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.

ongoing –Sun. Feb. 5

John Logan’s “Red,” which is at the Wimberly Theatre at the Calderwood Pavilion through Super Bowl Sunday, is a 90-minute two-man play about, oh,, lots of things, even as it takes place in one room (art studio). It centers – oh, does it center - around abstract painter Mark Rothko and his angst as he hits the twilight of his career, specifically his bitter joy and explosive rage at being commissioned to paint a series of works to go up at a new Four Seasons restaurant in New York. It was 1958. And this was most prestigious, the grandest public commission an abstract expressionist had ever received and yet … well, it would also be background for a dining room in which blithe rich people would eat, people who Rothko felt he had no connection with or empathy for. Rothko’s works are huge slabs of red, maroon and black streaks. Not pretty, pretty dark.

^{_{Rothko – as brilliantly played by Thomas Derrah in the SpeakEasy’s production and directed by David Gammons – has a love/hate relationship with himself. And not a lot of empathy for anyone else. This isn’t part of the play, but there is a point near the end where you think Rothko’s self-hatred might explode (considering what we know about him). As the Guardian wrote in 2002, “Mark Rothko was found on the morning of February 25 1970, lying dead in a wine-dark sea of his own blood. He had cut very deep into his arms at the elbow, and the pool emanating from him on the floor of his studio measured 8ft x 6ft. That is, it was on the scale of his paintings. It was, to borrow the art critical language of the time, a colour field.”}}

_^“Red” won four Tonys in 2010, including the big one, best play. And it is tremendously involving, as Rothko invites a young art student Ken (Karl Baker Olson) in to be his assistant – not his friend, mind you. But over the course of time a relationship of sorts develops. The problem with Rothko – who says he wants his paintings to inspire a conversation with the viewers – is that he harbors contempt for most anyone who might approach his work, from galleries, to museums, to fans. And his involvement with himself – he’s a hermit, really, shut off from the world and shut up in his studio, scornful of natural light –is the horrible part about, let’s face it, a number of famous artists, whatever their field. One question “Red” raises is: Does talent and success isolate one from the world in which he ostensibly draws inspiration?

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?)

Sat. Feb. 4

“I think you can imagine why we're calling this show ‘Wild and Weird,”says Alloy Orchestra musical director and junk percussionist Ken Winokur. “There are some crazy films here.”

      Alloy Orchestra – the Boston trio consisting of Winokur, fellow junk percussionist Terry Donahue and Mission of Burma’s Roger Miller on keyboards – has been setting new music to old silent movies for two decades. “We feel we revitalized these movies with our modestly modern music, that it’s no longer this dusty old experience; it’s exciting and fun," says Winokur. It’s something he readily admits they “stumbled into,” when then-Coolidge Corner Theatre programmer David Kleiler suggested it.

     At the Somerville Theatre, Saturday Feb. 4, they’re playing music set to ten films, among them “The Acrobatic Fly,” “Artheme Swallows His Clarinet” and “Filmstudie.”

    “Over the last 20 years that we've been doing Alloy, I've watched every silent film I can get my hands on,” Winokur says, “searching for the perfect vehicle for Alloy's scores. I kept stumbling on shorts that were really odd, films that didn't feel like the typical melodramas or slapstick comedies. They were films that really appealed to me for their wild creativity - films that really pushed the boundaries of film conventions. And, interestingly, many of the films are quite early in the history of filmmaking.”

“Since the films are wildly different from one another Alloy's music is also really varied. ‘The Acrobatic Fly” is a bizarre film of a fly that has been glued to a table upside down and spins miniature dumbbells or a ball like a circus performer. It has a totally improvised mostly percussive soundtrack that sounds a lot like the music of the groundbreaking percussion composer Edgar Varese.

“Artheme Swallows His Clarinet’ is about guy who wanders around trying to remove a clarinet that has been rammed through his skull. It relies on the sounds of a squawking clarinet to illustrate the poor guy's difficult predicament, and some sweet clarinet melodies.

“Filmstudie,’ by Dada artist Hans Richter, has Terry and Roger doing a spacey improv while I recite DADA poetry by Richter's college, Hugo Ball.”

“The other films,” adds Winokur, “are more scripted and have music that reflects Alloy's typical styles - sometimes humorous, sometimes overly dramatic and usually filled with percussion and off-kilter melodies.”

The Alloys star has been on the ascent for years – they’ve composed scores for 22 full-length films and a myriad of shorts– but Winokur says they got a real boost in 2010, when Turner Classic Movies invited them to contribute an updated score for ‘Metropolis’ (Alloys first film) at the US premiere of the magnificent restoration of the classic sci-fi film, which took place in Los Angeles’ movie palace Grauman's Chinese Theater. “It was a big bump of name recognition,” Winokur says. 

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," dropped Tuesday. They are primarily sexy pixie singer Mette Lindberg and producer-keyboardist-songwriter Lars Iverson. Live, they're fleshed out by four other players including a horn section.

   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.