Comedy
‘Drunk Black History’
Derek Waters had an epiphany: Alcohol can make history more interesting and funnier. So in 2007 he created “Drunk History” by plying his friends with liquor, recording them as they channeled their inner Jon Meachams and having comedians re-enact the resulting stories. The series gained traction through Funny or Die’s website and YouTube channel, eventually moving to Comedy Central, where it remained until 2019.
As “Drunk History” was wrapping up, Brandon Collins started putting his own spin on the concept, hosting live events in New York that focused on the storytellers and their boozy recollections of overlooked moments in Black history. Since then he has grown “Drunk Black History” into a podcast as well as a touring show, with upcoming gigs in Austin, Boston and Detroit. But before Black History Month comes to a close, Collins will present a round of inebriated tales of African American greatness at Littlefield in Brooklyn, with the sports commentator Bomani Jones and the comedians Sarah Cooper, Charles McBee and Onika McLean.
Tickets are $25 in advance and $30 on the day of the show on the club’s website. SEAN L. McCARTHY
Music
Pop & Rock
Diana Ross
When Diana Ross presented Kendrick Lamar with the Grammy for song of the year earlier this month, the rapper’s triumph was tempered by reverence: He bowed to his elder and started his acceptance speech by declaring himself star-struck.
He’s not alone. Undeniable star power has kept Ross, now 80, in the spotlight for over six decades. In the 1960s, she was the buoyant lead voice of the Supremes, anchoring Motown classics like “You Can’t Hurry Love” and “Stop! In the Name of Love.” She recorded silky soul tunes and reintroduced herself as a movie star in the ’70s, then carried the torch of disco into the ’80s with her Chic-produced triumph “Diana.”
More than a dozen albums later, Ross continues to tour regularly. In 2015, she played the inaugural show for the rechristening of Kings Theater, and this weekend she returns there to celebrate the 10th anniversary. Tickets start at around $100 on the theater’s website. OLIVIA HORN
Classical
Zwilich’s Double Quartet
What’s better than one string quartet? Why two, of course.
Such enhanced string power fosters new relationships among the instruments and players, which will be on display at this concert by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center on Sunday. It starts contentiously with Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Double Quartet, which she wrote for the Chamber Music Society soon after she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for music. The work pairs two string quartets, which at first battle each other and then join forces, all in Zwilich’s spiny, vigorously dissonant style. As for the other pieces on the bill, Louis Spohr’s Double Quartet No. 1 in D minor picks a clear leader — the first violin of the first quartet — and offers a sprightly charm; Max Bruch’s posthumously published String Octet in B-flat major swaps a cello for a double bass; and in Olli Mustonen’s Nonet II, the double bass remains in the conversation, one full of singing melodies and luscious, loamy harmonies.
Tickets start at $35 on the society’s website. GABRIELLE FERRARI
Kids
Crankies Take New York!
Crankies may sound like an affliction that strikes children when they’re underfed, overstimulated or just plain bored. But crankies are actually an art form, and this weekend they should make young people smile.
Popular during the 19th century, these handmade narrative tools consist of a box containing two spools and an illustrated scroll. A storyteller or singer winds a crank that unfurls the scroll, providing pictures for a tale or ballad.
Hosted by Emily Schubert, the festival Crankies Take New York! will include performances at 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday that are geared more toward adolescents and grown-ups, and a Sunday master class just for adults. Saturday afternoon, however, is a kid-oriented extravaganza.
At 1 p.m. that day, young artists can participate in a make-your-own-crankie workshop, using cardboard and drawing materials. At 2 p.m., they can enjoy the “Witchy & Weird Crankie Show for Families,” in which Josh Kohn, Nasaria Suckoo and Randy Chollette will relate a Caymanian ghost story; the Boxcutter Collective will join Charming Disaster for a tale about a haunted lighthouse; and the Lantern Sisters will perform a spooky fiction about cats.
The children’s workshop is $5 with a ticket stub from any performance; it is free for adults accompanying young participants as well as members and their children. Show tickets start at $8. LAUREL GRAEBER
Film
Tales From The New Yorker
The New Yorker is celebrating its centennial this year, and this Film Forum series shows that the magazine has influenced movies for nearly that long. All the titles are, in one way or another, connected to its pages.
In “Adaptation” (screening on Friday and Saturday), derived by the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman from Susan Orlean’s book “The Orchid Thief,” which originated as an article in the magazine, the joke is that New Yorker stories aren’t obviously the stuff of exciting cinema. For “Shadow of a Doubt” (on Saturday and Tuesday), Alfred Hitchcock hired Thornton Wilder, fresh off “Our Town,” to write the screenplay. But later, as he told François Truffaut, the longtime New Yorker contributor Sally Benson was brought in to “inject some comedy highlights that would counterpoint the drama.” And shortly before it was published in English, Milan Kundera’s novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” was excerpted in the magazine. The screen version, which stars Daniel Day-Lewis, Lena Olin and Juliette Binoche, plays on Saturday and Monday. BEN KENIGSBERG
Theater
Last Chance
‘English’
The winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for drama, Sanaz Toossi’s quiet comedy is set in an Iranian classroom, where a group of adults is learning English from a teacher who once lived abroad, and dreaming of inhabiting different lives. Knud Adams, who staged the exquisite Off Broadway production in 2022, directs the original cast. Read the review.
Critic’s Pick
‘Gypsy’
Grabbing the baton first handed off by Ethel Merman, Audra McDonald plays the formidable Momma Rose in the fifth Broadway revival of Arthur Laurents, Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim’s exalted 1959 musical about a vaudeville stage mother and her daughters: June, the favorite child, and Louise, who becomes the burlesque stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. Directed by George C. Wolfe, with choreography by Camille A. Brown, the cast includes Danny Burstein, Joy Woods, Jordan Tyson and Lesli Margherita. Read the review.
Critic’s Pick
‘Hell’s Kitchen’
Alicia Keys’s own coming-of-age is the inspiration for this jukebox musical, which won two Tonys. Studded with Keys’s songs, including “Girl on Fire,” “Fallin’” and “Empire State of Mind,” it’s the story of a 17-year-old girl (Maleah Joi Moon, last year’s winner for best actress) in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, growing into an artist. Directed by Michael Greif, the show has a book by Kristoffer Diaz and choreography by Camille A. Brown. Read the review.
Critic’s Pick
‘Maybe Happy Ending’
Robot neighbors in Seoul, nearing obsolescence, tumble into odd-couple friendship in this wistfully romantic charmer of a musical comedy by Will Aronson and Hue Park, starring Darren Criss and Helen J Shen. Michael Arden (“Parade”) directs. Read the review.
Art
Critic’s Pick
‘Harmony & Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910-1930’
Sprawling, mood-lifting and masterpiece-studded, this exhibition confers a thrilling sharpness on a movement that has long been a blur. This first in-depth look at Orphism brings together about 80 works by 26 artists that mostly date to the enchanted years preceding World War I, an upbeat time when inventions ranging from incandescent lightbulbs to the first cars and airplanes were leading artists to rethink their mission. You may think that Picasso and Braque had already answered the question adequately through their Cubist canvases. But no, not to the Orphists, who sought to infuse the dun-hued planes of cubism with rapturous color. Read the review.
‘Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy’
This reconstruction of a fair held in Hamburg, Germany, in the summer of 1987 — complete with carnival rides decorated by artists such as Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat, which are unfortunately cordoned off — reserves its greatest pleasures for visitors with more art-historical tastes. Crammed with informative wall texts, this event — or is it an exhibition? — documents, but barely recreates, a long-lost cultural experiment that “blurred the lines between art and play.” Thirty-seven years later, at the Shed, those lines stay largely well defined. Most everything stays ensconced on the “art” side. The whole thing feels weirdly peaceful, hardly the midway I expected. Read the review.
Critic’s Pick
‘Ceremonies Out of the Air: Ralph Lemon’
Africa is unmistakably among the few direct references to global culture in this show, which covers Lemon’s work from roughly the past two decades. But it’s his encounters with American culture that really seem to grip him, as is evident in a recent and continuing series of large ink-and-paint drawings. There’s also a quick picker-upper in his body-and-mind-blaster of a performance video called “Rant (redux).” In it, eight stellar dancers leap, dive, writhe and vogue to a high-decibel score by the artist Kevin Beasley, while Lemon himself, the work’s choreographer, shout-reads words by Angela Davis and other liberationist thinkers. Read the review.
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