THEATER: Over the summer the Belarusian Free Theater was arrested, along with their audience, during a performance of their play Being Harold Pinter, which uses Pinter’s magnificent Nobel Prize acceptance speech as a springboard for theatrical dissent, something the Belarus police state isn't really so into. (For that reason, the company’s performances are normally held secretly in alternating private apartments.) Unable to bring the entire production to New York for his Under the Radar festival,......

THEATER: As Steve On Broadway notes, Chicago’s stellar Steppenwolf Theater Company, which launched the careers of Gary Sinise and Little Johnny Malkapee, is back on Broadway for the first time since 2001, when their production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest won the Tony for Best Revival. This time they’ve delivered playwright Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County, and after reading today’s rave reviews, you can count on more Tonys flying back to the Windy......

ART: Duke Riley brings his latest exhibit, After the Battle of Brooklyn: East River Incognita II, to Magnan Projects. Starting tonight and showing through December 22nd, the works imagine New York during the Revolutionary War and "interweave historical and contemporary events with elements of fiction and myth to create allegorical histories. His re-imagined narratives comment on a range of issues from the cultural impact of overdevelopment and gentrification of waterfront communities to contradictions within political......

SHOPPING: Everyone needs a little Betsey Johnson flair in their closet, and this week you can get some designer dresses without dropping too much dough. There's a two day Betsey Johnson warehouse sale starting now, 80% off! 10am to 8pm (through October 5th) // 263 W 38th St READING: We may prefer listening to, rather than reading about, jazz, but John Coltrane had a whole world of things going on that led up to his......

EXHIBIT: Great Halls of Science Photographs and Holograms bring technology and art together. At last! "Great Halls of Science explores objects and architecture from the mid-twentieth-century using twentieth-century media. Wenyon & Gamble have a history of working in astronomical observatories and other scientific institutions, reflected in the imagery in this show. The holograms on display, Radio Waves from Space , depict magnetic discs of astronomical data. The images of discs from the 1960s and 70s......

ART: Projecting on the outdoor walls of MoMA through February 12th will be Doug Aitken's first large-scale outdoor installation in the US. The installation consists of eight large moving projections in which five characters' lives are played out during one night in New York. Actors include: Tilda Swinton, Chan Marshall (Cat Power), Seu Jorge, Ryan Donowho, and Donald Sutherland. We hear Cat Power will be playing a show at MoMA in February - stay tuned!......

THEATER: The Pearl Theatre Company, known for their deft handling of classic plays, has revived Molière's satire School for Wives. The play deliciously skewers the aristocrat Arnolphe, who so fears he’ll marry an unfaithful woman that he locks a little girl in a convent for 13 years, keeping her utterly isolated until she comes of age. The hi-jinks begin when he’s finally ready to fulfill his master marriage plan and finds himself outmaneuvered by a......

READINGS: A handful of good readings on the slate for you tonight - Claire Messud reads from the highly anticipated Emperor's Children at Barnes & Noble [see this upcoming weekend's Sunday review, too]; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reads from her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun at 192 Books; and finally, over at McNally Robinson NYC, political reporter Thomas Edsall reads from his new book, Building Red America: What the Conservative Realignment ­Really Means. Too......

August 23 & 24: Grouse Dinner at Orsay Grouse? Yes, grouse. It's grouse season, which is quite brief, running from August 12 through the end of the month. To celebrate, Orsay will present Scottish grouse dinners as the first in a series of special dinners focusing on game and specialty products from Scotland (menus dedicated to partridge, pheasant and wood pigeon are in the works). The five-course grouse dinners include wine pairings with each savory......

But not together (no need to start any wild rumors here). We heard yesterday that Mr. Bruni's review would be hitting today's Dining section. But what would he think? Would he lean towards Steve Cuozzo's take? Adam Platt's? Both of them seemed to think that although some of the food was predictably good, if not overpriced, the decor and sheer vastness of the place combined with some misses on the menu threw the whole......

through October 29: Aureole Fights Breast Cancer Aureole is participating in the Madison Avenue Pink Ribbon Project, which will donate funds to three of the country’s leading breast cancer research and treatment facilities. Through October 29th, Aureole will donate 10 percent of sales from their special menus to the project, benefiting Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Mount Sinai Hospital, and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Chef Dante Boccuzzi’s special menu features foods with health benefits: seared......

Amanda Hesser chronicles the time she spent with the folks at Tía Pol in yesterday's NYT magazine. Although it was interesting to hear the Craig's List story of how the place got started and hear a bit more about the history of the restaurant, we would have been satisfied just to have their recipe for fried chickpeas. Topped with smoked paprika (also a key ingredient in some of the pickled ramps we made with Rick......