The Green Bird

In this fractured fairy tale for adults, based on a Carlo Gozzi fable, The Lion King's Julie Taymor again shows why she's the theater's champion beguiler. Characters wear silvery masks with oversize jowls and noses; there are singing apples, floating skulls, talking statues, a soothsayer who channels old radio jingles, and a traffic jam performed by actors with '50s sedans on their heads. Taymor's liberating stage ideas, rendered with elegant simplicity, are a wonder.