DANCE
Skybetter and Associates
Photo Credit: Christopher Duggan
Friday, 7 p.m.
Mills Gallery
551 Tremont St., Boston
Free, 617-426-5000
www.bcaonline.org
The “Movement at the Mills” series continues with this troupe, led by choreographer Sydney Skybetter, who describes his and his crew’s repertory as “rigorously formal.” Their goal: “to enliven an architecture of feeling that can only be articulated by arresting bodies in motion.” This performance will feature works commissioned by the Kennedy Center, plus a preview of a new work.
COMEDY
The Kids in the Hall
Friday, 7:30 and 10 p.m.
The Wilbur Theater
246 Tremont St., Boston
$57, 800-745-3000
www.ticketmaster.com
Last time the famed Canadian sketch comedy troupe came to Boston, we only got two Kids, but this time we get all five: Kevin McDonald, Scott Thompson, Mark McKinney, Dave Foley and Bruce McCulloch. They may have greyer hair and a bit more of a paunch than their 90’s selves, but their satirical edge, alternately silly and dark, remains as sharp as ever.
THEATER
Eugene Onegin
Photo Credit: Valeriy Myasnikov
Friday and Saturday
Cutler Majestic Theater
219 Tremont St., Boston
$35-$125, 617-824-8400
www.artsemerson.org
The Vakhtangov State Academic Theatre of Russia presents a staging of Pushkin’s epic poem, a classic of 19th century Russian literature that thoroughly explores, through the lens of its titular bourgeois hero, the ins and outs of life, death and everything in between. With 45 actors, this award-winning adaptation from one of Russia’s most lauded theater companies ought to be quite the spectacle.
Assassins
Thursday through Sunday
Boston Conservatory
31 Hemenway St., Boston
$15-$30, 617-912-9142
www.bostonconservatory.edu
Boston Conservatory presents composer Stephen Sondheim and writer John Weidman’s “Assassins”, a one-act musical that imagines what might happen if six notorious Presidential assassins in American history, from John Wilkes Booth to Lee Harvey Oswald, got the chance to meet up and share stories. A grim subject, yes, but a dark sense of humor pervades it all.
Gidion’s Knot
Thursday through June 22
Calderwood Pavilion
527 Tremont St., Boston
$35, 617-933-8600
www.bostontheatrescene.com
Bridge Repertory Theater of Boston presents this tense one-act play that focuses on a heated parent-teacher conference called over the suspension of a 5th grader, the titular Gidion. The audience is knocked back and forth like a tennis ball between teacher and parents as more information is revealed, showing just how fraught with nuance issues of blame, responsibility, and intentionality can be.
FESTIVALS
Cambridge River Festival
Saturday, 12-4 p.m.
Central Square
Along Mass. Ave. and Sidney St., Cambridge
Free, 617-349-4380
www.cambridgema.gov/arts
Moved this year from its normal location near Harvard Square due to construction, the Cambridge Arts Council’s 35th annual River Festival is as big as ever, drawing an enormous crowd to a smorgasbord of performers in multiple genres of music, comedy, dance, poetry, theater and storytelling, plus dozen of food and craft vendors, public art installations and kids’ activities.
MUSIC
Mozart and Salieri
Sunday through Wednesday
Center Makor
1845 Comm. Ave., Brighton
$30-$100, 617-610-9348
www.commonwealthlyrictheater.com
Commonwealth Lyric Theater presents a one-act opera about the rivalry in 18th century Vienna between exhaustingly prolific boy genius Mozart and the lesser Italian composer Antonio Salieri. The true extent of antagonism between the two men, who competed for cushy posts, is not clear, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming the stuff of classical music legend.
Carmina Burana Open Sing
Tuesday, 7 p.m.
Coolidge Corner Theater
290 Harvard St., Brookline
$15, 617–734–2500
www.metropolitanchorale.org
The Metropolitan Chorale of Brookline hosts this sing-along to one of the most epic pieces in classical choral music—Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana”, a work ubiquitous in media, both in serious and parody contexts, for its unparalleled expression of apocalyptic enormity—a sentiment, incidentally, that is still trending pretty strong even after the world failed to end in 2012.
FOOD
Phantom Gourmet Hot Dog Safari
Saturday, 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Along Lansdowne St., Boston
$10-$75, 617-586-1403
www.aceticket.com
Hot dogs have to be one of the least exotic foods out there, which makes this festival’s name pretty funny—then again, with so many different spins on the immortal frank, it may prove quite a culinary trip after all. Proceeds benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation—because at least someone’s health needs to improve after this is over.
ROCK SHOWS
Luscious Jackson
Saturday, 7 p.m.
The Paradise
967 Comm. Ave., Boston
$20, 18+, 800-745-3000
www.ticketmaster.com
Appearing on the eclectic pop scene of the post-Nirvana 90’s, Luscious Jackson were a funky all-female band with hip-hop leanings and deep sense of groove—it was a unique sound in a sea of bands trying especially hard to be unique. Always ahead of their time, they reunited in 2011 after a decade hiatus, the groove as sure as ever.
The Preatures
Thursday, 8:30 p.m.
T.T. the Bear’s Place
10 Brookline St., Cambridge
$12, 18+, 866-777-8932
www.ticketweb.com
This hip young band from Australia has a slick, savvy vibe, equal parts retro and contemporary, focused on the interplay between charismatic male and female vocalists Gideon Bensen and Izzi Manfredi. They’re already generating a nice swarm of buzz stateside—you should catch them now, ‘cause chances are next time they come they’ll be playing a venue twice as big.
Deafheaven
Sunday, 7:30 p.m.
The Sinclair
52 Church St., Cambridge
$16, 18+, 800-745-3000
www.ticketmaster.com
It’s bad to stare into the sun, but if you could somehow stare into the sun with your ears, we’re pretty sure you would hear something very similar to Deafheaven’s 2013 album “Sunbather”—an epic post-hardcore squall of noise and melody surging to seemingly endless emotional heights. Moody chaos for those without the acquired taste, cathartic bliss for those with it.
MOVIES
What is Cinema?
Friday through June 12
Brattle Theater
40 Brattle St., Cambridge
$8-$10, 617 876-6837
www.brattlefilm.org
Directed by Chuck Workman, this is a documentary on film itself, with contemporary and archival interviews with some of the greats in the form, answering the titular question not only in the sense of what film has been, but what it now is and could be. For each day of its run, the Brattle Theater will pair it with one of the films it analyzes.
ART
Lotta’s Trees
Friday through July 27
Gurari Collections
460 Harrison Ave., Boston
Free, 617-367-9800
www.gurari.com
It would be difficult to avoid the word “whimsical” in describing these drawings by Swedish artist Lotta Olssen, but there’s also a deeper, contemplative beauty to these fanciful “trees”, from which grow many sorts of leaves, some robust, some in autumn swoon, some almost totally bug-bitten, all inspired by the countryside in Olssen’s childhood home—a child’s impressions informed by adult wisdom.
Devon Govoni: A Wide Range of Emotions
Through August 1
Hess Gallery, Pine Manor College
400 Heath St., Chestnut Hill
Free, 617-731-7000
www.pmc.edu/hess-gallery
These paintings by Pine Manor College teacher and alumna Devon Govoni have a raw power, mixing the naive and the brutal, with a childlike sense of the surreal. It’s therefore not at all surprising that Govoni has a day job as an therapist—though raw and direct, her work displays a subtle sensitivity to the rhythms and dissonances of the emotional life.
