Soap Opera

THE PERSONAL life of Sharon Reed, the Channel 10 anchor, makes Page 3 of the Daily News. Her relationships with the men she chooses to date are of no interest to me. I think it's pretty low when news reporters, radio personalities and journalists start attacking each other and dragging names in the mud. I would have rather seen Page 3 (or even Page 1) filled with news about the symposium on black concerns that was held at Sharon Baptist Church on Saturday. As a matter of fact, I didn't see any article in your paper about it. Carolyn Hernandez, Philadelphia I watched the Channel 10 news for the past week, and you can see a difference in Steve Levy.

Alison Sweeney has had a crash course in troubled teen-age life courtesy of her "Days of Our Lives" alter ego, Samantha "Sami" Brady. Sami has battled bulimia, witnessed her mother having an affair, kidnapped her baby sister and, most recently, found a boyfriend who just happens to be a rapist. "Sami doesn't have anything normal happen to her," Sweeney says with a laugh. "She can't do anything without causing trouble. " But that's exactly what Sweeney had hoped for the character.

After Cardinal Dougherty defeated Archbishop Wood way back on Nov. 11 to clinch a place in the Northern Division championship game, the team was forced to play the waiting game to see who its next opponent would be. And so the members waited. And waited. And waited some more. Finally, after playing to two ties, Father Judge defeated Archbishop Ryan and earned the right to face Dougherty. And when those teams met, on Nov. 19, Judge and Dougherty did the natural thing and tied once again.

As you watch the production of Strindberg's Miss Julie that Emily Mann has adapted and directed for the McCarter Theatre, one question overrides all others. The question is why? With all of dramatic literature from which to choose, why select this 1888 soap opera, so dated in both its social attitudes and its windy dramaturgy, for production in 1993? And, if there's a satisfactory answer to that question, why cast the crucial title role with an actress who barely suggests the raging passions essential to the part?

"Indochine" is like a big, fat Harlequin novel. Mind you, a Harlequin novel with historical and political resonances and a sweeping vision. But a Harlequin novel, nonetheless. Like "The Lover," released earlier this year, "Indochine" takes place in French-colonized Indochina, which later became Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Like "The Lover," it also focuses on an ostensibly forbidden interracial relationship between Indochinese and French lovers. Catherine Deneuve stars as Eliane, who runs a rubber plant in Indochina at a time when the French are losing their control over the region.

One team has a coach who cannot lose and the other has a coach once considered a loser. Michigan has a roster overstuffed with high school All-Americas. Seton Hall's most famous performer is a skinny, sandy-haired kid whose Australian heritage has received twice the publicity of his basketball skills. Michigan is portrayed as a group of high-flying daredevils, Seton Hall a bunch of plodding executioners most comfortable with their heads under the rim. Michigan runs before it jogs.

Glassboro resident Carol Dickson has never been one to turn her back on a good cause - or a chance to socialize with a good-looking soap opera star. An avid soap-opera fan, Dickson is co-chairwoman of Parents Anonymous of New Jersey's Soap Opera Benefit. She hopes to locate 1,000 enthusiastic fans who will gladly pay to meet two soap stars at the April 26 fund-raiser. Days of Our Lives stars Stephen Nichols and Drake Hogestyn will entertain the audience during the four-hour benefit at the Cherry Hill Inn, Dickson said.

LOS ANGELES - About four hours after soap opera and contemporary art fans arrived to watch actor James Franco tape an episode of "General Hospital" at the Pacific Design Center on a recent Thursday night, many were still baffled. "Do you know what's going on?" one asked in a not-so-quiet whisper. "I'm still learning myself," answered another. Over the course of the evening, Franco found that he had a lot of explaining to do. The event was "Soap at MOCA: James Franco on 'General Hospital,' " hosted by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. New MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch collaborated with Franco to produce what they consider a performance art project, which is elaborate and complex in its layers of fantasy and reality.

SOMEBODY'S GOT some serious 'splaining to do. Gloria Estefan's hubby, Emilio Estefan Jr., has been accused of making threats and unwanted sexual advances by a Venezuelan soap opera actor, who is seeking a restraining order against the high-profile music producer. Who needs a Spanish-language telenovela when a real-life one is playing out in Miami? Who, we ask?!? Estefan, meanwhile, disputed the allegations Tuesday through his legal eagle and described his accuser, one Juan Carlos Diaz, as an unwanted trespasser.

It's more black market than free market in the 21st-century Czech Republic of Up and Down. A bruising, dark comedy populated by pickpockets, smugglers, skinhead soccer hooligans, and a misguided abductor of infants, director Jan Hrebejk's and screenwriter Petr Jarchovsky's wry take on the social upheaval hitting Eastern Europe brings major issues - racism, classism, alienation, economic struggle, apathy and xenophobia - down to a distinctly human scale....

"If you could only know what it is to have lost everything … . Every hope has deserted me. " That a Russian writer penned these lines in 1895 might not surprise us. That the current U.S. president campaigned to restore hope in 2008 gives reason to seek relevance in Anton Chekhov's The Seagull. Quintessence Theatre Group certainly thinks so. Since 2010, this fledgling company has dedicated itself to contemporary productions of classic works. Its innovative stagings include this season's flapper-era Venetian Twins and a riveting rendition of Plato's Apology, during which the small space at Mt. Airy's Sedgwick Theatre boomed like an ancient amphitheater.

Jonathan Frid, 87, the man known to fans around the world as Barnabas Collins, the suave vampire from the cult hit soap opera Dark Shadows , has died. The Hamilton Spectator, of Hamilton, Ontario, reports the Canadian actor died of natural causes in his hometown of Hamilton at the Juravinski Hospital last Friday. Mr. Frid's final screen role was a cameo in Dark Shadows , the soap opera's big-screen revamp directed by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp as Barnabas, and due out next month.

Perhaps more than any of the professional sports leagues in America, the NBA is the one that most closely resembles TMZ. With very little prompting necessary, there always seems to be a story about some player wanting a trade or wanting his coach canned or something even nuttier (think former St. Joseph's player Delonte West circumnavigating the Washington Beltway with three loaded pistols on a three-wheeled motorcycle). The 76ers have been above this foolishness for the most part, but they delved into it this past week when an article appeared on Sports Illustrated's website that quoted all-star forward Andre Iguodala wondering why teammate Lou Williams, a gifted offensive player, is "one of the toughest guys to guard in the league, but he can't guard anybody.

DENVER - Peyton Manning stood next to John Elway, holding up a bright-orange jersey with the No. 18 on it. Yes, that could take some getting used to. And now, if Manning's surgically repaired neck cooperates, these two quarterbacks - one in the Hall of Fame, the other headed there one day - think they might be taking a similar photo together, only next time they will be holding a Super Bowl trophy. Manning was introduced as the new quarterback of the Denver Broncos on Tuesday, the four-time MVP taking the spot once held by Elway, who as Broncos vice president engineered the deal to bring the NFL's most sought-after free agent to town.

How does a 43-year-old friendship end? When one-half of that relationship is a soap opera, it cannot possibly end with a satisfying thud in the heart. That's how it was Friday, for me and undoubtedly tens of thousands of others who have been loyal fans of One Life to Live, as we watched the soap opera's finale after ABC canceled the show. There is no good way to handle an unwanted breakup. Still, the writers tried. (Spoiler alert! If you haven't yet watched the episode, stop reading.

How hot, how popular, how devastatingly handsome is that smoldering Wolverine, Hugh Jackman ? So charismatic, says Hugh's remarkably lovely and fetching wife of 15 years, Deborra-Lee Furness , that crowds virtually trample her (for shame!) to get to her man. The delightful D-Lee tells the New York Post's Page Six Magazine, Thursday edition, that she has "been almost pummeled" by Hughophiles clamoring to steal away a milligram of his essence. "Literally, they will push you out of the way," Furness says.

Doris Belack, 85, a veteran stage, television, and screen actress best known for her roles as a no-nonsense judge on Law & Order and as the peeved soap opera producer in Tootsie, died last Tuesday in New York. Her death, which was confirmed by a family friend, Jason Watkins, came four months after the death of her husband, Philip Rose, the influential Broadway producer of A Raisin in the Sun and Purlie Victorious, both considered breakthroughs for racial equality in American theater.

What the Dickens? How do you satisfactorily conclude 41 years of intricate, incremental storytelling? The denizens of Pine Valley did it in traditional fashion Friday afternoon: with a formal party at Chandler Mansion as the cherished soap opera All My Children broadcast its last show on ABC. The tone was valedictory, the emphasis on family ties. Old characters were brought back - in the case of Stuart Chandler (David Canary), from beyond the grave. And Erica Kane (Susan Lucci)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Porgy and Bess has so many different past lives, you never know if the latest one - a storm-inducing American Repertory Theater mounting starring Audra McDonald that began performances Wednesday - is a progression or a regression. Although soundly conceived as a grand opera, George Gershwin's 1935 masterpiece contains so many breakout tunes that Porgy and Bess has led a double life. It thrived on Broadway and similar venues into the mid-1970s, when a revival by the Houston Grand Opera showed audiences that it's the Great American Opera.