BUZZ: Producer Jesse Shapiro '01 is proud of Galileo's "super-experienced mega-superstar staff" who face quite a task; among the things they have to recreate are Galileo's scientific instruments and a three-dimensional starscape. One worry is that Galileo is Carmichael's directorial debut at Harvard. However, with numerous Harvard acting credits under his belt, as well as a professional directing experience last summer, Carmichael is "more than up to the challenge." Though the play is certainly intellectual, its emotional aspect is what is most intriguing. "What makes us love the play is the texture of the relationships Galileo has with the other characters and the way those relationships make us feel rather than merely how they make us think."

RUDDIGORE

By William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

Directed by Sarah Meyers '02 and Jonathan Girard

Produced by Lane Shadgett '00 and Elizabeth Little '03

Agassiz Theater

April 6-15

STORY: Ages ago, Sir Rupert Murgatroyd tortured a witch. With her dying words, she decreed that he and every Baronet of Ruddigore after him would be doomed to commit a mortal sin every day, or die in agony. Generations later, the current Baronet tries to escape his curse and title in order to win the hand of the village beauty, the perfectly proper Rose Maybud. Unfortunately, his overwhelming timidity, a rather bumptious half-brother and a picture gallery of dead ancestors stand in his way. But if he can win her, a chorus of professional bridesmaids are ready and waiting in a village of pastoral bliss and sinister gloom.

BUZZ: The Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan Players are a mainstay of the campus theater season, and their offerings are perennially entertaining if not always terribly innovative. Ruddigore is one of the famous British team's lesser known operettas, but its musical score is said to be among Sullivan's best. Meyers has generated waves of enthusiasm in all those with whom she's come in contact, and Girard comes loaded with professional-level experience. Things to watch for: clever juxtaposition of pastoral bliss and Gothic spookiness, characters with more than one dimension, paintings that come to life.

THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES

By John Guare