First Nighter: Peter Brooks' "Valley of Astonishment," "The Sucker Emcee," "The Bullpen"

(Peter Brooks' production The Valley of Astonishment has opened at Theatre for a New Audience's Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Here is the review I filed after seeing it at London's Young Vic in June.) The interest Oliver Sacks takes in the human brain fascinates Peter Brook. The Valley of Astonishment is another consequence of that fascination, and, as presented at the Young Vic, currently Brook's London outlet of choice, it, too, is fascinating. Just after it begins, small and child-like-voiced ...