On the contrary, as this compelling and vivacious production proved, it's a vintage vehicle whose quirky style somehow epitomizes its time.

It's a fitting ending to such a vivacious production, which celebrates youth and the promise that young talent represents.

Freud appeared as the befuddled central figure in John Malkovich's vivacious production of Terry Johnson's "Hysteria," at Steppenwolf's main stage, a rumination on the doctor's last days.

That, in any case, is the fashion direction indicated by the title character of "King John" in the early scenes of Tina Packer's vivacious production for Shakespeare & Company at the Founders' Theater here.

North of the border, Scottish Opera hangs on, and despite an organisation now stripped to skin and bone, its vivacious productions of Orlando and Orpheus in the Underworld proved that the skeleton still has life and potential.

This vivacious production offered the suave baritone Scott Hendricks and the dynamic soprano Judith Howarth as Robert Storch, a famous composer, and his bossy, fretful and snappish wife, Christine (stand-ins for Richard and Pauline Strauss).

Gerald Gutierrez's vivacious production, starring Kevin Kline, doesn't build the necessary bridges between its emotional extremes.

Theon Weber of The Village Voice said that "Spears's writers present her with the goofiest, most vivacious productions she's ever had, filling 'Radar' with pinging noises and polishing Madonna's dance-floor trash bright."

(Gates) 'WOYZECK' This improbably vivacious London-born production of Buchner's great, prophetic drama of existential emptiness finds the bleak rhythm of life in, of all things, the music of Elvis Presley.

But there is little question that as the heroine of Frank Wedekind's "Lulu," in the vivacious visiting production from the Almeida Theater of London, Ms. Friel is standing on a pair of extremely lethal weapons.