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 – 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?)

Monday March 5

On sale Thursday Feb. 9! Meryl Streep and Jonathan Demme have won ‘em, and on Monday March 5 actor Viggo Mortensen (“A Dangerous Method,” “The Road,” “Appaloosa,” “A History of Violence” and “Eastern Promises,” among others) makes his way to Brookline to accept the Coolidge Corner Theatre’s 9^th annual Coolidge Award. Which, not to get all parochial about this, is a pretty big deal, to have internationally acclaimed film people come to our little burg – yes, we live in Coolidge Corner, too – to both be honored and honor the Coolidge for what it’s done over the years to keep indy cinema alive and vital, something even more vital as the age of videotape moved to videodisc and then downloads.

Viggo, who stars in Walter Salles adaptation of Kerouac’s “On the Road” this summer, is going to have a busy day. There’s a TBA film screening at noon followed by a Q/A with the actor ($20). At 6 pm, there’s a VIP reception with Viggo and other special guests (another TBA situation, tickets $250) and at 8, it’s “An Evening with Viggo Mortensen,” meaning an in-depth conversation about his life and career ($50).

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.

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.