Fuse Coming Attractions: What Will Light Your Fire This Week
Arts Fuse critics select the best in film, theater, music, dance, 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
Orphan Morphin: Creative Plundering of the Archive with Craig Baldwin
March 24
Bright Lights Series in the Bright Family Screening Room, 559 Washington Street, Boston, MA
Free and open to the public.
“San Francisco filmmaker, curator, and archivist Craig Baldwin will present a feature-length program of both old and new work, consummating in an expanded cinema performance.” Baldwin is a brilliant archivist of lost and rare films that he creatively de-contextualizes into dense and extraordinary works of art. His masterworks include Tribulation 99, Sonic Outlaws, and Mock-Up on Mu.
Records Collecting Dust
Wednesday March 25 at 8pm.
Somerville Theatre
in Davis Square, Somerville, MA
A special screening of a documentary film about the music and records that changed lives. Written and directed by San Diego based musician and filmmaker Jason Blackmore, Records Collecting Dust documents the vinyl record collections, origins, and various holy grails of alternative music icons Jello Biafra, Chuck Dukowski, Keith Morris, John Reis, and over thirty other underground music comrades. A full description of the film can be found at Dangerous Minds.
The Devils
March 25 at 7:30 p.m.
Harvard Film Archive, Cambridge, MA
Ken Russell’s outlandish and controversial 1971 film doesn’t get seen on the big screen all that often. Based partly on Aldous Huxley’s novel The Devils of Loudun, it recounts the story of radical Catholic priest (played by Oliver Reed) in 17th century France who is accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. It also mixes in a group of sexually hysteric nuns, including a young Vanessa Redgrave, and some political jabs at the unholy alliance between the church and the court of King Louis XIII. The Devils‘ more extravagant scenes and graphic language generated a number of censorship battles. Russell was a major influence on directors such as Guillermo del Toro and David Cronenberg.
Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me
Thursday, March 26 at 7pm
Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline, MA
Glen Campbell was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2012. “He wrote his last song with producer Julian Raymond, which took the Grammy Award for country song. This film was shot largely after his diagnosis, during Campbell’s 2012-13 Goodbye Tour.” Campbell was one of the original session players in ‘The Wrecking Crew’ and went on to extraordinary success. He holds a special place in hearts of the public and great respect among musicians. This a special screening sponsored by Goddard House, Sherrill House, Brookline Council on Aging & the Brookline Community Aging Network.
Boston Underground Film Festival
March 25 – 29 Various Times
Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA
This festival, which “highlights the bizarre, the troubling and the overlooked” returns to the Brattle for its seventeenth year. The focus this year is rare horror films. One of them is The Editor, an homage to the tradition of 1970’s Eurotrash giallo films: it is about a film editor who accidentally slices off his own fingers in a fit of rage. He struggles to maintain his sanity as several of his fellow crew members end up murdered around him. The scary celluloid closes with the Australian film Goodnight Mommy: set in a lonesome country house during the summer, it narrative focuses on nine-year-old twin brothers are waiting for their mother. When she comes home, bandaged after cosmetic surgery, she seems to be a completely new person. The children start to doubt that this woman is actually their mother. An existential struggle for identity and fundamental trust emerges. Full schedule, information, and other special events here.
Homme Less
March 26 at 7 p.m.
UMass Boston Campus Center, Ballroom “C”, 3rd Floor.
Free and open to the public.
Doc New York City awarded this film a Metropolis Jury Prize for this reason: “I takes a lot to surprise and shock us. It’s also rare to find a film that does this in such a skillful way—through a present-tense cinematic language that explores every dark nook and cranny of its subject’s life. We were impressed with this film’s craft, but we were even more impressed with its content. It portrays both the beauty and cruelty of New York. It also shows the city’s obsession with surfaces, and it gives us a figure who is complex, troubling, and fascinating.” Written, co-produced, directed, filmed, and co-edited by Thomas Wirthensohn who will be on hand for a Q&A after this Boston premiere screening.
— Tim Jackson
Salad Days: The Birth of Hardcore Punk in the Nation’s Capital
March 27
Somerville Theatre, Somerville, MA
When it comes to hardcore punk, no American city does it better than Washington, D.C. In Salad Days: The Birth of Hardcore Punk in the Nation’s Capital, director Scott Crawford tells the story of the scene that gave us Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Scream, Fugazi, and so many others through interviews with the musicians who made the whole thing possible. This is the Boston-area premier of the film, and a must for fans of American punk, hardcore, and alternative music history.
— Adam Ellsworth
Ornette: Made in America. Directed by Shirley Clarke. At the Harvard Film Archive, Cambridge, MA, on March 29.
Ornette Coleman, one of the greatest jazz artists of the 20th century turned 85 on March 9th, and this 1984 documentary is indispensable viewing for admirers. “By virtue of the footage alone,” wrote the New York Times,” it’s a valuable time capsule for anyone drawn to Mr. Coleman’s work, particularly in the two decades following the cusp of the 1960s, when his dauntless, affirming vision of free improvisation famously created a crisis of faith in jazz.”
— Bill Marx
Dance
L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato
March 27 at 9 p.m. (Eastern Time)
This filmed work will be broadcast on PBS
Once in a while something remarkable from the live stage makes its television debut—in this case, Mark Morris’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato on PBS’s program Great Performances. This evening-length work –set to the music of Handel’s baroque classic — is both colorful and joyful.
Dance on Camera Tour Film Screening
March 27 at 7 p.m.
Sophia Gordon Hall, Tufts University
Medford, MA
For those who enjoy dance-on-camera films, be sure not to miss this special screening hosted by Tufts University. View a selection of films from this year’s Dance Films Association and the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s 2015 Dance on Camera Film Festival, with pre-show and post-show Q&A discussions with guest artists.
ANGAJE
March 27 & 28, 8 p.m.
Plaza Theatre, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA
Jean Appolon Expressions brings its new full-length production of ANGAJE to Boston. Set in the context of modern Haiti, the work, which features the company’s eight performers and a live music ensemble, explores such topics as homophobia, injustice, and inequality.
Of Looms & Lilies
March 27 & 28, 8 p.m.
Dance Complex
Cambridge, MA
Jody Weber’s new work Of Looms & Lilies is inspired by Thoreau’s botany research on Walden Pond and the realities of the industrial revolution in Lowell, MA. This piece brings the past into present: its dancers span time periods — the experiences of a fictional woman in the mills are juxtaposed with the life of a contemporary female counterpart. View a preview of the work here.
And further afield…
Soledad Barrio and Noche Flamenca
March 27, 8 p.m.
Veterans Memorial Auditorium
Providence, RI
FirstWorks presents what promises to be an exciting evening of world-renowned flamenco talent. This performance marks the finale of FirstWorks’ 2015 “Artistic Icons” series, which will feature prominent artists in dance, theatre, and music.
— Merli V. Guerra
Rock
Swervedriver
March 28
The Sinclair, Cambridge, MA
After disbanding at the end of the 20th century, English shoegazers Swervedriver reunited in 2008 and have been touring off and on ever since. This year brings not only another tour, but the first new album from the band: I Wasn’t Born to Lose You.
Belle and Sebastian
March 30
House of Blues, Boston, MA
January 2015 saw the release of Scottish group Belle and Sebastian’s first album of new music in five years, Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance. They aren’t a band that typically tops the pop charts, but they’re critically acclaimed for a reason and well worth your time.
Upcoming and On Sale…
The New Highway Hymnal (4/10/2015, Middle East-Upstairs); Rock ‘n’ Roll Rumble Preliminary Rounds (4/11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18/2015, TT the Bear’s Place); Jeff Beck (4/19/2015, Orpheum Theatre); They Might Be Giants (4/23/2015, House of Blues); Rock ‘n’ Roll Rumble Semifinal Rounds (4/23-24/2015, TT the Bear’s Place); Manic Street Preachers (4/24/2015, The Sinclair); Rock ‘n’ Roll Rumble Finals (5/1/2015, TT the Bear’s Place); Sufjan Stevens (5/4/2015, Citi Performing Arts Center); Faith No More (5/11/2015, Orpheum Theatre); Kasabian (5/15/2015, House of Blues); Primal Scream (5/17/2015, Royale); Crosby, Stills and Nash (5/19/2015, Citi Performing Arts Center); Boston Calling (featuring Beck, Pixies, My Morning Jacket) (5/22-24/2015, City Hall Plaza); The Who (5/24/2015, Mohegan Sun Arena); Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds (6/6/2015, Boston Opera House); Best Coast (6/12/2015, Paradise Rock Club); Paul Weller (6/13/2015, Paradise Rock Club); Spoon (6/18/2015, House of Blues); Rush (6/23/2015, TD Garden); Buffalo Tom (6/26 and 27/2015, The Sinclair); Huey Lewis and the News (6/27/2015, Indian Ranch); Melvins (6/27/2015, Paradise Rock Club); U2 (7/10, 11, 14, 15/2015, TD Garden); Mudhoney (7/11/2015, Brighton Music Hall); Billy Joel (7/16/2015, Fenway Park); Foo Fighters (7/18-19/2015, Fenway Park); Modest Mouse (7/23/2015, Blue Hills Bank Pavilion); Interpool (7/23-24/2015, House of Blues); Bombino (7/27/2015, The Sinclair); Willie Nelson & Family (8/21/2015, Blue Hills Bank Pavilion); AC/DC (8/22/2015, Gillette Stadium); Death Cab For Cutie (9/11/2015, Blue Hills Bank Pavilion); Mark Knopfler (10/9/2015, Orpheum Theatre); The Who (10/29/2015, TD Garden)
— Adam Ellsworth
Visual Arts
Director’s Choice: In Memoriam: Sideo Fromboluti, John Grillo, and Selina Trieff
through May 10
Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA
For museums in New England summer artists’ colonies, many of the artists on view are not so much exhibitors as family. A number of these places, such as the Provincetown Art Association Museum (one of the most venerable and distinguished of the bunch), grew out of informal social gatherings of artists who spent the short warm weather months working in New England before heading back to New York, Boston, and other East Coast cities for the winters. Like the summers themselves, these groups were rocket-like and intense: the passing of one of their legends or grandees marks a significant moment in their collective history and memory.
Director’s Choice: in Memoriam remembers three artists who “contributed greatly” to the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and are represented in the museum’s permanent collections. The show includes Abstract Expressionist artist John Grillo, native of Lawrence, Massachusetts, who died last November at the age of 97.
In California, where Grillo studied at San Francisco’s California Institute of the Arts on the G.I. Bill, he is considered one of the most important Californian Abstract Expressionists. Later, in New York City, he studied with the legendary Hans Hofmann, expat German teacher of so many of the generation of Americans who made New York the center of world art. In New Work, his work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
For a 25-year chunk of his later career (1967 to 1992), Grillo was a professor of fine arts at U. Mass, Amherst, which mounted a 50-year retrospective of his work just before his death.
Other artists in the Provincetown show: Sideo Fromboluti, born in Hershey, PA in 1920, known for his soft-focus nudes and summer landscapes. His work was also widely exhibited and represented in museum collections. Brooklyn-born Selina Trieff, who died in January of this year in her Cape Cod home in Wellfleet. Another Hofmann student in both New York and Provincetown, Trieff was known for her mysterious, androgynous figures and portraits in gold-leaf and oil. All three were members of the Provincetown artists’ family for large chunks of their professional careers.
Walter Wick: Games, Gizmos, and Toys in the Attic
March 28 to July 6
Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont
Walter Wick’s manic photographs of toys, bowling pins, miniature cars, plastic figurines, and the sort of indiscriminate playroom clutter well known to all parents of small children are at the heart of his popular I Spy children’s books. Walter Wick: Games, Gizmos, and Toys in the Attic is a trip behind the scenes into the award-winning photographic illustrator’s studio. Models, video studies, and larger scale images show the effort and planning that go into Wick’s whimsical imagery.
Organized by the New Britain Museum of American Art, the show will seem right at home amidst the Sheburne’s vast and eccentric collections of American folk art.
— Peter Walsh
Roots and World Music
The Gibson Brothers
March 25
Johnny D’s, Somerville, MA
The Gibsons have risen to the top of the bluegrass ranks by creating their own material and the kind of harmonies that only family members can generate. On their latest LP, Brotherhood, they pay tribute to the many other country and bluegrass duet groups made up of brothers that came before them.
The Nile Project
March 27
Tsai Performance Center, Boston University, Boston, MA
One of the highlights of this winter’s Globalfest was this sprawling pan-African revue. Besides featuring virtuoso musicians from 11 countries, the performance (which is presented here by World Music/Crash Arts) also serves as a vehicle for social activism. Both music and politics will be discussed at a series of panels and workshops during the week.
Heritage Blues Orchestra
March 28
Somerville Theater, Somerville, MA
Virtually the only non-rock oriented blues outfit to cross over from the club to the theater circuit in recent memory, the 9-piece HBO mixes-and-matches rootsy gospel, folk, and blues with inventive horn arrangements. This is a most welcome Boston debut.
Todd Baptista’s Doo Wop 11
March 28
Zeiterion Theater, New Bedford, MA
Local group harmony author and historian Todd Baptista was frustrated by the usual pitfalls of the oldies circuit: phony groups, too-short and/or predictable sets as well as indifferent backing bands. So he put together his own series which has now become a regular part of the Zeiterion’s lineup. For this edition he’s come up with a real coup: the first reunion in eons of the living original members of the El Dorados. You can bet that some of their sublime and rarely heard ballads will be on the set list. Also on the bill are doo-wop revivalist Kid Kyle, swamp pop teen idol Jimmy Clanton, and a version of The Crystals led by Dee Dee Kenniebrew.
Zakir Hussein and Celtic Connections
March 29
Somerville Theater, Somerville, MA
The tabla master never fails to excite his audiences. His latest project is among his most intriguing: a 9-piece group of both Indian and Irish virtuosos.
— Noah Schaffer
Jazz
Miguel Zenón
March 25, 7:30 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge, MA.
One of the best releases of 2014 was the composer and alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón musical investigation of Puerto Rican heritage, Identities Are Changeable. Zenón will be joined by his superb longtime quartet: pianist Luis Perdomo, bassist Hans Glawischnig, and drummer Henry Cole.
Kyle Nasser
March 25, 8 p.m.
Beat Hotel, Cambridge, MA.
Harvard and Berklee graduate Kyle Nasser’s debut album, Restive Soul, sports knotty grooves that are all his own, inflected equally by modern jazz-rock drive and jazzy flow. The tenor saxophonist brings members of the album’s sharp quintet to Harvard Square: guitarist Jeff Miles, pianist Dov Manski, bassist Chris Van Voorst, plus drummer Jonathan Pinson.
Rebirth Brass Band
March 26, 6:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.
The Sinclair, Cambridge, MA.
The great New Orleans aggregation’s roots are in that city’s ancient second-line parade tradition, but their music makes distinctions among jazz, funk, hip-hop, and R&B meaningless. It’s all there.
Melissa Aldana & Crash Trio
March 26, 7:30 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge, MA.
Tenor saxophonist and composer Melissa Aldana — the first-ever female winner of the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Saxophone Competition — released one of the best albums of 2014 with her Crash Trio, bassist Pablo Menares and drummer Francisco Mela. Her sound and saxophone vocabulary — deeply cultured but also highly personal — are something to behold. (Think: Don Byas to Mark Turner, with a quick detour at Sonny Rollins.)
Dan Gabel’s High Society Orchestra
March 26, 8 p.m.
Scullers Jazz Club, Boston, MA.
This dandy repertory band covers the likes of early jazz and swing from Armstrong, Ellington, Cab Calloway, Fletcher Henderson, and more obscure inventors of the form.
Brandeis Improv Festival
March 27-29
Slosberg Music Center, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Legendary master percussionist Milford Graves gives the keynote address and performs at the first annual Brandeis Improv Fest, a weekend-long assortment of panels, workshops, and musical and multi-media performances. The performers range from Graves (a key figure in the first wave of free jazz) to pianists Dave Bryant and Tim Ray, saxophonist Tom Hall, bassist Bob Nieske, guitarist Dave Tronzo, turntablist Mister Rourke, Club d’Elf, Guttman’s Klezmer Allstars (with violinist Mimi Rabson), artist Lennie Peterson, video artist Greg Kowalski, and more. And it’s all free.
The Either/Orchestra
March 27, 7:30 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge, MA.
Boston’s singular 10-piece “little big band,” the Either/Orchestra, returns to the Regattabar with its mix of charter members and “newer” players from, oh, the last decade or so: trumpeters Tom Halter and Dan Rosenthal, saxophonists Charlie Kohlhase and Mark Zaleski, trombonist Joel Yennior, pianist Gilson Schachnik, bassist Rick McLaughlin, drummer Oscar Suchanek, conguero Vicente Lebron, and E/O leader/reed player Russ Gershon. Everything about this band is original, whether it’s their “covers” of “Ethiojazz” by Mulatu Astatke or Afro-Cuban and Mingus-inspired post-bop.
Heritage Blues Orchestra
March 28, 8 p.m.
Somerville Theatre, Somerville, MA.
The Heritage Blues Orchestra (presented here by World Music/Crash Arts) plays it all — inventive arrangements and vibrant performances that span country blues classics, Chicago electric blues, New Orleans second-line, and a bit of modern jazz.
Kat Edmonson
March 29, 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Scullers Jazz Club, Boston, MA.
Singer Kat Edmonson’s covers and originals are inspired by American Songbook standards and movie musicals, from Cole Porter to Henry Mancini to Ennio Morricone. She brings laser-like focus to her cinematic dreamscapes. Her Sony Masterworks debut, The Big Picture, was one of the highlights of 2014.
Kyle Eastwood Band
April 1, 7:30 p.m.
Regattabar, Cambridge, MA.
Bassist and composer Eastwood has done a lot of soundtrack writing for his dad, Clint, and his own pieces have a cinematic quality that’s not so far removed from the pop-inflected writing in bands like James Farm and the Brian Blade Project. Now based in France, Eastwood has also picked up an appealingly cosmopolitan French accent.
— Jon Garelick
Classical Music
Andris Nelsons conducts Gandolfi and Mahler
Presented by the Boston Symphony Orchestra
March 26-28 and 31, 8 p.m. (1:30 p.m. on Friday)
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
Andris Nelsons’ spring residency with the BSO kicks off with the premiere of Ascending Light, a piece for organ and orchestra by Michael Gandolfi and Mahler’s titanic Symphony no. 6. The brilliant organist Olivier Latry is the soloist in the former.
Bach’s St. Matthew Passion
Presented by the Handel and Haydn Society
March 28 at 7:30 p.m. and 30 at 3 p.m.
Symphony Hall, Boston, MA
The Handel and Haydn Society closes the month with Bach’s beloved St. Matthew Passion. Harry Christophers conducts the Period Instrument Orchestra and Chorus, who are joined by the VAP Young Women’s and Men’s Choruses, plus soloists including Joshua Ellicott (Evangelist) and Roderick Williams (Jesus).
— Jonathan Blumhofer
Arneis Quartet
March 23 at 7 p.m.
At Visiting Nurse Association, 259 Lowell Street, Somerville, MA
The program includes Franz Josef Haydn’s Quartet in D minor, Op. 42; Ludwig von Beethoven’s Quartet in a minor, Op. 132; John Wallace’s pale reflections… (1999). This performance will mark the concert debut of Violobos.
Music for Food
March 25 at 8 p.m.
At Carriage House Violins, 1039 Chestnut Street, Newton Upper Falls, MA
$20 Suggested Donation; 100% of proceeds benefit Newton’s Centre Street Pantry.
An all-Schubert concert that includes the Arpeggione Sonata, D. 821 (cellist Blaise Déjardin and pianist Andrei Baumann); the Quintet in C Major, D. 956, with the Muir String Quartet (Peter Zazofsky and Lucia Lin, violins; Steve Ansell, viola; Michael Reynolds, cello) and Robert Mayes, cello
Pianist Russell Sherman
March 25 at 8 p.m.
At New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Free
The NEC Distinguished Artist-in-Residence celebrates his 85th birthday and the 70th anniversary of his professional debut at Town Hall with an all-Beethoven recital. The program includes Variations (15) and Fugue for Piano in E flat “Eroica”; Sonata for Piano no 30 in E major, Op. 109; Sonata for Piano no 23 “Appassionata.”
The Rake’s Progress
March 26 8 p.m., also March 27 and 28 at 8 p.m., on March 29 at 2 p.m.
At the Boston Conservatory Theater, 31 Hemenway St., Boston, MA
The opera features music by Igor Stravinsky and a libretto by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman. “This masterpiece of mid-20th century opera (premiered in 1951) was inspired by a famous set of paintings and engravings of the same title by William Hogarth from the 1730s, which Stravinsky had seen at an exhibition in Chicago. The Faustian plot traces the rise and fall of Tom Rakewell, an ambitious young man, who, goaded and tricked by Nick Shadow, betrays his beloved Ann Trulove, but is eventually redeemed by her constancy. A cautionary tale for a hedonistic age. Performed in English with projected supertitles.” Andrew Altenbach conducts; Nathan Troup directs.
Rinaldo
March 26 at 8 p.m., also March 27 and 28 at 8 p.m. and March 29 at 4 p.m.
At the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology, 41 Berkeley St., Boston, MA
Boston Opera Collaborative will performs Handel’s opera in Italian with English supertitles in a 160-seat replica of Symphony Hall. Michael Sakir conducts; Greg Smucker and Patricia-Maria Weinmann direct. “Handel’s brilliant opera, distilled to an action-packed 90 minutes.”
Boston Choral Ensemble
March 27 at 8 p.m.
At Oberon, Cambridge, MA
The program “Cold, Cold Night” includes David Lang’s 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning setting for choir and percussion instruments of the Hans Christian Anderson story “The Little Match Girl” plus the world premiere of the short opera Riding on a Train at Rush Hour by Samuel Beebe, winner of BCE’s 2014 competition for a new work. “This piece is the first in a series of 10-minute operas for choir that the group is commissioning in the next few years.”
Cantata Singers
March 28 at 2 p.m.
In Longy School of Music’s Pickman Hall, Cambridge, MA
A “Chamber Concert” program entitled “Songs of the Great War.” The program, inspired by the 100th anniversary of the World War One, explores “music and poetry written from the Western front and beyond. The artistic endeavors which emerged out of this time bear the mark of this momentous event in world history. Join us for an afternoon of music by Berg, Borden, Butterworth, Debussy, Finzi, and Ravel among others.”
Chameleon Arts Ensemble
March 28 at 8 p.m. and March 29 at 4 p.m.
First Church in Boston, 66 Marlborough St, Boston, MA
The program of chamber music includes: Schubert’s Auf dem Strom for soprano, piano, and horn; Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin for wind quintet; George Crumb’s Apparition for soprano & piano; George Rochbeg’s Contra Mortem et Tempus for flute, clarinet, violin & cello; Louis Vierne’s Piano Quintet in c minor, Op. 42 (1917).
— Susan Miron
Theater
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. Directed by Brian Mertes. Staged by Trinity Repertory Company at the Chace Theater, 201 Washington St., Providence, Rhode Island, through March 29.
Williams’s oft-oft-produced warhorse will no doubt receive a radical revamping in the hands of director Mertes, who is nothing if not enterprising. The cast features Mia Ellis as Laura Wingfield, Brian McEleney as Tom Wingfield, and Anne Scurria as Amanda Wingfield.
Shockheaded Peter, created for the stage by Julian Crouch and Phelim McDermott. Original music and lyrics by The Tiger Lillies. Originally conceived and produced by Michael Morris for Cultural Industry, London. Directed by Steven Bogart. Staged by Company One at Suffolk University’s Modern Theatre, 525 Washington Street, Boston, MA, through April 4.
“The most damning [tale] ever told on stage” — I will be the judge of that. “Fall into the world of Victorian SteamCRUNK nightmares as a manic music-box spins stories of naughty children and misguided parents.”
From The Deep by Cassie M. Seinuk. Directed by Lindsay Eagle. Staged by Boston Public Works at the Black Box Theater, Boston Center for the Arts, through March 28.
The East Coast premiere of this script (winner of the 2014 Boston University Jewish Cultural Endowment Grant) about two men in captivity is the second up-by-your-bootstraps project undertaken by “Boston Public Works, a playwright-driven theater collective thatʼs forgoing the traditional routes for play development by producing their own plays and leaving a road-map for like-minded playwrights to follow.” Arts Fuse review
Culture Clash 30th Anniversary Tour: The Muse & Murros by Culture Clash. Presented by Arts Emerson at the Jackie Liebergott Black Box at the Emerson/Paramount Center, Boston, MA, through March 29.
From the Arts Emerson website: “For 30 years, Culture Clash has scoured all points of the Nation searching for the American Character through the oral histories of its citizens.” In this show the trio of “master storytellers” give a “voice to the voiceless” in Boston. Arts Fuse review
The Colored Museum by George C. Wolfe. Directed and choreographed by Billy Porter. Staged by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Boston University Theatre, Boston, MA, through April 5.
I remember enjoying George C. Wolfe’s savvy satiric revue back in the ’80s. It will be interesting to see if the show still contains much sting after two decades. Again, this major theater revival raises the question of why we need to go back so far in time to find a stage piece that addresses racial issues. Aren’t there any pieces penned after the millennium that tackles these issues? Does commercial success have to determine whether a piece with political bite can be produced? Aren’t there any young dramatists with something to say about what is going on today? Just wondering … Arts Fuse review
Big Fish Book by John August. Music & Lyrics by Andrew Lippa. Based on the novel by Daniel Wallace and the Columbia Motion Picture written by John August. Directed by Paul Daigneault. Staged by SpeakEasy Stage Company at the Boston Center for The Arts, through April 11.
A revival (with some streamlining changes) of the Broadway musical about “Edward Bloom, a traveling salesman whose larger-than-life stories of epic adventures delight everyone around him, except his pragmatic son Will.” Arts Fuse review
The Misadventures of Spy Matthias by Joe Byers. Directed by Darren Evans. Staged by Theatre on Fire at the Charlestown Working Theater, Charlestown, MA, through April 4.
The world premiere of what sounds like a solipsistic apocalyptic comedy/romance: “In a universe of blistering dread, when everyone you love is either burning or drowning or vaporizing into limbo, maybe the best you can do is save yourself.”
Terminus by Mark O’Rowe. Directed by Meg Taintor. Staged by Solas Nua at the Burren, Somerville, MA, on March 23. (Suggested Donation)
A staged reading of Mark O’Rowe’s “darkly moving play, written entirely in verse, telling the story of one night in dank Dublin inhabited by a former schoolteacher, her lonely, estranged daughter, and a homicidal maniac obsessed with Bette Midler.” Show starts promptly at 7:30 p.m.
The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht. Directed by Liz Diamond. Staged by the Yale Repertory Theatre at the University Theater, New Haven, CT, through April 11.
Critic Martin Esslin’s verdict: “With its poetry, its use of narrators, its two-pronged construction, it stylized action — the negative, wicked characters are masked — The Caucasian Chalk Circle is the outstanding example of the technique of ‘epic’ drama. It is one of Brecht’s greatest plays.” I have no quarrel with that — and, given how few productions of Brecht are around these days, it may well be worth a trip down to New Haven to see OBIE award-winning director Diamond’s revival.
Stronger Than the Wind, written and performed by Alice Manning. Part of the second annual Next Rep Black Box festival in the Black Box Theater at the Arsenal Center for the Arts, Watertown, MA, through April 5.
Alice Manning’s one-woman show deals with her life after she gave birth to her twin boys. She “finally has everything she wants. But a twist of fate and a hospital error leaves her newborn son, Aidan, fighting for his life. Through anger, humor, and tears, Alice fights to keep her family afloat in the midst of unspeakable trauma and fear.”
Out of the City by Leslie Ayvazian. Directed by Christian Parker. Staged by the Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Lowell, MA, through April 22.
The regional premiere of a romantic comedy by an Outer Circle Critics Award-winning playwright that “presents endearing, relatable characters in a setting that’s both fantastical and familiar. It’s a play about friendship amidst marriage, forgiveness amidst hurt, and enduring love amidst elusive romance.”
Come Back, Little Sheba by William Inge. Directed by David Cromer. Staged by the Huntington Theatre Company at the South End / Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA, March 27 through April 26.
In this intimate production of Inge’s play about frustrated lives in ’50s Middle America, celebrated director David Cromer “invites audiences into Doc and Lola’s home and examines how our yearning for the past can get in the way of living in the present.”
City of Angels Music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by David Zippel, book by Larry Gelbart. Directed by Spiro Veloudos. Staged by the Lyric Stage Company, 140 Clarendon Street, March 27 through May 2.
“Set in the seductive Hollywood of the 1940s, City of Angels chronicles the misadventures of Stine, a disillusioned young novelist attempting to write a screenplay for a tyrannical movie producer. As his marriage falls apart, we follow Stine’s film alter-ego, the dashing detective Stone, who is haunted by the memory of the girl that got away.” The Lyric Stage cast includes Leigh Barrett, Ed Hoopman, and Jennifer Ellis.
The Mikado, performed by The Hypocrites. Adapted and directed by Sean Graney. Co-Directed by Thrisa Hodits. Music Direction by Andra Velis Simon. Presented by the American Repertory Theater at Oberon, Cambridge, MA, March 31 through April 5.
“The Chicago-based company The Hypocrites (Pirates of Penzance, Romeo/Juliet, 12Nights) reimagines this 1885 operetta, infusing the absurdist comedy of W.S. Gilbert’s libretto with Monty Python clownishness, and bringing a folk/pop interpretation to Arthur Sullivan’s lovely, lilting melodies. Expect zany fun and hip tunes in this vibrant adaptation of one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s most beloved works, The Mikado.”
A Flea in Her Ear by Georges Feydeau. A new translation by Curt Columbus. Directed by Tyler Dobrowsky. Staged by the Trinity Repertory Company in the Dowling Theater, Providence, Rhode Island, March 26 through April 26.
“Often heralded as the most masterful farce ever written, A Flea in Her Ear is an uproarious tale of a disintegrating marriage” and slamming bedroom doors.
God’s Ear by Jenny Schwartz. Directed by Thomas Derrah. Staged by the Actors’ Shakespeare Project at the Davis Square Theatre, Somerville, MA, March 25 through April 12.
Edward Albee called this “a provocative, adventuresome, beautifully written play.” “Language works as equal parts shield and sword in the verbal warfare at the center of God’s Ear. As married protagonists Mel (Tamara Hickey) and Ted (Gabriel Kuttner) try to hold together a marriage unraveling after the accidental death of their son, words stream forth in torrents as both deflect their own pain by inflicting more.”
— Bill Marx
Author Events
Gabriel Levin
March 23 and 26
At Suffolk University, Boston, MA
A poet and translator from Hebrew and Arabic (including translations of the contemporary Palestinian/Israeli poet Taha Muhammad Ali and the Hebrew medieval poet Yehuda Halevi), Levin will read from his poetry (he has published five volumes in the UK) on March 26 at the Suffolk University Poetry Center, Sawyer Library, 3rd floor. On March 23 he will lecture on the “Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, who wrote at the turn of the 29th century in Alexandria, and the lesser known figures of the Egyptian Francophone, Ahmed Rassim (1895-1958), also from Alexandria, and the Cairene, French-educated, English-language writer Jacqueline Kahanoff (1917-1979),” also at the Suffolk University Poetry Center. His volume of memoir/essays The Dune’s Twisted Edge was published in 2013 by U of Chicago Press. (Arts Fuse review) In all of his writings Levin has explored the Levant and Mediterranean for common threads—contemporary, biblical, and classical.
— Bill Marx
Kazuo Ishiguro
In conversation with Robert Birnbaum
The Buried Giant: A Novel
March 21 at 4 p.m. (Doors open at 3:15)
Memorial Church, 1 Harvard Yard, Cambridge, MA
$5 tickets on sale now
It’s been over a decade since Ishiguro published the acclaimed dystopian novel Never Let Me Go, and the eminent writer is back with a mysterious new tale. The novel is set in post-Roman Empire Britain: a couple decides to search through the misty, rain-swept landscape to find their lost son. Ishiguro will discuss his book with local literary journalist Robert Birnbaum.
JC Hallman
B & Me: A True Story of Literary Arousal
March 23 at 7 p.m.
Brookline Booksmith, Coolidge Corner, MA
Free
Every reader knows what it feels like to discover a writer you love and become obsessed with reading as much of his or her work as humanly possible. JC Hallman has added his own take on the popular ‘writing-about-reading genre,’ putting his spin on the digressive style of Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage and Nicholson Baker’s U and I. Hallman discovers a new passion for literature and a new means to find himself in the microscopic labyrinths of Nicholson Baker, author of The Mezzanine, Vox, and The Fermata.
Barney Frank
Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage
March 24 at 7 p.m. (Doors open at 6:30)
First Parish Church, Cambridge, MA
$5 tickets on sale now
In an event co-sponsored by Harvard College Democrats and Harvard Book Store, the legendarily witty former Congressman from Massachusetts will read, sign, and discuss his new memoir. During his lengthy and colorful tenure in Washington, Frank experienced a number of watershed events: living through the AIDS crisis years of the ’80s; weighing in on the ’90s debates about big government in the Clinton era; helping to bring about the controversial and wide-ranging Dodd-Frank bill in 2010. In his book, Frank explains how a feisty, eloquent, and (initially) closeted kid from New Jersey became a respected and influential public figure.
David and Julianne Mehegan
Record of a Soldier in the Late War: The Confederate Memoir of John Wesley Bone
March 24 at 1 p.m.
Mildred F Sawyer Library, Suffolk University, Boston, MA
Free
North Carolina’s John Wesley Bone signed up to fight in the war between the states at the age of eighteen. Bone saw almost every aspect of the war and fought at Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, and Malvern Hill. He was wounded at the battle of Spotsylvania but eventually rejoined his regiment and was present at the Appomattox Courthouse when Lee surrendered. David Mehegan, a longtime Boston Globe book critic/editor and Arts Fuse contributor collaborated with his wife Julianne (Bone’s great-great granddaughter) on an annotated and illustrated edition of Bone’s vivid and compelling memoir of the war that redefined America forever.
Bob Katz
The Whistleblower: Rooting for the Ref in the High-Stakes World of College Basketball
March 25 at 7 p.m.
Brookline Booksmith, Coolidge Corner, Brookline MA
Free
Just in time for March Madness, journalist Bob Katz come up with a book that highlights the people on the court who doesn’t usually get much attention – the refs. Katz spent a season on the road with a set of referees – watching the games they officiated, eavesdropping on their locker room chat, learning about the challenges of the job. Katz is taking on a formidable challenge — encouraging fans to modulate their animus toward referees and cheer for the whistleblowing buzzkills in zebra stripes.
Susan Sered
Can’t Catch A Break: Gender, Jail, Drugs, and The Limits of Personal Responsibility
March 25 at 7 p.m.
Porter Square Books, Cambridge MA
Free
In this book, based on five years of in-depth fieldwork in Boston, Suffolk University Sociology professor Susan Sered and her co-author Maureen Norton-Hawk examine the lives of forty women who are grappling with ineffective programs, sexual abuse, incarceration, and discriminatory police. Sered will discuss the insidious, widespread influence of a reactionary attitude that these women should be blamed for their suffering because of something they have done, brought on as a consequence of their own choices and personalities.
James Penner
Timothy Leary: The Harvard Years
March 26 at 7 p.m.
Level 3 of The Harvard Coop, Cambridge MA
Free
Editor Penner will discuss the infamous Leary’s early research at Harvard University from 1960 to 1965. The reading will cover Leary’s scientific articles and scholarly pursuits, including his participation in the Harvard Psilocybin Project, the Concord Prison Project, and the “Good Friday Experiment,” which took place in Boston University’s Marsh Chapel.
David Shields
I Think You’re Totally Wrong: A Quarrel
March 30 at 7 p.m.
Brookline Booksmith, Coolidge Corner, MA
Free
The battle between a writer’s commitment to art or to life has long been a contentious issue. David Shields, author of the controversial and widely-debated polemic Reality Hunger, sat down with his former student Caleb Powell to argue about the value of juggling family responsibilities versus the demands of the writing life. For those expecting a rumble, be aware that Shields will come to Brookline to present his side of the book-length dialogue by himself.
— Matt Hanson
Tagged: Adam Ells, Bill-Marx, Jon Garelick, Jonathan Blumhofer, Matt Hanson, Merli V. Guerra, Noah Schaffer, peter-Walsh, Susan Miron