David Canfield

This is ultimately a basic piece of theater that never really digs below its cozy, slightly drab surface. Each of the play's two acts is constructed as follows: one-third background from Lithgow, reminiscing on his childhood or the power of storytelling, and two-thirds his solo performance of a classic short story. The production is strikingly bare-bones - as if you've walked into a dusty study that's just been cleared out for a house move, with only a chair, small desk, and thick ol' storybook remaining. There is no flourish here. All eyes are meant to be on Lithgow as he loosely moves about, all ears on the tales he spins with vigor.

The Children may take place within an apocalyptic landscape, but you'd barely know it. Within the confines of its remote, modest cottage home is a whole world of personalities, ideas, humor, and conflict. Virtually anything could be going on outside, an idea rendered brilliantly in the stage design: The set's a small, slightly tilted box surrounded by vast areas of dark, empty blue. We, like the characters, stay inside.

There couldn't be a better time, in other words, for Latin History for Morons to get a Broadway upgrade. Leguizamo's one-man show features the performer as a version of himself, revising the way American history is typically taught to elevate the heroes of his own ethnic background, and to give his son the chance to feel pride in where and what he comes from. Leguizamo, who was born in Colombia, has long been a wild stage presence, an actor of enough range to keep an entire theater enraptured through his own musings, impressions, and literal pratfalls. (Previous one-man shows have netted him Obie and Drama Desk awards.) Yet while Latin History doesn't exactly depart from that script - Leguizamo is hardly subdued here - this production is a sobering expression of political urgency that reflects its star's maturation as a Latino public figure.