Broadway's Baryshnikafka

Mikhail Baryshnikov awoke one morning to discover he had turned into an actor—sort of. If The Turning Point was a dream, White Nights was a snore and Dancers a dreadful yawn. Now comes the stretch: this month Baryshnikov (artistic director of American Ballet Theatre) makes his theatrical debut on Broadway in Steven Berkoff's adaptation of Kafka's Metamorphosis, reprising the role that film director Roman Polanski played last spring to much acclaim in Paris. For a man who has been haunted by the question "What next?' ' almost since the day he defected to the West in the mid-seventies, the role is a startling choice. There is no dancing, and the character is a bug. Recently, even Misha himself seems to have joined in the second-guessing, expressing fears that the play could turn into his own worst nightmare come true—an open invitation to be squashed by critics who would rather watch him pirouette in a loincloth than lumber in a carapace. Whatever the outcome, one thing is certain: it's another daring leap by a dancer who always manages to land on his feet. —J.R.

J.R.