By DOROTHY HARTZ

One week remains in the 18th season of the renowned Wildflower Music Festival at the Dorflinger-Suydam Wildlife Sanctuary in White Mills, PA. There is one last chance, this year, to savor a lovely experience that has helped to define summer in our area.

I savored it for the first time on July 22 when Philadelphia's City Rhythm Orchestra delivered its acclaimed brand of jazz, swing and big band sounds to a capacity crowd. "In the Mood" brought several couples to their feet by the end of the first set, a tribute to the Big Bands, featuring much loved standards such as "Take the A-Train," "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" and "April in Paris."

The second set evoked the Ladies of Duke Ellington, as the versatile vocalist, working her feather boa, alternately soared and steamed through some popular renditions of Ellington's classics.

The third set was all "Jump and Swing" and had the audience ah-hahing in recognition of the tunes. Even I had to sing along with "It Don't Mean a Thing" and "Dig That Crazy Chick." By evening's end, I was definitely not ready to "Hit the Road" with Jack or the rest of the toe-tapping audience.

The City Rhythm Orchestra, headed by saxophonists Pete Spina and Nick Valleria, has been called "Philly's premier swing outfit," and they showed us why at the Wildflower Music Festival.

A Wildflower concert is a package experience. I knew that picnicking is encouraged before and during the concerts and I was curious to see how the idea played out. I am happy to report an experience even Felix Unger could enjoy. We settled near the top left of the slope, and were surrounded by groups, most of an age to remember the Big Band era, but by young families, too, with, fortunately, well behaved children. Nearly every group in our vicinity had picnic suppers, ranging from sodas and bags of chips to wine in stemmed glasses and plates of fork food conjured from attractive baskets.

The Settlers' Inn in nearby Hawley has a picnic menu which can be ordered from in advance with meals delivered to the Sanctuary complete with napkins and utensils.

The last Wildflower Concert will feature jazz musicians Nick Niles & Company on Saturday August 12. In case of rain, concerts are held in the Wallenpaupack Area High School auditorium.

The box office opens at 5 p.m. for the 6 pm concert. General admission is $15, students 18 and under $6. Call 570/253-5500 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday to Friday or 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the day of the concert.

By TOM KANE

FORESTBURGH - Roger Corman's "Little Shop of Horrors," a 1961 low-budget movie with Jack Nicholson as the sadistic dentist, his first appearance in a film, has gone beyond being a cult movie and moved into the mainstream.

The black comedy about a house plant in a flower shop on Skid Row that grows and grows when fed human blood and body parts has been done so many times, even by high school groups, that it's as American as apple pie despite the ghoul.

The original film was put together in a week's time with unknown actors. In 1982, it was made into a musical and then a movie starring Steve Martin. Recently, aficionados have succeeded in supporting another version of the film with the "lost ending" in which the plant and its offspring eat all New York City and start working on Brooklyn.

The wackiness of the comedy is successfully championed by the equally wacky and energized cast of the Forestburgh Playhouse.

The main problem I had with the show had nothing to do with the actors or director or set people. It was with the score. It's no "Guys and Dolls" with memorable tunes coming at you every minute. The music is weak but that didn't stop this cast.

Leading the pack in wackiness is Trisha Rapier playing the dizzy Audrey after whom the plant is named. Rapier can belt out a tune like a bell and can sweet-soft you with caresses in her voice. As Adelaide in the Forestburgh production of "Guys and Dolls" this past month, she mixed the same concoction of vocal zaniness and sweetness that made me sit up and take notice. The role wasn't as fat as Adelaide but she made it as round as she could. This lady should have a short trip to Broadway.

Matching her in zany energy if not vocal energy was Michael Iannucci as Seymour, the poor-soul of a businessman who rockets to success after feeding victims-his boss included-to the voracious plant. Iannucci who played Nathan Detroit in the same "Guys and Dolls" has an "Everyman" moment when he faces a moral dilemma between doing the right thing on the one hand and winning the love of Audrey by not doing it on the other. He chooses Audrey and the wrong thing and in the end pays the price of loosing her and his own life, sacrificed to the voracious appetites of the plant now grown into a monster.

Michael Scott who played the sadistic dentist and several other roles showed a remarkable versatility. Scott Baker in the role of Mushnik, Seymour's seedy boss, provided the right amount of seediness.

Three ladies of the street, playing the role that the chorus plays in a classic Greek tragedy, pranced and danced marvelously, pointing their collective fingers in shame and their limbs in enticement.

The Forestburgh Playhouse still has two more productions on the docket: "No Sex Please, We're British," a comedy without music, opening on August 8 at 8 p.m. and "The Sunshine Boys," another comedy without music, opening on August 22 at 8 p.m. Both plays will have only one-week runs.

For more information or reservations call 845/794-2005.

By JORDAN KINZLER

At one point in time, all theater strove to be ritual. That is, theater was clearly understood as a process in which a group of people might become connected to a heightened sense of being, and as a result, become more deeply connected to each other.

Contemporary mainstream theater certainly has the ability to do this, but often falls short, perhaps due to the pressure to be financially successful. It's rare for a theater piece to attempt to facilitate an experience of the sacred. North American Cultural Laboratory's (NaCl) recent production of "Arca Nova" did just that.

Teeming with energy, the performance utilized aesthetically beautiful physical performance and mystical music in exploring the text of the "Book of Genesis." "Enchanting," "awe-inspiring" and "ecstatic" are vain attempts to describe what was truly an indescribable experience. The feeling was well beyond words.

The performance incorporated acrobatics, stilt-walking, dance, chanting, and surreal costuming. But what really made "Arca Nova" special was the performers' cultivation of awareness and an intimacy between themselves and the audience. The theater space was alive with sensitivity and alertness.

This stimulated sense of being is what the members of the NaCl strive for in their work. Their primary development takes place off stage, where they rigorously practice physical and vocal exercises for the development of increased awareness.

That they have developed an ability to exist in this sacred space while projecting outwardly is what makes their performance truly special. "Arca Nova" developed a situation in which audience members were reminded of where that scared space is, enabling willing audience members to go there themselves. It was so that audience members became as inspiring when contemplated as that which was taking place on-stage.

The performance was able to bring a vitality and a richness to an ancient narrative that many find difficult to relate to in our modern age. The result was a temporary deepening of my own relationship with the text.

Rather than searching for meaning in literal interpretations of biblical scenarios, coming up with black and white moral lessons, the performers explored the visceral, energetic dynamic of the biblical world's relationship with God. The performers made a claim to their right as human beings to breath the same rarefied air that would have filled the lungs of early biblical characters who felt the presence of God in their every action.

"Arca Nova" went a long way in bringing an esoteric knowledge into performance, and ultimately, into real life.