CULTURAL ESCAPES IN NYC and BEYOND(c) By Polly Guerin

Take a trip beyond the Big Apple to cast your line out for cultural delights that include plays, cabarets and film festivals. Stay in town for Einstein on the Beach, get dotty and spotty, and enjoy a sidewalk dinner al fresco. Here’s the scoop!!!

MOLIERE’s THE IMAGINARY INVALID (le malade imaginaire) The Richard B. Fisher for the Performing Arts at Bard College (pictured left) opens with SummerScape’s, new all-male production featuring Ethan Phillips, best-known for long–running roles on TV’s Star Trek: Voyager and Benson. In this phantom comedy Phillips plays Argan, a housebound hypochondriac who schemes to marry his daughter to a doctor. July 13 to July 22. THE KING in SPITE OF HIMSELF (Le roi malgre lui) In Emmanuel Chabrier’s witty comic opera, this hapless 16th century French noble has been chosen by the Poles to be their king. Poor Henri de Valois is repelled by the weather, the food, and the fashion, and pines for his milieu in Anjou. Farce ensues when he tries to eschew the crown. The production is the first to be staged in New York and the first staged revival of the 1887 version. July 27 to August 1. BARD: Tel: 845.758.7900, fishercenter.bard.edu.                                                                                                                               
MORGAN GETS TOTHE BEACH and You Can too!!! Robert Wilson/Philip Glass: The Morgan Library & Museum presents Philip Glass’s handwritten 62-page score for the ground-breaking 1976 opera “Einstein on the Beach,” united with Robert Wilson’s production storyboards. Also included in the exhibition is an archival film from the production's premieres in Brussels and Paris as well as an excerpt from a New York rehearsal are viewed in the museum’s auditorium. Don’t miss “The Changing Image of Opera,” a documentary about the 1984 restaging of the production at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which is being screened throughout the run of the exhibition. 225 Madison Ave., at 36th Street, themorgan.org. Tel: 212.685.0008                                                                                                                        
GETTING DOTTY Yes, you’re seeing spots, but there is nothing ordinary about them. Dots of widely imaginary nature are covering the façade of the Louis Vuitton Fifth Avenue Sore, which in collaboration with the 83-year- old artist Yayoi Kusama created windows and merchandise being sold in the shop covered with her signature dots. My dear, what a gasp! Inside one window a lifelike model of the diminutive artist places herself within her dots. Only in New York, my Friends, only in New York. All this following the Whitney Museum of American Art’s retro-spective exhibition of the Japanese artist.
Polly’s Restaurant Pick of the Week: TONY’S, Di Napoli serves up the best Italian fare al fresco or inside the AC restaurant and bar. Quite simply put the eggplant parmigiano and broccoli rabe melt in your mouth. 1081 Third Ave. at 63/64 Sts. P: 212.888.6333.                                                                                                         
Ta Ta Darlings!!! I’m getting dotty with all those dots, but their fascinating rhythm is worth seeing . Fan mail welcome www.pollytalk.com. Visit Polly’s Blogs at www.pollytalk.com and in the left-hand column click on the Blog that interests you from fashion to poetry and visionary men.