Arts Fuse critics select the best in film, theater, dance, music, visual arts, and author events for the coming week.

By The Arts Fuse Staff

Film

Boston Area Film Schedules—What is Playing Today, Where, and When

Ottawa International Animation Festival
January 3, 3 p.m.
January 8, 7 p.m.
January 10, 3 p.m.
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA

The gathering is described as “cutting-edge, thoughtful, funny, and provocative animation of classic cartoons, mind-bending experiments, fantastic digital creations, dazzling effects, technical fireworks, thought-provoking observations, or pure gut-busting fun.” These are the festival’s best selections from 2015. The work is intended for mature audiences.

Mustang
Tuesday 5 at 7:30 p.m.
Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA

The Independent Film Festival of Boston presents a free screening of one of my top films of the year. In Northern Turkey, five free-spirited teenaged sisters splash about on the beach with their male classmates. A neighbor hears of this and reports what she considers to be the illicit behavior to the girls’ family. The parents overreact, removing all “instruments of corruption,” such as cell phones and computers. The girls are virtually imprisoned at home, subjected to endless lessons in housework in preparation for marriage. When the eldest sisters are married off, the younger ones bond together to avoid the same fate. The clash between tradition and modernity is frustrating, damaging, and inevitable. This angry and hopeful narrative moves briskly along, helped by smart editing, carefully rendered cultural detailing, and excellent amateur performances. By its end, the film becomes a powerful portrait of female empowerment. While admission is free a pass is required. Passes are available here.

Janis: Little Girl Blue
Jan 8 through 14
Regent Theater, Arlington, MA

The Boston premiere of the latest film from Oscar-nominated director Amy Berg (Deliver Us from Evil, West of Memphis). Much of the documentary is told in Janis Joplin’s own word; Cat Power reads from letters that Joplin wrote to her parents over the years, many of them made public here for the first time. But the correspondence is only one element in this excellent documentary, which includes stunning, previously unseen material Berg discovered during the seven years she spent making the film. New audio and video of Joplin in concert and in the studio (some shot by D.A. Pennebaker), and footage from her emotional return to Port Arthur for her tenth high school reunion, add depth and texture to the singer’s remarkable story.

Opening night (Friday) will feature a musical appearance by rock, blues songwriter, singer, and 5-string violin player Kate Russo, as well as a BBQ. I will be hosting a post-film discussion and panel.

— Tim Jackson

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Dance

Salute to Vienna New Year’s Concert
January 3 at 2:30 p.m.
Symphony Hall
Boston, MA

Celebrate the new year in a very elegant way: Viennese orchestral music performed by the Strauss Symphony of America fills the hall, as professionals in the classical genres of ballet (Kiev-Aniko Ballet of Ukraine) and ballroom (International Champion Ballroom Dancers) sweep across the floor.

Return to ORG!
January 7 at 8 p.m.
OBERON
Cambridge, MA

Enjoy an evening of music, dance, film, and revelry at this multimedia variety show, all in the magical cabaret setting of OBERON. Viewers must be 18+.

— Merli V. Guerra

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Theater

Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, a musical adaptation of an excerpt from Leo Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace by Dave Malloy. Directed by Rachel Chavkin. Choreographed by Sam Pinkleton. Staged by the American Repertory Theater at the Loeb Drama Center, Cambridge, MA, through January 3.

“Natasha is young, Anatole is hot, and Andrey isn’t here…But what about Pierre?” What about Tolstoy? Hey, he didn’t write musicals, so he couldn’t see that War & Peace had a beat you could dance to. “This electropop opera is Tolstoy like you’ve never experienced him before. Step into a glamorous, romantic world of chandeliers, vodka and caviar in the salons and opera houses of 19th century Moscow, where passions ignite as Napoleon’s war rages outside the city.” Features “an immersive set designed by 2015 MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ Winner, Mimi Lien.” Arts Fuse review

Buyer & Cellar by Jonathan Tolins. Directed by Courtney O’Connor. Staged by the Lyric Stage Company of Boston at 140 Clarendon Street, Boston, MA, through January 3.

“When you’re an out-of-work L.A. actor, what better job could you imagine than being the sole employee of the ‘Great Mall of Malibu’—Barbra Streisand’s treasure-filled basement!” Stars Phil Tayler. Arts Fuse review.

The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare. Directed by Melia Bensussen. Staged by the Actors’ Shakespeare Project in Wilet Hall at the United Parish, Brookline, MA, through January 3.

Steven Barkhimer, Marianna Bassham, Allyn Burrows, and Nigel Gore are in the cast for this staging of Shakespeare’s magical fable, where “forgiveness wins out over mistrust, keeping this sublime romance out of the clutches of tragedy!” Arts Fuse review.

Arabian Nights, an adaption of One Thousand and One Nights by Dominic Cooke. Staged by the Nora Theatre Company and the Underground Railway Theater Company at the Central Square Theater, Cambridge, MA, through January 3.

A revival of an award-winning production: a stage version of “a collection of folk tales from the Middle East and Asia.” The presentation “is rich with suspense, romance and hilarity—stories irresistible for all ages, and at its heart, the power of the imagination to heal, inspire, and transform.” Arts Fuse review

Matchless & The Happy Prince Directed by Debra Wise. Staged by Underground Railway Theater at Central Square Theater through January 3.

On the program: Gregory Maguire (Wicked) adapts the Hans Christian Andersen tale “The Little Match Girl” for the stage, along with a version of Oscar Wilde’s fairy tale “The Happy Prince,” which “celebrates an unlikely friendship with his signature wit, humor, and heart. Both stories are intimately staged with actors and puppets. All ages are invited to discover life’s magic transformations: how love makes a family-and imagination finds beauty-in the most unexpected places.”

The Pirate Princess by Lila Rose Kaplan. Directed by Allegra Libonati. Music by Mike Pettry and choreography by Cheryl Turski. Staged by the American Repertory Theater/MXAT Institute for Advanced Theater Training at the Loeb Drama Center, Cambridge, MA, through January 3.

This musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a “swashbuckling adventure on the high seas. When a giant sea monster destroys their ship, seafaring twins Violet and Victor are torn from one another. Lost in a world of rowdy pirates and lovesick royals, the siblings must be crafty and brave to reunite. Featuring a 40-foot sea monster, daring sword-fights, and a pirate recruitment center for youngsters in the theater’s lobby, this lush world of adventure and danger will be a holiday treat for the whole family.”

Cardboard Explosion! performed and directed by Brad Shur. At the Puppet Showplace Theater, 32 Station Street, Brookline, MA, January 9 through 24.

The world premiere production of a “one-of-a-kind puppetry experience” that received a 2016 Jim Henson Foundation Family Grant. In the show, “five original stories are brought to life using nothing but cardboard and the power of an audience’s imagination. Inspired by everyday details from kids’ lives, puppeteer Shur transforms simple cardboard shapes into elaborate puppet characters and and fantastical scenes, then brings them to life before the audience’s eyes.”

The One-Minute Play Festival, produced by the Boston Public Works Theater Company and Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, through January 5. All performances will begin at 8 p.m.

For the first time, this year’s festival will be presented in two series. Series A: Where Have We Been? A Body Of Plays Examining Our Distant And Recent History (January 3). Series B: Where Are We Going? A Body Of Plays Imagining What Our Future Might Look Like (January 4 and 5). “Part community-convening, part social action, and part play festival, 1MPF investigates the questions, Who are we? What is our relationship to each other? To our community? To our work? To our activism? Through a series of 100 pulses of storytelling, 100 heartbeats that say something about who we are, where we are, and where we might be going as a community.”

Via Dolorosa by David Hare. Part of the third annual Next Rep Black Box Festival in the Black Box Theater at the Arsenal Center for the Arts in Watertown, MA, January 2 through 31.

Hare’s one-man show about the political and cultural quandaries afflicting Israel will be performed by David Bryan Jackson.

Violet by Jeanine Tesori, Music, and Brian Crawley, Lyrics and Book. Directed by Paul Daigneault. Music direction by Matthew Stern. David Connolly, Choreography. Staged by the SpeakEasy Stage Company in the Virginia Wimberly Theatre in the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street in Boston’s South End, January 9 through February 6.

The New England premiere of the New York version of a musician that proffers a folk, rock, and gospel score. The show “tells the story of a young North Carolina woman named Violet who travels by bus across the South in 1964 to see a faith-healer she hopes will transform her life. Along the way, she forms unlikely friendships with her fellow passengers, and learns that it’s the journeys you take in life that help you discover who you are.”

Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar. Directed by Gordon Edelstein. Staged by the Huntington Theatre Company in association with the Long Wharf Theatre, at the Boston University Theatre, Boston, MA, January 8 through February 7.

In this Pulitzer prize-winning play, “high-powered New York lawyer Amir has climbed the corporate ladder while distancing himself from his Muslim roots. When he and his wife Emily host a dinner party, what starts as a friendly conversation escalates, shattering their views on race, religion, and each other.”

The script is definitely one of the flavors of the season: “Disgraced is being produced at 10 major American regional theatres this season and will be produced across the United States 32 times over the next two years, as well as several productions overseas. A film version of the play is also in the works with HBO.”

The White Chip by Sean Daniels. Directed by Sheryl Kaller. Staged by the Merrimack Repertory Theatre at the Nancy L. Donahue Theatre, 50 East Merrimack Street, Lowell, MA, January 6 through 31.

The world premiere of a “dark comedy about the science of addiction” written by Daniels, MRT’s Artistic Director. The script is “based on his own struggles with alcoholism and path to recovery.” The impressive cast of the 90-minute drama includes Benjamin Evett, Isabel Keating, and Jeffry Binder.

—Bill Marx

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Visual Arts

List Projects: Ann Hirsch
January 5 – February 21
List Center, MIT, Cambridge, MA

Though many artists these days work with video as a medium, Los Angeles-based Ann Hirsch’s involvement has been unusually hands on: she has appeared as a contestant in a reality TV show, established a YouTube channel with a cult following, and based works on her youthful chat room experiences in the 1990s. Concerned, in particular, with how young women are portrayed and portray themselves on-line, Hirsch has chosen three of her “greatest hits” as features in this MIT show: Scandalishious (2008-2009), Here for You (Or My Brief Love Affair with Frank Maresca) (2010), and Twelve (2013).

Eric Aho: Ice Cuts
January 9 – March 13
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

Anyone who has lived in the frozen north is likely to develop a fascination for the thick ice that covers rivers, lakes, and ponds in the darkest months: translucent, treacherous platforms over a cold, black, world in suspended animation. Vermont-based Eric Aho’s Hood Museum show focuses on a series of works inspired by the Finnish avanto: the hole cut in the ice in front of a sauna for the ice water bath following a session in the dry heat. The results are both an exploration of ethnic heritage (Aho’s family still keeps to the avanto tradition) and a exposition of the austere beauty of winter.

Alchemy of the Soul: Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons
January 9 – April 3
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA

Boston-based Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons is considered one of the key figures in post-Revolutionary Cuban art. Her art combines the transitory, the ephemeral, and the barely perceivable with heavier issues of exile, identity, and spirituality. Alchemy of the Soul is her most ambitious collaboration to date with her musician-composter husband, Neil Leonard. The show incorporates blown glass, painting, photography, sound, and even smells to evoke scenes from her childhood in a Cuban sugar plantation town which was full of abandoned sugar mills, rum factories, and memories of generations of brutal labor.

— Peter Walsh

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Classical Music

Elizabeth Rowe and Jessica Zhou play Mozart
Presented by the Boston Symphony Orchestra
January 7-9 and 12, 8 p.m. (1:30 p.m. on Friday)
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA

The BSO eases into the new year with two of its most popular member-soloists, principal flute Rowe and principal harp Zhou, front-and-center in Mozart’s Concerto for Harp and Flute. François-Xavier Roth also conducts Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony and leads the first BSO performances of music by François-Joseph Gossec (the Symphony for 17 Parts).

David Lang’s Love Fail
Presented by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
January 10, 1:30 p.m.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA

David Lang’s 2012 meditation on “the timelessness of love” comes to the Gardner Museum courtesy of the excellent Lorelei Ensemble.

Voices Now and Tomorrow
Presented by Collage New Music
January 10, 8 p.m.
Pickman Hall, Cambridge

Soprano Dominique LaBelle joins CNM for the premiere of a new piece by Talia Amar, plus additional works by David Rakowski, Chaya Czernowin, and Yehudi Wyner.

— Jonathan Blumhofer

Boston Artists Ensemble: Point/Counterpoint
January 8
At Hamilton Hall, 9 Chestnut Street, Salem, MA
January 10
At St. Paul Church, 15 St. Paul Street, Brookline, MA

On the program: Bartók’s String Quartet No. 1 in A minor; Ravel’s String Quartet in F.

The Italian Invasion: Newton Baroque
January 9 at 8 p.m.
At the Second Church in Newton, 60 Highland Street, West Newton, MA

On the program: Music of Giovanni Rigatti, Giovanni Rovetta, Franz Tunder, Dietrich Buxtehude and more.

Boston Symphony Chamber Players
January 10 at 3 p.m.
At Jordan Hall/New England Conservatory, 290 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA

The program celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of Henri Dutilleux.

— Susan Miron

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Jazz

Bert Seager Quartet
January 6 at 7:30 p.m.
Lily Pad, Cambridge, MA.

The always adventurous, lyrical pianist and composer Bert Seager resumes his residency at the Lily Pad, fronting a quartet: tenor saxophonist Rick DiMuzio, bassist Max Riddley, and drummer Dor Herskovits.

Roy Hargrove
January 8 and 9 at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m
Scullers Jazz Club, Boston, MA.

The gifted 46-year-old trumpeter Roy Hargrove, who has sometimes delved into electrified jazz-funk with his RH Factor, these days seems to be hitting acoustic post-bop. Which is never a bad thing.

Russ Gershon/Phil Neighbors + Charlie Kohlhase/Aaron Darrell
January 9 at 8 p.m.
Third Life Studio, Somerville, MA.

A double-bill of duos: Either/Orchestra mainman and saxophonist Russ Gershon with drummer Phil Neighbors, and pan-scene sage and multi-reedman Charlie Kohlhase with bassist Aaron Darrell.

Esthema
January 10 at 7:30 p.m.
Lily Pad, Cambridge, MA.

The unclassifiable Boston sextet Esthema — whose original compositions combine elements of jazz, classical, rock, and world music (with special attention to the Balkans), hits the Lily Pad. The players include guitarist Andy Milas, drummer/percussionist George Lernis, oud and buzuki player Mac Ritchey, cellist Naseem Alatrash, violinist Onur Dilisen, and bassist Tom Martin.

The Eric Quinntet + Canned Bread
January 12 at 7 p.m.
Lily Pad, Cambridge, MA.

Two New York bands with overlapping personnel split the bill at the Lily Pad. The Eric Quinntet is trombonist Eric Quinn, tenor saxophonist Fabien Williamson, trumpeter Alex Quinn, bassist Sean Lovato, and drummer Ken Ychicawa. The intricate, soft-toned counterpoint and edgy harmonies and swing exhibited on their Soundcloud tracks are something we can get behind. The more pop-leaning Canned Bread is guitarist Conor Linehan, saxophonist Hunter McKay, trombonists Josh Gagnon and Eric Quinn, bassist Jason Emmond, and drummer/vocalist Robbie Neeb

— Jon Garelick

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Author Events

Roger Lowenstein
America’s Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve
January 5 at 7:30 p.m.
Abbey Room, Central Library in Copley Square, Boylston MA
Free

The widely published financial journalist recounts the surprisingly dramatic story of how reformers created the Federal Reserve bank, bringing America onto the economic world stage. Lowenstein tells a story of Gilded Age politicians, bankers, and presidents that still resonates in our unsteady economic times.

Greg Jobin-Leeds
When We Fight, We Win!: Twenty-First-Century Social Movements and the Activists That Are Transforming Our World
January 7 at 7 p.m.
Harvard Book Store, Cambridge MA
Free

Progressive causes are gaining traction: Bernie Sanders’s campaign is generating enormous attention, same-sex marriage has become the law of the land, and there’s a new international consensus on carbon emissions. In a multimedia collaboration, Jobin-Leeds discusses how progressives can rally support for their causes. He will be joined by AgitArte, an artists collective and a few of the people he interviews in his book, including activists and scholars.

Emily Ross
Half In Love with Death
January 7 at 7 p.m.
Porter Square Books, Cambridge MA
Free

We’re used to a plethora of incense-and-peppermint stories about the sixties, but this novel by the award-winning novelist takes a different approach. The narrative focuses on a family drama in which a free-spirited daughter mysteriously disappears and the police investigation raises questions about the missing woman’s life. Her younger sister is left alienated amid the social/personal fallout.

ZZ Packer
January 9 at 6:30 p.m.
Marran Theater at Lesley University, Cambridge MA
Free

The acclaimed author of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere will be reading from her latest work at Lesley university, where she is a writer-in residence. Packer’s work has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner award, and appeared in many publications, including The Best American Short Stories.

Elizabeth Strout
My Name is Lucy Barton
January 12 at 6 p.m. (Doors open at 5:30)
Brattle Theatre, Cambridge MA
$5 tickets on sale now

The bestselling author of Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys comes to Cambridge to read and sign copies of her new novel. It tells the story of a woman who takes a long time recovering from a surgery gone awry; she finds herself renewing her relationship with her estranged mother in the process.

— Matt Hanson