The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer took the runner-up prize this weekend in the American Theatre Critics Association's Steinberg New Play Award. That's a $5,000 award to playwright Carson Kreitzer. Oppenheimer premiered a year ago at Playhouse in the Park, the final Rosenthal New Play Prize winner.

Cincinnati did well in the ATCA competition with Warren Leight's James and Annie, which premiered at Ensemble Theatre last year, making it into the final round.

Performing with Renata Renee Wilson in the production of Oliver! are Christian Vannasdall (lower left) and Samuel Todd (top left). The Marketing Group

The award-winning play is Lynn Nottage's Intimate Apparel.

There's good news, too, for Joseph McDonough's One, which opened the Shelterhouse season in fall. One gets its second production at the Riverside Theatre in Vero Beach, Fla. next season.

If you're planning a spring trip to London, Rosenthal New Play Prize winner Coyote on a Fence is booked for a limited run at the Duchess Theatre in the West End starring Ben (Chariots of Fire) Cross.

On the road with 'Oliver!'

Oliver! update: Local young actors and School for Creative and Performing Arts students Samuel Todd and Christian Vannasdall performing in the children's chorus hope to continue with the show through April, 2005. They want to be performing their hearts out when the show comes to Cincinnati in January, 2005 as part of Fifth Third Bank Broadway in Cincinnati.

The boys auditioned last July, were cast last August and started rehearsals in late September prior to beginning the national tour in Denver in November.

They've been offered the opportunity to continue with the tour for a second year. "They have worked very hard to be able to continue until they can perform before the 'home crowd,' " says grandmom Karen Vannasdall.

Even so, signing on for the tour extension was a huge decision.

Christian's dad, David Vannasdall, says it's hard, but as a school principal he's thrilled with the "on-location education" the kids are getting. They were in Newark, N.J., last week and a lesson about immigration took them to Ellis Island and Chinatown. (They also went to Broadway for a dance class.)

One-woman show at Xavier

An Evening with Madame F will play at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Xavier University's Gallagher Center Theater. Admission is free.

A one-woman theater-with-music performance by Claudia Stevens, she'll play an elderly concentration camp survivor who performed as a musician at Auschwitz.

Stevens is on the faculty of William & Mary College and a child of Holocaust survivors. Madame F uses music played and sung by women musicians at Auschwitz and draws on survivors' accounts.

Information and directions: Bruggeman Center, 745-3922.

E-mail jdemaline@enquirer.com