "the Macedonian premiere of Sam Shepard's Buried Child. " Sam Shepard? Macedonia? Now that's what you call a story. In a flash, I was at Woodman's bedside at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, notebook in hand.

Santa Claus was there and so was an elf, but the gifts given yesterday didn't come from the North Pole. They were the citzenship papers given to the 20 or so foreign-born orphans who became American citzens during a ceremony at Philadelphia Distict Office of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service at 16th and Callowhill streets. J. Scott Blackman, the district director, called the children's ceremony a "holiday tradition. " The children came from as far as China, Russia, Holland, South America and Korea.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Marianne Massi and other members of Maranatha Tabernacle in Moorestown were determined that the Romanian orphans who were scheduled to visit would return home with happy memories. The orphans, who had been brought to the United States by Small World Ministries, were on their way to see the World Trade Center when the two towers were hit. Unable to leave New York, the group stayed overnight in a nearby hotel with no electricity and then headed to a Christian camp in South Carolina the next day. The group had originally planned to visit Moorestown before traveling to South Carolina.

Two extraordinary Brazilian features screen on Sunday, part of the ambitious "Latin American Visions" program at International House. Both are about orphans whose alienation from family alienates them from culture. Suzana Amaral's Hour of the Star (1986) is a lively chronicle of the extremely dull life of Macabea, a country orphan who comes to bustling Sao Paulo. A typist who can't spell, a romantic without a lover and a Coca-Cola aficionada who can't afford her taste, Macabea is a misfit everywhere but in her dreams.

In a note to audiences, the New City Stage, which is literally new in the city, says it aims to present "actors striving to genuinely live on the stage within the imaginary world of the play. " In its production of Orphans the company does a pretty good job of achieving that goal. The play by Lyle Kessler is presented with an intensity that commands attention by dint of some strong performances, and because of the close proximity of the action to the audience in the makeshift theater space New City Stage has rented in the desolate NewMarket shopping center.

The situation is this: Two brothers grow up wild in an unkempt house without parents in the vicinity of Broad and Olney. The older brother, Treat, carries a knife. He mugs people. The younger brother, Phillip, spends days hiding in the closet, watching reruns on TV and staring out the window. He appears to be feeble-minded. Into their lives comes a hearty drunk from Chicago named Harold. His attache case is filled with a fortune in securities. Treat takes him captive, envisioning a windfall in ransom.

Sister M. Alphonsa Molot, 89, who was imprisoned by the Russians in World War II and eventually helped bring a thousand Polish orphans to the United States, died Sunday at St. Joseph's Catholic Nursing Home, Woodbridge, Middlesex County. Born in Poland, Sister M. Alphonsa arrived in the United States weighing only 75 pounds following her wartime ordeals. She spent time recuperating before serving at the residence of the late Bishop Bartholomew Eustace in the Diocese of Camden. After obtaining her New Jersey practical nurse's license, she was assigned to St. Mary's Catholic Home in Cherry Hill for three years.

HARRISBURG - A triumphant Gov. Rendell returned to the state Capitol yesterday after a whirlwind trip to Haiti to rescue dozens of orphans. "The good news is, we went down not knowing how we were going to fare," said Rendell, who spent 61/2 hours on the ground in Port-au-Prince on Monday. "And we got every child but one out of the orphanage - 53 out of 54. " Rendell said that the 54th child was accidentally left on a bus in Haiti, but that the child was quickly found and left Haiti on a later flight.

Heaven on Earth, the new single-episode edition of Masterpiece Theater airing tomorrow (Channel 12 at 9 p.m.), dramatizes one result of Britain's Industrial Revolution at the end of the 19th century: an unusually large number of orphans. These were children whose parents neglected them while they worked in the booming factories, or who were the survivors of parents who died from the frequent industrial accidents. Many of these luckless young people were sent to Canada and placed in foster homes - more than 125,000 of them between 1865 and 1914, in fact, under a program organized by a British feminist, Susan Rye. All of this is explained by Masterpiece host Alastair Cooke before the start of this 90-minute, Canadian-made production, and it's a good thing, too, because Heaven on Earth itself provides little historical context.

HARRISBURG - Pennsylvania wildlife officials said Friday that they had successfully relocated three orphaned bear cubs into new dens days after they were discovered alongside a road near the New York state line. The state Game Commission described the frantic search for new homes after the third and final relocation was completed in Pike County on Friday. The three were placed inside dens with other cubs after experts had tranquilized the sows. Motorists in the area of Armenia Mountain, near Troy, Pa., alerted officials to the three cubs Tuesday.

CITY OFFICIALS told Kensington residents at a meeting in late January that if they didn't want about 150 trees planted at McPherson Square Park, then the city would find somewhere else to plant them. Imagine the surprise yesterday morning, when residents found seven young trees plopped onto the grounds on F Street near Indiana Avenue before anyone had a chance to discuss plans for rejuvenating the park. The area is rife with blatant drug activity, and the park - scene of a fatal shooting last month - is dark enough at night without the extra tree cover, neighbors say. Curtis Helm, a Parks and Recreation project manager, said Bustleton Services, a Bensalem-based contracting company, was told that the plan had to be reviewed by neighbors before any trees were to be planted there.

From the Check Up blog ( http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/healthcare/ ): Donations totaling $10 million, mostly from a single anonymous donor, will allow the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine to create an interdisciplinary center focused on finding and disseminating treatments for orphan diseases, the school announced Tuesday. Each "orphan" disease affects a relatively small number of people - fewer than 200,000 Americans - and that makes them less attractive targets for big pharmaceutical companies than more common maladies offering a bigger potential market.

A large-format (Imax) nature film of the type normally seen in museums and science centers, Born to Be Wild 3D celebrates the efforts of two intrepid women, half a world apart, who rescue orphaned animals and return them to the wild. This is very much "a fairy tale," as Morgan Freeman narrates. Director David Lickley ( Jane Goodall's Wild Chimpanzees ) and his crew follow Birute Galdikas, a researcher in Borneo who evolved from studying orangutans to saving them. Their habitat is being destroyed to make way for vast palm-oil plantations.

BERBERA, Somalia - Their mother was shot and they were driven through a raging civil war, destined to be pets in the Middle East - until Somali authorities intervened to save two lion cubs smuggled aboard a ship in the chaotic country's port. The two tiny cubs, a brother and sister, are believed to be rare Berbera lions because of their spotted coats. They were confiscated four weeks ago after Mogadishu's port manager reported his suspicions to Bancroft, an organization which is training African Union peacekeepers in the war-ravaged Somali capital.

The eight little girls who play the orphans are the best thing about Media Theatre's production of Annie , which opened last weekend - they are adorable, and good singers and dancers, too. And while they don't steal the show, they leave an indelible mark on it. I found myself thinking of them long after the Sunday matinee. Except for Tori Heinlein, the 10-year-old who plays Annie nightly, I can't tell you who they are; the show has a revolving cast of kids, so two girls play each role.

The photos are poignant, sometimes goofy: little Noah with a purple plastic ring on his head, tearing up at his first haircut or splashing in a baby pool. Then there is the video of a father twirling his son through the air, both giggling uproariously. The website is called "Becky & Jeremy's Exciting Adoption Adventure," created by a Haverford couple to capture a once-in-a-lifetime odyssey to bring home a son from Kazakhstan as well as the joys of raising a first child. But what has happened so far to Becky Compton, Jeremy Meyer, and the 16-month-old they call Noah Aldanysh Compton-Meyer in the mountain-ringed city of Taraz has been anything but routine.

Gru - short for gruesome? - resembles a beaky Anton Ego, with a puffed-out midsection tottering atop flamingo legs. He is an arch archvillain with mommy issues and a Slavic accent, commanding an army of minions, yellow cylinders with goggle eyes. The minions assist him in nefarious, headline-grabbing schemes like stealing the Times Square Jumbotron. (Oh, the horror!) When he learns that a younger archvillain has made off with the Great Pyramid of Giza, Gru aims for the moon: He will steal it. Take that, Junior!

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - On Saturday, two members of England's national team, Michael Dawson and Matthew Upson, visited the SOS Children's Village, an orphanage housing approximately 80 children. The orphanage is situated outside Rustenburg, near England's World Cup base camp. Local radio stations and various websites circulated this (fabricated) quotation from the visit: "It's good to put a smile on the faces of people with no hope, constantly struggling and facing the impossible," said Jamal Umbobo, age 6, of his visit with Dawson and Upson.

WHEN RECRUITING for his win-mill Philadelphia University men's basketball program, coach Herb Magee tells parents, "We want that young man to graduate in four years. " In the 43 years he's been head coach, about 95 percent of them have. His current co-captains have a higher-than-B+ average, but Herb shuns credit for that. Those two players "are disciplined. They came with that and they got that from their parents," he tells me a few days before his record-setting victory. The trim, relaxed Magee seems more like a mild-mannered accountant than a world-beating coach.