Through Sunday Jan. 29 

I was talking with Van Hughes, the punk-styled actor/singer who plays Johnny in “Green Day’s American Idiot,” Tuesday night after the opening, during the after-party at Salvatore’s. I was saying how the 90-minute show came hurtling at you, one song smashing into another, a whirlwind of tight choreography and that the idea not to have an intermission was a good one –just keep it careening. Hughes, who played the role on Broadway, too, nodded and said, “It’s geared toward a generation that’s geared toward over stimulus.”

Whether that over-stimulation (and ready acceptance of it) is good or bad or mixed is a topic for another day. But it works here, here being the Opera House where “American Idiot” remains through Sunday Jan. 29. It won two Tonys on Broadway last year. Hughes played Johnny on Broadway; one of the other leads, Scott J. Campbell, was also on Broadway as Tunny.

By now, the notion that rock ‘n’ roll can translate to theater is pretty much universally accepted – “Hair” (and its Diane Paulus revival last year), “Tommy,” “Spring Awakening.” What isn’t always accepted is how well that rock ‘n’ roll works. (I’ve seen “Jesus Christ Superstar” on the big stage with Ted Neely and thought it dreadful; I’ve also seen it done on a small stage by the now-defunct Boston Rock Opera group and seen it rock with humor and passion.) Rockers have to accept the fact that a theater experience is not a rock show per se. (I suppose theater people have to accept a certain decibel level, which is loud but not crushing.) Although, when Campbell came prancing through the after-party, he exclaimed, “It’s just a big ol’ rock show” when a fan praised the production.

Not exactly. But there’s not a whole lot of dialog and there is a lot of pop-punk music – Green Day’s “American Idiot”album from 2004, plus a few from the followup “21^st Century Breakdown,” a B-side and a new one. The theme is one of desperate youth, a timeless entry in the rock ‘n’ roll canon – go back to the Who’s “Quadrophenia”for one of the best long-form takes on that. “American Idiot” is that updated, brought to suburbia and people by guys that are angry, callow or bored. The show’s opening is a total blast, the song “American Idiot” spat out by the cast (and a six-piece band )on an industrial set with a couple of dozen TVs and, pre-song, a barrage of ready-for-war pronouncements from George W. Bush and various blips from pop culture 2004. Power chords! Agitation! Angst! Celebration! The book is by Green Day singer/guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong and director Michael Mayer (who also directed the stellar “Spring Awakening”).

Ongoing – Feb. 12

Is Pompeii the most famous doomed city of all time? That’s not something any city aspires to, but due to the abruptness of what happened – the eruption of Mount Vesuvius wiping out the city in one day, that day being August 24, 79 A.D.  – it may be just that. Of course, we’d not have known so much about this – to say nothing of seeing the artifacts from it – if not for an accidental discovery in 1749 and subsequent excavations. Some of those artifacts – from pots and pans to statues, gold bracelets and surgical instruments – are on display at the Museum of Science’s “A Day In Pompeii,” which is up through Feb. 12.
    I took in the exhibit recently.  Like most exhibits of this sort, you need to get our head in the zone. That means ignoring your fellow exhibit trawlers and focus on what you see and feel, time trip as it were. Two things that help: The exhibit has these time-lapse films, one a computer-generated flyover of the city’s buildings, showing marketplaces, homes, courtyards and public baths. The second recreates the volcano’s eruption and how the city was engulfed.
    The most poignant, and haunting images are human. Most of the citizens escaped. Tourists, too, we assume as Pompeii was a destination vacation spot for Roman nobles. But some of the less connected (or maybe less prescient) tried to seek shelter and then, when that didn’t seem to be working, flee, which didn’t work out so well, either They ran then came the wet scalding ash. And there were the slaves. They didn’t have much choice in the matter. They were doomed. So, yes, the exhibit does make you consider the glory days of the Roman Empire, which was glorious for the prosperous, not so much for the underclass. (Sound like anything you know in modern days?)

Ongoing – Feb. 5

The hostility that lurks underneath the veneer of civility, the anger the courses below the appearance of moderation. It’s what fuels “God of Carnage,” up at the Huntington’s BU Theatre through Feb. 5, and it’s perhaps despite what I just wrote it’s an hilarious, sometimes vicious, dark comedy. Chances are who you like and dislike will zig and zag throughout the 80-minute play.

     Here’s how it starts: Two couples walk into a nicely appointed, pristine room. It appears that Alan and Annette Raleigh’s 11-year-old son Benjamin has assaulted Michael and Veronica Novak’s son, loosens two of Henry’s teeth with a stick. They’re both smart modern couples. Alan (Brooks Ashmanskas) is a lawyer representing a pharmaceutical company. Annette (Christy Pusz), we’re not sure. Michael (Stephen Bogardus) owns a successful household supplies store; Veronica (Johanna Day) writes books about the strife in Darfur. The Raleighs have come in peace; the Novaks, too, want to make things right. Set up a meeting between the boys? But make sure Benjamin is sincere in his apology.  It’s the “spirit of reconciliation,” as one character says. Everyone wants this to work out. We, however, suspect it won’t just as we suspect that schoolyard fight won’t stay the focus of the play. It merely provides the kindling for the psychodrama to come. (And we never see any of the kids.)

     I can’t remember when I’ve laughed as much at the theater, you know, the genuine LOL kind, not just the “knowing” laughter when you recognize irony or something clever. I was far from alone. I haven’t been around this many people vicariously enjoying others’ discomfort in a long time. Among the pleasures: taking joy in the come-uppance of a near-constant cell phone addict, a Linda Blair-worthy display of surprise projectile vomiting (yes, the cinema’s favorite new toy come to theater!) a debate over the cruel fate of the Novaks' daughter's hamster, Nibbles. It’s a talky play, but there’s plenty of physicality, as director Daniel Goldstein sends his actors up and down the elaborate staircase and through fits of pent-up rage and destruction.

    Yes, there’s a more than little bit of “Virgina Woolf” in this play by Yazmina Reza’s (translated from French to English) – two bickering couples, arguments fueled by booze.

Fri. Jan. 27

Dave Wakeling formed the Beat in Birmingham England in the late 1970s. It was one of the leading bands of the ska-punk, two-tone movement – two-tone meaning blacks and whites playing in the same band. The Beat, called the English Beat in America for legal reasons, has broken up, re-formed, and taken different shapes over time. Several members went off to form Fine Young Cannibals.  Wakeling has long been based in California and it’s a US band he brings to Lupo's in Providence Friday jan. 27. . We’ve known Wakeling going back to when the Beat first hit Boston, around 1979; we saw them play a great show last year; and we caught up with him again for a chat about then and now. The English Beat play What struck us - 2007 in a club, then at Earth Fest -  was how fresh, how pertinent old material like “Save It for Later,” “Twist and Crawl,” “Mirror in the Bathroom” and others seemed now, and we asked him about it.

 Does the music change its meaning over time?

 ongoing 

   As Apple launched its iPad 2 in San Francisco, Blue Man Group unveiled its GiPad in Boston. Let’s hope Steve Jobs is not in litigation mode, or at least has developed a sense of humor.
    We were at press preview of the new show in early March. At the start, three GiPads – eight-by-five-foot electronic screens that resemble iPads – descended from the rafters at the Charles Playhouse, The three black-clad men in cobalt blue body-paint and skullcaps looked at them with curiosity.  
    Blue Man Group – which has been up at the Charles since 1995 - presented a 45-minute press performance, showcasing new or retooled material in their 105-minute show.
    The gigantic faux iPads made perfect sense. Blue Man Group has always done a lot with technology and communication. We live in an age of information overload and are awash in smart phones, tablets and apps. And so now are the Men.
   After the GiPads were lowered, the quizzical Blue Men touched the screens. A GiPad announced it would “do for reading what texting has done for driving.” It was time for “Synopsize Me!” (or “Twit Lit”) with Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Twain and Melville  rendered in Twitter-ese.
    “Moby-Dick” in `140 characters: “Where is that damn whale? Here whaley whaley! There he is! I think I've got him! Actually, no I don't That's off: He's coming towards the ship! I've got a bad feeling about”
     There was also on-screen give and take about texting and face-to-face communication. “Don’t you ever want to have a real conversation?” read one screen. “What do you mean by ‘real’?” read another. And, of course, there was yet another of modern life’s major online distractions, the cute cat video.

Friday Jan. 27

Last call!

tt was film as audience participation and interactive theater. It was a joyous community of misfits - on screen and out in the crowd. It was, in parts, a parody of '50s B-movie horror movies and the beginning of a new wave of outre entertainment. It was first a stage show in 1973 and then it was adapted by the original director Jim Sherman and actor-writer Richard O'Brien for the screen. It came out the the glam rock era and the emerging gay rights period and became the biggest midnight movie of all time. It is, of course, the omnisexual "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," with sweet transvestite Dr. Frank-N-Furter (originally Tim Curry), a scientist who has a few kinky things in store for his desperate surprise visitors Janet (originally Susan Sarandon) and Brad (originally Barry Bostwick). And of course there's Eddie (Meat Loaf). In my journalistic travels over the years, I've met and talked with Bostwick, Curry and Meat. Everyone was pretty proud of what they'd helped create.
  "Rocky Horror" is being revived in Cambridge at Club Oberon by Ryan Landry and his team of Gold Dust Orphans every Friday night through Dec. 2. We had a chat with Landry - famous for his movie parodies and mashups - "Willy Wanker and the Hershey Highway," "Silent Night of the Lambs" and "All About Christmas Eve" to name three. Landry   

JSink had an email chat with Landry.

JSInk: Why revive it now?
Landry: Why not?! That's like asking 'Why revive Shakespeare or "Porgy and Bess"? The musical score is a masterwork. I revived it because I wanted to share it again with others who feel the same way about the music that I do. I love everything about the music. When it comes to rock 'n' roll, I know my shit and I'm a pretty picky queen. So when I decide to revive something, baby, consider it revived! In short, if I love something I cannot turn my back on it. Let's just say I don't stay up nights wondering "Would 'Rent' have been a better choice?
Does it fit today's zeitgiest in some way?
It fits everybody's "zeitgeist." One zeitgeist fits all. It's an acid trip that every age can relate to. It's about the ups and downs of sexual freedom, the destruction of one's innocence, true or false. It asks the musical question, "Why do we exist if not for pleasure?" That pretty much sums up the human folly from Adam and Eve to Adam and Steve.

ongoing

Thank God for Martin Scorsese. Authentic movie magic is a rare event these days, but Scorsese conjures it several times in "Hugo." This is the story of a boy who watches through small windows as other people live their lives. It is about the struggles of creative people, of artists, of failures and renewed victories. It is Martin Scorsese’s life, transferred and transformed into a version of Brian Selznick’s book, "The Invention of Hugo Cabret."

Paris during the 1930′s. Hugo Cabret is the son of a clock maker (played well but briefly by Jude Law) who dies in a fire. Hugo’s uncle, a drunk and a clock maker himself, takes him in and teaches Hugo how to maintain the clock at a train station in Paris. When the uncle disappears without a word, Hugo continues to take care of the station’s clocks on his own, all the while living within the walls of the train station.

Scorsese and rock-star cinematographer Robert Richardson take 3D and create artful investigations of the train station, the gear infested walls and the streets of Paris, seen from atop the clock tower. Snowflakes fall into our laps as we watch Hugo walk, chilled to the bone, along the frozen sidewalk. We feel the depth of his home within the walls, as we sweep through narrow passages and up and down ladders. My favorite, though, is simply seeing Hugo watch the train inhabitants through the face of a clock. The clock itself is in the foreground, while Hugo’s watchful face is farther back in the depths of his world, the one nobody knows about. The effect of the 3D in this case is an addition to the storytelling, rather than a slick, though impressive, technique.

Saturdays

First, there is the smell.Familiar. Intoxicating. Some say ED-preventing.Then, just when you can barely take anymore, a smiling head pops through the door - “Anybody want some chocolate?”
 
Welcome to two-and-a-half hours of educational heaven, aka the Taste of Chocolate Workshop.
 
Run by the folks who have been bringing the legendary Mystery Café to Boston and beyond for years and hosted in the Elephant and Castle Pub in Downtown Boston (the same site as one of the most popular Mystery Café dinners), the Workshop tells you perhaps more than you ever wanted to know about chocolate (pretty much right down to the molecular level) and then lets you get into it up to your wrists (at least) through a hands-on truffle-making party.

ongoing

Leonardo DiCaprio, the preeminent actor of the under-40 generation, is stunning in "J. Edgar," Clint Eastwood’s biopic about the most famous (and important) man in the history of the F.B.I.DiCaprio of course plays the man himself, J. Edgar Hoover, who we follow from his earliest days at the Bureau until the day he dies.  Hoover’s innovations, like bringing fingerprinting and guns to the Bureau, are astonishing from today’s perspective. Armie Hammer inhabits Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s lifeling colleague and lover. Their brutally constricted relationship is one of the more captivating movie love affairs of recent years.

Eastwood and DiCaprio have created a man who we can appreciate, even respect, all the while maintaining an appropriate level of disgust. Writer Dustin Lance Black and Eastwood want us to see that what he did for the F.B.I. was both amazing and terrible. They succeed. The way DiCaprio plays him, it makes me think vaguely of Gary Oldman as Beethoven in Immortal Beloved. He is the wretched, driven man with genius and grave flaws, loved and hated with equal fervor. The kind of man who makes for a great story.

DiCaprio disappears underneath thick makeup, a gravely, subtle accent and a moderate stoop that all but obliterates the pretty boy from Titanic. Leo is far beyond the other under-40 actors in Hollywood, largely because he has no fear, but even more so because he seems to be insatiably interested in interesting characters.

Jan. 29 

You can get your Lemmy live and in person at Lowell's Tsongas Arena Jan. 29 as the 66-year-old king of speed leads the Motorhead assault on your eardrums. Or, you can get your Lemmy on your flat screen, with the  DVD, "Lemmy: 49% Motherf**ker, 51% Son Of A Bitch," which hit #1 on the Billboard music video chart. Both the DVD and Bluray disc landed in the top 10 best seling documentaries on Amazon.com. Hey, JSInk recommends you just Lemmy out and do both, catch the mighty steamroller of punk-metal-rock in concert and spend time on the couch with the DVD (and while you're at it pick up the new CD, "The World Is Yours," it's one of their best. It's also got some clever self-referential stuff. Old song titles pop up in new songs.)
   About 11 years ago, Lemmy Kilmister - Motorhead's founding and sole remaining member, bassist, singer and songwriter - and I were backstage at the (now defunct) Axis club. Thinking of metal as being a young man's game, I asked how long Lemmy thought he could keep slamming away at a mega-decibel volume, touring clubs. He looked at me quizzically. "What else am I gonna do? A fucking talk show?"
   Point taken. "We don't known when to quit/We don't have room/But we'll get over it," Lemmy barks in "Get Back in Line," on the new disc. In "Rock 'n' Roll Music," he sings, "Rock 'n' roll music is my religion/I don't need no miracle vision/I don't need no indecision ... do it til the day I die."
   I talked to Lemmy in 1998 when I was at the Globe. Once again, asked about perseverance. "The main secret of surviving," Lemmy posed, "is not stopping, right? It's just what I want to do. I don't want t do nothing else and I don't want to stop doing it, 'cause I'm enjoying it. Also, my facial presentation doesn't lend itself to a lot of other jobs." The survival thing also has to do with Lemmy's intake of drugs and drink, and while he's never shied away about taking things that make him go fast, he wrote one of the sharpest, most devastating anti-heroin essays I've ever read in the defunct Nerve magazine some years ago.
   Is Motorhead a metal band? Not exactly, but they're loved but many metalheads and every metal band worth its salt. Metallica even dressed up like four Lemmys and played his 50th birthday bash - "bullet belts, black shirts and trousers, shades and wigs on," Lemmy told me, "they looked more like me than I did, but then they had the tattoo on the wrong arm."

Tues. Dec. 31

Is Yo-Yo Ma the hardest working man in showbiz?

We reached Ma, the world’s most acclaimed cellist, by phone in Atlanta in early January, where he was slated to perform a concert of Bach suites in Athens and then another Dvorak’s Cello Concerto with the Atlanta Symphony. This came not long after he was honored at the Kennedy Center Awards in Washington. Soon, Ma would be jetting back to Cambridge home to rehearse for two concerts Tuesday January 31 with Goat Rodeo Sessions at House of Blues.

So, has he taken over the late James Brown’s sobriquet as that hardest-working man?

“Oh no, not at all, not by a long shot,”says Ma, 56, with a laugh. “I feel I’m more like Waldo. I’m in a lot of different places. So, if you don’t live my life and are looking at it from the outside, it looks like I just keep flopping down in a lot of different places. It feels as if it has no rhyme or reason, but there are always lots of reasons.”

The House of Blues concerts are with the bluegrass/classical quartet Ma formed last year with bassist Edgar Meyer, mandolin/banjo player Christ Thile (of Nickel Creek and the Punch Brothers) and fiddler Stuart Duncan. Crooked Still singer Aoife O'Donoovan will join them, as she did on last year's album, and sing two songs. (You'lll hear from her later in the piece.)

“As much as we think of this music as being tinged with bluegrass, it’s kind of genre-proof,” Ma said. “I like genre-proof music because you go deeply into something and you acquire all the necessary skills.”

This sort of cross-cultural music exploration – going beyond the Western classical tradition – is something Ma has been doing for years with his Silk Road Ensemble.

“When I was five I thought to myself my goal in life is I just want to understand things,” Ma said. “Because there were just so many things I didn’t understand and probably because of my background. I was born in France of Chinese parents who moved to America when I was seven. People would say different things that didn’t make sense, so I think I’ve spent my whole life wanting to listen to people and trying to make sense.”

Fri. Feb. 3

When you want to hear deep funk and psychedelia, where do you turn? To George Clinton, of course. (And George will be at Berklee in February doing a four-day session with students and concert Feb. 16.) But George isn't always around and at - well, ageless, it seems - he won't be around forever. So, how about ... Copenhagen? The Asteroids Galaxy Tour have been winning over audiences globally since 2007 with their unique brand of cutting edge, soulful, infectious pop. Nylon calls it: “A scintillating update to the Funkadelic sound” and Rolling Stone blurbs, that it's "a frothy retro-future party mix based in Sixties soul and Seventies funk, and buoyed by sci-fi synths and dub effects.” They begin a US tour at the end of January and land at the Middle East Downstairs Friday Feb. 3. Their new album, "Out of Frequency," drops Jan. 31.
   They have a signature sound that infuses indie-pop with neo-psychedelia, dance and retro-futuristic soul. Consider the slinky “Major," a seductive slab of '70s blaxploitation-esque horn stabs and edgy vocals that are the perfect balance of commanding and sweet. Title track “Out Of Frequency” highlights the soulful side of the band with its smoky nostalgic atmosphere and “Fantasy Friend Forever” has all the elements of an ecstatic psych-pop explosion with it’s thumpin’ booty-shaking beat and addictive hooks.