Susan Boyle is back. Did you miss her?

Susan Boyle, the show-tune singing Scottish spinster who captured global attention earlier this year for her appearances on "Britain's Got Talent," has returned -- and just in time for the holidays, wouldn't you know?

Boyle's debut album "I Dreamed a Dream" is coming out in stores and features 12 tracks including the title song from "Les Miserables" as well as pop numbers ("Wild Horses," "Daydream Believer") and religious songs ("Silent Night," "Amazing Grace").

In her review today, Times pop music critic Ann Powers wrote: "Boyle's clear but warm tone and stolid phrasing turns everything it touches into a more songful version of New Age music. It's relaxing to listen to those drawn-out syllables, gradually building toward a gentle, wavelike climax."

She added: "Boyle possesses neither an impulse to swing nor an ounce of the blues; whether she's covering the Monkees, the Rolling Stones or Madonna, Boyle sings like she's in a place of worship, surrounded by white walls and soft light, cooking up some chicken soup for the soul."

Powers wrote that Boyle is at her worst when she pushes harder. "She doesn't know how to build drama, and her throat seems to constrict as she reaches for bigger notes," wrote the critic.

As you may recall, Boyle lost to the dance group Diversity in the final round of "Britain's Got Talent."

Read Powers' entire review of Boyle's album.

-- David Ng

Photo: Susan Boyle, during a recent appearance on "America's Got Talent." Credit: Trae Patton/NBC Universal Inc.

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Marc Shaiman talks about returning as music director of the Oscars ceremony

Tony winner Marc Shaiman is headed down Oscar's red carpet once again. The stage and film composer is returning as music director of the 82nd annual Academy Awards ceremony, which will be held March 7 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.

Shaiman, who won a Tony for his work on Broadway's "Hairspray" and has received five Oscar nominations, is a veteran of the Academy Awards ceremony, having written comic medleys for shows in years past. He also served as musical director for the 2004 ceremony.

Speaking from New York, Shaiman said he's already started working on potential musical numbers for the show. "We've had just a few meetings, and some ideas have started to be put into place," he said.

"The show is a huge ship that takes off every year. It's never too early to start work, but it's not until the nominations are announced that we can really begin."

The Oscar nominations are set to be announced Feb. 2.

Shaiman said he was happy to be re-teaming with his "Hairspray" collaborator Adam Shankman, who is producing the telecast along with Bill Mechanic. Shaiman added that his job entails all aspects of music during the show, except for conducting the live orchestra.

The composer revealed some tidbits about his current and upcoming stage and screen projects. His musical adaptation of the film "Catch Me if You Can" is currently looking for a home on Broadway, after out-of-town tryouts in Seattle earlier this year.

"We're circling theaters like Broadway vultures," he said. "You have to actively hope for a show to fail. It's a terrible thing to think."

He also discussed his in-the-works Showtime project with director Steven Spielberg -- a scripted series about the world of Broadway musicals: "We've just begun, but the ideas are flowing. And it seems to be on the fast track."

In addition, Shaiman is working on a new musical version of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," for which he is writing the score along with Scott Wittman.

As for the Oscars, Shaiman refused to say whether hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin would be performing a musical number together.

"Who knows?" he said. "I can tell you there will be surprises, but of course I can't tell you what they will be."

-- David Ng

Photo: Composer Marc Shaiman, at right in the blue pimp outfit, at the 2000 Academy Awards ceremony, with "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. (They worked together for the film "South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut.") Credit: Los Angeles Times

L.A. photographer documents U.S. military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy

Why would you want to take a portrait of someone without showing his or her face? The essence of portrait photography, after all, is to capture the spirit of the subject and to reveal some crucial aspect of his or her identity.

But in the case of L.A. photographer Jeff Sheng's latest project, capturing his subjects' faces would almost certainly put their careers in jeopardy. That's because Sheng has set about to photograph U.S. military service personnel who are gay but closeted in their work lives. Titled "Dont' Ask, Don't Tell," the ongoing project consists of a series of stark, sometimes sad, portraits of U.S. soldiers who are forced to hide a part of who they are.

"I want to give an invisible community some visibility, but at the same time, to keep them invisible," said Sheng on the phone from Vancouver, where he is working on another project.

"There's already a lot of journalistic work on gay people in the military who have been discharged. My project is more about people who are still serving."

To conceal the identities of current military personnel, the photographer has used lighting and shadow effects to mask part or all of their faces. Sometimes, the subject will conceal his or her face with a hand, as in the photo above, titled "Jess, Bend, Oregon, 2009." (The names and towns of the titles are fictional for the protection of identity.) In certain cases, the entire subject is hidden in the shadows. The photographer sometimes meets them in a hotel near the base where they are serving.

Monster Mash: LACMA's red ink; Charlie Chaplin museum in Switzerland; Galileo's fingers

-- Financial trouble: LACMA loses 23% of its investments in the last fiscal year. One victim is Jeff Koons' dangling train project, which was scheduled to arrive at LACMA in 2011-12, and is now delayed for three more years. (Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg)

-- Little tramp: A long-planned museum dedicated to Charlie Chaplin, pictured, will be constructed at the site of the actor's former home in Switzerland. (Radio Suisse Romande)

-- Discovery: Two severed fingers and a tooth belonging to Galileo have been identified by a museum in Florence, Italy. (CNN)

-- Landing on their feet: Two actors from the recently closed Broadway revival of "Brighton Beach Memoirs" have landed roles in the upcoming revival of "A View from the Bridge." (New York Times)

-- Major project: A $208-million concert hall in Helsinki, Finland, is intended to improve on the existing Finlandia Hall, but it's already 50% over projected costs. (Bloomberg)

-- Winner: Jez Butterworth's "Jerusalem" was named best play at the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards. (Playbill)

-- Operatic great: Swedish soprano Elisabeth Soderstrom has passed away at age 82. (Telegraph)

-- Moving up: "Enter Laughing," which has had two runs off-Broadway, is aiming for a Broadway engagement in the fall of 2010. (Variety)

-- And in the L.A. Times: The L.A. Philharmonic's "West Coast, Left Coast" festival begins; a look at the Broadway production of "Fela!"

-- David Ng

Photo:  Charlie Chaplin with Virginia Cherrill in a scene from "City Lights." Credit: Los Angeles Times

Opera broadcasts from La Scala, Barcelona returning to local cinemas

Now that the Metropolitan Opera no longer has the monopoly on opera broadcasts to cinemas, fans can look forward to a greater variety of productions from outside the Peter Gelb Ministry of Music.

Starting Dec. 7, Laemmle Theaters in Southern California will screen broadcasts of opera productions from Milan's La Scala and Barcelona's Gran Teatre del Liceu. The season of programs, which runs through July 1 and includes six productions, features such vocal luminaries as Plácido Domingo, Diana Damrau, Jonas Kaufmann, Ben Heppner and Erwin Schrott.

The participating Laemmle cinemas are: the Sunset 5 in West Hollywood, Town Center 5 in Encino and Playhouse 7 in Pasadena. This will be the second year that Laemmle Theaters has participated in the opera broadcasts, which are organized by Emerging Pictures.

Kicking off the series on Dec. 7 will be a live broadcast of La Scala's opening night production of Bizet's "Carmen," conducted by Daniel Barenboim, and starring  Kaufmann, Schrott, Anita Rachvelishvili and Adriana Damato. The live broadcast begins at 9 a.m., with a rebroadcast at 4:30 p.m.

Verdi’s "Il Trovatore" is next, with a live broadcast from the Gran Teatre del Liceu on Dec. 22 at 11 a.m. (A rebroadcast will play at 4:30 p.m.)

The remainder of the series runs from April to July.

Monster Mash: Shroud of Turin controversy; Green Day revisits hit single; new curator at Whitney

-- Real or fake?: A researcher claims to have discovered text that authenticates the Shroud of Turin. (Forbes)

-- Back in the studio: The rock band Green Day is recording a new version of its hit song "21 Guns" with the cast of the stage musical "American Idiot." (Playbill)

-- New job: Scott Rothkopf will leave his position as senior editor of Artforum to become a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. (New York Times)

-- Tooting his horn: Composer Edward Elgar ("Pomp and Circumstance") was apparently a terrible trombone player. (The Independent)

-- High-tech: Two instruments that were aboard the Hubble Space Telescope go on display at the National Air and Space Museum and are scheduled to tour California. (BBC News)

-- Antitrust: Ambassador Theatre Group’s purchase of Live Nation’s UK theaters is being investigated by Britain's Office of Fair Trading. (The Stage News)

-- For the kids: Oxford will be getting a new children's museum dedicated to the art of storytelling. (The Guardian)

-- Art in motion: New York's Metrocard becomes art, sort of. (New York Times)

-- And in the L.A. Times: Times music critic Mark Swed reviews Philip Glass's latest opera; theater critic Charles McNulty reviews "Equivocation" at the Geffen Playhouse.

-- David Ng

Photo: an image of the Shroud of Turin. Credit: Ellen Jaskol / For The Times

Pulitzer Prize-winning 'Ruined' to open Geffen Playhouse's 2010-11 season

Lynn Nottage's "Ruined," which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama this year, will have its L.A. premiere at the Geffen Playhouse. A spokeswoman for the company said the drama is scheduled to open the Geffen's 2010-11 season.  

"Ruined" will be a co-production with Seattle's Intiman Theatre, where it is set to run July 2 to Aug. 8. The Geffen's season usually begins in August or September, but the company said no opening date had been set yet for the drama.

Kate Whoriskey, the Intiman's incoming artistic director, is expected to stage the play in Seattle and L.A., according to the Geffen. 

In February, Whoriskey directed the New York production of "Ruined" at the Manhattan Theatre Club, where it quickly became one of the most talked about plays of the season. (The play originated at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in November 2008, also under Whoriskey's direction.) In April of this year, "Ruined" won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. 

The play focuses on the matron of a Congolese brothel who tries futilely to keep the outside war at bay. But violence keeps intruding thanks to the constant foot traffic of both women and men through the brothel doors.

In an interview with The Times this year, Nottage said: "I knew I wanted to tell a story that was not agitprop, that was universal, epic and unabashedly theatrical. Something truthful and yet joyful. And I didn't know how I was ever going to do that."

The Geffen said that Nottage may be "intimately involved" with the productions in Seattle and L.A. 

Nottage is no stranger to L.A. theater. Local audiences may remember her play "Intimate Apparel," which ran at the Mark Taper Forum in 2004 and starred Viola Davis. Her work has also been produced by South Coast Repertory in Orange County.

-- David Ng

Photo: Lynn Nottage, on the set of the New York production of her drama "Ruined." Credit: Jennifer S. Altman / For The Times

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Dancing about illness, the debate that never dies

In the U.K. next month, a dance artist who has epilepsy will attempt to induce a seizure on stage. Rita Marcalo has stopped taking her medication ahead of the event at the Bradford Playhouse, according to the BBC News. "If she has a seizure, an alarm will sound and the audience will be invited to film on their mobile phones," said the report.

Not surprisingly, the event, scheduled to take place Dec. 11, has sparked controversy. Epilepsy Action, a charity group, has asked the dancer "to reconsider" the event. But the Arts Council of England, which is funding the performance, stated that the project is intended to raise awareness of the illness and that it supports the artist's choice.

All this prompts the question: Is it really art?

The question is the same one that New Yorker dance critic Arlene Croce asked in 1994 in her nonreview of Bill T. Jones' AIDS-themed work "Still/Here." Taking issue with the choreographer's decision to put his illness front and center on stage, Croce refused to attend the show and instead ended up penning what is perhaps the most divisive piece of dance criticism ever written.

Whether dealing with AIDS or epilepsy, a work of art that explores the artist's illness is by definition a self-reflective work steeped in identity politics, that most thorny of creative themes. What Croce had to say about "Still/Here" (pictured above) can seem harsh and cruelly dismissive, but it also feels surprisingly relevant today. 

Artist Jeanne-Claude, co-creator of 'The Gates,' dies at 74

The artist known as Jeanne-Claude, who along with her husband Christo made wrapping famous structures their artistic calling card, died Wednesday night at a New York hospital from complications of a brain aneurysm, according to reports. She was 74.

Recognizable by her orange-dyed hair, Jeanne-Claude was a fixture of the international art scene and was a highly visible New York personality. Along with Christo, she created "The Gates," a 2005 public art project consisting of 7,503 orange rectangular structures draped with fabric and erected throughout Central Park.

Jeanne-Claude, who was born Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon to a French family in Casablanca, met Christo in 1958 and soon started collaborating on art projects. Their signature style involved wrapping public structures in fabric. In 1964, they moved to New York, where they have been based ever since.

Among the outdoor structures and buildings they wrapped were the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Pont Neuf in Paris; and the Reichstag in Berlin.

One of their most recent projects was "Over the River," which involved fabric panels suspended horizontally above the Arkansas River.

The couple have a son, Cyril, who was born in 1960. 

When asked in a 2002 interview what her favorite among her creations is, Jeanne-Claude replied: "We always say that each one of our projects is a child of ours, and a father and mother who have many children will never tell you which one is their favorite. If people insist that we have to have a favorite one, then we say, 'Okay, you are right, we do have a favorite one and it’s always the next one.'"

-- David Ng

Photo: Christo and Jeanne-Claude answer questions at a LACMA event last year. Credit: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times

Monster Mash: Metropolitan Museum of Art in the red; Shubert's Broadway deal; Thom Mayne's Dallas museum

-- Red ink: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has reported an $8.4-million deficit for the fiscal year that ended in June. (CultureGrrl)

-- Broadway deal: The Shubert Organization has entered into an unusual, three-year deal with producers Robert Cole and Frederick Zollo, which guarantees Cole-Zollo projects one of the Shuberts' 17 Broadway theaters. (Variety)

-- This old house: Britain's National Theatre is planning an $83-million renovation of its London home. (The Stage)

-- Massive project: Groundbreaking has occurred in Dallas on the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, designed by architect Thom Mayne. (Dallas Observer)

-- Financial trouble: The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra is trying to cut its current deficit of $2.8 million, the highest ever in its history. (Indianapolis Star)

-- In the works: A proposed museum honoring the Negro Baseball League in Baltimore would cost about $4.1 million. (Baltimore Sun)

-- Winner: New York landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh has been selected to redesign the northeast corner of Grant Park in Chicago. (Chicago Tribune)

-- Controversial: A dance artist in Britain plans to induce an epileptic seizure on stage. (BBC News)

-- And in the L.A. Times: Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne examines the designs for the proposed Bush presidential library; Santa Monica vies for Eli Broad's contemporary art museum.

-- David Ng

Photo: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Credit: Daniel Acker / Bloomberg