National Post View: China gets greedy

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The loneliest number? Chinas one-child policy. The loneliest number? Chinas one-child policy. At 1.1 billion and counting, China has more people than any nation on earth.. hahaha! youre.	Launch of the Fix the Debt Campaign: July 17th, 2012. Launch of the Fix the Debt Campaign: July 17th, 2012. Launch of the Fix the Debt Campaign: July 17th, 2012 - National Press.. Your system had.	NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake speaks at. NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake speaks at. AFTER REICHSTAG FIRE 9/11. View reply Loading... When China hosted the Olympics.	US hides real debt, in worse shape than Greece. US hides real debt, in worse shape than Greece. The US national debt is twenty times higher than is officially. RT is the first news channel to.
Margaret Thatcher death: We look at her war with the. Margaret Thatcher death: We look at her war with the. Job losses and pit closures sparked the dispute, but National Union of. View all 2 replies.	Debt Crisis 2015 United States of America Explained. Debt Crisis 2015 United States of America Explained. Demogorgon47 : And when the global financial collapse happens revolution. because a few.	The International Debt Crisis - YouTube The International Debt Crisis - YouTube The Role of China in the Debt Crisis. Youtube wouldnt allow me to post the link.	What Are the Dangers of Too Much Debt? - YouTube What Are the Dangers of Too Much Debt? - YouTube is that why China is buying up real assets in the US?.. There is no chance of them getting an.
Obama says adding $4 trillion to debt is unpatriotic. Obama says adding $4 trillion to debt is unpatriotic. Ever since Obama has been in office, the national debt has double, it is.. When are you.	Banned US Commercial about the national debt. Banned US Commercial about the national debt. A new television ad about the U.S. national debt produced by. Chinas coming to get you.	Chinese Military Parade-milions marching. Chinese Military Parade-milions marching. In December 1982, the fifth National Peoples Congress revised the State. In actual practice.	China exports air pollution to the US - YouTube China exports air pollution to the US - YouTube China is exporting more than just cheap products to the US. theyre also exporting their.

The Listings

Movies A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy movies playing this weekend in New York City. * denotes a highly recommended film. Ratings and running times are in parentheses. Full reviews of all current releases, movie trailers, showtimes and tickets: nytimes.com/movies. Now Playing BEING JULIA Starring Annette Bening. Directed by Istvan Szabo (R, 103 minutes). A flimsy frame surrounding a marvelous performance. As Julia Lambert, an aging star of the prewar London stage, Ms. Bening swoops from melodrama to farce with splendid hauteur and touching fragility. Julia, whose marriage to her long-time director (Jeremy Irons) has long been a primarily professional attachment, falls into an affair with Tom Fennel (Shaun Evans), a sweet-faced, penniless American who turns out to be a callow adventurer. In tracing the phases of her affair -- from rapture to heartbreak to revenge -- the film is too busy and plodding to develop an emotional core, and Mr. Evans has all the sexual magnetism of a boiled potato. The rest of the cast supports Ms. Bening gallantly, and she lifts the movie from the costume-drama doldrums by sheer dazzling force of will. A. O. SCOTT A DIRTY SHAME Starring Tracey Ullman and Johnny Knoxville. Written and directed by John Waters (NC-17, 89 minutes). A crashing bore is more like it. Mr. Waterss latest movie once again pits unruly, life-affirming sex maniacs against uptight prudes. The line between them is blurry: the heroine, Sylvia Stickles (Ms. Ullman), starts out as a repressed suburban mother and, after suffering a concussion, goes on a libidinous rampage. She joins a sex-addict cult (led by Mr. Knoxville), which is devoted to discovering a hitherto undreamed-of kink that will unlock the erotic secrets of the universe. The movie sounds like more fun than it is, but Mr. Waters, after more than 35 years of moviemaking, remains a determined amateur. If his jokes were still funny, or his attitudes still provocative, the crudeness of the picture would be less bothersome, but the net effect of all the energetic naughtiness is like that of being in a room full of 8-year-old boys who have just learned some new swear words. SCOTT THE FORGOTTEN Starring Julianne Moore, Dominic West and Gary Sinise. Directed by Joseph Ruben (PG-13, 100 minutes). In this preposterous thriller, a pseudo-spiritual, mumbo-jumbo, sciencefiction-inflected mess, Mr. Ruben does not just fail to tap into the talent of his luminous star, Ms. Moore; he barely gets her attention. As Telly, a Brooklyn mother in mourning, Ms. Moore delivers a performance that has all the emotional commitment of a bored kid playing with a light switch. Even after Telly discovers that all the images of her dead son have been erased from the photographs scattered around her home, Ms. Moore keeps flipping the switch: sad, not sad; sad, not sad. Initially, the disappearing images are explained away by Tellys creepy psychiatrist, Dr. Munce (Mr. Sinise), who insists that the boy never existed and that after suffering a miscarriage, she invented him out of thin air. Telly finds this hard to believe (she isnt the only one) and embarks on a Search for the Truth involving cheap thrills, emotional uplift and some nonsense about the eternal mother. MANOHLA DARGIS FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS Starring Billy Bob Thornton. Directed by Peter Berg (PG-13, 105 minutes). Mr. Berg directs this Texas high school football extravaganze in a tough, gritty style that gives it an unusually fine and vivid sense of place. The place in question is Odessa, a West Texas town where football is more than just an obsession; its the foundation of the social order and the source of lifes meaning. The film, based on H. G. Bissingers 1990 book of reportage, follows a handful of senior athletes and their put-upon coach (Mr. Thornton) through an anxious season. The town wants a state championship, and in trying to satisfy this expectation the young men face extraordinary risks and sacrifices. Conventional as it is, Friday Night Lights is both rousing and honest, and it features good performances from Derek Luke, as the teams star runner, and Lucas Black as its anxious quarterback. SCOTT * I (heart) HUCKABEES Starring Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Huppert, Jude Law, Jason Schwartzman and Lily Tomlin. Directed by David O. Russell (R, 105 minutes). This high-wire comedy captures liberal-left despair with astonishingly good humor: its Fahrenheit 9/11 for the screwball set. Choc-a-block with strange bedfellows -- Mr. Hoffman and Ms. Tomlin play a hot-and-heavy married couple, Mr. Schwartzman gets his groove on with Ms. Huppert -- the film is a snort-out-loud-funny master class of controlled chaos. In this topsy-turvy world, where yes is the new corporate no and businesses sponsor environmental causes while bulldozing over Ranger Rick, a pair of existential detectives sift through a clients trash to solve the riddle of his malaise. Like Mr. Russell, they gladly risk foolishness to plunge into the muck of human existence. The film is loud, messy, aggressively in your face and generally played for the back row in the theater, and it doesnt offer up solutions, tender any comfort or rejoice in the triumph of the human spirit. All we can do, says Mr. Russell, is keep pushing the rock back uphill. Thats kind of a bummer, but in its passion, energy and go-for-broke daring, in its faith in the possibility of human connection (if not its probability), I Huckabees provides its own reason for hope. DARGIS LADDER 49 Starring Joaquin Phoenix and John Travolta. Directed by Jay Russell (PG-13, 115 minutes). In Ladder 49 fires smolder and rage and generally act in a far more lively and persuasive fashion than any of the men struggling to put them out. A sob story, the film stars Mr. Phoenix as Jack Morrison, a once and future hero who battles untold infernos, saves untold lives and quaffs untold draft beers to become a firemans fireman, the kind who fearlessly enters burning buildings and puts everything at risk, including a picture-perfect family and a self so radically unexamined, so thin and vaporous, its a wonder it doesnt drift off the screen along with all the billows of enveloping smoke. Pegged as a true-to-life story, one meant to put a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye, this is essentially a male weepy about strong, simple men and the strong, simple women behind them, and as such its platitudinous rubbish. What makes this nonsense more galling than usual is that while Ladder 49 might have started out as a heartfelt attempt to honor those in the line of literal fire, it weighs in as an attempt to exploit their post-Sept. 11 symbolism. DARGIS * THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES Starring Gael García Bernal and Rodrigo de la Serna. Directed by Walter Salles (R, 126 minutes; in Spanish, with English subtitles). In 1952 Alberto Granado, a 29-year-old chemist, and his pal Ernesto Guevara, a 23-year-old medical student, set out from Buenos Aires to explore South America. Their journey might have vanished into private recollection were it not for the fact that Ernesto went on to become Che, political idol, revolutionary martyr and pillar of the T-shirt industry. Mr. Salless film, based on Granado and Guevaras notebooks, is partly a political coming-of-age story in which Ernesto (Mr. Bernal) awakens to the injustice that plagues the continent. But the movie is also a rambunctious buddy picture (thanks in part to Mr. de la Sernas high-spirited portrayal of the Falstaffian Granado), a breathtaking travelogue and an unusual love story. The love in question is Ernestos sensual and spiritual connection to the continent itself, beautifully communicated through Eric Gautiers sublime cinematography. Mr. Bernals soulful performance is sure to enhance his reputation as one of the most magnetic young actors around, but the real stars of the movie are the rugged Chilean highlands, the peaks of the Andes and the misty banks of the Peruvian Amazon. SCOTT RAISE YOUR VOICE Starring Hilary Duff. Directed by Sean McNamara (PG, 97 minutes). Ms. Duff, as Terri Fletcher, redefines the word pep. But when tragedy strikes her family, Terri loses her voice (her great joy is singing) and her love of life. The only thing that might snap her out of it would be attending a very hard to get into summer-music program in Los Angeles, but her hardheaded father (David Keith) objects. It takes deception and the help of a free-spirited aunt (Rebecca De Mornay) to get her there. Predictably, the big city lives up to its bad reputation at first, but chances are good that Terri will find her voice again, teach her parents a lesson and get the guy (Oliver James). Thinking adults wont find much of Raise Your Voice worth their time, but this piece of fluffs infectious high spirits will appeal to young moviegoers without conveying any sinister messages, beyond the suggestion that soul-crushing grief can be cured in the short space of a summer. ANITA GATES SHALL WE DANCE? Starring Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez and Susan Sarandon. Directed by Peter Chelsom (PG-13, 106 minutes). This Americanization of a popular 1996 Japanese film is an old-fashioned feel-good fantasy that piles on the euphoria. The movie returns Mr. Gere to the site of his hoofing triumph in Chicago. His character is a mild-mannered estate lawyer, happily married with two teenage children, who on an impulse starts taking evening ballroom dancing classes. As he evolves from bland suburban frog into suave dance-floor prince, he regains his faltering zest for life and refreshes his marriage (to Ms. Sarandon). Ms. Lopez, in full sizzle, is the dedicated instructor who teaches him that ballroom dancing, as she puts it, is a vertical expression of a horizontal wish. STEPHEN HOLDEN SHARK TALE With the voices of Will Smith, Robert De Niro, Renée Zellweger, Jack Black and Angelina Jolie. Directed by Vicky Jenson, Bibo Bergeron and Rob Letterman (PG, 92 minutes). Swimming in the lucrative wake of Finding Nemo, DreamWorkss foray into computer-generated underwater animation is a rambunctious, reasonably amusing pop confection. Where Pixar goes for sublimity and sincerity, DreamWorks continues to prefer a jokey, referential style, full of bright colors, almost-offensive ethnic stereotypes, big-name movie stars and easy cultural references that sail over the heads of the children in the audience and splatter in their parents faces. Mr. Smith, as charming in fins and scales as in the flesh, is Oscar, a fish who becomes a celebrity after falsely taking credit for killing a mobbed-up shark. Mr. Black is the dead sharks vegetarian brother, Mr. De Niro is the shark capo, and Ms. Zellweger and Ms. Jolie are competing romantic interests, the latter a slinky, pouty fish fatale. SCOTT SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW Starring Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie and Giovanni Ribisi. Written and directed by Kerry Conran (PG, 107 minutes). In this movies elegant murk, Mr. Law and Ms. Paltrow slip into comic-book archetypes of the dashing aviator and the intrepid girl reporter with supreme confidence. When Mr. Conrans remarkable filmmaking debut remembers that storytelling and characters matter more than design and special effects, the movie charms as well as impresses. If nothing else, it is a landmark of computer-generated images, with actors cavorting through an entirely synthetic, retro-styled future world that fuses Art Deco, Futurism, Fritz Langs Metropolis and the spirit of the 1939 Worlds Fair into an all-purpose eve-of-World War II environment extrapolated into a science-fiction limbo. But its visual elegance comes at a price. Its ethereal evocation of a pulp-fiction future-past eclipses almost any other sci-fi franchise in subtlety and imagination, but shadowy washed-out color is a far cry from the robust hues of a movie like Raiders of the Lost Ark. HOLDEN STAGE BEAUTY Starring Billy Crudup and Claire Danes. Directed by Richard Eyre (R, 105 minutes). A 17th-century Star Is Born, though with interestingly convoluted sexual politics and a provocative historical thesis. Mr. Crudup is Ned Kynaston, one of the biggest stars of the London stage, who specializes in playing Shakespearean heroines. Ms. Danes is Maria, his loyal, ambitious dresser, who, with the help of the kings mistress, ends the long ban on female performers, thus destroying Neds career. In spite of a sludgy Sunday-brunch score and a weak performance from Ms. Danes, the film explores its period with rare precision and with a lively sense of intellectual curiosity. Much of this is squandered, though, in a flat and conventional final act that turns Ned and Maria into the inventors of Method acting and, recoiling from its earlier subtlety, celebrates a world where men are men and women are women. SCOTT * TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE With the voices of Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Directed by Mr. Parker (R, 98 minutes). Without question the finest R-rated puppet action-musical of the past decade. Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone, the creators of South Park, apply their foulmouthed ingenuity to blow-em-up cinema and current geopolitics. Saddam Hussein, a key character in the South Park movie, has been replaced by Kim Jong Il, a bespectacled blend of Eric Cartman and Professor Chaos, who plots to arm terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. If that doesnt sound like a laughing matter, fear not: there are plenty of profane, catchy songs and giddily offensive jokes to keep you amused. But like any good satire, this film has a distinct moral point of view. The members of Team America, the square-jawed action heroes who take on Kim and his supporting cast of left-wing Hollywood stooges, may blow up a lot of stuff, but they do it by accident, not by design. And while the movie is happy to mock American bluster, it also expresses a blunt, uncynical patriotism. SCOTT * VERA DRAKE Starring Imelda Staunton and Phil Davis. Written and directed by Mike Leigh (R, 125 minutes). In this new film about a back-street abortionist, the moment invariably comes when the title character asks her client to bring her some boiling water. Veras affect is so cozy, as nurturing as a maternal bosom, that its always somewhat of a surprise when you remember that the water isnt for a warming cup of tea, but for the solution she dispenses. Thats very much to Mr. Leighs point since Vera wants nothing so much as to support the frightened, the dismayed and the impoverished who seek her help, who come to this tender dumpling of a woman because they believe they have no other choice. Here, the politics of abortion isnt a position that individuals can take and leave at will; its what drives women underground to someone like Vera, with her clucks and smiles, her bar of lye soap and all that hot water. Set in London in 1950, and suffused with humanity rather than dogma, the film is easily Mr. Leighs best work in a decade. DARGIS Rock/Pop A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy rock and popconcerts in the New York metropolitan region this weekend. * denotes a highly recommended concert. Full reviews of recent rock and pop performances: nytimes.com/music. * AGAINST ME!/BLOOD BROTHERS, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, near the Bowery, Lower East Side, (212) 533-2111. An appealing double-bill starring two different bands of punk-rock eccentrics. Against Me!, from Gainesville, Fla., specializes in roaring, galloping folk songs. And the Blood Brothers, from Seattle, compose screaming (but sly) tantrums; their new album is Crimes (V2), which includes a jagged, wriggly ballad called, Peacocks Skeleton With Crooked Feathers; for maximum enjoyment, bring a lyric sheet to the show and follow along. Tonight at 8, with True North; tickets are $12. KELEFA SANNEH BROTHERS PAST, the Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard Street, TriBeCa, (212) 219-3006. A jam band that leans toward jazz-rock, the Brothers Past thrive on odd meters and sudden shifts from vamp to vamp. Tomorrow night at 11:30; tickets are $10 in advance, $12 tomorrow. JON PARELES * DANU, Satalla, 37 West 26th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-1155. Danu is an Irish traditional band that plays old-fashioned acoustic instruments, with a repertory that reaches from fierce fiddle reels to pensive ballads. Its arrangements show an ear for texture that allows for both drive and delicacy. Tonight at 7:30; admission is $18. PARELES * DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE, Roseland Ballroom, 239 West 52nd Street, Manhattan, (212) 777-6800. This indie-rock band was responsible for one of 2003s best albums, Translatanticism (Barsuk), which contained 11 impeccable songs about lovers just out of reach. The guitarist and producer Chris Walla stripped the music down so you could hear every hum and sigh, and Ben Gibbard peeled back layers as he sang, often starting with a vivid metaphor and ending with a memorable plea. The live show is a bit louder and messier than the pristine album -- Mr. Gibbard doesnt miss a beat, but he does sometimes miss the microphone. Expect him to sound lovely, regardless. Tonight at 6:45, with Pretty Girls Make Graves; tickets are $21 in advance, $24 tonight. SANNEH ELYSIAN FIELDS, Tonic, 107 Norfolk Street, near Delancey Street, Lower East Side, (212) 358-7503. Elysian Fields plays languid songs that sound best in a late-night haze, as Jennifer Charless breathy voice hints at decadence and vulnerability while Oren Bloedow wraps the songs in slinky, deadpan guitar. Tonight at midnight; admission is $5. PARELES VICENTE FERNANDEZ, Theater at Madison Square Garden, 33rd Street and Seventh Avenue, Manhattan, (212) 465-6741. In Mexico, Vicente Fernandez is a household name, a television star who owes his fame to songs about loving, crying and suffering. With his dramatic tenor voice and his wall-shaking vibrato, Mr. Fernandez brings out all the melodrama of Mexican ranchera songs, which bounce and laugh as they detail vast heartaches. Tomorrow night at 8; tickets are $54.50 to $139.50. PARELES GALACTIC, Stone Pony, 913 Ocean Avenue, Asbury Park, N.J., (732) 502-0600 and Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, at 15th Street, Union Square, (212) 777-6800. Galactic carries on the second-line groove tradition of its hometown, New Orleans, with easy-rolling funk tunes that add a horn section to the syncopated subtleties of the Meters. At the Stone Pony tonight at 8; tickets are $18 in advance, $20 at the door. At Irving Plaza tomorrow night at 8, with Scratch (formerly of the Roots) opening, and Sunday night at 8 with Mike Doughty and JJ Grey opening; tickets are $25. PARELES * AL GREEN,Westbury Music Fair, 960 Brush Hollow Road, Westbury, N.Y. (516) 334-0800, and Beacon Theater, 2124 Broadway, at 74th Street, (212) 496-7070. Soul oldies meet gospel testifying in Al Greens highly unpredictable performances. He sings, he preaches, he dances, he tosses roses to the ladies. He jumps in and out of songs and teases the crowd with his timing and his whims. Sometimes he makes songs like Lets Stay Together sound like aching, immediate pleas, and sometimes the audience ends up singing more than he does, but hes never less than charismatic. Stephanie Mills, who moved between Broadway (The Wiz) and pop-soul hits in the 1970s and 80s, opens at Westbury. But at the Beacon, Mr. Green is paired with another great gospel-steeped singer: Mavis Staples, whose husky voice holds both reverence and earthly sensuality. Her current album, Have a Little Faith (Alligator), is her first in a decade, and it shows she has held on to every bit of her sultry fervor. At Westbury tonight at 8; tickets are $56.50. At the Beacon tomorrow night at 8; tickets are $45 to $85. PARELES * JUNIOR BOYS, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, near the Bowery, Lower East Side, (212) 533-2111; Other Music, 15 East 4th Street, East Village, (212) 477-8150. Domino Records just reissued this Canadian groups suave debut album, Last Exit, which synthesizes different iterations of electonica: dubby microhouse, old-fashioned new wave, futuristic R & B. On the title track, Jeremy Greenspan sighs woe-is-us lyrics over rippling, hiccupping rhythms. And during the last song, When Im Not Around, as a saxophone materializes, unexpectedly but gently, to nudge the CD toward its conclusion. Tomorrow night at the Bowery Ballroom at 10, opening for the appealing local guitar-tronica duo Ratatat and the fiddly German electro-pop act Mouse on Mars; tickets are $14. Sunday evening at Other Music at 7; admission is free. SANNEH * KANDA BONGO MAN, Satalla, 37 West 26th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-1155. Kanda Bongo Man is one of the suavest singers in Congolese pop, where suavity is king. He helped turn the lilting guitar rumbas of soukous into the even more upbeat style called kwassa kwassa, crooning over a skein of luminous guitars. Tomorrow night at midnight; admission is $25. PARELES THE LAST OF THE INTERNATIONAL PLAYBOYS/MAIN SQUEEZE ORCHESTRA, Fez (downstairs at the Time Cafe), 380 Lafayette Street, at Great Jones Street, East Village, (212) 533-2680. Accordions and more accordions are on the bill as the Last of the International Playboys, a loungey, eclectic nine-piece band led by Walter Kuehr on accordion and bassoon, is reinforced by his other project: the 18-woman, 18-accordion Main Squeeze Orchestra, which he conducts. Its Mr. Kuehrs birthday. Tomorrow night at 7; tickets are $12 in advance, $15 tomorrow. PARELES * LITTLE BRAZIL, Pianos, 158 Ludlow Street, near Rivington Street, Lower East Side, (212) 505-3733. A band led by Landon Hedges, an Omaha singer-songwriter who has spent time with both Desaparecidos and the Good Life. Mr. Hedges has a skewed, boyish warble, which pulls his sweet and tuneful indie-rock songs slightly askew; Now, from the groups forthcoming debut album (on the Seattle-based Mt. Fuji Records), has a simple chord progression, a swaying 6/8 beat and lots of sighing-then-screaming mood changes; by the time youre finished figuring out whether you like it, the songs already over -- and, more likely than not, already stuck in your head. Tonight at 8:30; tickets are $8. SANNEH * LYLE LOVETT/JOHN HIATT/JOE ELY/GUY CLARK, Beacon Theater, 2124 Broadway at 74th Street, (212) 496-7070. Three Texans and a ringer from Indiana share this bill of smart, down-home songwriters. Lyle Lovett uses the ache in his voice to sound utterly heartfelt even when his songs grow wry and absurd, while his limber band covers the Texas spectrum from swing to honky-tonk to gospel. John Hiatt, who was born in Indianapolis, sings about loyalty, love and the full range of human eccentricity with his deep-diving baritone and unlikely rhymes. Joe Elys songs encompass a West Texas of cowboys and cockfights, honky-tonks and wide-open spaces, country and rockabilly and rhythm-and-blues, and Guy Clark writes cozy, aphoristic songs about the pleasures of friendship, romance and home-grown tomatoes. Tonight at 8; tickets are $38.50 to $78.50. PARELES * PHIL ROY, Satalla, 37 West 26th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-1155. The first words on Phil Roys most recent album, Issues + Options (Or Music) are, Ive got a feeling somethings wrong. An undercurrent of raw melancholy runs through his songs, making him a kindred spirit to brooding types like Leonard Cohen, John Martyn and Peter Gabriel. He often sings in a thoughtful tenor with a backup of folky guitars, and occasionally he rasps like a haggard rocker, but hes always full of clear-eyed compassion. Tomorrow night at 7:30; admission is $15. PARELES ROGER SANCHEZ, Crobar, 530 West 28th Street, Chelsea, (212) 629-9000. Mr. Sanchez, a local D.J. and producer, helped invent contemporary New York dance music, occasionally adding Latin rhythms to his clattering house-inspired beats. Ever since his 2002 award for a No Doubt remix, hes invariably called a Grammy-winning D.J., although that title seems like faint praise. This past August he issued Release Yourself Vol. 3 (Stealth), an appealing double-disc mix that starts with gauzy, disco-influenced mood music and ends with Carl Kennedys buoyant and precise house track, The Love You Bring Me. Tomorrow night after 10; tickets are $20 in advance, more at the door. SANNEH THE SECTION QUARTET, Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston Street, at Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, (212) 260-4700. The Section Quartet is a string quartet that plays rock events like the Coachella Festival; for this show, its performing its transcriptions of Radioheads album OK Computer. Tonight at 11; admission is $10. PARELES GENO SITSON, Aaron Davis Hall, City College, West 135th Street and Convent Avenue, Hamilton Heights, (212) 650-6900. Geno Sitson, a New Yorker from Cameroon, sings modal songs that repatriate African-influenced jazz. Also, using his body for percussion, he performs vocal solos that evoke all sorts of voices, instruments and natural sounds, as if Bobby McFerrin had a brother steeped in African polyphony. Tomorrow at 2; admission is free, but reservations are required. PARELES TOWER OF POWER, B. B. King Blues Club and Grill, 243 West 42nd Street, Times Square, (212) 997-4144. A funk band from Oakland, Calif., thats renowned for the punch of its horn section, Tower of Power has persevered since the 1970s, concentrating less on songs (though it had moderate hits with So Very Hard to Go and Dont Change Horses in the early 1970s) than on a danceable groove. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8 and 10:30; tickets are $25.50 in advance, $30 the day of the show. PARELES YONDER MOUNTAIN STRING BAND, Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, at 15th Street, Manhattan, (212) 777-6800. Yonder Mountain String Band, from Colorado, carries a traditionalist bluegrass lineup -- banjo, guitar, mandolin and bass, with high vocal harmonies and no drums -- onto the jam-band circuit, picking its way through songs of wanderlust and thwarted love. Tonight at 8; tickets are $22 in advance, $25 at the door. PARELES YOSHIDA BROTHERS/AKIRA SATAKE, Leonard Nimoy Thalia, 2537 Broadway, at 95th Street, (212) 864-5400 or (212) 545-7536. The shamisen is a Japanese stringed instrument with a bright, snapping attack that can sound a lot like a banjo to American ears, and music from Tsugaru, in northern Japan, bounces along like bluegrass. The Yoshida Brothers build modern tunes, with touches of rock and jazz, on a foundation of traditional shamisen music. To test the bluegrass connection, Akira Satake, a banjo player, opens the concert picking Appalachian tunes. Tomorrow at 3 and 8; tickets are $25, $21 for World Music Institute members. PARELES Jazz A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy jazz concerts in the New York metropolitan region this weekend. * denotes a highly recommended concert. Full reviews of recent jazz performances: nytimes.com/music. ERIC ALEXANDER QUARTET, Smoke, 2751 Broadway, at 106th Street, (212) 864-6662. A young tenor saxophonist with a beautiful sound, centering in the Coltrane-ish lower-middle register; if he is a little unabashedly entranced by a particular area of jazzs past, around 1955 to 1965, he does well by it. Sets are tonight and tomorrow night at 9, 11 and 12:30; cover charge is $20. BEN RATLIFF JOHN BENITEZ QUINTET, Jazz Gallery, 290 Hudson Street, South Village, (212) 242-1063. This Puerto Rican bassist has become one of the most valuable parts of the new Latin-jazz scene in New York; he has recently been seen leading a number of different bands, and this is yet another. It includes Luis Bonilla on trombone, Ivan Renta on bass, and Patrick Forero on drums. Sets are tonight and tomorrow night at 9 and 10:30; admission is $15 per set. RATLIFF * DIZZY ALUMNI ALLSTARS, Blue Note, 131 West Third Street, West Village, (212) 475-8592. This has become an annual homage to Dizzy Gillespie during his birthday week. Its usually led by Jon Faddis, but this weekend the star is Clark Terry, one of the great soloists in jazz; other musicians this week include Roy Hargrove, James Moody, Slide Hampton, Benny Green and the singer Roberta Gambarini. Sets through Sunday are at 8 and 10:30 p.m.; cover charge is $35 at the tables, $20 at the bar and there is a $5 minimum. RATLIFF * DIZZY GILLESPIE FESTIVAL, Dizzys Club Coca-Cola, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th Street, Manhattan, (212) 258-9595. Jazz at Lincoln Centers new nightclub is opening with two weeks celebrating Dizzy Gillespie. The first week centers on Gillespies small-band music, including his great bop landmarks of the 40s, and it features Bill Charlaps trio, with the alto saxophonist Charles McPherson and the trumpeter Nicholas Payton as guests. Sets through Sunday are at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., with an 11 p.m. set tonight and tomorrow; cover charge is $35 with a $10 minimum at the tables and a $5 minimum at the bar. RATLIFF * JIM HALL/GEOFF KEEZER, Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, West Village, (212) 255-4037. A weekend of duos by the guitarist Jim Hall -- a patient, honest musician and a fascinating improviser -- with the pianist Geoff Keezer. Sets through Sunday night are at 9 and 11; cover charge is $30. RATLIFF * FRED HERSCH DUOS, Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-2232. If the jazz pianist Fred Hersch is a superb solo performer, that encomium can stretch to his duo performances, in which he both accompanies and makes a lot of his own rapturous, harmony-rich, dynamically calibrated sound-world as well. Its the end of a week at the Jazz Standard -- reprising a successful experiment at the club last year -- in which a different duo partner is featured each night. Tonight Mr. Hersch performs with the bassist John Patitucci, tomorrow with the singer Nancy King and Sunday night with the tenor saxophonist Joel Frahm. Sets through Sunday are at 7:30 and 9:30, with an 11:30 set tonight and tomorrow; cover charge is $25, and $20 on Sunday. RATLIFF * DAVE HOLLAND QUINTET, Birdland, 315 West 44th Street, Clinton, (212) 581-3080. Its unmistakable when a band hits its stride, and the bassist Dave Hollands quintet arrived at that point in the late 90s. The music seems to play itself: dynamically controlled, light and built of sleek lines from the horns in front (Chris Potter on saxophones and Robin Eubanks on trombone), which come together and then fork off into elegant counterpoint. And it is settled by the leaders strong, thick bass lines, in vamps that repeat and repeat until its time for solos that virtuosically make their case. Sets tonight and tomorrow are at 9 and 11; cover charge is $40 and there is a $10 minimum. RATLIFF ARTURO OFARRILL, BAM Cafe, Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette Avenue, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, (718) 636-4100. Mr. OFarrill, son of the composer and arranger Chico OFarrill, came into his fathers band through the piano chair and now, since the fathers death, has become its boss; more recently he became leader of Lincoln Centers impressive new Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra. He is as conceptually invested in Afro-Cuban jazz as his father was, but in his own band he gets the jolt of the new by collaborating with the great younger players of the music. Tonight at 9:30; minimum is $10. RATLIFF * DIANNE REEVES AND FREDDY COLE, Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th Street, (212) 721-6500. Jazz singers these days seem more likely to find their information more in the restraint and mystery of bossa nova than in the unapologetic splendor of, say, Sarah Vaughan. Maybe its because they feel that reticent music implies modernity more quickly. If so, Dianne Reeves is their opposite: shes only lightly concerned with reticence. She has an enormous (and Vaughan-inspired) voice, and an enormous talent, and she offers it up to stun her audience. Freddy Cole is the brother of Nat (King) Cole, but they sound more like cousins: though the quick-reflex delivery is there in the voice, Freddy has a richer, wider tone. He is one of the better ballad singers in jazz. Tomorrow at 8 p.m.; tickets are $30 to $150. RATLIFF * VISION CLUB: JOHN ZORN, ROB BROWN, ROY CAMPBELL, HENRY GRIMES, ET. AL., Brunstein Showroom, 13 Stanton Street between Chrystie and Bowery, Lower East Side, (212) 696-6681. Its the first night of what will become a weekly occurrence: a group of musicians in New Yorks free-jazz community gathered together at this new Lower East Side spot to improvise together in varying formations. Tonight at 8 and 10; admission is $15. RATLIFF * STEVE WILSON QUARTET, Sweet Rhythm, 88 Seventh Avenue South, West Village, (212) 255-3626. Steve Wilson, the saxophonist, has been in demand all over the jazz world since the 90s; everybody wants his light sound and his total assimilation of postwar saxophone history, from Parker to Coleman. He brings a band this weekend that includes the pianists Helen Sung (tonight) and Bruce Barth (tomorrow) as well as the bassist Richie Goods and the drummer Adam Cruz. Sets are tonight and tomorrow at 8, 10 and midnight; cover charge is $20 and there is a $10 minimum. RATLIFF Cabaret A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy cabaret shows in Manhattan this weekend. * denotes a highly recommended show. Full reviews of recent cabaret shows: nytimes.com/music. * KAREN AKERS, Le Jazz au Bar, 41 East 58th Street, (212) 308-9455. Ms. Akers brings back Time After Time, her acclaimed salute to the traditional love song. Demure and statuesque with an air of aristocratic reserve, she retains the formality of a concert performer while delivering beautifully intoned, deeply felt versions of standards that include Im Old Fashioned, Falling in Love With Love. Time After Time, and Loving You. It is as romantically satisfying a cabaret show as youll ever find. Don Rebic accompanies on piano. Tonight through Sunday night at 8, with a late show tomorrow night at 10:30. Cover $50 tonight and tomorrow night, $35 on Sunday; no minimum. STEPHEN HOLDEN BARBARA CARROLL, Oak Room, Algonquin Hotel, 59 West 44th Street, (212) 419-9331. The Lady of a Thousand Songs is back in the Oak Room for Sunday brunch and evening performances. This elegant, red-headed pianist and singer is a poised entertainer whose impeccable pianism belongs to the school of jazz that maintains a sense of classical decorum at the keyboard. Even when swinging out, she remains an impressionist with special affinities for Thelonious Monk and bossa nova. Vocally, she belongs to the conversational tradition of Mabel Mercer with a style thats blasé but never cold. Sunday at 2 and 8 p.m. Cover: $55 at 2, including brunch at noon; $80 at 8, with dinner served at 6:30. HOLDEN CY COLEMAN, Feinsteins at the Regency, 540 Park Avenue, at 61st Street, (212) 339-4095. At 75, the Count Basie of cocktail jazz piano still commands the keyboard with the authority of a sharpshooter who never misses. He is served exceptionally well by the other members of his trio, the bassist Gary Haase and the drummer Buddy Williams. But his singing is shaky. The bulk of the show is an anecdote-laced retrospective of Mr. Colemans show tunes sung by the composer in a gruff, frayed, occasionally tuneless voice. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8:30 and 11. Cover: $60; $40 minimum at the early shows and $30 at the late shows. HOLDEN BOBBY SHORT, Cafe Carlyle, Carlyle Hotel, 35 East 76th Street, (212) 570-7189. After announcing his semi-retirement last year from performing at the Cafe Carlyle, this legendary singer and pianist changed his mind and is back in action for another season. Mr. Short never fails to conjure ebullient party spirits and has impeccable taste in songs. Expect to hear at one least one of his three signature songs, Guess Whos in Town?, Just One of Those Things and Romance in the Dark, along with something by one of the two Dukes (Ellington and Vernon). Tonight and tomorrow night 8:45 and 10:45. Cover: $90. HOLDEN Classical A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy opera and classical music events this weekend in the New York metropolitan region. * denotes a highly recommended event. Full reviews of recent classical music and opera performances: nytimes.com/music. Opera AIDA The Metropolitan Opera often succeeds in making a spectacle of itself; at least the spectacle is warranted in the case of Verdis Aida, originally conceived as grand opera. Everyone involved in the current revival can at least succeed in making the thing fly, led by Dolora Zajick as Amneris, whose ringing mezzo sometimes threatens to blow everyone else offstage, and Marcello Viotti in the pit, trying to keep the other principals in line. Fiorenza Cedolins is not up to the title role, except when she can sing quietly, but at least looks pretty; Franco Farina as Radamès has a robust tenor but a hint of a buzz-saw quality in the upper register. Add a few armies of dancers and a couple of braces of horses and you could have a fine old time. Tomorrow night at 8, Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000. Tickets: $40 to $215. ANNE MIDGETTE LA BOHÈME It has been some time since the Metropolitan Operas crowd-pleasing production of Puccinis Bohème has held much interest for adventurous opera buffs. But this revival offers an impressive and intriguing cast. The golden-voiced coloratura soprano Ruth Anne Swenson continues her exploration of the rich lyric-soprano repertory as she sings the role of Mimi. The elegant soprano Ainhoa Arteta will be Musetta. The impassioned tenor Marcelo Álvarez sings Rodolfo, and the young Swedish baritone Peter Mattei, who was such a charismatic Don Giovanni last season, appears as Marcello. Daniel Oren conducts. Tonight at 8, Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000. Tickets: $35 to $200. ANTHONY TOMMASINI CARMEN Over the years, Bizets gritty opéra-comique has succumbed to edema, and Franco Zeffirellis Metropolitan Opera production suffers especially from bloat and stiffness, dealing in archetypes rather than living, breathing figures. Some new singers have stepped into the lead roles of this revival: Maria Domashenko takes on Carmen; Fabio Armiliato sings Don José; Maureen OFlynn is Micaëla; and the stentorian bass-baritone Louis Otey is Escamillo. An additional tenor will be present in the pit: Plácido Domingo, tending his second (or is it third) career as a conductor. Tomorrow afternoon at 1:30, Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000. Remaining tickets: $215. MIDGETTE LE NOZZE DI FIGARO This great collaboration between Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte has everything: comic scenes that demand clockwork pacing, spectacularly beautiful vocal and orchestral writing, a durable political undercurrent, thanks to the Beaumarchais play on which it is based, and most crucially, some truly moving lessons about love, betrayal and forgiveness. John Copleys lovely production has been in the New York City Opera repertory since 1977, but it has worn well, partly because the soft-hued sets and costumes by Carl Toms never get in the way of the music, and Albert Shermans stage direction strikes a fine balance between solo turns and ensemble acting. The cast this season includes David Pittsinger as Figaro; Sharon Rostorf-Zamir as Susanna (in her house debut); Jennifer Rivera as Cherubino; Paulo Szot as the Count, and Orla Boylan as the Countess. Steven Mosteller conducts. Tonight at 8, Sunday at 1:30 p.m., New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 870-5570. Tickets: $27 to $105 tonight; $32 to $115 on Sunday. ALLAN KOZINN LA TRAVIATA Verdis drama is so well written that a singer who can manage to get through the difficult title role is virtually guaranteed a success. At City Opera, Maria Kanyova attacks Violetta with a will and negotiates the roles hurdles with a kind of fierce vivacity, down to a brief but solid high E flat at the end of Sempre libera in Act I. Since the start of this revival in September, she has been joined by some new men in her life: Grant Youngblood, who should be a fine strong Germont, and Eric Fennell as Alfredo. Ari Pelto, a young conductor in his first appearances with the company, conducts. Tomorrow night at 8, New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 870-5570. Tickets: $32 to $115. MIDGETTE Classical Music BARGEMUSIC Moored in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, this intimate floating concert hall is a charming place to hear solo recitals and chamber music while rocking gently on the waves of the East River. Tonight, the German cellist Peter Bruns and the pianist Christoph Berner complete their two-part survey of Beethovens music for cello and piano, including the seldom-performed variations on a theme from Mozarts Magic Flute. Tomorrow and Sunday, the violinist Mark Peskanov joins them for Beethovens Ghost Trio and Schuberts magnificent B-flat major trio. Tonight and tomorrow night at 7:30 and Sunday afternoon at 4, Fulton Ferry Landing, under the Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn, (718) 624-2083. Tickets: $35; students, $20. JEREMY EICHLER CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER In its further pursuit of the European tradition, the Chamber Music Society heads east this weekend. Dvorak, master of Czech nationalism and every music lovers friend, takes up two-thirds of the program. The beloved Opus 81 Piano Quintet is one item, the lesser-known Opus 77 String Quintet, the other. Alexander Tcherepnin, a Russian cosmopolitan and busy composer, led a musical life on the fringes of a 20th-century music establishment dominated by Stravinsky and others, but his Cello Sonata in D will get a rare chance at the beginning of this program. Edgar Meyer is the bassist and Anne-Marie McDermott the pianist in an ensemble of players all of whom will be familiar to Chamber Music Society fans. Tonight at 8 and Sunday at 5 p.m., Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 875-5788. Tickets: $27.50 to $48. BERNARD HOLLAND GEWANDHAUS ORCHESTRA OF LEIPZIG This orchestra, which traces its history to 1743, gave the worlds first complete traversals of the Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner symphonies and lists Felix Mendelssohn, Arthur Nikisch, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Kurt Masur among its past music directors. Herbert Blomstedt, who became the orchestras 18th director in 1998, is an insightful musician whose appproach should suit the all-Brahms programs he is leading on his current American tour with the orchestra. Yet concerts earlier this week at Avery Fisher Hall were puzzlingly inconsistent. Maybe it was an off night, or two. Now he heads across the Hudson to lead the Second Symphony and, with Garrick Ohlsson as his soloist, the First Piano Concerto. Tonight at 8, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, 1 Center Street, Newark, (888) 466-5722. Tickets: $15 to $69. KOZINN GUARNERI STRING QUARTET This recital of works by Beethoven, Dohnanyi and Dvorak opens the 105th season of the Peoples Symphony Concerts, an important series that presents both young and established performers at remarkably affordable prices. As ensembles go, it doesnt get more established than the Guarneri Quartet, which was founded 40 years ago and still has three of its original members. The group also retains much of its trademark interpretative elegance in standard repertory, though when heard last weekend at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there were occasional lapses in tuning and ensemble control. One has to admire the groups storied past, but it also makes one wish for more joyfulness or passion in its music-making of the present. Tomorrow at 8 p.m., Washington Irving High School, 40 Irving Place, Manhattan, (212) 586-4680. Tickets: $9. EICHLER CHRISTINA KISS The line between bravery and foolhardiness may be a thin one, and undertaking to perform the complete solo piano works of Liszt -- from memory -- in several dozen recitals might easily fall on either side. Christina Kiss, a pianist who was born in Budapest and has won prizes at several international competitions, undertook this project in 1990 and has so far made it through about 550 works, leaving enough to keep her busy, she estimates, through 2015 (a decade beyond her original projection). Ms. Kiss has not listed a program for her recital tomorrow but at this point, more than 30 installments into the series, it scarcely matters. More to the point, Ms. Kiss has the bravura technique and the imagination to make this mammoth project work, and if youre a Liszt fancier, this is clearly the place to be. Tomorrow afternoon at 2, Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800. Tickets: $35 to $45. KOZINN LUXEMBOURG PHILHARMONIC Bramwell Tovey, this orchestras British music director, has begun to make headway in America, notably in a series of summertime concerts with the New York Philharmonic a few months ago. The orchestra is making its New York debut, but you can sample its wares beforehand in a new recording of works by Albert Roussel on the Timpani label. And the great added attraction is the percussionist Evelyn Glennie, playing vibraphone in a transcription of a Vivaldi concerto and marimba in the New York premiere of Bright Shengs Colors of Crimson. Mr. Bramwell also leads the orchestra in Berliozs Roman Carnival and Elgars Enigma Variations. Sunday at 3 p.m., Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500. Tickets: $30 to $65. JAMES R. OESTREICH * MUSIC FOR NEW YORK NOW Marathon performances take on their own momentum. At the 10-hour piano extravaganza inaugurating a new performance space at the Faust Harrison Pianos showroom on Sunday, that momentum may be the main connecting thread in a deliberately eclectic narrative. The music is by composers from Chopin to Cage, classical to jazz; the 20-odd performers include leading lights of the contemporary scene like Margaret Leng Tan and Kathleen Supové; even the instruments are varied, with pianos described as ranging from rare vintage to contemporary. Conceived and curated by Jed Distler and Michael Harrison, both composers and pianists whose own works will be performed, the marathon is offered free of charge to the public, so that ones own comings and goings form the parameters of an individuals experience of the event. Sunday from noon to 10 p.m., Faust Harrison Pianos, 205 West 58th Street, Manhattan, (212) 489-0666. MIDGETTE NEW YORK VIRTUOSO SINGERS A chamber chorus with the word virtuoso in its name might seem over-confident, but the New York Virtuoso Singers can claim truth in advertising. Founded in 1988 by Harold Rosenbaum, the ensemble has won consistent praise for its technically accomplished and authoritative performances of a wide-range of challenging 20th-century and contemporary music. Mr. Rosenbaum is not just an expert music director but a bracing programmer. On Sunday his ensemble offers a typically adventurous program titled American Gems, with works by Crumb, Tsontakis, Zaimont, Mayer, Pellegrini and Chuaqui. At 4 p.m., Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, at 73rd Street, (212) 288-8920. Suggested donation: $10; $8 for students and 65+. TOMMASINI ORPHEUS On its good days, this famously conductorless ensemble can play with enough precision and character to make baton-wielding maestros seem superfluous. Naturally, it also helps when the group has a strong soloist to take the lead, as it will in this concert when the formidable pianist Garrick Ohlsson performs Chopins Piano Concerto No. 1. The ensemble is also expanding its repertory, performing two works this weekend for first time: Brahmss Haydn Variations and Sandor Veresss Transylvanian Dances. Tomorrow night at 8, Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800. Tickets: $30 to $88. EICHLER PANOCHA QUARTET Or you could argue that the headliner here is the Hungarian-born pianist Andras Schiff, in the second of a run of three appearances. (The last is a solo recital next Thursday in the Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall.) Here Mr. Schiff joins the Prague-based Panocha Quartet in Dvoraks Opus 81 Quintet. But the more savory Czech spices, if not the meat of the program, comes in Janaceks two quartets, the Kreutzer Sonata and Intimate Letters, as performed by masters of the style. Tonight at 7:30, Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800. Tickets: $38 to $52. OESTREICH CHARLES ROSEN One of the great thinkers of the keyboard world, Charles Rosen is renowned for his insightful books and essays. But his performances are by no means bookish: as concerned as he is with the details of form and style, he presents the great composers as creatures of flesh and blood, animated by passions, desires, victories and disappointments. In the second installment of his three-part series, The Romantic Generation -- the title comes from one of his books -- Mr. Rosen is exploring the peculiar world of Robert Schumann, one of Romanticisms defining spirits. Included in his program are the Arabeske, the Intermezzo from Faschingsschwank aus Wien, the Fantasy in C (Op. 17) and the richly characterized Davidsbündlertänze. Sunday at 3 p.m., with a preconcert lecture at 1:30. 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue, (212) 415-5500. Tickets: $30. KOZINN * TOKYO STRING QUARTET With Hitlers ascent, many composers and musicians were forced to flee Europe, and we are only now beginning to understand how the modernist project was transported and transformed in their flight. With this concert, the Tokyo String Quartet begins a promising series at the 92nd Street Y, exploring the music of three exiled composers: Zemlinksy, Schoenberg and Hanns Eisler. Works by the latter two make up the heart of this program, including Eislers little-known but wonderful String Quartet, as well as Verklärte Nacht, Schoenbergs feverishly beautiful paean to the Viennese fin-de-siècle. Its tempting to say the Tokyo players are watering down their conceit since the Schoenberg was not written in exile, and Haydn is also on the bill, but with music of this caliber performed by a top-tier ensemble, who would really complain? Tomorrow night at 8, 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue, (212) 415-5500. Tickets: $35. EICHLER Dance A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy dance events this weekend in the New York metropolitan region. * denotes a highly recommended event. Full reviews of recent dance performances: nytimes.com/dance. AMERICAN BALLET THEATER The companys autumn season, which continues through Nov. 7, features a rich assortment of one-act works ideally suited for a space in which dramatic details come into vivid focus. Among this weekends highlights are two new works to be shown tonight: Trey McIntyres Pretty Good Year, a group piece (repeated tomorrow night and Sunday afternoon), and Christopher Wheeldons VIII, a ballet about Henry VIII with Angel Corella as the amorous monarch (to be repeated later in the season). And there are amorous duelings in Jiri Kylians Petite Mort. Tonight at 8, tomorrow at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. City Center, West 55th Street, Manhattan, (212) 581-1212. Tickets: $35 to $80. (Related review, Page 3.) JACK ANDERSON ARTUS/COMPANY GÁBOR GODA This leading Hungarian dance and theater company will perform Cains Hat, which explores the biblical stories of Cain and Moses. Artus, founded and directed by Gábor Goda, is known for its mix of concept, acrobatic movement and visual effects. Here, the performers perch on poles, collide in mid-air and pile stones. (For this they slaved at the ballet barre?) Today at noon and 8 p.m.; tomorrow at 8 p.m. The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 255-5793, Ext. 11. Tickets: $20; $16 for students; $10 for noon performance. JENNIFER DUNNING * MONICA BILL BARNES Ms. Barnes has the kind of humor -- not a snicker in sight -- that is in woefully short supply in dance these days. The Happy Dance (or what started out O.K.) sounds like a perfect example. In the tragicomic exploration of hopelessness, two twinlike characters become obsessed with a dreary, fast-paced jig that will not let go of them. Ms. Barnes describes it all as post-modern dance and musical theater with a Brechtian spin. Tonight through Sunday at 8:30 p.m. Danspace Project at St. Marks Church, 131 East 10th Street, East Village, (212) 674-8194. Tickets: $15. DUNNING IAN SPENCER BELL DANCE CIRCLE This weekends wildcard program is the work of a man, Mr. Bell, who has defined his choreographic interest as being in the space above our heads and beyond our grasp. His new Looking at the Stars is set to the music of the Platters. Laundry will be danced to music by Arlo Guthrie. A reception follows each performance. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8. Williamsburg Arts neXus, 205 North Seventh Street, between Driggs and Roebling Streets, Brooklyn, (718) 599-7997. Tickets: $12. DUNNING AKIM FUNK BUDDHA How to resist an artist who taught himself to stand still without blinking, tell stories, rap, tap and perform Mongolian throat singing? Mr. Buddha, who was born in Syracuse and raised in Zimbabwe, describes his Up in the Air as cosmic cabaret. It also features belly dancing by Pure and music by Mr. Kite. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8:30. BRIC Studio, 57 Rockwell Place, between Fulton Street and DeKalb Avenue, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, (718) 855-7882, x53. Tickets: $10; $8 for students. DUNNING * CHARLES DENNIS: HOMECOMING This new documentary celebrates 20 years of dance and ultimate funk at P.S. 122, which Mr. Dennis co-founded. The film focuses on 10 choreographers who created seminal work there, with music by John Zorn, photography by Dona Ann McAdams and commentary by critics and presenters. Sunday (and Sundays through Nov. 14) at 2 p.m. P.S. 122, 150 First Avenue, at Ninth Street, East Village, (212) 477-5288. Tickets: $5. DUNNING FOREVER TANGO Better than Viagra, and for all ages, too. Luis Bravos Forever Tango features sultry and comical dancers and first-rate musicians in a show, extended through Nov. 28, that is both tacky and transcendent. Tonight (and Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays) at 8; tomorrow (and Wednesdays) at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Shubert Theater, 225 West 44th Street, Manhattan, (212) 239-6200. Tickets: $45 to $85. DUNNING FOURTHDIMENSIONDANCETHEATER Performers from De La Guarda, Momix and Stomp will join Karen Fuhrman and Dustin Stephens in their new Hymenoptera: The Social Order, danced to music by John Oyzon and Eric Lee of Groove Collective. Tonight at 8; tomorrow at 7 and 9:30 p.m. John Ryan Theater at White Wave, 25 Jay Street, at John Street and the waterfront, Dumbo, Brooklyn, (917) 447-6285. Tickets: $16 to $25. DUNNING KDNY Strictly speaking, this program combines the work of the New York-based KDNY company and of KDHDC of Austin, Tex. They will perform, respectively, modern-dance works dances by Kathleen Dyer and Kathy Dunn Hamrick. Now you know. Tonight at 9; tomorrow at 8 p.m. Cunningham Studio, 55 Bethune Street at Washington Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 924-0077. Tickets: $15; $10 for students, 65+ and dancers. DUNNING ALI KENNER Ms. Kenner, whose mentor is Phyllis Lamhut, takes on the mathematical notion of absolute value in her new eveninglong dance of the same name. Set to music by Morgan Packard, the piece is a series of vignettes exploring the inevitabilities of attraction and habit. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8. Joyce SoHo, 155 Mercer Street, between Houston and Prince Streets, (212) 334-7479. Tickets: $15. DUNNING * KOOSIL-JA In her new mixed-media deadmandancing EXCESS, the choreographer formerly known as Kumiko Kimoto examines the fear and fantasy of dying. The set includes dozens of television monitors and the media includes film, specifically clips from movie death scenes. It all sounds pretty grim, but the Bessie Award-winning choreographer often offers new perspectives on the great themes. Tonight and tomorrow night (and Thursday through next Saturday) at 9. Performing Garage, 33 Wooster Street at Grand Street, SoHo, (212) 375-0186. Tickets: $15. DUNNING MANDANCE PROJECT Eliot Felds new choreographic endeavor brings together five men (Damian Woetzel, Wu-Kang Chen, Nickemil Concepcion, Jason Jordan and Sean Suozzi) and one woman (Patricia Tuthill) in solos, duets and group works by Mr. Feld to music ranging from Bach to jug band tunes. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8; Sunday at 3 p.m. Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 242-0800. Tickets: $42. ANDERSON * MERIÁN SOTO DANCE & PERFORMANCE Ms. Sotos new Máquina del Tiempo (Time Machine) is a full-evening piece in three parts that explores popular dance and music forms as time machines, which reveal much about their eras. The multi-media piece draws on postmodern dance and improvisational salsa, hip-hop, swing and mambo. Tonight through Sunday (and Thursday through next Sunday) at 7:30 p.m. Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street, Manhattan, (212) 924-0077. Tickets: $25. DUNNING MOUNTAIN VIEW ESTATES Kourtney Rutherford of Big Dance Theater fame has set a murder in a house being built onstage. It all takes place in a residential tract in the shadow of a brooding volcanic Mount Rainier in Washington State in this eveninglong theater and dance piece, which examines the violence that lurks beneath everyday surfaces. Tonight and tomorrow night (and next Friday and Saturday) at 8 and 10. DUMBO Stable, 16 Main Street at Water Street, Brooklyn, (212) 420-7252. Tickets: $15. DUNNING NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL: BANGARRA Australias Bangarra Dance Theater, which brings age-old Aboriginal traditions to contemporary choreographic life, returns to New York with Bush, a lush celebration of creation stories from the region known as Arnhem Land. Choreographic vignettes by Stephen Page and Frances Rings include rituals honoring female sexuality. Tonight and tomorrow at 7:30. BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, (718) 636-4129. Tickets: $20 to $45. ANDERSON ANN ROBIDEAUX AND ALEXANDRA SHILLING Ms. Robideaux and Ms. Shilling choreograph offbeat dance as well as teaching at the American Dance Festival. Their new Sun Shines Over the Yardarm sounds like a similar mix of tradition and the new. The new site-specific dance piece will be performed aboard the historic lightship Frying Pan, as an interactive tour that combines dance, history and sound. Tomorrow at 1, 2 and 3 p.m. The Frying Pan, Pier 63, 23rd Street and West Side Highway, Chelsea, (646) 321-9383. Tickets: $15 (by reservation, which is recommended); $20 day of show. DUNNING * STREB S.L.A.M. You could say Elizabeth Streb and her performers are sitting pretty, with their own 150-seat studio-theater in which to create new work and regularly present it. But no one sits for long at a Streb program. The dancers fly, dive and dangle in new and recent pieces. The audience can walk around, as at a fairground, with popcorn provided. Tonight and tomorrow night (and Fridays and Saturdays through Nov. 20) at 7.; Sunday (and Sundays through Nov. 21) at 3 p.m. S.L.A.M. (Streb Lab for Action Mechanics), 51 North First Street, Willliamsburg, Brooklyn, (718) 384-6481. Tickets: $15. DUNNING * WORLD MUSIC INSTITUTE: MASKED RITUALS OF KERALA, INDIA In these ancient masked rituals (theyyams), men in sumptuous jeweled costumes and headdresses are transformed into gods and goddesses, shifting consciousness on stage from the mundane to the divine. Martial arts figure in dances (vellattam) for warrior gods. Sunday at 3 and 8 p.m. Symphony Space, Broadway at 95th Street, (212) 545-7536. Tickets: $30; $15, children. DUNNING Theater A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy Broadway and Off Broadway shows this weekend. Approximate running times are in parentheses. * denotes a highly recommended show. + means discounted tickets were available at the Theater Development Funds TKTS booth for performances last Friday and Saturday nights. ++ means discounted tickets were available at the TKTS booth for last Saturday night only. Full reviews of current shows, additional listings, showtimes and tickets: nytimes.com/theater. Broadway + DRACULA, THE MUSICAL And here it is, looming like a giant stuffed bat on a stick, the easiest target on Broadway. This show, which sets the familiar tale of old snaggletooth to the familiar music of Frank Wildhorn, bristles with all the animation, suspense and sex appeal of a Victorian waxworks in a seaside amusement park. Take your shots. Say something, if you must, about toothlessness or bloodlessness or the kindness of hammering stakes into the hearts of undead shows. But you may concede that it isnt much fun to trash something so eminently trashable. Dracula, the Musical, which features a book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton and is directed by Des McAnuff (The Whos Tommy), isnt simply bad, which is an aesthetic state of being that is kind of fun if youre in the right mood. It is bad and boring. Among the talents wasted here are Melissa Errico, Kelli OHara, Stephen McKinley Henderson and, looking like a butlers butler in the title role, Tom Hewitt (2:10). Belasco Theater, 111 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6000. Tuesdays at 7 p.m.; Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $36.25 to $101.25. BEN BRANTLEY *+ I AM MY OWN WIFE (Tony winner for best play and best actor in a play). Doug Wrights one-actor play, with a thrillingly accomplished performance by Jefferson Mays and a diamond-sharp production directed by Moisés Kaufman, tells a terrific story based on a real person, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (né Lothar Berfelde), a soft-spoken but tenaciously gender-bending biological man who died in 2002 at 74. Her lifelong obsession -- Mahlsdorf preferred to be thought of as female -- was the preservation of furniture, especially from the 1890s, and other household relics like Victrolas and gramophones. Her devotion to her astonishing collection, with which she turned her home into a museum, gave focus and motivation to a life whose grandest achievement was that it proceeded to its natural end. The play is largely about Charlottes enduring the cruel repressions of the Nazis and the Communists, and her harrowing tales of survival through the eras of the Gestapo and the Stasi are nothing short of breathtaking. Ah, but are they credible? That also becomes an issue in the play, which very subtly but, in the end, quite powerfully makes a case for the necessity of storytelling in our lives (2:15). Lyceum, 149 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $61.25 to $86.25, with $20 student and teacher tickets at the box office the day of show. BRUCE WEBER * RECKLESS The most dangerous smile on Broadway fills the opening moments of this animated revival of Craig Lucass comedy from 1988, directed by Mark Brokaw. The smile belongs to Mary-Louise Parker, playing an improbably ecstatic houswife on Christmas Eve, and its enough to make anyone grin back at her. In the course of the show, however, Ms. Parkers smile wavers, tightens and shrinks in ways that seem to age her at least a decade, so that by the end, you may feel like youve undergone high-speed Prozac withdrawal. Reckless milks the tension between a goofy surface intoxication and a core of cold sobriety. The story of a runaway waif-woman in a violent world, Reckless remains a beguiling sneaky crash course in the loss of innocence. Granted, its as thick with whimsy as Pee-wee Hermans playhouse, and its ideal environment is not a big Broadway theater. But Ms. Parkers high incandescence and emotional fluidity go some distance in justifying this scaled-up production (1:45). Biltmore Theater, 261 West 47th Street, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets: $51-$79; $26 student rush tickets available the day of the show. BRANTLEY *+ WONDERFUL TOWN (Tony winner for choreography). Standing on high heels that transform her into the tallest, most self-conscious figure on stage and mugging with the rubbery animation of Desilu-vintage Lucille Ball, Brooke Shields is game, gawky, a little unsteady and supremely likable as Ruth Sherwood, the man-scaring writer from Ohio who arrives in Manhattan in 1935 as green as a spring tomato. In this delicious revival of the 1953 musical, Ms. Shields is an unexpected and unpretentious delight, adding a goofy sweetness to a production whose charms have only mellowed since it opened last fall. No, she doesnt rival the impeccable polish of her predecessor, Donna Murphy. But Ms. Shields appealingly emphasizes the inner naïf of a character whose worldly sophistication keeps slipping off like an ill-fitting cocktail hat. Leonard Bernsteins happiest score is played as ravishingly ever by the onstage orchestra. And the crackerjack supporting cast includes the appealingly relaxed Gregg Edelman and the honey-voiced Jennifer Hope Wills, as Ruths luscious sister, Eileen (2:30). Hirschfeld, 302 West 45th Street, Clinton, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $51 and $101. BRANTLEY Off Broadway + DIRTY TRICKS Distinguishing between blazing energy and plain old desperation isnt always easy. Look at Martha Mitchell, who as the wife of United States Attorney General John Mitchell teetered so spectacularly between high spirits and dementia during the Watergate era. Now in John Jeters Dirty Tricks, the redoubtable Judith Ivey has taken on the woman whose eagerness to share secrets and fears with the American people helped bring down the presidency of Richard Nixon. Ms. Ivey, as always, has vitality and skill to spare. But these assets are deployed in a vain attempt to paper over the seams in a conspicuously piecemeal play. Like its compulsively chatty heroine, Dirty Tricks, directed by Margaret Whitton, is scattershot, hazy and, yes, desperate. Even with Ms. Ivey pouring on the cotillion-belle flirtiness and Southern discomfort, Dirty Tricks is nowhere near as entertaining or alarming as Mrs. Mitchell was at the height of her notoriety (1:30). Public Theater, 525 Lafayette Street, East Village, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets: $50. BRANTLEY * MRS. FARNSWORTH Political candidates poised to sling mud might take a pointer from A. R. Gurney: good manners can be lethal weapons. Though it deals with revelations that are the stuff of smear campaigns, Mrs. Farnsworth is as polite and sweetly subversive a political attack as youre likely to come across. Set in a creative-writing classroom (with the excellent Danny Burstein as the teacher), the play unfolds around its title characters desire to write a novel about her youthful involvement with a man who sounds awfully like George W. Bush. Sigourney Weaver, returning to the role she created last spring, deploys annihilating charm as a wealthy high-WASP wife; Gerry Bamman, as her husband, completes the cast. Mrs. Farnsworth, directed by Jim Simpson, is a polemical exercise that never screams at you. Instead, it feels as if it is spoken out of the side of the mouth -- sotto voce and through a locked jaw. As delivered by Ms. Weaver, this turns out be a thoroughly disarming technique (1:30). Flea Theater, 41 White Street, TriBeCa, (212) 352-3101. Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $50 to $60. BRANTLEY + SLAVAS SNOWSHOW A giggle of clowns led by the Russian master Slava Polunin is stirring up laughter and enjoyment at the Union Square Theater. As audiences shuffle in through the snowlike rectangles of white paper that blanket the floor and seats, prompting immediate attempts at artificial snowball throwing, this show announces itself as something unusual. And so it is, as Mr. Polunin, with his baggy yellow romperlike costume, his red ball of a nose, his tufts of white hair and his shaggy red bulbous shoes, teams with his cutup colleagues. Before the night is over, in a show that touches the heart as well as tickles the funnybone, members of the audience are likely to find themselves covered by a giant cobweb, spritzed with water, providing a lap for a wandering clown and stung by the snow of the title, propelled with blizzard force in a dramatic finale (1:30). Union Square Theater, 100 East 17th Street, (212) 307-4100. Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 4 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 and 5:30 p.m. Tickets $59.90 to $64.90. LAWRENCE VAN GELDER SPATTER PATTERN (OR HOW I GOT THAT STORY) Neal Bells moody new play is a cautionary tale that proves the wisdom of avoiding ones neighbors. Edward Dunn (Peter Frechette), one of the dual protagonists, is a screenwriter still in shellshock over the death of his companion of more than two decades. Trying to jumpstart his stalled career, he moves into a pokey new studio apartment. His neighbor who turns out to be -- egad! -- a tabloid star, the Prof Who Offed the Co-ed, although the guilt of Marcus Tate (Darren Pettie) has yet to be proved. (He hasnt even been charged.) Edward, at emotional loose ends, strikes up a casual friendship with the celebrity next door. They are soon embroiled in a knotty psychological intimacy. Elements of Mr. Bells murder-mystery plot suggest the playwright has logged more than a few Law & Order marathons in his television-watching diary. But the writing has a literate, high-toned shimmer that would probably bring out the red pencils from Dick Wolfs producers. Unfortunately the playwright is unable to meld these elements into a satisfying whole. The play rings hollow as an inquiry into gray areas of moral responsibility. And Spatter Pattern fizzles out more thoroughly as a thriller with an unexciting conclusion. But the director Michael Greifs stylish production drenches the writing in so much noir-ish atmosphere it takes a while to notice. Mr. Frechettes familiar, woozy-wistful stage persona is a good match for the emotionally dislocated Edward, and the opaque surfaces of Mr. Petties Marcus Tate keep us guessing (2:00). Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 279-4200. Tuesdays through Fridays at 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays at 2 and 7:30 p.m.; Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m. Tickets: $38 to $45. CHARLES ISHERWOOD + STRING OF PEARLS Its that old one-object-through-the-years gimmick, but Michele Lowes one-act drama makes it fresh, funny and poignant. The stellar four-woman cast includes Ellen McLaughlin, the Tony Award-winning angel from Angels in America, and Mary Testa, the Tony-nominated alcoholic voice teacher from On the Town. Along with Antoinette LaVecchia and Sharon Washington, they create more than two dozen characters in a highly satisfying, often hilarious blend of sex, satire and absurdism, with an emphasis on womens relationships and the inevitability of both loss and happiness. The play, directed with knowing sparkle by Eric Simonson, is the tale of a necklace bought by a New York man for his wife just before he dies, its loss and its travels over the next three decades. That involves a lot of women, including a divorced landlady who is kind to a woman with cancer, a Tunisian hotel housekeeper with a greedy husband, a Riverside Drive swimmer who pretends not to be rich and a 300-pound lesbian gravedigger. Even the minor characters are memorable (1:30). Primary Stages at 59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street, (212) 279-4200. Tuesdays at 7 p.m.; Wednesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $55. ANITA GATES ++ WHITE CHOCOLATE Think of it as Black Like Moi. William Hamiltons play about a rich white couple who wake up to discover theyve turned black is a shrill, sporadically funny situation comedy that is at heart nothing more than its central situation. Mr. Hamilton is famous for his cartoons in The New Yorker, which portray willowy, patrician figures poised over cocktails and crudités. Throughout White Chocolate, which is directed as if it were a traffic jam by David Schweizer, there are sharp, shiny lines that might work as captions for Hamilton cartoons. (She may not want a Scotch, Brandon. Its not dark yet, and shes only half-WASP.) But they are lines that tell you less about character than class. And as a comedy of social identity, White Chocolate never looks far beneath the veneers it pretends to be peeling away. With Lynn Whitfield and Reg E. Cathey as the transformed spouses and the inimitable Julie Halston, who finds the wildly surreal in the conventional role of a blue-blooded snob (2:15). Century Center for the Performing Arts, 111 East 15th Street, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $55 to $60. BRANTLEY Last Chance * HEDDA GABLER Ivo van Hoves strange, and strangely enthralling, new production of Ibsens much-mounted drama about a dangerously frustrated housewife may not necessarily illuminate the play as a dramatic text. His sights are set considerably higher: he is an artist seeking, as Ibsen once did, to illuminate the world around him. The set, designed by his longtime collaborator Jan Versweyveld, is not a reasonable representation of the handsome, expensively appointed home spoken of more than once in the course of the play; the empty, echoing space represents an interior landscape, the cold, underpopulated expanses of Heddas mind. In a performance that is a major achievement for this adventurous actress, Elizabeth Marvel evokes this process with captivating clarity, tracing the disjointed trajectory of an intellect devouring itself. The rest of the cast is also superb (2:30). New York Theater Workshop, 79 East Fourth Street, East Village, (212) 239-6200. Tonight at 8; tomorrow at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m. Tickets: $65. ISHERWOOD LAST EASTER The unofficial anthem of Bryony Laverys abrasively sentimental comedy is Irving Berlins Easter Parade. But as you watch this tale of a terminally ill lighting designer and her terminally madcap friends, you may think of another Berlin standard, the one in which theater folk are hymned for being able to smile when they are low. The author, who made a smashing New York debut this year with Frozen, chronicles an antic trip to Lourdes undertaken by June (Veanne Cox), a lighting designer with second-stage cancer, and her three best friends. They all face down doom with the typically British stiff upper lip, though here it acquires a curl of flashy bravado. The attitude is adorned with bright, shrink-wrapped eccentricities and desperate jokes. Directed by Doug Hughes, the cast members are as winsomely brittle as the script demands that they be. But the pained, reflective lyricism at the plays center is overwhelmed by its brave, quippy flippancy (2:00). Lucille Lortel Theater, 121 Christopher Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 279-4200. Tonight at 8; tomorrow at 2:30 and 8 p.m.. Tickets: $60; $15 student rush tickets available 30 minutes before performances. BRANTLEY RICHARD III Ascending the throne has never been more of a struggle for Shakespeares most Machiavellian monarch than it is in this production. Peter Dinklage (of the film The Station Agent), who portrays the title character, is 4 foot 5 inches, and the throne of England was obviously designed with a taller man in mind. That means that for this Richard, physically placing himself in the seat of power requires strenuous and gymnastic exertions, an image that would be comic except for the determination and harsh sense of absurdity with which he invests it. And once this Richard is seated, he owns that throne. The hard blue ice of his eyes is enough to deflect any challenge. It is even almost enough to make you forget the overheated amateurishness of the show. Peter DuBoiss production doesnt drag, but its high spirits are those of an overcaffeinated adolescent. See it, though, for Mr. Dinklages refreshingly direct and purposeful Richard, whose fierce, effortful will power translates into extraordinary charisma (2:45). Public Theater, 525 Lafayette Street, East Village, (212) 239-6200. Tonight at 8; tomorrow at 2 and 8 p.m.;Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets: $50. BRANTLEY Art A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy art, design and photography exhibitions at New York museums and art galleries this weekend. At many museums, children under 12 and members are admitted free. Addresses, unless otherwise noted, are in Manhattan. Most galleries are closed on Sundays and Mondays, but hours vary and should be checked by telephone. Gallery admission is free unless noted. * denotes a highly recommended show. Full reviews of recent museum and gallery shows: nytimes.com/art. Museums * THE ART OF ROMARE BEARDEN, Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Ave., at 75th Street, (212) 570-3600, through Jan. 9. Its a pity only that this retrospective is so big. Art like Beardens -- mostly small, intense and intricate -- deserves close scrutiny. His genius, aside from his poetic knack for piecing scraps of photographs and other tiny tidbits together, was to see collage as an inherent social metaphor: that its essence was to turn nothings into something, making disparate elements cohere, a positivist enterprise. His collages celebrated black culture and personal history, combined elements of East and West, high and low, old and new: African masks with ancient Greek art, Matisse with patchwork quilts. Literature and music shaped the work no less than Picasso, George Grosz and Vermeer did. There are roads out of secret places within us along which we all must move as we go to touch others, Bearden said. And thats exactly where he takes us. Hours: Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Fridays, 1 to 9 p.m. Admission: $12; $9.50, students and 62+. MICHAEL KIMMELMAN ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR, New Museum of Contemporary Art/Chelsea, 556 West 22nd Street, (212) 219-1222, through Nov. 13. Occupying new temporary quarters on the Chelsea Art Museums ground floor, the New Museum presents a mostly video group show that reflects the problems of adapting to the constant changes of modern experience. Robert Melees home-entertainment center documents his adaptation to his eccentric mother; a video by Bojan Sarcevic shows a Turkish Gypsy band learning to play Western pop songs; and, best of all, a video by Kerry Tribe shows a wonderfully charismatic 10-year-old girl thoughtfully responding to philosophical questions posed by a man off-camera. Hours: Tuesdays through Saturdays, noon to 6 p.m.; Thursdays, to 8 p.m. Admission: $6; students and 65+, $3. KEN JOHNSON * JOSEF AND ANNI ALBERS: DESIGNS FOR LIVING, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, 2 East 91st Street, (212) 849-8400, through Feb. 27. This enlightening, quietly excellent show is the first to juxtapose the design efforts -- his furniture, her textiles -- of two remarkable artists who happened to be married to each other. Instead of Josefs paintings of glowing nesting squares, which presage Minimalism, we get his 1927 nesting tables with the same meticulous sense of color, proportion and geometry that he would later apply to canvas. Anni brought a similarly intelligent structure to fabrics and tapestries that make every thread, texture and color count, at once exposing and exalting her mediums basic grid. She was the Sol LeWitt of weaving. Reflecting design moving toward art by dint of formidable concentration on its own purposes and potentials, this show may rearrange some ideas about early modernist design as well as Minimalist art and furniture. Hours: Tuesdays to Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Fridays, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 6 p.m. Admission: $10; students and 62+, $7. ROBERTA SMITH * AUSTRIA WEST: NEW ALPINE ARCHITECTURE AND NEW ALPINE RESIDENCES, Austrian Cultural Forum, 11 East 52nd Street, (212) 319-5300, through Oct. 30. An exciting survey of more than 70 structures -- from hotels to factories -- produced by what amounts to a thriving school of young architects working in the Austrian provinces of Tyrol and Vorarlberg. Their historical pedigree reaches back to the International Style and the Bauhaus, but has been relaxed by postmodernism and inspired by recent advances in building materials, techniques and systems. Nothing helps the new Alpine architecture like the grandeur of the old Alpine landscape, but this show confirms the point so often lost on American builders: that elegance, sustainability, innovation and respect for the environment are not antithetical. A show within a show of 40 houses by the same architects reflects more intimate applications of their ideas. One can come away with the inspiring realization that old history can be taught new tricks, and that even in these global, postmodern, pluralistic times, there can still be such a thing as a coherent style that accommodates individual sensibilities. Hours: Mondays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Free. SMITH * THE AZTEC EMPIRE, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, (212) 423-3500, through Feb. 13. When a big survey of Aztec art opened in London in 2002, everybody flipped out. It was one of the hottest ancient-art events since Tutankhamen. Now an expanded version of the London show is at the Guggenheim, and its a stunner. Objects from pre-Aztec Mexico set the stage, but it is material from the bloody-minded, deity-besotted Aztec culture that fills the museums darkened ramps. Set on jutting platforms and dark recesses are a skull-headed earth goddess in a skirt of writhing snakes, a warrior metamorphizing into a bird and a god of spring and fertility shedding his skin. Funky clay images of domestic life alternate with ultrasophisticated gold jewelry, and in one astonishing small sculpture, a human face splits apart to reveal the ages of man. The show may be a little too heavy on theater and too light on information, but its totally mesmerizing. HOLLAND COTTER * CHINA: DAWN OF A GOLDEN AGE, 200-750 A.D, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, (212) 535-7710, through Jan. 23. Almost all of the 350 objects in this splendid and rigorous exhibition are straight from China; a few were unearthed as recently as last year. But the show is far less about trophy archaeology than about history or about how archaeology is shaped into history. There are a few monumental sculptures; most of the objects, of gold, silver, bronze, lacquer and ceramic, are small, but absolutely riveting. And the guiding theme -- that China, far from being a pure, monolithic source from which peripheral cultures drew, took from the larger world at least as much as it gave -- has everything to say to our own multicultural time. Its a show that asks you to do some work, but there is so much of interest to look at that no one, even the casual drive-by viewer, will feel shortchanged. Hours: Sundays, Tuesdays through Thursdays, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays until 9 p.m. Admission: $12; students and 65+, $7. COTTER * COLONIAL ANDES: TAPESTRIES AND SILVERWORK, 1530-1830, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, (212) 535-7710, through Dec. 12. This sumptuous, groundbreaking show examines the fruitful cultural collision triggered by the Spanish conquest of the highly developed Incan empire in 1532. Their forced mixing resulted in a third hybrid culture that reached its zenith in two indigenous crafts: metalwork and, especially, tapestry weaving, which the Andean people perfected over 100 years. Beginning with the gorgeously geometric pre-Colonial tunics and mantles worn by the Inca elite, this exhibition traces the progressive absorption and adjustment of Renaissance and Baroque styles from Europe. The silverwork has an astounding roiling energy that seems to reflect the metals abundance. Hours and admission: see above. SMITH * DESIGN IS NOT ART: FUNCTIONAL OBJECTS FROM DONALD JUDD TO RACHEL WHITEREAD, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, 2 East 91st Street, (212) 849-8400, through Feb. 27. This bracingly contentious but spatially challenged and cursory show is worth seeing, if only because it is the first in an American museum to survey the functional and semifunctional objects designed during the last three decades by artists, in this case 18 well-known Minimalists, post-Minimalists and post-post-Minimalists. The show is overdue, which also makes it seem late, as it ignores many younger artists. It also resembles a high-end home furnishings store. Points of interest are few: Richard Tuttles lamps, John Chamberlains carved foam couch, Joel Shapiros side tables, crystal tumblers by Sol LeWitt and, above all, Franz Wests decorate-it-yourself table and chairs. The only designs that seem likely to last are those of Donald Judd, who presides over the exhibition as Picasso would over a survey of Cubism. Hours and admission: see above. SMITH DONT CALL IT PERFORMANCE, Museo del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Avenue, at 104th Street, East Harlem, (212) 831-7272, through Nov. 7. Performative seems to be the preferred term now for performance art, to distinguish it from theater. Whatever, its alive and kicking here where short videos by 30 artists, mostly Latino or Latin American but including some North American and European colleagues, are on view. They are grouped in five categories, dealing with behavior; meditative and spiritual explorations; pop culture; social and political views; and sound, including language and music. The work is uneven, but you do get a sense that a younger generation is keeping performative work a vital presence in the art world. Hours: Wednesdays through Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission: $6; $4 for students and 65+. GRACE GLUECK EUROPEAN BRONZES FROM THE QUENTIN COLLECTION, the Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, (212) 288-0700, through Jan. 2. During the last few decades there has been a revival of interest in the collection and technical exploration of small-scale bronzes from the Renaissance, depicting gods, goddesses, religious figures, nymphs, fauns, satyrs, animals and simple folk. About 35 of these statuettes, from the 15th to the mid-18th centuries and assembled by an Argentine collector, star in this lively show. Originally inspired by mythological themes or classical marble statuary, and often reconstructed in innovative ways by well-known artists, the statuettes were eagerly sought by European connoisseurs, who admired their masterly modeling, subtle surfacing and elegant finishes. Happily, these bronzes are displayed without vitrines, so they can be examined closely from every angle. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 6 p.m. Admission: $12; $8 for 62+; $5 for students. GLUECK GREAT EXPECTATIONS: JOHN SINGER SARGENT PAINTING CHILDREN, Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, at Prospect Park, (718) 638-5000, through Jan. 16. Primarily known for his dashing portraits of high-born ladies sumptuously decked out, Sargent painted other subjects, too, not least among them children. And in these portraits, mostly of upper-class offspring, to be sure, he tended to get more real. This show, presenting about 40 works on the subject, has large ambitions. A major one is exploring how his likenesses tied in with the changing notions of childhood that came into play at the end of the 19th century, when children began to be regarded as distinctive personalities in their own right. For the most part here, he seems to see his young subjects that way, rather than as the syrupy stereotypes portrayed by his Victorian and 18th-century predecessors. Said to be the first to bring together Sargents influential portraits of children, the show with its catalog is a refreshing new take on this bravura brushmeister. Hours: Wednesdays to Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. (to 11 p.m. on the first Saturday of every month). Admission: $6; students and 62+, $3. GLUECK * LOOKING AT LIFE, International Center of Photography, 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at 43rd Street, (212) 857-0000, through Nov. 28. From its start in 1936 until its demise as a weekly magazine in 1972, Life was this countrys archive of public memory, supplying millions of Americans, most of them educated, white and middle class, with a collective visual inventory of the world as imagined for Main Street, U.S.A. This entertaining show is a reminder of many memorable photographs the magazine published, from Robert Capas pictures of the landing at Normandy Beach and Larry Burrowss bloodied G.I.s in Vietnam to W. Eugene Smiths Spanish village and Carlo Bavagnolis shot of Jane Fonda as Barbarella. The big idea is how Life and, by implication, all forms of popular journalism, package news, but in the end the photographs, looked at one by one, speak for themselves. Hours: Tuesdays through Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Fridays, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission: $10; $7, students and 62+. KIMMELMAN * MEMORIALS OF WAR, Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue, at 75th Street, (212) 570-3600, through Nov. 28. The Whitney reveals a little-seen aspect of its collection and some interesting new acquisitions in this small but powerful show of works inspired by the Vietnam War. Vic Munizs recent photographs are ghostly recreations of three of that eras most indelible news photographs. Edward Kienholz and Robert Morris are represented by proposals from around 1970 for unexecuted memorials that emphasize the hard truths of armed combat. Chris Burden restages five of Americas Darker Moments, in tableaus whose toy-soldier scale in no way diminishes shocks and aftershocks of these events. Hours and admission: see above. SMITH Galleries: Uptown NICOLA HICKS, Flowers, 1000 Madison Avenue, (212) 439-1700, through Oct. 30. This accomplished British sculptor combines neo-Classical traditionalism, surrealistic mythology and Modernist raw materialism in bronze and painted plaster representations of humans and animals. The life-size reclining nude attended by winged putti veers toward old school academicism, but the portraits of dogs and the muscular head of a Minotaur have much vitality. JOHNSON STONE ROBERTS, Salander-OReilly, 20 East 79th Street, (212) 879-6606, through Oct. 30. Mr. Roberts aims for a kind of Victorian revivalism in his big paintings of well-to-do New Yorkers inside and outside their well-appointed homes. Apparently copied from photographs, they are made with assiduous attention to detail, and from a distance the realist illusionism is impressive if not colorful. The narrative psychology is vapid, however, and under close-up inspection, the paint is lifeless. JOHNSON FRITZ BULTMAN, Irascible II: Abstract Expressionist Paintings, Circa 1960, Schlesinger, 24 East 73rd Street, (212) 734-3600, through Oct. 30. In the late 1950s and early 60s, this Abstract Expressionist was in top form, judging by the eight small- to medium-size canvases in this show. He wasnt doing anything that Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline didnt do, but his impetuous, sensuously crusty paintings have an urgency of their own that still feels fresh. JOHNSON Galleries: 57th Street KATHERINE BOWLING, Divide, Greenberg Van Doren, 730 Fifth Avenue, at 57th Street, (212) 445-0444, through Oct. 30. To plain vanilla countryside, Ms. Bowlings softly brushed works bring a touch of soul. Concentrating on the landscapes surrounding her home in upstate New York, she responds to the roads, trees and fields that she experiences daily and the light that falls on them at various times of day and night. Her spirit is derived from the great landscapists of the past, but she uses thoroughly modern compositional and painting devices. GLUECK Galleries: SoHo THE ART OF READING, Poets House, 72 Spring Street, (212) 431-7920, through Nov. 22. This appropriately quiet presentation of 38 small paintings, drawings, prints and photographs of people reading includes Paul Cadmuss portrait of Glenway Wescott; David Hockneys sweet colored pencil drawing of a young man reclining on a sofa; photographs of William Burroughs by Allen Ginsberg; and King Babar (the elephant) reading his newspaper at the beach in a watercolor by Laurent DeBrunhoff. JOHNSON WILLIAM HUDDERS, Tatistcheff, 529 West 20th Street, (212) 627-4547, through Oct. 30. If you gave this exhibition of neatly painted views of Long Island City-scapes and still-life pictures of shoes, apples and glassware just a quick glance you might peg it as the work of an earnestly conservative recent art school graduate. The more you look, however, the more inexplicably odd, sweet and subtly humorous these cannily simplified pictures seem. Influences of De Chirico and Hopper are evident, but Mr. Hudders has his own engaging way with the poetry of ordinary things. JOHNSON JEFF LADOUCEUR, Schmo, ZieherSmith, 531 West 25th Street, (212) 229-1088, through Nov. 13. With a finely pointed pen in black ink and a meticulous touch, this Vancouver-based artist draws cartoons about a bald, long-nosed, sad-sack of a character called Schmo. Our heros struggles with ordinary existence and surrealistic encounters with cloud-creatures, tiny elephants, octopi and an abominable snowman are funny, weird and touching. JOHNSON Galleries: Chelsea TONY DE LOS REYES, The Strange Tale of Near and Far, DCKT Contemporary, 537 West 24th Street, (212) 741-9955, through Oct. 30. From a distance it looks as if Mr. de los Reyes is in engaged in an eccentric revival of some antique tradition. He paints images of 17th-century ships at sea and detailed images of wild plants and flowers in shades of blue and white like Delftware. Up close you discover that these glossy pictures are made by distinctively modern methods of pouring, pooling and manipulating liquid paint. JOHNSON * NALINI MALANI, Bose Pacia, 508 West 26th Street, (212) 989-7074, through Oct. 30. Ms. Malani, based in Mumbai, has been seen here only sporadically, with paintings in museum group shows and an intensely theatrical video installation at the New Museum two years ago. Both media play a role in this strong gallery solo show, her first in Manhattan, that draws on mythology, religion and history, both Western and Indian. In paintings, she dovetails the figures of Sita from the Ramayana and Medea -- the one an ideal of submissive self-sacrifice, the other an emblem of destructive fury -- to propose a complex female persona beyond controlling stereotypes. A video installation addressing sectarian violence and a magic lantern-style shadow play complete the exhibition, which finds a political artist of impressive visual range at the height of her power. COTTER Other Galleries ELECTRIFYING ART: ATSUKO TANAKA, 1954-1968, Grey Art Gallery, New York University, 100 Washington Square East, Greenwich Village, (212) 998-6780, through Dec. 11. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Ms. Tanaka was a member of the avant-garde Japanese art group called Gutai, and the Grey Gallery survey covers the years of that association. Its a visually low-key show, but one with lots of ideas from an artist who was doing proto-Conceptualist and proto-Minimalist work and very early versions of sound and performance art. Spend time with the short films in the galleries; they bring everything else to life. COTTER * FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION NATIONAL MONUMENT, Foley Square, Lower Manhattan, (212) 206-6674, through Nov. 13. On a return engagement sponsored by Creative Time and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, this interactive outdoor sculpture, made in the symbolic year 1984, consists of a big, bright red Constructivist-style megaphone, through which members of the public can exercise their right to free speech. The work is a collaboration among the architect Laurie Hawkinson, the artist Erika Rothenberg and the performer John Malpede. It points, perhaps appropriately, toward the state and federal courthouses. SMITH Last Chance HERNAN BAS, Sometimes With One I Love, Daniel Reich, 537 A West 23rd Street, Chelsea, (212) 924-4949, through tomorrow. Mr. Bas, who lives in Miami and was in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, paints formally modest but unabashedly sentimental narratives of adventure, sexual intrigue and mystical experience starring slender, fine-featured adolescent boys. Made in an expressionistic style that calls to mind paperback book covers of the 1940s, his easel-size paintings are exciting mainly for the possibly more ambitious future of painterly story-telling they promise. JOHNSON SANG-AH CHOI, Ultra Immortality, Sandra Gering, 534 West 22nd Street, (646) 336-7183, through tomorrow. A skillful technician and inventive Neo-Pop image maker, Ms. Choi produces glossy panel paintings that use resin and reflective plastics to imitate traditional Asian lacquer work. Images lifted from fashion magazines and childishly sweet cartoons seduce while satirizing a world of infantile consumerism. Also on view are small pop-up books that are marvels of paper-cutting craft. JOHNSON COVER GIRL: THE FEMALE BODY AND ISLAM IN CONTEMPORARY ART, Ise Cultural Foundation, 555 Broadway, near Prince Street, SoHo, (212) 925-1649, through tomorrow. Islam is a monolithic word in the West, though there is every reason to know it shouldnt be. The five women in this show were born in Islamic countries or raised in Islamic households. Yet no two of them take the same approach to the theme -- at once a stereotype and a reality -- of the veiled female body in Islamic culture. A wall text by the Indian artist Rummana Hussain, who died in 1999, captures the prevailing refusal to deal in easy answers: Have you defined her? Does she have any options? Are her beliefs an escape? Or a security? Or a habit? Or a choice? The complete text is quite long, and it is composed entirely of questions. HOLLAND COTTER * DONALD JUDD, Peter Freeman, 560 Broadway at Prince Street, Soho, (212) 966-5154, through tomorrow. This show features an unknown work:the only triangular piece in captivity by the generally four-square Minimalist sculptor Donald Judd. It is large, equilateral, made of raw plywood mad open at the top, with its interior and exterior unexpectedly opposed. The only other triangular Judd is an outdoor work in concrete in Australia. SMITH * LEON FERRARI: POLITISCRIPTS, The Drawing Room, 40 Wooster St., (212) 219-2166, through tomorrow. Born in Argentina in 1920, Leon Ferrari is one of a group of Latin American modernists who, in the 1960s, created an intensely politicized art that ran in parallel to, and sometimes anticipated, trends in Europe and North America. The ink-on-paper pieces in this small show may best be understood as a response to the repressive political of environment of Argentina in 1960s, when censorship was common. A few are inflammatory statements by the artist written in a twisting script at once amusingly ornate and next to impossible to read. And even those that look entirely abstract are executed with care, so that they all convey the impression of carrying coded and encrypted information known only to the artist. In short, they are like taunting gestures of counter-censorship. Through its very opaqueness abstraction becomes a political tool. COTTER PETER GREAVES, Reverie, Forum, 745 Fifth Avenue, (212) 355-4545, through tomorrow. Mr. Greavess miniature portraits of attractive young women, each a bit larger than a postage stamp, are marvels of fastidious technique. With a slightly hazy focus and not a single visible stroke of pencil or brush, his tiny, pensive heads seem to emerge as if conjured by sorcery from the dark backgrounds. JOHNSON ROBIN HILL, Lennon Weinberg, 560 Broadway at Prince Street, SoHo, (212) 941-0012, through tomorrow. Second-generation Process artists dont fade away, they just keep marshalling orderly accumulations of this or that material as if Eva Hesse never existed. The works here employ cotton batting, wax, plaster and string, as well as hundreds of tiny circles of mica that are pinned to the wall in buoyant circling lines. Beautiful, but also familiar. SMITH TERESA HUBBARD AND ALEXANDER BIRCHLER, Single Wide, Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, 120 Park Avenue at 42nd Street, (917) 663-2453, through today. Single Wide is a technically sophisticated, six-minute video loop that revolves around the nighttime event of a distraught woman crashing her pickup truck into her rural single wide-size trailer home. Shot in one long circulating pan, it is like a film version of a Gregory Crewdson photograph with the vividly amplified sound effects of a Janet Cardiff production. JOHNSON AN-MY LE, Murray Guy, 453 West 17th Street, (212) 463-7372, through tomorrow. Theater of war refers to the geopolitical area that any war actively encompasses. But battles are staged and choreographed, troops deployed in units, like corps de ballet. All of this requires rehearsal, and rehearsal for war is the subject of these photographs, shot at the Marine Corps Air Ground Control Center in California, a desert outpost where marines train for future combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. The terrain has a John Ford-ish grandeur. The marines act out cowboy-and-Indian roles: some play Americans; others play Iraqis. The pictures are dramatic and gorgeous, as combat photography often is. They are also apt documents of a war which, some people argue, is based on a fiction and, at least as originally scripted, staged for the media. COTTER * BEN NICHOLSON, Jacobson Howard, 19 East 76th Street, (212) 570-2362, through tomorrow. The best pieces in this show of paintings and drawings by one of the best painters to emerge in England between the world wars are a half-dozen Cubist-style pictures from the 1940s and 50s. They are notable for their exquisite draftsmanship, suave colors, delicately tactile surfaces and lively, syncopated play with flat shapes and planar layering. JOHNSON PAUL HENRY RAMIREZ, In Fluent Form, Mary Boone, 745 Fifth Avenue, (212) 752-2929, through tomorrow. The stylized parsings of the body in these impeccably mannered canvases are accomplished by dividing flat, pristine white grounds with arrangements of thin vertical and horizontal lines, often rooted in rounded blocks of brilliant color. The lines support bright, fleshy blobs in candy hues and occasionally end in hearts that flower into symmetrical bursts of wiry, wiglike curls. Elegant splatters of drops in the shape of eyeballs dance cheerily around these conceits. The high-finish paint surface is nothing short of perfection. The body as an 18th-century drawing room or a Vivaldi composition might work as a description of these pretty but sterile paintings. GLUECK * PIPILOTTI RIST, Luhring Augustine, 531 West 24th Street, (212) 206-9100, through tomorrow. This relatively uncluttered video installation offers full-blown Rist World along with further proof that the artists dizzying, slipping, sliding conflation of sound, color, scale and spatial illusion has few equals in video. The subversive (feminist) tensions of Ms. Rists best works are absent here, but the work makes the brain so fuzzily relaxed you may not notice. SMITH TALESPINNING: SELECTIONS FALL 2004, Drawing Center, 35 Wooster Street, Soho, (212) 219-2166, through tomorrow. The work of 14 artists whose imagery flirts with narrative in one way or another fills this wide-ranging show, which exposes some intriguing talents. Some manipulate texts and even whole books; others play with fairy tales and folklore; still others base figments on literary characters and a few address social, political and other worldly topics. It all adds up to an uneven show, but one in the centers tradition of invigorating experiment. GLUECK

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The Listings

Movies A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy movies playing this weekend in New York City. * denotes a highly recommended film. Ratings and running times are in parentheses. Full reviews of all current releases, movie trailers, showtimes and tickets: nytimes.com/movies. Now Playing AROUND THE BEND Starring Michael Caine, Josh Lucas and Christopher Walken. Written and directed by Jordan Roberts (R, 85 minutes). This heavily padded, thinly conceived, well-meaning movie about four generations of men stars Josh Lucas as Jason, a single parent raising an only son, Zach (Jonah Bobo), and caring for his querulous, sickly grandfather, Henry (Mr. Caine). Decades earlier, Jasons father, Turner (Mr. Walken), had abandoned his son and delivered him into Henrys loving care. Then one day Turner materializes on the front door. Jason initially rejects his father, but because blood is thicker than water, if only in the fantasy worlds of mainstream fiction and self-help books, reconciliation looms. Will Jason learn to trust Turner? Will Turner explain why he abandoned Jason? Will Mr. Walken deliver one of his patented eccentric performances? Will the screenplay explain Mr. Caines on-and-off Cockney accent? The answers, in order, are yes, yes, yes and no. MANOHLA DARGIS * CELLULAR Starring Kim Basinger, Chris Evans and William H. Macy. Directed by David R. Ellis (PG-13, 89 minutes). In this improbable, improbably entertaining action thriller, a Los Angeles science teacher (Ms. Basinger) is kidnapped by a squad of baddies, who lock her in an attic with a telephone that works just well enough for her to connect, at random, with the cellphone of a surfer (Mr. Evans), who spends the rest of the movie trying to rescue her. In an age of self-important, bloated blockbusters, this movie, directed with breeziness and rigor by Mr. Ellis, is a refreshing rarity: an honest, unpretentious B picture, with enough decent jokes, crackerjack car chases and plot convolutions to make the price of the ticket seem like a reasonable bargain. Mr. Macy adds a wry, touching note as the weary L.A.P.D. veteran who helps the surfer in his effort to save the science teacher. A. O. SCOTT A DIRTY SHAME Starring Tracey Ullman and Johnny Knoxville. Written and directed by John Waters (NC-17, 89 minutes). A crashing bore is more like it. Mr. Waterss latest movie once again pits unruly, life-affirming sex maniacs against uptight prudes, here known as neuters. The line between them is blurry: the heroine, Sylvia Stickles (Ms. Ullman), starts out as a repressed suburban mother and, after suffering a concussion, goes on a libidinous rampage. She joins a sex-addict cult (led by Mr. Knoxville), which is devoted to discovering a hitherto undreamed-of kink that will unlock the erotic secrets of the universe. The movie, an anarchic catalog of perversions, sounds like more fun than it is, but Mr. Waters, after more than 35 years of moviemaking, remains a determined amateur, with little interest in acting, storytelling or visual creativity. If his jokes were still funny or his attitudes still provocative, the crudeness of the picture would be less bothersome, but the net effect of all the energetic naughtiness is like that of being in a room full of 8-year-old boys who have just learned some new swear words. SCOTT THE FORGOTTEN Starring Julianne Moore, Dominic West and Gary Sinise. Directed by Joseph Ruben (PG-13, 100 minutes). In this preposterous thriller, a pseudo-spiritual, mumbo-jumbo, sciencefiction-inflected mess, Mr. Ruben does not just fail to tap into the talent of his luminous star, Ms. Moore; he barely gets her attention. As Telly, a Brooklyn mother in mourning, Ms. Moore delivers a performance that has all the emotional commitment of a bored kid playing with a light switch. Even after Telly discovers that all the images of her dead son have been erased from the photographs scattered around her home, Ms. Moore keeps flipping the switch: sad, not sad, sad, not sad. Initially, the disappearing images are explained away by Tellys creepy psychiatrist, Dr. Munce (Mr. Sinise), who insists that the boy never existed and that after suffering a miscarriage, she invented him out of thin air. Telly finds this hard to believe (she isnt the only one) and embarks on a Search for the Truth involving cheap thrills, emotional uplift and some nonsense about the eternal mother. DARGIS FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS Starring Billy Bob Thornton. Directed by Peter Berg (PG-13, 105 minutes). Mr. Berg directs this Texas high school football extravaganze in a tough, gritty style that gives it an unusually fine and vivid sense of place. The place in question is Odessa, a West Texas town where football is more than just an obsession; its the foundation of the social order and the source of lifes meaning. The film, based on H. G. Bissingers 1990 book of reportage, follows a handful of senior athletes and their put-upon coach (Mr. Thornton) through an anxious season. The town wants a state championship, and in trying to satisfy this expectation the young men face extraordinary risks and sacrifices. Conventional as it is, Friday Night Lights is both rousing and honest, and it features good performances from Derek Luke, as the teams star runner, and Lucas Black as its anxious quarterback. SCOTT * I HUCKABEES Starring Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Huppert, Jude Law, Jason Schwartzman and Lily Tomlin. Directed by David O. Russell (R, 105 minutes). This high-wire comedy captures liberal-left despair with astonishingly good humor: its Fahrenheit 9/11 for the screwball set. Choc-a-block with strange bedfellows -- Mr. Hoffman and Ms. Tomlin play a hot-and-heavy married couple, Mr. Schwartzman gets his groove on with Ms. Huppert -- the film is a snort-out-loud funny master class of controlled chaos. In this topsy-turvy world, where yes is the new corporate no and businesses sponsor environmental causes while bulldozing over Ranger Rick, a pair of existential detectives sift through a clients trash to solve the riddle of his malaise. Like Mr. Russell, they gladly risk foolishness to plunge into the muck of human existence. The film is loud, messy, aggressively in your face and generally played for the back row in the theater, and it doesnt offer up solutions, tender any comfort or rejoice in the triumph of the human spirit. All we can do, says Mr. Russell, is keep pushing the rock back uphill. Thats kind of a bummer, but in its passion, energy and go-for-broke daring, in its faith in the possibility of human connection (if not its probability), I Huckabees provides its own reason for hope. DARGIS LADDER 49 Starring Joaquin Phoenix and John Travolta. Directed by Jay Russell (PG-13, 115 minutes). In Ladder 49 fires smolder and rage and generally act in a far more lively and persuasive fashion than any of the men struggling to put them out. A sob story, the film stars Mr. Phoenix as Jack Morrison, a once and future hero who battles untold infernos, saves untold lives and quaffs untold draft beers to become a firemans fireman, the kind who fearlessly enters burning buildings and puts everything at risk, including a picture-perfect family and a self so radically unexamined, so thin and vaporous, its a wonder it doesnt drift off the screen along with all the billows of enveloping smoke. Pegged as a true-to-life story, one meant to put a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye, this is essentially a male weepy about strong, simple men and the strong, simple women behind them, and as such its platitudinous rubbish. What makes this nonsense more galling than usual is that while Ladder 49 might have started out as a heartfelt attempt to honor those in the line of literal fire, it weighs in as an attempt to exploit their post-Sept. 11 symbolism. DARGIS * THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES Starring Gael García Bernal and Rodrigo de la Serna. Directed by Walter Salles (R, 126 minutes; in Spanish, with English subtitles). In 1952, Alberto Granado, a 29-year-old chemist, and his pal Ernesto Guevara, a 23-year-old medical student, set out from Buenos Aires to explore South America. Their journey might have vanished into private recollection were it not for the fact that Ernesto went on to become Che, political idol, revolutionary martyr and pillar of the T-shirt industry. Mr. Salless film, based on Granado and Guevaras notebooks, is partly a political coming-of-age story in which Ernesto (Mr. Bernal) awakens to the injustice that plagues the continent. But the movie is also a rambunctious buddy picture (thanks in part to Mr. de la Sernas high-spirited portrayal of the Falstaffian Granado), a breathtaking travelogue and an unusual love story. The love in question is Ernestos sensual and spiritual connection to the continent itself, beautifully communicated through Eric Gautiers sublime cinematography. Mr. Bernals soulful performance is sure to enhance his reputation as one of the most magnetic young actors around, but the real stars of the movie are the rugged Chilean highlands, the peaks of the Andes and the misty banks of the Peruvian Amazon. SCOTT RAISE YOUR VOICE Starring Hilary Duff. Directed by Sean McNamara (PG, 97 minutes). Ms. Duff, as Terri Fletcher, redefines the word pep. But when tragedy strikes her family, Terri loses her voice (her great joy is singing) and her love of life. The only thing that might snap her out of it would be attending a very hard to get into summer-music program in Los Angeles, but her hardheaded father (David Keith) objects. It takes deception and the help of a free-spirited aunt (Rebecca De Mornay) to get her there. Predictably, the big city lives up to its bad reputation at first, but chances are good that Terri will find her voice again, teach her parents a lesson and get the guy (Oliver James). Thinking adults wont find much of Raise Your Voice worth their time, but this piece of fluffs infectious high spirits will appeal to young moviegoers without conveying any sinister messages, beyond the suggestion that soul-crushing grief can be cured in the short space of a summer. ANITA GATES SHARK TALE With the voices of Will Smith, Robert De Niro, Renée Zellweger, Jack Black and Angelina Jolie. Directed by Vicky Jenson, Bibo Bergeron and Rob Letterman (PG, 92 minutes). Swimming in the lucrative wake of Finding Nemo, DreamWorkss foray into computer-generated underwater animation is a rambunctious, reasonably amusing pop confection. Where Pixar goes for sublimity and sincerity, DreamWorks continues to prefer a jokey, referential style, full of bright colors, almost-offensive ethnic stereotypes, big-name movie stars and easy cultural references that sail over the heads of the children in the audience and splatter in their parents faces. Mr. Smith, as charming in fins and scales as in the flesh, is Oscar, a fish who becomes a celebrity after falsely taking credit for killing a mobbed-up shark. Mr. Black is the dead sharks vegetarian brother, Mr. De Niro is the shark capo, and Ms. Zellweger and Ms. Jolie are competing romantic interests, the latter a slinky, pouty fish fatale. SCOTT SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW Starring Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie and Giovanni Ribisi. Written and directed by Kerry Conran (PG, 107 minutes). In this movies elegant murk, Mr. Law and Ms. Paltrow slip into comic-book archetypes of the dashing aviator and the intrepid girl reporter with supreme confidence. But can the movie establish a swashbuckling franchise as commercially potent as the Indiana Jones movies? When Mr. Conrans remarkable filmmaking debut remembers that storytelling and characters matter more than design and special effects, the movie charms as well as impresses. If nothing else, it is a landmark of computer-generated images, with actors cavorting through an entirely synthetic, retro-styled future world that fuses Art Deco, Futurism, Fritz Langs Metropolis and the spirit of the 1939 Worlds Fair into an all-purpose eve-of-World War II environment extrapolated into a science-fiction limbo. But its visual elegance comes at a price. Its ethereal evocation of a pulp-fiction future-past eclipses almost any other sci-fi franchise in subtlety and imagination, but shadowy washed-out color is a far cry from the robust hues of a movie like Raiders of the Lost Ark. STEPHEN HOLDEN STAGE BEAUTY Starring Billy Crudup and Claire Danes. Directed by Richard Eyre (R, 105 minutes). A 17th-century Star Is Born, though with interestingly convoluted sexual politics and a provocative historical thesis. Mr. Crudup is Ned Kynaston, one of the biggest stars of the London stage, who speciallizes in playing Shakespearean heroines. Ms. Danes is Maria, his loyal, ambitious dresser, who, with the help of the kings mistress, ends the long ban on female performers, thus destroying Neds career. In spite of a sludgy Sunday-brunch score and a weak performance from Ms. Danes, the film explores its period with rare precision and with a lively sense of intellectual curiosity. Much of this is squandered, though, in a flat and conventional final act that turns Ned and Maria into the inventors of Method acting and, recoiling from its earlier subtlety, celebrates a world where men are men and women are women. SCOTT TAXI Starring Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah. Directed by Tim Story (PG-13, 97 minutes). With his drivers license revoked, a New York cop (Mr. Fallon) teams up with a taxi driver (Queen Latifah) -- whose Yellow Cab has a supercharged engine under the hood -- to track down a gang of bank robbers, composed of leggy Brazilian models led by the leggy Brazilian model Gisele Bündchen. A tired, cliché-ridden remake of a 1998 French production of the same name, Mr. Storys film ends abruptly, as if hed walked out on his own picture -- something many viewers will be tempted to do as well. DAVE KEHR * VERA DRAKE Starring Imelda Staunton and Phil Davis. Written and directed by Mike Leigh (R, 125 minutes). In this new film about a back-street abortionist, the moment invariably comes when the title character asks her client to bring her some boiling water. Veras affect is so cozy, as nurturing as a maternal bosom, that its always somewhat of a surprise when you remember that the water isnt for a warming cup of tea, but for the solution she dispenses. Thats very much to Mr. Leighs point since Vera wants nothing so much as to support the frightened, the dismayed and the impoverished who seek her help, who come to this tender dumpling of a woman because they believe they have no other choice. Here, the politics of abortion isnt a position that individuals can take and leave at will; its what drives women underground to someone like Vera, with her clucks and smiles, her bar of lye and all that hot water. Set in London in 1950, and suffused with humanity rather than dogma, the film is easily Mr. Leighs best work in a decade. DARGIS Pop/Jazz A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy pop and jazz concerts in the New York metropolitan region this weekend. CMJ shows are noted. * denotes a highly recommended concert. Full reviews of recent pop and jazz performances: nytimes.com/music. * MARC ANTHONY, Roseland Ballroom, 239 West 52nd Street, Manhattan, (212) 777-6800. Marc Anthony pines for romance with one of the most ardent voices in pop: a tenor that starts out seeming hesitant and rises to pealing, sobbing notes that hold on to their gentleness even at full power. His songs in English have been more awkward than his salsa hits in Spanish. His most recent album, Amar Sin Mentiras (Sony), leans heavily on the ballads, but theres no denying his combination of boyish charm and supercharged supplication. Sunday night at 6; tickets are $99.50. JON PARELES CLAUDIA ACUÑA, Sweet Rhythm, 88 Seventh Avenue South, above Bleecker Street,West Village, (212) 255-3626. Ms. Acuña, a young jazz singer from Chile, is committed to the idea of a jazz singer as an inseparable part of the band -- or, better yet, as a bandleader. She is working with a great crop of New York musicians, and they play around with mambos, Middle Eastern scales and improvising that goes far beyond mere accompaniment. Sets are tonight and tomorrow at 8, 10 and midnight; cover charge is $20 and there is a $10 minimum. BEN RATLIFF * EVA AYLLON, TownHall, 123 West 43rd Street, Midtown, (212) 840-2824. Afro-Peruvian music, which imported African rhythms into Spanish and Andean song, became popular in Peru during the 1970s and 80s, when many South American countries were discovering their cultural roots. Eva Ayllon is one of the best musicians to come out of it, a strong and outrageously good singer whose songs move between waltzes and the Afro-Peruvian rhythms called lando and festejo. Her music also has the dramatic temper of out-and-out romantic pop, and at the heart of her band are three drummers. Her repertory is filled with references to black and Peruvian pride; the first song on her new album, Eva! Leyenda Peruana (Times Square), is a semi-autobiographical lando called Negra Presuntuosa (The Presumptuous Black Woman). She is internationalizing herself; this is her first North American tour that isnt playing specifically to Peruvian communities. Tonight at 8; tickets are $25 to $45. RATLIFF * RAY BARRETTO 75th BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION, Blue Note, 131 West Third Street, West Village, (212) 475-8592. After a long career playing with jazz and salsa bands and various other bands in between, the great conga player Ray Barretto will tell you that he plays jazz, full stop. But here he is, for a significant birthday-week gig, connecting with conga players who represent 60 years of Afro-Cuban roots music and Latin jazz: Candido Camero, Patato Valdes and Giovanni Hidalgo. Kenny Garrett, a jazz alto saxophonist who has nothing to do with Latin music per se, will be another guest. Sets through Sunday night at 8 and 10:30; cover charge is $30 and there is a $5 minimum. RATLIFF CAMPER VAN BEETHOVEN/CRACKER, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, near the Bowery, Lower East Side, (212) 533-2111. Camper Van Beethoven, the California band that played deadpan mixtures of folk-rock, reggae, klezmer and anything else its songwriters felt like toying with, spawned so many offshoots that the band itself may not be able to keep track of them. After leading Cracker for much of the 1990s, David Lowery reconvened Camper Van Beethoven, which has made a new album, New Roman Times (Pitch a Tent), thats a rock opera about a soldier. Camper and Cracker are both gathered tonight, with Johnny Hickmen of Cracker at 6:30, Cracker at 6:40, Jonathan Segel and Victor Krummenacher from Camper at 7:50 and Camper Van Beethoven at 8. A CMJ show; tickets are $15. PARELES BILLY COBHAM CULTURE MIX, Iridium, 1650 Broadway at 51st Street, Midtown, (212) 582-2121. Mr. Cobham, drummer extraordinaire for the old Mahavishnu Orchestra, long ago decided to use a wide canvas: jazz, rock and funk. This week he plays with a group that includes the percussionist Airto Moreira and the trumpeter Randy Brecker. Sets through Sunday night at 8 and 10, with an 11:30 set tonight and tomorrow; cover charge is $30, and there is a $10 minimum. RATLIFF THE CRAMPS, Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, at 15th Street, Manhattan, (212) 777-6800. The Cramps have been scrambling punk, goth, twang and B-movie memories into their own frenzied psychobilly music since the mid-1970s. Sunday night at 8, with the Chesterfield Kings and Dead Combo; tickets are $25 in advance, $30 Sunday. PARELES * DR. JOHN/SHEMEKIA COPELAND/CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE, Bardavon Opera House, 35 Market Street, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., (845) 473-2072. Three very different takes on the blues. Dr. John is the growly-voiced New Orleans piano wizard who splashes barrelhouse flourishes over songs that could hold voodoo secrets. Shemekia Copeland sings in a gutsy but girlish voice about men and their many flaws, from indifference to infidelity. Charlie Musselwhite has been a celebrated harmonica player since the 1960s, and on his most recent album, Sanctuary (Real World), he lets his conversational voice contemplate memories and mortality before reaching for deep blues with his harmonica. Tomorrow night at 8; tickets are $42.50. PARELES ELIANE ELIAS, Le Jazz Au Bar, 41 East 58th Street, Manhattan, (212) 308-9455. Ms. Elias, the Brazilian pianist who fuses the main line of postwar jazz with Latin American rhythms and song forms, has been one of the more interesting crosscultural musicians on the New York scene; her group can hit hard, escaping the languidness of so much Brazilian jazz. Sets are tonight at 8 and 10 and tomorrow night at 11; cover charge is $40. RATLIFF FANTCHA, Satalla, 37 West 26th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-1155. Fantcha sings mornas, the lilting, wistful, piquantly mournful songs from the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Senegal. As a protégée of the best-known Cape Verdean singer, Cesaria Evora, she has learned some of the secrets of mornas amiable melancholy. Tomorrow night at 10; tickets are $18 in advance, $20 tomorrow. PARELES DAVE FRISHBERG AND JAY LEONHARDT, Birdland, 131 West 44th Street, Midtown, (212) 581-3080. Two jazz performers with clever senses of humor, who have compiled a body of sly songs -- many of them about playing jazz and living the jazz life. Sets are tonight and tomorrow night at 9 and 11; cover charge is $40 and there is a $10 minimum. RATLIFF THE JAZZ MASTERS, Flushing Town Hall, 137-35 Northern Boulevard, Flushing, Queens, (718) 463-7700. Barry Harris, Jimmy Heath, Percy Heath, Clark Terry, Benny Powell, Winard Harper -- all but Mr. Harper are among the most venerable living jazz musicians. A concert involving all six will involve bonhomie and some secrets of the old-school performance style. Tonight at 8; tickets are $30; $24 for members. RATLIFF * JIMMY EAT WORLD, Warsaw, 261 Driggs Avenue, at Eckford Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, (718) 387-5252. Jimmy Eat World was an early standard-bearer for emo, adding emotional and musical complications to punk-rock while never resisting a good hook. Its about to resist its next album, Futures (Interscope). Tonight at 8, with Robbers on High Street and the Oranges Band; tickets are $22. PARELES JON LANGFORDS SHIP AND PILOT, Southpaw, 125 Fifth Avenue, at Sterling Place, Park Slope, Brooklyn, (718) 230-0236. Jon Langford of the Mekons brings one of his many side projects, Ship and Pilot, backing him as he bawls his way through songs full of history, surrealism and twang. Tonight at midnight, headlining a CMJ show that also includes Meat Purveyors at 11, the Fandanglers at 10, Carolyn Mark at 9 and the Cobble Hillbillies at 8; admission is $8. PARELES RUSSELL MALONE QUARTET, Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-2232. Mr. Malone, who played guitar with Diana Krall, brings the virtuosity of a stricter, older period in jazz; he can play a slow blues beautifully and then play ridiculously fast four-bar breaks. Sets through Sunday night are at 7:30 and 9:30, with an 11:30 set tonight and tomorrow night; cover charge is $25 tonight and tomorrow night, $20 on Sunday. RATLIFF * BETTE MIDLER, Radio City Music Hall, 1260 Avenue of the Americas, at 50th Street, (212) 247-4777. This voracious, wildly energetic entertainer blows into town for two performances of Kiss My Brass, her clever, freewheeling current show. Shameless dirty jokes, tear-jerking ballads, sly political digs and -- of course -- mermaids in wheelchairs: she rarely seems any more (or any less) than half serious, even when shes crooning about that famous wind beneath those famous wings. (Has there ever been a more mean-spirited tribute to a friend?) Ms. Midler makes other, more single-minded performers seem stodgy by comparison. Tomorrow night and Sunday night at 8; tickets are $70 to $255. KELEFA SANNEH ALEXI MURDOCH/MIKE DOUGHTY, Fez (downstairs at the Time Cafe), 380 Lafayette Street, at Great Jones Street, East Village, (212) 533-2680. Alexi Murdochs songs seek quiet revelations, harking back to folky, introspective songwriters like Nick Drake and John Martyn. Mike Doughty, whose wisecracking neo-Beat rapped lyrics were the core of Soul Coughing, is on his own now, still droll and rhyming. A CMJ show, tomorrow night at 7, with Hotel Lights opening; admission is $12. PARELES DAVID FATHEAD NEWMAN QUARTET, Smoke, 2751 Broadway at 106th Street, (212) 864-6662. Mr. Newman, the saxophonist, is one of the figures who led jazz toward pop in the 1960s, as Ray Charless right-hand man in Charless bands greatest years and a maker of consistent solo records for Atlantic. He has maintained his smoothness, and he is also a master of the blues. Sets are tonight and tomorrow night at 9, 11 and 12:30; cover charge is $20. RATLIFF ONE NIGHT WITH LITE, the Theater at Madison Square Garden, 7th Avenue at 32nd Street, (212) 465-6741. An eminently risible concert, sponsored by Lite 106.7 FM, starring Josh Groban, John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting and Celine Dion. (Wasnt she supposed to be safely sequestered in Las Vegas? And how could her high-carb ballads possibly qualify as lite?) But if you should somehow find yourself in the Theater at Madison Square Garden tonight, take heart: the lineup includes the nimble and elegant country singer Martina McBride, who should easily steal the show, even though her music isnt lite at all. Tonight at 8; tickets are $79.50 to $354.50. SANNEH * OUTPUTMESSAGE, Tonic, 107 Norfolk Street, Lower East Side, (212) 358-7503. An emerging electronic producer who has released a handful of suave but angular tracks, letting jagged, asymmetrical rhythms collide with fizzy bits of melody; expect to hear disjointed pop songs and dry rhythm tracks seeping out of his laptop. Tonight at 9, as part of the CMJ Music Marathon; tickets are $10. SANNEH * ERIC REED QUINTET, Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, West Village, (212) 255-4037. The pianist Mr. Reed has been working on increasingly sophisticated versions of small-group jazz over the last 10 years or so; he has written a ton of original compositions, with precise arrangements, in styles ranging from ragtime to gospel to uptempo swing. His band includes the trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, the saxophonist Seamus Blake, the bassist Dwayne Burno and the drummer Billy Drummond. Sets through Sunday night are at 9 and 11; cover charge is $30. RATLIFF STAN RIDGWAY, Joes Pub, 425 Lafayette Street, East Village, (212) 539-8778 or (212 239-6200. A Hollywood film-noir sensibility runs through Stan Ridgways rock songs, which are full of characters in trouble and smoky ambience. Sunday night at 9:30; tickets are $25. PARELES SASHA, Crobar, 530 West 28th Street, near 10th Avenue, Chelsea, (212) 629-9000. A top-dollar club night starring Sasha, a D.J. who pleases huge crowds without (for the most part) pandering to them: eschewing both the obvious and the unusual, he tops his steady, thumping beats with complicated electronic patterns that slowly decay and mutate. Tonight after 10, with D.J. Three; tickets are $40. SANNEH SINGAPORE SLING/LOW FLYING OWLS, Pianos, 158 Ludlow Street below Stanton Street, Lower East Side, (212) 505-3733. Singapore Sling, a band from Iceland, has been listening to glam-rock and Jesus and Mary Chain; its devoted to drones overlaid with late-night decadence. Low Flying Owls, from California, revive psychedelia with all its drones and feedback, adding a little punk bite. Tomorrow night, Low Flying Owls at 9:30 and Singapore Sling at 11:30, on a CMJ show with Looker at 7:30, Another Blue door at 8:30, Benzos at 10:30 and Viva K at 12:30 a.m.; admission is $10. PARELES SOCIAL DISTORTION, Roseland Ballroom, 239 West 52nd Street, Manhattan, (212) 777-6800. Social Distortion came out of the Southern California punk explosion of the late 1970s and stuck around. By now, its buzzsaw chords and minor-key melodies have taken on a tinge of roots-rock, and Mike Ness has moved from singing about youthful frustrations to pondering adult choices and consequences. Tonight at 7, with two younger punk bands, Tiger Army and Explosions, opening; tickets are $30. PARELES SONIC BOOMS E.A.R., the Hook, 18 Commerce Street between Richards and Columbia Streets, Red Hook, Brooklyn, (718) 797-3007. Sonic Boom, formerly of Spacemen 3, loves the trippy sounds of echoes and distortion and the swoops of synthesizers and theremin; his Experimental Audio Research takes its time with long, abstract jams. Tomorrow night at midnight, on a CMJ bill with Landing at 10 and Paik at 9; admission is $10. PARELES * REGINA SPEKTOR/THE MENDOZA LINE, Tonic, 107 Norfolk Street, near Delancey Street, Lower East Side, (212) 358-7503. Regina Spektor plays spare, precise piano and sings in the voice of a very wise child: one who knows about sex, guns, despair and euphoria. She can come across as a sly combination of Rickie Lee Jones, Meredith Monk and Bjork. The Mendoza Line brings touches of country to the disheveled collegiate-rock of Pavement, ending up somewhere near Wilco in the realm of tarnished roots-rock. Unlike Wilco, the Mendoza Line focuses on the ways relationships crumble, summing them up in lines like Were all in this alone. Tomorrow, with Ms. Spektor at 10 and the Mendoza Line at 11, preceded by Zykos at 8 and the Fontaine Toups at 9. A CMJ show; admission is $12. PARELES * SUFJAN STEVENS, Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston Street, at Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, (212) 260-4700. Last year, this captivating singer-songwriter released Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lake State (Asthmatic Kitty), which he claimed was the first in a series of albums about all the states. Having completed 2 percent of his task, he switched directions and released the stripped-down Seven Swans (Sounds Familyre), a gorgeous, hushed CD full of glowing songs of love and faith. Tonight at 12:30 a.m., as part of the CMJ Music Marathon; tickets are $14. SANNEH * THE THERMALS, Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston Street, at Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, (212) 260-4700. This gleeful but squint-eyed punk trio bashes out deceptively simple songs, wriggling and wriggling as if trying to escape a very small box. Visit http://www.thethermals.com/videos.html to watch the addictive, low-concept video for How We Know, a recent single. Tomorrow night at midnight, at the Sub Pop Records CMJ Showcase, a sure-to-be-packed concert that also stars Low, the Helio Sequence, Frausdots and Sam Jayne; tickets are $12. SANNEH MARY TIMONY, the Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard Street, TriBeCa, (212) 219-3006. Mary Timony, who led the band Helium, has kept her tightly wound guitar riffs but has gradually left behind the personality crises of indie-rock to ponder higher thoughts and cosmic forces. Tonight at 10:15, on a CMJ bill that also includes Manhunter at 8, Food for Animals at 8:45, Channels at 9:30, El Guapo at 11 and Q and not U at midnight; admission is $12. PARELES * ROKIA TRAORE, Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800. Rokia Traore, from Mali, has a voice thats both delicate and impassioned. Her songs are cats-cradles of circling guitar lines, marimba patterns and rhythms tapped on a calabash; her new album, Bombwoi (Nonesuch) also uses a string quartet. Ms. Traore subtly updates traditional styles while holding to their intricate clarity. Tomorrow night at 8:30; tickets are $28 to $35. PARELES TV ON THE RADIO/SALLY TIMMS, Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place at 15th Street, Manhattan, (212) 777-6800. TV on the Radio is a New York art-rock band to the core, reaching back to the frenzied minimalism of the Velvet Underground and adding its own eerie, poetic overlay. Sally Timms, the longtime vocalist of the Mekons, has a matter-of-factly melancholy voice and a repertory that extends from quasi-country to the songs about masculinity from her new album, The World of Him (Touch and Go). Tonight, TV on the Radio at 12:45 and Ms. Timms at 9:30, along with Tara Jane ONeil at 8, Whirlwind Head at 8:45. Battles at 10:20 and Pinback at 11:25. A CMJ show; admission is $22.50. PARELES THE TWILIGHT SINGERS, Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, at 15th Street, Manhattan, (212) 777-6800. Greg Dulli led the Afghan Whigs before he started the more introspective Twilight Singers, who help him wallow in loneliness and romantic insecurity as he confesses all in his smoky voice. The groups new album, She Loves You (One Little Indian Us), is a collection of other peoples songs, from Bjork to Mary J. Blige to Gershwin. Tomorrow night at midnight; tickets are $20. PARELES ADAM ROGERS QUARTET, Jazz Gallery, 290 Hudson Street, South Village, (212) 242-1063. Mr. Rogers is easily one of the best jazz guitarists in New York, the next step in the tradition of swinging mainstream players -- in the line of Pat Martino and George Benson, though he can rock and play country as well. This weekend he appears with the pianist Edward Simon, the bassist Scott Colley and the drummer Clarence Penn. Sets are tonight and tomorrow at 9 and 10:30; admission is $15. RATLIFF VON BONDIES, Plaid, 76 East 13th Street, Manhattan, (212) 388-1060. Throwbacks and proud of it, the Von Bondies play garage-rock songs that are all riff and muscle: just three or four chords, a brawny beat, and something for Jason Stollsteimer to howl. Tonight at 11, in a CMJ show that also includes Idiot Pilot at 8, the Crimea at 8:45, the Sun at 9:30, Rolling Blackouts at 10:15 and Mean Reds at midnight. Admission: $25. PARELES THE FAINT -- This weekend, the CMJ Music Marathon invades the downtown nightclubs, bringing together enough indie-rockers from around the country to repopulate Williamsburg several times over. (Visit http://www.cmj.com/marathon/showcase.php for the full schedule.) The Faint, new-wave revivalists from Omaha, come to town to play two of the weekends most eagerly anticipated concerts -- a CMJ showcase tonight and a concert tomorrow night thats not affiliated with the Marathon. The bands new album is Wet From Birth (Saddle Creek), an inventive, sometimes awkward CD driven by saw-toothed bass lines and flat, uneasy vocals. On How Could I Forget and Paranoiattack, the band explores a jagged, mutated version of house music, but elsewhere, the singer Todd Baechle often adds lyrics that are either too ridiculous or not ridiculous enough. (Its hard to tell; whats clear is that the phrase tunnel of mucus should never have been committed to tape.) Still, expect a propulsive, theatrical show, with the band members wobbling their knees in time to the beat as patterns and icons flicker on the huge screens behind them. (Tonight at 6 with the Good Life; Beep Beep; Son, Ambulance; and Broken Spindles. Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, East Village, (212) 353-1600. Tickets are $20; a limited number of CMJ badge holders will also be admitted. Tomorrow night at 7:30 with TV on the Radio and Beep Beep; tickets are $20, no CMJ badgeholders will be admitted.) KELEFA SANNEH Cabaret A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy cabaret shows in Manhattan this weekend. * denotes a highly recommended show. Full reviews of recent cabaret shows: nytimes.com/music. BARBARA CARROLL, Oak Room, Algonquin Hotel, 59 West 44th Street, (212) 419-9331. The Lady of a Thousand Songs is back in the Oak Room for Sunday brunch performances. This elegant, red-headed pianist and singer is a poised entertainer whose impeccable pianism belongs to the school of jazz that maintains a sense of classical decorum at the keyboard. Even when swinging out, she remains an impressionist with special affinities for Thelonious Monk and bossa nova. Vocally, she belongs to the conversational tradition of Mabel Mercer with a style thats blasé but never cold. Sunday at 2 and 8 p.m. Cover: $55 at 2, including brunch at noon; $80 at 8, with dinner served at 6:30. STEPHEN HOLDEN ELIANE ELIAS, Le Jazz au Bar, 41 East 58th Street, (212) 308-9455. The Brazilian pianist and singer Eliane Elias commands the keyboard with a forceful two-handed muscularity that belies her image as a blonde older sister of the mythical Girl From Ipanema. The more percussive her pianism becomes, the more she opens up a song and re-positions it in what might be called a romantic carnival groove. The more aggressively she and her band (Marc Johnson on bass, Rubens de la Corte on guitar and Paulo Braga on drums) rub up against the formal structures of pop samba, the better they sound. Tonight at 8 and 10:30 and tomorrow night at 11. Cover $40; no minimum. HOLDEN PHILLIP OFFICER, Dannys Skylight Room, 346 West 46th Street, Clinton, (212) 265-8133. Mr. Officer is a font of optimism. Even when the storm clouds are dumping buckets of rain on his head, he would rather peer into the distance and discern the hazy outlines of a rainbow on the horizon. What keeps the singing of this light but steady baritone from becoming insistently cloying is his musicality and connoisseurship of songs from many decades, which he likes to weave into odd but smart combinations (e.g. Van Morrisons Moondance with Irving Berlins Let Yourself Go); Barry Levitt charges behind on piano. Sunday at 2 p.m. Cover: $20; two-drink minimum. HOLDEN SANDY STEWART AND BILL CHARLAP, Oak Room, Algonquin Hotel, 59 West 44th Street, (212) 419-9331. There are moments when the singer Sandy Stewart resembles the great French actress Simone Signornet in her later years. Lifes heartbreaks and tragedies have been absorbed and folded into a maternal persona that exudes comfort, wisdom and a humming serenity only rarely interrupted by moments of alarm. Her son, Mr. Charlap, who accompanies on piano and takes his own brief solo set, is a brilliant jazz whiz who shares his mothers no-frills sense of musical discretion. Tonight and tomorrow night at 9 and 11:30. Cover: $50; $50 prix-fixe dinner requred at the early shows; two drink-minimum at the late shows. HOLDEN Classical A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy opera and classical music events this weekend in the New York metropolitan region. * denotes a highly recommended event. Full reviews of recent classical music and opera performances: nytimes.com/music. Opera AIDA The characters an innocent teenage maiden, but the role requires a voice that can run the gamut from limpid to stentorian, all at considerable volume. By the end of the evening its usually pretty clear whos won: tomorrow nights contender, taking on Verdis Ethiopian slave girl in the Metropolitan Opera revival, is Fiorenza Cedolins. Shes appearing with other singers capable of mighty if not always accurate sounds, Franco Farina (as Radamès) and Juan Pons (as her father Amonasro); while the redoubtable Dolora Zajick will reprise one of her signature scene-stealing Verdi mezzo roles, Amneris. Marcello Viotti conducts. Tomorrow night at 8, Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000. Remaining tickets: $40 to $215. ANNE MIDGETTE LA BOHÈME You can do almost anything to Puccinis best-loved opera -- even move it to the East Village (see Rent). James Robinsons production at City Opera doesnt go that far; but it does nudge the action up to the eve of World War I, so that Grant Youngbloods full-bodied Marcello adorns the walls of the Bohemians garret with bright Fauve-like colors, and Colline (Matthew Burns) demonstrates against the war. In this revival (which ends its run tonight), Jorge Antonio Pitas Rodolfo sounds strained; Angela Marambio is a warm Mimi, and, although the production has lost some of its starch over the years, Mimis death remains an effective tear-jerker. Steven White conducts. Tonight at 8, New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 870-5570. Tickets: $27.50 to $105.50. MIDGETTE CARMEN Over the years, Bizets gritty opéra-comique has succumbed to edema, and Franco Zeffirellis Metropolitan Opera production suffers especially from bloat and stiffness, dealing in archetypes rather than living, breathing figures. Some extra motion comes into the picture tomorrow as new singers step into the lead roles: Maria Domashenko takes on Carmen, and Fabio Armiliato sings Don José. An additional tenor joins the cast, but in the pit: Plácido Domingo, tending his second (or is it third) career as a conductor. Rounding out the cast are Hei-Kyung Hong, a lyrical Micaëla, and the worthy newcomer Ildar Abdrazakov as Escamillo. Tomorrow afternoon at 1:30, Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000. Remaining tickets: $215. MIDGETTE DIALOGUES OF THE CARMELITES The New York City Operas new production of Poulencs tragic opera continues its run at the New York State Theater. From a career of composing filled with the shrewd, the witty, the tender and the generally lighthearted, Poulenc has also left us this deeply serious opera and the questions it asks about faith and revolution. Definitely worth a trip. Sunday at 1:30 p.m., New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 870-5570. Tickets: $32.50 to $115.50. BERNARD HOLLAND FALSTAFF Diminutive it may be, but you cant say its not ambitious: the Dicapo Opera, in an underground theater in a church basement, is staging Verdis final opera, a comic masterpiece that happens to be fiendishly difficult, as its first production of this season. Just to make it more difficult, Michael Capasso, the companys co-founder, is updating the action to Brooklyn and evoking the spirit of 1950s sit-coms: such updating either works or really, really doesnt. Amanda Winfield, David Malis and Richard Byrne lead the cast; Pacien Mazzagatti conducts. Tonight and tomorrow at 8, Sunday afternoon at 4, Dicapo Opera Theater, 184 East 76th Street, (212) 288-9438. Tickets: $47.50. MIDGETTE * PLATÉE There is an element of meanness in Rameaus Platée, the French baroque comédie-lyrique, which has returned to the New York City Opera in Mark Morriss enchanting production. Mr. Morris, who directed and choreographed the work, does not shy away from the cruelty in the story, which surely is just as Rameau intended. To teach his jealous wife Juno a lesson, Jupiter pretends to fall in love with Platée, a homely, part-amphibian marsh nymph who carries on like the grand dame of the swamp creatures. As costumed by Isaac Mizrahi, Platée may look ridiculous, with her frog skin, webbed feet and hands, and a sagging breast and tummy disguised by a sheer greenish gown. But as played by the diminutive and riveting tenor Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, Platée is an endearing diva. Its funny, yes, but heartbreaking to see her so blithely duped. The winning cast includes members of the Mark Morris Dance Group, wildly costumed as frogs, snakes, nymphs and such. Daniel Beckwith conducts. Tomorrow night at 8, New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 870-5570. Tickets: $32.50 to $115.50. ANTHONY TOMMASINI LA TRAVIATA Verdis drama is so well written that a singer who can manage to get through the difficult title role is virtually guaranteed a success. At City Opera, Maria Kanyova attacks Violetta with a will and negotiates the roles hurdles with a kind of fierce vivacity, down to a brief but solid high E-flat at the end of Sempre libera in Act I. Shes joined tomorrow by some new men in her life: Grant Youngblood, who should be a fine strong Germont, and Eric Fennell as Alfredo. The matinee will also mark the company debut of a young conductor named Ari Pelto. Tomorrow afternoon at 1:30, New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 870-5570. Tickets: $32.50 to $115.50. MIDGETTE Classical Music AMERICAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA When Bruno Walter (born in 1876) and Hans Pfitzner (born 1869) were leading young figures in German music, each was a composer and a conductor. Walter left composing behind as conducting took over his life. Eventually Walter left Pfitzner behind as well when he emigrated to America, never forgiving his former colleague for his Nazi sympathies. A Complicated Friendship is the title of the program Leon Botstein will conduct tonight in which this relationship is explored. Performances of Pfitzners Palestrina Preludes and his Violin Concerto (with Alexander Markov as soloist) will be followed by the first performance in half a century, according to Mr. Botstein, of Bruno Walters Symphony No. 1, which dates from 1907. Tonight at 8, Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500. Tickets: $25 to $53. TOMMASINI BARGEMUSIC Moored in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, this intimate floating concert hall is a charming place to hear solo recitals and chamber music while rocking gently on the waves of the East River. Tonight, the pianist Olga Vinokur offers an all-Russian program of works by Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, Medtner and others. Tomorrow night and Sunday will bring chamber music programs, including Smetanas smoldering G-minor Trio and Cindy McTees Circle Music I, a work designed like a choose-your-own-adventure novel with the performers deciding individually which route to take through the music. Tonight and tomorrow night at 7:30 and Sunday afternoon at 4, Fulton Ferry Landing, under the Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn, (718) 624-2083. Tickets: $35; students, $20. JEREMY EICHLER LEONARDO CAPALBO As part of its important work supporting young singers in recital appearances across the United States, the Marilyn Horne Foundation offers a series of intimate and popular voice recitals in New York. This seasons series begins on Sunday afternoon with the tenor Leonardo Capalbo, a graduate of Juilliard and the Music Academy of the West (where he studied with Ms. Horne). Mr. Capalbo, who enjoyed recent success in appearances with Opera North in England, will perform songs by Bellini, Mascagni, Liszt, Quilter and others, accompanied by the pianist Jonathan Kelly. Sunday at 3 p.m., the Chapel at St. Bartholomews Church, Park Avenue and 50th Street, (212) 378-0248. Tickets: $20,$15 for 65+ and free for students TOMMASINI * FLOATING WORLDS: GEORGE CRUMB/FERNANDO VELAZQUEZ With its striking colors, bold gestures and brilliant use of extended instrumental techniques, George Crumbs music has always invited a level of visual engagement. So perhaps its not surprising that a contemporary painter has accepted the invitation. The London-based artist Fernando Velazquez has responded to Mr. Crumbs music with an 8-by-12-foot painting that will be presented for the first time this evening as accompaniment to an all-Crumb program performed by the enterprising International Contemporary Ensemble and the soprano Tony Arnold. Among the works featured will be the Vox Balaenae (1971), inspired by whale song, and a more recent solo piano work Eine Kleine Mitternachtmusik. Tonight at 8:30, Thalia Theater, Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, at 95th Street, (212) 864-5400. Tickets: $21; $18 for students and 65+. JEREMY EICHLER WOLFGANG HOLZMAIR If, for whatever reason, Lincoln Center declares it a Brahms season, its a Brahms season. The big guns will be the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Dresden Philharmonic in the four symphonies. But the Great Performers series The Classical Romantic begins more modestly with the excellent Austrian baritone Wolfgang Holzmair presenting an array of Brahms songs, including some of the exquisite settings of German folk songs, too seldom heard. As in all Brahms songs, Russell Ryan, the pianist, will play a crucial role. Sunday at 5 p.m., Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500. Tickets: $48. JAMES R. OESTREICH GREAT MUSIC FOR A GREAT CITY One measure of a citys greatness may be the amount of free music available on any given night, and in those terms, New York scores high, especially with all the concerts at local conservatories. Even so, this free series in Midtown is a welcome addition to the citys wallet-friendly offerings. Many of its fall concerts are devoted to American music, including tomorrow nights program of works by Gershwin, Ellington, Copland and Bernstein. Tomorrow night at 7:30, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, at 34th Street, (212) 817-8215. Free; paid reservations are available. EICHLER GUARNERI STRING QUARTET This ensemble, founded in 1964 and long a pillar of the American chamber music world, has been renovating its sound in recent years. When the groups original cellist, David Soyer, retired in 2001, the remaining players -- the violinists Arnold Steinhardt and John Dalley and the violist Michael Tree --- brought in the cellist Peter Wiley, who, though considerably younger, had a broad range of chamber music experience. Any personnel change in a chamber ensemble of long standing will inevitably have an effect on the groups energy, and so far the results have been promising. On Saturday, Guarneri players are also likely to draw some electricity from Peter Serkin, who joins the group for Dvoraks Piano Quintet in A. The program also includes Mozarts String Quartet in B flat (K. 589) and Frank Bridges String Quartet No. 1. Tomorrow night at 8, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street, (212) 570-3949. Tickets: $45. ALLAN KOZINN EMMA KIRKBY AND FRETWORK The recital series at the Frick Collection offers a broad range of repertory, but early music played on period instruments has long been one its strengths. Fretwork, an English viola da gamba quintet that has made some superb recordings, is presenting a program of works by English composers, among them Taverner, Dowland, Byrd, Gibbons, Wilbye and Purcell. All wrote magnificent consort works, but they also contributed some of the most magical music in the English vocal repertory. The soprano Emma Kirkby, whose recordings of Dowland and Purcell songs are incomparable, will join the group to offer a sampling. Sunday at 5, Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, (212) 288-0700. Free, but tickets are required. KOZINN MAURIZIO POLLINI The Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini takes his music seriously, and he often takes it on the road. On Sunday he makes one of his regular calls at Carnegie Hall, and as usual his repertory rarely strays far from Chopin. The first half of this recital brings familiar favorites, including the Third Ballade and the B-flat minor Sonata. The 12 Preludes, Book II, of Debussy come after intermission: music whose seeming haze and indeterminacy hides a musical mind of great precision. Mr. Pollinis elegance and respect for texts should make the second half more interesting than the first. Sunday at 2 p.m., Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800. Tickets: $27 to $97. HOLLAND RUDDIGORE For outlandish plot twists and clever complications, this 10th operetta in the Gilbert and Sullivan canon is not quite at the level of H.M.S. Pinafore or The Pirates of Penzance. Still, the most crucial Savoyard trademarks are there, from romantic mixups and light strains of social satire, to catchy chorus and inspired silliness. Albert Bergerets New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players, founded in 1974, has this repertory virtually to itself. Normally, Mr. Bergeret conducts the companys productions, but for this staged concert version, he will turn over the baton to Jan Holland, and will sing the role of Richard Dauntless. The cast also includes Del Bourree Bach, Richard Holmes, Stephen OBrien, Megan Friar, Victoria Devany and Elizabeth Hillebrand. Sunday at 3 p.m., Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, at 95th Street, (212) 864-5400. Tickets: $41 to $51. KOZINN RIVERSIDE CHURCH CARILLON In 1991, on a gorgeous summer Sunday, I went to review a recital on the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Carillon at Riverside Church and -- amid the noise from boom-boxes, traffic and general neighborhood mayhem -- heard next to nothing. Now Milford Myhre, a renowned carillonneur, applies his hand (more properly, his fists) to the huge instrument, and he may have a fighting chance of being heard. This recital celebrates the reopening of the instrument after a five-year refurbishment, presumably including improvements in the church tower to give the sound surer direction and better projection toward street level. Sunday at 1 p.m., Riverside Church, Riverside Drive at 122nd Street, Morningside Heights, (212) 870-6784. Free outdoor listening in the area. OESTREICH WARSAW PHILHARMONIC Town Hall used to be a hot spot for debuts, so it is somehow appropriate that Antoni Wit makes his New York debut as music director of the Warsaw Philharmonic there. On the other hand, what will a big international orchestra sound like in fairly intimate confines? Brahmss First Symphony should pack a wallop. The program also includes Krzysztof Pendereckis Polymorphia and Chopins First Piano Concerto, with Olga Kern as soloist. Ms. Kern, a co-winner of the Van Cliburn competition in 2001, made a big impression at Zankel Hall in May: big enough that she was invited into Carnegie Hall soon after to substitute for an ailing Krystian Zimerman. Sunday at 3 p.m., Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, Manhattan, (212) 840-2824. Tickets: $15 to $35. OESTREICH NATHANIEL WEBSTER An impressive baritone voice, programming thats both intriguing and appealing and smart career-building: these are all nice attributes for a young singer to have, and Mr. Webster seems to have them. In his Carnegie Hall recital debut tonight, he offers songs with a wide range of folk and popular overtones, from Schumann settings of Robert Burns to Gershwins Oh, Lady Be Good! The program also includes Purcell, Ravel, Wolf and a final set of rather disparate contemporary songs in English, from Bernstein to Rufus Wainwright to a single song from Ned Rorems 9/11 cycle Aftermath, which Mr. Webster sang at its premiere and has kept in his repertory. His accompanist is Peter Murphy. Tonight at 7:30, Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800. Tickets: $32. MIDGETTE IAN BOSTRIDE AND LEIF OVE ANDSNES Few song cycles are as wrenching and powerful as Winterreise, Schuberts bleak portrait of a lovelorn young man who leaves his town, on foot, on a winters night. The texts, drawn from the final part of Wilhelm Müllers Poems From the Posthumous Papers of a Traveling Horn Player, capture the protagonists changing emotional state, from disappointment and nostalgia to brief flowerings of self-deceived hopefulness, and back through multiple shades of despair. But it is Schuberts music -- both his shapely vocal lines and his evocative, almost pictorial piano writing -- that gives Müllers scenes their flesh and blood. Ian Bostridge (above right), a young English tenor, has established himself in recent years as an astute and sensitive lieder singer with a particular affinity for Schubert. Among his current projects is a series of Schubert recordings with the Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, who proves a thoroughly sympathetic collaborator. The latest installment, as it happens, is a recording of Winterreise in which youthfulness and world-weariness are finely balanced. Given that Mr. Bostridge has generally proved even more affecting live than on disc, his concert version should not be missed. (Tomorrow at 8 p.m., Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800. Tickets: $25 to $84.) ALLAN KOZINN Dance A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy dance events this weekend in the New York metropolitan region. * denotes a highly recommended event. Full reviews of recent dance performances: nytimes.com/dance. BAX GRANT SHOWCASE PERFORMANCE The little engine that could of dance institutions, the Brooklyn Arts Exchange has encouraged some very good young modern-dance choreographers to spread their wings in free rehearsal sessions. The results will be seen in dances and performance pieces by Zina Camblin, Catherine Dill and Alyse Rothman this weekend and in programs in mid-November. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, 421 Fifth Avenue, at Eighth Street, Brooklyn, (718) 832-0018 or www.bax.org. Tickets: $15. JENNIFER DUNNING COMPAGNIE 111 AND PHIL SOLTANOFF A French dance troupe from Toulouse and a New York director collaborate on Plan B,a mixed-media production that sets dancers balancing and tilting on an ever-shifting topsy-turvy plane that they try to conquer with the aid of kung-fu fighting, bungee cords, Velcro suits and suction cups. Tonight at 7, tomorrow at 2 and 7 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m., New Victory Theater, 229 West 42nd Street, Manhattan, (212) 239-6200. Tickets: $10 to $30. JACK ANDERSON COMPANHIA PORTUGUESA DE BAILADO CONTEMPORÂNEO From Portugal, the Companhia will make its North American debut in the Martha Graham-trained Vasco Wellenkamps Amaramália Abandono, an evocation of the Portuguese fado and Amália Rodrigues, one of the most famous interpreters of this style of folksong. Tonight at 8; tomorrow at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 242-0800. Tickets: $38. DUNNING EVERETT DANCE THEATER In Home Movies, company members put their family histories onstage in a 75-minute production in which true stories are choreographically told, cut up, intertwined and connected in an attempt to comment on life in a multicultural world. Tonight and tomorrow night at 7:30, Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 924-0077. Tickets: $20. ANDERSON BIMBAVATI DEVI & COMPANY Ms. Devi, who teaches at the Manipuri Nartanalaya institution in India, is touring the United States with her dancers in lecture-performance programs on the devotional Manipuri style of Indian dance. Tomorrow at 4 p.m, Lotus Music and Dance Studios, 109 West 27th Street, Manhattan, (212) 627-1076 ext. 16 or www.lotusarts.com. Tickets: $15; $12 students and 65+. DUNNING DURA MATER Kriota Willberg founded the company, whose name translates to tough mother, and her new The Bentfootes sounds as interestingly oddball. The piece tells the story of an American family of dancers from 1796 to today, incorporating recreations of period dances. It also asks the question: How could anyone be in the dance business for 200 years and not be famous? Tomorrow at 8 p.m., Dixon Place, 258 Bowery, between Houston and Prince Streets, Lower East Side, (212) 219-0736 or www.dixonplace.org. Tickets: $12; $10 for students and 65+. DUNNING FOREVER TANGO Better than Viagra, and for all ages, too. Luis Bravos Forever Tango features sultry and comical dancers and first-rate musicians in a show, extended through Nov. 28, that is both tacky and transcendent. Tonight (and Tuesdays and Thursdays) at 8; tomorrow (and Wednesdays) at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Shubert Theater, 225 West 44th Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenues, Manhattan, (212) 239-6200. Tickets: $45 to $85. DUNNING KITT JOHNSON Although Kitt Johnson heads a company called X-act in Copenhagen, this Danish choreographer has also achieved acclaim as a solo performer. In The Mirror she depicts an individuals quest to realize herself, and her complex solo journey toward self-perception takes place with the aid of mirrored reflections, some of which are only sporadically legible. Tonight, tomorrow night and Sunday at 8:30, Danspace Project, St. Marks Church, Second Avenue at 10th Street, East Village, (212) 674-8194. Tickets: $15. ANDERSON ISABEL GOTZKOWSKY AND FRIENDS Ms. Gotzkowskys work has been described as theatrically assertive. Here, this German-born modern-dance choreographer presents dances that address public and private worlds as well as loss, memory and the stillness of isolation in a dance inspired by the terrorist attacks of 9/11. In a third piece, four women interact with five set elements. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8, the Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues, Chelsea, (212) 255-5793 ext 11. Tickets: $20; $15 for students and 65+ with identification. DUNNING HELLENIC FESTIVAL This ambitious festival focuses on the impact of ancient and classical Greek culture on contemporary thinking and art. The dance component begins this weekend with a performance by the Greek-American Folklore Society. Tomorrow at 3 p.m., Bruno Walter Auditorium, New York Public Library of the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, Manhattan, (212) 870-1630 or www.nypl.org. Free. DUNNING KOOSIL-JA In her new mixed-media deadmandancing Excess, the choreographer formerly known as Kumiko Kimoto examines the fear and fantasy of dying. The set includes dozens of television monitors and the media includes film, specifically footage from movie death scenes. It all sounds pretty grim, but this Bessie Award-winning choreographer often offers new perspectives on the great themes. Tonight and tomorrow night (and Thursday through next Saturday nights) at 9, Performing Garage, 33 Wooster Street, at Grand Street, SoHo, (212) 375-0186. Tickets: $15. DUNNING HENNING RUBSAMS SENSEDANCE Melissa Morrissey, Akua Parker, Sonny Robinson and Ramon Thielen, of Dance Theater of Harlem, are guest artists in a program featuring three premieres. Mr. Rubsam introduces dances on point into his repertory with Chorale, a work for three couples that features unusual partnering to an original score by Ricardo Llorca, and Django, a tribute to the jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. Herman Sherman is a virtuosic solo by Shizu Yasuda set to Woody Hermans music. Tonight at 8, tomorrow at 2 and 8 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m., Baruch Performing Arts Center, 55 Lexington Avenue, at 25th Street, (212) 868-4444. Tickets: $22 and $30. ANDERSON * STREB S.L.A.M. You could say Elizabeth Streb and her performers are sitting pretty, with their own 150-seat studio-theater in which to create new work and regularly present it. But no one sits for long at a Streb program. The dancers fly, dive and dangle in new and recent pieces. The audience can walk around, as at a fairground, with popcorn provided. Tonight and tomorrow (and Fridays and Saturdays through Nov. 20) at 7 p.m.; Sunday (and Sundays through Nov. 21) at 3 p.m. S.L.A.M. (Streb Lab for Action Mechanics), 51 North First Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, (718) 384-6481. Tickets: $15. DUNNING WHITE WAVE 2004 D.U.M.B.O. DANCE FESTIVAL More than 85 companies and choreographers and more than 350 dancers will perform in a series of marathons featuring work by new and newly familiar dance artists -- like Tina Croll, Tom Pearson, Sue Bernhard, Zvi Gotheiner and Young Soon Kim. We cant vouch for the general level of the choreography and performance, but if this festival is anything like the neighborhood it celebrates, the results should be yeasty. Tonight from 7 to 10; tomorrow from 2 to 4 p.m., 5 to 7 p.m. and 8 to 10 p.m.; Sunday from 4 to 7 p.m, White Wave John Ryan Theater, 25 Jay Street at the waterfront, Brooklyn. There will also be an outdoor performance on Sunday from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park, on the waterfront, between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, (718) 855-8822 or www.whitewavedance.com. Free, but donations are encouraged. DUNNING Theater A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy Broadway and Off Broadway shows this weekend. Approximate running times are in parentheses. * denotes a highly recommended show. + means discounted tickets were available at the Theater Development Funds TKTS booth for performances last Friday and Saturday nights. Full reviews of current shows, additional listings, showtimes and tickets: nytimes.com/theater. Broadway * AVENUE Q (Tony Award winner for best musical, original score and book of a musical). The inspired brainchild of the songwriters Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, this canny toy chest of a musical takes its stylistic cues from Sesame Street, from its cheery urban set to its singing puppets of assorted colors and dispositions. And in doing so it becomes the first mainstream musical since Rent to coo with such seductive directness to theatergoers on the fair side of 40 in their own language, in which irony is less a mind-set than a loosely worn style. Directed by Jason Moore, with a book by Jeff Whitty, the show applies the coaxing, learning-is-fun attitude of childrens educational television to the R-rated situations of postcollegiate life in the big city. Featuring a pitch-perfect ensemble of live performers and oversize hand puppets, Avenue Q is to Sesame Street what Mel Brookss Producers is to vintage Broadway musicals: a connoisseurs tribute to what it only seems to send up (2:10). Golden, 252 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m. Tickets: $46.25 and $96.25, with a limited number of $21.25 rush tickets available by lottery at the theater at 5:30 p.m. for the evening show and at 11:30 a.m. for the matinee. BEN BRANTLEY + DRACULA, THE MUSICAL And here it is, looming like a giant stuffed bat on a stick, the easiest target on Broadway. This show, which sets the familiar tale of old snaggletooth to the familiar music of Frank Wildhorn, bristles with all the animation, suspense and sex appeal of a Victorian waxworks in a seaside amusement park. Take your shots. Say something, if you must, about toothlessness or bloodlessness or the kindness of hammering stakes into the hearts of undead shows. But you may concede that it isnt much fun to trash something so eminently trashable. Dracula, the Musical, which features a book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton and is directed by Des McAnuff (The Whos Tommy), isnt simply bad, which is an aesthetic state of being that is kind of fun if youre in the right mood. It is bad and boring. Among the talents wasted here are Melissa Errico, Kelli OHara, Stephen McKinley Henderson and, looking like a butlers butler in the title role, Tom Hewitt (2:10). Belasco Theater, 111 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6000. Tuesdays at 7 p.m.; Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $36.25 to $101.25. BRANTLEY *+ I AM MY OWN WIFE (Tony winner for best play and best actor in a play). Doug Wrights one-actor play, with a thrillingly accomplished performance by Jefferson Mays and a diamond-sharp production directed by Moisés Kaufman, tells a terrific story based on a real person, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (né Lothar Berfelde), a soft-spoken but tenaciously gender-bending biological man who died in 2002 at 74. Her lifelong obsession -- Mahlsdorf preferred to be thought of as female -- was the preservation of furniture, especially from the 1890s, and other household relics like Victrolas and gramophones. Her devotion to her astonishing collection, with which she turned her home into a museum, gave focus and motivation to a life whose grandest achievement was that it proceeded to its natural end. The play is largely about Charlottes enduring the cruel repressions of the Nazis and the Communists, and her harrowing tales of survival through the eras of the Gestapo and the Stasi are nothing short of breathtaking. Ah, but are they credible? That also becomes an issue in the play, which very subtly but, in the end, quite powerfully makes a case for the necessity of storytelling in our lives Among the plays resonant assertions is that lives themselves are narratives (2:15). Lyceum, 149 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $61.25 to $86.25, with $20 student and teacher tickets at the box office the day of show. BRUCE WEBER Off Broadway *+ GUANTÁNAMO: HONOR BOUND TO DEFEND FREEDOM On an anxious night, you have probably had a dream that goes something like this: You are arrested by uniformed officers for a crime that is never specified but that you know you did not commit, and there is no way for you to prove your innocence. Such a scenario was immortalized by Franz Kafka in The Trial. It is also the real-life situation of Jamal al-Harith, Bisher al-Rawi, Mozzam Begg and Ruel Ahmed. Their stories are told with a bafflement that shades into gut-level despair in this deeply moving documentary play by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo. First produced in London by the Tricycle Theater, this calmly condemning drama considers the plights of some of the British detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. There is no question that it is a partisan work, but it exerts an icy visceral charge that is never achieved by flashier agitprop satire, like Tim Robbinss Bush-bashing Embedded (1:45). Culture Project, 45 Bleecker Street Theater, Greenwich Village, (212) 307-4100. Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Wednesday, Saturdays and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $25 to $60. BRANTLEY * HEDDA GABLER Ivo van Hoves strange, and strangely enthralling, new production of Ibsens much-mounted drama about a dangerously frustrated housewife may not necessarily illuminate the play as a dramatic text. His sights are set considerably higher: he is an artist seeking, as Ibsen once did, to illuminate the world around him. The set, designed by his longtime collaborator Jan Versweyveld, is not a reasonable representation of the handsome, expensively appointed home spoken of more than once in the course of the play; the empty, echoing space represents an interior landscape, the cold, underpopulated expanses of Heddas mind. In a performance that is a major achievement for this adventurous actress, Elizabeth Marvel evokes this process with captivating clarity, tracing the disjointed trajectory of an intellect devouring itself. The rest of the cast is also superb (2:30). New York Theater Workshop, 79 East Fourth Street, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays at 7 p.m.; Wednesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m. Tickets: $65. CHARLES ISHERWOOD LAST EASTER The unofficial anthem of Bryony Laverys abrasively sentimental comedy is Irving Berlins Easter Parade. But as you watch this tale of a terminally ill lighting designer and her terminally madcap friends, you may think of another Berlin standard, the one in which theater folk are hymned for being able to smile when they are low. The author, who made a smashing New York debut this year with Frozen, chronicles an antic trip to Lourdes undertaken by June (Veanne Cox), a lighting designer with second-stage cancer, and her three best friends. They all face down doom with the typically British stiff upper lip, though here it acquires a curl of flashy bravado. The attitude is adorned with bright, shrink-wrapped eccentricities and desperate jokes. Directed by Doug Hughes, the cast members are as winsomely brittle as the script demands that they be. But the pained, reflective lyricism at the plays center is overwhelmed by its brave, quippy flippancy (2:00). Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher Street, (212) 279-4200. Tuesdays at 7 p.m.; Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays at 2:30 p.m.. Tickets: $60; $15 student rush tickets available 30 minutes before performances. BRANTLEY * MRS. FARNSWORTH Political candidates poised to sling mud might take a pointer from A. R. Gurney: good manners can be lethal weapons. Though it deals with revelations that are the stuff of smear campaigns, Mrs. Farnsworth is as polite and sweetly subversive a political attack as youre likely to come across. Set in a creative writing classroom (with the excellent Danny Burstein as the teacher), the play unfolds around its title characters desire to write a novel about her youthful involvement with a man who sounds awfully like George W. Bush. Sigourney Weaver, returning to the role she created last spring, deploys annihilating charm as a wealthy high-WASP wife; Gerry Bamman, as her husband, completes the cast. Mrs. Farnsworth, directed by Jim Simpson, is a polemical exercise that never screams at you. Instead, it feels as if it is spoken out of the side of the mouth -- sotto voce and through a locked jaw. As delivered by Ms. Weaver, this turns out be a thoroughly disarming technique (1:30). Flea Theater, 41 White Street, TriBeCa, (212) 352-3101. Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $50 to $60. BRANTLEY RICHARD III Ascending the throne has never been more of a struggle for Shakespeares most Machiavellian monarch than it is in this production. Peter Dinklage (of the film The Station Agent), who portrays the title character, is 4 foot 5 inches, and the throne of England was obviously designed with a taller man in mind. That means that for this Richard, physically placing himself in the seat of power requires strenuous and gymnastic exertions, an image that would be comic except for the determination and harsh sense of absurdity with which he invests it. And once this Richard is seated, he owns that throne. The hard blue ice of his eyes is enough to deflect any challenge. It is even almost enough to make you forget the overheated amateurishness of the show. Peter DuBoiss production doesnt drag, but its high spirits are those of an overcaffeinated adolescent, all flailing limbs and whooping voice. See it, though, for Mr. Dinklages refreshingly direct and purposeful Richard, whose fierce, effortful will power translates into extraordinary charisma (2:45). Public Theater, 525 Lafayette Street, East Village, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays at noon; Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets: $50. BRANTLEY + SLAVAS SNOWSHOW A giggle of clowns led by the Russian master Slava Polunin is stirring up laughter and enjoyment at the Union Square Theater. As audiences shuffle in through the snowlike rectangles of white paper that blanket the floor and seats, prompting immediate attempts at artificial snowball throwing, this show announces itself as something unusual. And so it is, as Mr. Polunin, with his baggy yellow romperlike costume, his red ball of a nose, his tufts of white hair and his shaggy red bulbous shoes, teams with his cutup colleagues. Before the night is over, in a show that touches the heart as well as tickles the funnybone, members of the audience are likely to find themselves covered by a giant cobweb, spritzed with water, providing a lap for a wandering clown and stung by the snow of the title, propelled with blizzard force in a dramatic finale (1:30). Union Square Theater, 100 East 17th Street, (212) 307-4100. Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 4 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 and 5:30 p.m. Tickets $59.90 to $64.90. LAWRENCE VAN GELDER + STRING OF PEARLS Its that old one-object-through-the-years gimmick, but Michele Lowes one-act drama makes it fresh, funny and poignant. The stellar four-woman cast includes Ellen McLaughlin, the Tony Award-winning angel from Angels in America, and Mary Testa, the Tony-nominated alcoholic voice teacher from On the Town. Along with Antoinette LaVecchia and Sharon Washington, they create more than two dozen characters in a highly satisfying, often hilarious blend of sex, satire and absurdism, with an emphasis on womens relationships and the inevitability of both loss and happiness. The play, directed with knowing sparkle by Eric Simonson, is the tale of a necklace bought by a New York man for his wife just before he dies, its loss and its travels over the next three decades. That involves a lot of women, including a divorced landlady who is kind to a woman with cancer, a Tunisian hotel housekeeper with a greedy husband, a Riverside Drive swimmer who pretends not to be rich and a 300-pound lesbian gravedigger. Even the minor characters are memorable (1:30). Primary Stages at 59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street, (212) 279-4200. Tuesdays at 7 p.m.; Wednesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $55. ANITA GATES + WHITE CHOCOLATE Think of it as Black Like Moi. William Hamiltons play about a rich white couple who wake up to discover theyve turned black is a shrill, sporadically funny situation comedy that is at heart nothing more than its central situation. Mr. Hamilton is famous for his cartoons in The New Yorker magazine, which portray willowy, patrician figures poised over cocktails and crudites. Throughout White Chocolate, which is directed as if it were a traffic jam by David Schweizer, there are sharp, shiny lines that might work as captions for Hamilton cartoons. But they are lines that tell you less about character than class. And as a comedy of social identity, White Chocolate never looks far beneath the veneers it pretends to be peeling away. With Lynn Whitfield and Reg E. Cathey as the transformed spouses and the inimitable Julie Halston, who finds the wildly surreal in the conventional role of a blue-blooded snob (2:15). Century Center for the Performing Arts, 111 East 15th Street, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $55 to $60. BRANTLEY Last Chance THE BALD SOPRANO AND THE LESSON Works of art have a way of regaining currency as the years pass. The Romanian-born Eugène Ionesco, writing in 1950, surely did not envision the 21st-century American political landscape, but his Bald Soprano, a dark comedy about the vacuity of language, seems eerily apposite today. This is true despite the flaws in Carl Forsmans production, which domesticates and slightly sentimentalizes Ionescos corrosive vision, generating plenty of silly humor but failing to penetrate to the plays icy core. In The Lesson, the problem doesnt arise, since this more macabre comedy is clear-cut, at least in its emotional dynamics. It, too, could easily be seen by the politically minded as a grim cautionary tale for today. Beneath the plays preposterous comic surfaces, Ionesco makes unsettling connections between the corruption of means of communication and the unleashing of mans basest, most violent instincts; he seems to suggest that the destruction of language leads inexorably to the destruction of life. The new translations by Tina Howe are clever, crisp and generally similar to previous versions (2:00). Atlantic Theater Company, 336 West 20th Street, (212) 239-6200. Tonight at 8; tomorrow at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets: $50. ISHERWOOD ROSE RAGE This is not, as you might imagine, a comedy about dueling florists. Its a hefty slab of Shakespeare: all three parts of Henry VI, trimmed of fat and put through a meat grinder, then garnished with generous doses of directorial panache. A freshly sharpened cleaver is the weapon of choice in Edward Halls flashy, eminently accessible production, which presents 15th-century England as a slaughterhouse doing big business. The three plays are compressed into less than four hours of stage time. (With a generous dinner break and two intermissions, Rose Rage requires about five and a half hours.) The overriding metaphor, equating war with butchery, is manifested in various arresting ways. A cleaver snaps down on a jiggling pile of organ meat, signifying the fated end of an earl. Globs of flesh drip from plastic bags flung up on meat hooks. Red cabbages, symbolizing traitorous heads, are splintered beneath wooden clubs. But metaphors are by their nature limiting, and Mr. Halls has worn a bit thin by the end of the long evening. More problematic: Characters emerge only in broad outline here, and a real sense of humanity is largely missing from the production (5:30). The Duke on 42nd Street Theater, 229 West 42nd Street, Manhattan, (212) 239-6200. Tonight and tomorrow night at 6; Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets: $75. ISHERWOOD KRISTIN LINKLATER Hecuba seems to be this seasons Greek tragedy of choice, on both sides of the Atlantic. This fall London is host to not one but two productions of Euripides tragedy, with Clare Higgins (Vincent in Brixton) and Vanessa Redgrave playing the role of the captive Trojan queen. Here, in a production running through Oct. 30 at 45 Bleecker Street Theater, the role has been undertaken by Kristin Linklater (above foreground). Ms. Linklaters name may not have the box-office ring of a Redgrave, but shes an immensely revered figure in the acting community, renowned for her voice coaching. The author of the book Freeing the Natural Voice, shes currently the head of acting at Columbia Universitys theater department. The list of boldface-worthy actors shes worked with includes Bill Murray, Sigourney Weaver, Bernadette Peters and Alfre Woodard. But even a natural voice as studiously freed as Ms. Linklaters presumably has been might be challenged by the role of Hecuba. She begins the play in despair, a prisoner of the Greeks in the aftermath of the Trojan War. Her anguish turns to rage when her daughter Polyxena is led off to be sacrificed by Odysseus. But wait, theres more! Before the plays conclusion Hecuba will also see the body of a son brought before her, setting the stage for a sanguinary finale. Even Ms. Linklater may want to keep a bag of throat lozenges handy. (This weekends schedule: tonight and tomorrow night at 8 and Sunday at 7 p.m., 45 Below, at 45 Bleecker Street Theater, Greenwich Village, (212) 352-3101. Tickets: $15.) CHARLES ISHERWOOD Art A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy art, design and photography exhibitions at New York museums and art galleries this weekend. At many museums, children under 12 and members are admitted free. Addresses, unless otherwise noted, are in Manhattan. Most galleries are closed on Sundays and Mondays, but hours vary and should be checked by telephone. Gallery admission is free unless noted. * denotes a highly recommended show. Full reviews of recent museum and gallery shows: nytimes.com/art. Museums ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR, New Museum of Contemporary Art/Chelsea, 556 West 22nd Street, (212) 219-1222, through Nov. 13. Occupying new temporary quarters on the Chelsea Art Museums ground floor, the New Museum presents a mostly video group show that reflects the problems of adapting to the constant changes of modern experience. Robert Melees home entertainment center documents his adaptation to his eccentric mother; a video by Bojan Sarcevic shows a Turkish Gypsy band learning to play Western pop songs; and, best of all, a video by Kerry Tribe shows a wonderfully charismatic 10-year-old girl thoughtfully responding to philosophical questions posed by a man off camera. Hours: Tuesdays through Saturdays, noon to 6 p.m.; Thursdays, to 8 p.m. Admission: $6; students and 65+, $3. KEN JOHNSON * JOSEF AND ANNI ALBERS: DESIGNS FOR LIVING, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, 2 East 91st Street, (212) 849-8400, through Feb. 27. This enlightening, quietly excellent show is the first to juxtapose the design efforts -- his furniture, her textiles -- of two remarkable artists who happened to be married to each other. Instead of Josefs paintings of glowing nesting squares, which presage Minimalism, we get his 1927 nesting tables with the same meticulous sense of color, proportion and geometry that he would later apply to canvas. Anni brought a similarly intelligent structure to fabrics and tapestries that make every thread, texture and color count, at once exposing and exalting her mediums basic grid. She was the Sol LeWitt of weaving. Reflecting design moving toward art by dint of formidable concentration on its own purposes and potentials, this show may rearrange some ideas about early modernist design as well as Minimalist art and furniture. Hours: Tuesdays to Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Fridays, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 6 p.m. Admission: $10; students and 62+, $7. ROBERTA SMITH * AUSTRIA WEST: NEW ALPINE ARCHITECTURE AND NEW ALPINE RESIDENCES, Austrian Cultural Forum, 11 East 52nd Street, (212) 319-5300, through Oct. 30. An exciting survey of more than 70 structures -- from hotels to factories -- produced by what amounts to a thriving school of young architects working in the Austrian provinces of Tirol and Vorarlberg. Their historical pedigree reaches back to the International Style and the Bauhaus but has been relaxed by postmodernism and inspired by recent advances in building materials, techniques and systems. Nothing helps the new Alpine architecture like the grandeur of the old Alpine landscape, but this show confirms the point so often lost on American builders: that elegance, sustainability, innovation and respect for the environment are not antithetical. A show within a show of 40 residences by the same architects reflects more intimate applications of their ideas. One can come away with the inspiring realization that old history can be taught new tricks, and that even in these global, postmodern, pluralistic times, there can still be such a thing as a coherent style that accommodates individual sensibilities. Hours: Mondays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Free. SMITH * CHINA: DAWN OF A GOLDEN AGE, 200-750 A.D, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, (212) 535-7710, through Jan. 23. Almost all of the 350 objects in this splendid and rigorous exhibition are straight from China; a few were unearthed as recently as last year. But the show is far less about trophy archaeology than about history or about how archaeology is shaped into history. There are a few monumental sculptures; most of the objects, of gold, silver, bronze, lacquer and ceramic, are small, but absolutely rivetting. And the guiding theme -- that China, far from being a pure, monolithic source from which peripheral cultures drew, took from the larger world at least as much as it gave -- has everything to say to our own multicultural time. Its a show that asks you to do some work, but there is so much of interest to look at that no one, even the casual drive-by viewer, will feel short-changed. Hours: Sundays, Tuesdays through Thursdays, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays until 9 p.m. Admission: $12; students and 65+, $7. HOLLAND COTTER * COLONIAL ANDES: TAPESTRIES AND SILVERWORK, 1530-1830, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, (212) 535-7710, through Dec. 12. This sumptuous, groundbreaking show examines the fruitful cultural collision triggered by the Spanish conquest of the highly developed Incan empire in 1532. Their forced mixing resulted in a third hybrid culture that reached its zenith in two indigenous crafts: metalwork and, especially, tapestry weaving, which the Andean people perfected over 100 years. Beginning with the gorgeously geometric pre-Colonial tunics and mantels worn by the Inca elite, this exhibition traces the progressive absorption and adjustment of Renaissance and Baroque styles from Europe. The silverwork has an astounding roiling energy that seems to reflect the metals abundance. Hours and admission: see above. SMITH * DESIGN IS NOT ART: FUNCTIONAL OBJECTS FROM DONALD JUDD TO RACHEL WHITEREAD, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, 2 East 91st Street, (212) 849-8400, through Feb. 27. This bracingly contentious but spatially challenged and cursory show is worth seeing, if only because it is the first in an American museum to survey the functional and semifunctional objects designed during the last three decades by artists, in this case 18 well-known Minimalists, post-Minimalists and post-post-Minimalists. The show is overdue, which also makes it seem late, as it ignores many younger artists. It also resembles a high-end home furnishings store. Points of interest are few: Richard Tuttles lamps, John Chamberlains carved foam couch, Joel Shapiros side tables, crystal tumblers by Sol LeWitt and, above all, Franz Wests decorate-it-yourself table and chairs. The only designs that seem likely to last are those of Donald Judd, who presides over the exhibition as Picasso would over a survey of Cubism. By default the show reminds us that design is a pressing social issue, which makes it slightly revolting to see successful artists indulge themselves at societys expense. Hours and admission: see above. SMITH DONT CALL IT PERFORMANCE, Museo del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Avenue, at 104th Street, (212) 831-7272, through Nov. 7. Performative seems to be the preferred term now for performance art, to distinguish it from theater. Whatever, its alive and kicking here where short videos by 30 artists, mostly Latino or Latin American but including some North American and European colleagues, are on view. They are grouped in five categories, dealing with behavior; meditative and spiritual explorations; pop culture; social and political views; and sound, including language and music. The work is uneven, but you do get a sense that a younger generation is keeping performative work a vital presence in the art world. Hours: Wednesdays through Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.. Admission: $6; $4 for students and 65+. GRACE GLUECK GREAT EXPECTATIONS: JOHN SINGER SARGENT PAINTING CHILDREN, Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, (718) 638-5000, through Jan. 16. Primarily known for his dashing portraits of high-born ladies sumptuously decked out, Sargent painted other subjects, too, not least among them children. And in these portraits, mostly of upper-class offspring, to be sure, he tended to get more real. This show, presenting some 40 works on the subject, has large ambitions. A major one is exploring how his likenesses tied in with the changing notions of childhood that came into play at the end of the 19th century, when children began to be regarded as distinctive personalities in their own right. For the most part here, he seems to see his young subjects that way, rather than as the syrupy stereotypes portrayed by his Victorian and 18th-century predecessors. Said to be the first to bring together Sargents influential portraits of children, the show with its catalog is a refreshing new take on this bravura brushmeister. Hours: Wednesdays to Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. (to 11 p.m. on first Saturday of every month). Admission: $6; students and 62+, $3. GLUECK * LOOKING AT LIFE, International Center of Photography, 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at 43rd Street, Manhattan), (212) 857-0000, through Nov. 28. From its start in 1936 until its demise as a weekly publication in 1972, Life was the countrys archive of public memory, supplying millions of Americans, most of them educated, white and middle class, with a collective visual inventory of the world as imagined for Main Street, U.S.A. This entertaining show reminds of many memorable photographs the magazine published, from Robert Capas pictures of the landing at Normandy Beach and Larry Burrowss bloodied G.I.s in Vietnam to W. Eugene Smiths Spanish village and Carlo Bavagnolis shot of Jane Fonda as Barbarella. The big idea is how Life and, by implication, all forms of popular journalism package news, but in the end the photographs, looked at one by one, speak for themselves. Hours: Tuesdays through Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Fridays, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission: $10; $7, students and 62+. MICHAEL KIMMELMAN * MEMORIALS OF WAR, Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue, at 75th Street, (212) 570-3600, through Nov. 28. The Whitney reveals a little-seen aspect of its collection and some interesting new acquisitions in this small but powerful show of works inspired by the war in Vietnam. Vic Munizs recent photographs are ghostly recreations of three of the eras most indelible news photographs. Edward Kienholz and Robert Morris are represented by proposals from around 1970 for unexecuted memorials that emphasize the hard truths of armed combat. Chris Burden restages five of Americas Darker Moments, in tableaus whose toy-soldier scale in no way diminishes shocks and aftershocks of these events. Hours: Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Fridays, 1 to 9 p.m. Admission: $12; $9.50, students and 62+. SMITH Galleries: Uptown * BEN NICHOLSON, Jacobson Howard, 19 East 76th Street, (212) 570-2362, through Oct. 23. The best pieces in this show of paintings and drawings by one of the best painters to emerge in England between the world wars are a half-dozen Cubist-style pictures from the 1940s and 50s. They are notable for their exquisite draftsmanship, suave colors, delicately tactile surfaces and lively, syncopated play with flat shapes and planar layering. JOHNSON Galleries: 57th Street KATHERINE BOWLING, Divide, Greenberg Van Doren, 730 Fifth Avenue, at 57th Street, (212) 445-0444, through Oct. 30. To plain vanilla countryside, Ms. Bowlings softly brushed works bring a touch of soul. Concentrating on the landscapes surrounding her home in upstate New York, she responds to the roads, trees and fields that she experiences daily and the light that falls on them at various times of day and night. Her spirit is derived from the great landscapists of the past but she uses thoroughly modern compositional and painting devices. GLUECK PETER GREAVES, Reverie, Forum, 745 Fifth Avenue, (212) 355-4545, through Oct. 23. Mr. Greavess miniature portraits of attractive young women, each a bit larger than a postage stamp, are marvels of fastidious technique. With a slightly hazy focus and not a single visible stroke of pencil or brush, his tiny, pensive heads seem to emerge as if conjured by sorcery from the dark backgrounds. JOHNSON PAUL HENRY RAMIREZ, In Fluent Form, Mary Boone, 745 Fifth Avenue, (212) 752-2929, through Oct. 23. The stylized parsings of the body in these impeccably mannered canvases are accomplished by dividing flat, pristine white grounds with arrangements of thin vertical and horizaontal lines, often rooted in rounded blocks of brilliant color. The lines support bright, fleshy blobs in candy hues and occasionally end in hearts that flower into symmetrical bursts of wiry, wiglike curls. Elegant splatters of drops in the shape of eyeballs dance cheerily around these conceits. The high-finish paint surface is nothing short of perfection. The body as an 18th-century drawing room or a Vivaldi composition might work as a description of these pretty but sterile paintings. GLUECK Galleries: SoHo COVER GIRL: THE FEMALE BODY AND ISLAM IN CONTEMPORARY ART, Ise Cultural Foundation, 555 Broadway, near Prince Street, (212) 925-1649, through Oct. 23. Islam is a monolithic word in the West, though there is every reason to know it shouldnt be. The five women in this show were born in Islamic countries or raised in Islamic households. Yet no two of them take the same approach to the theme -- at once a stereotype and a reality -- of the veiled female body in Islamic culture. A wall text by the Indian artist Rummana Hussain, who died in 1999, captures the prevailing refusal to deal in easy answers: Have you defined her? Does she have any options? Are her beliefs an escape? Or a security? Or a habit? Or a choice? The complete text is quite long, and it is composed entirely of questions. COTTER * LEON FERRARI: POLITISCRIPTS, The Drawing Room, 35 Wooster St., (212) 219-2166, through Oct. 23. Born in Argentina in 1920, Leon Ferrari is one of a group of Latin American modernists who, in the 1960s, created an intensely politicized art that ran in parallel to, and sometimes anticipated, trends in Europe and North America. The ink-on-paper pieces in this small show may best be understood as a response to the repressive political of environment of Argentina in 1960s, when censorship was common. A few are inflammatory statements by the artist written in a twisting script at once amusingly ornate and next to impossible to read. And even those that look entirely abstract are executed with care, so that they all convey the impression of carrying coded and encrypted information known only to the artist. In short, they are like taunting gestures of counter-censorship. Through its very opaqueness abstraction becomes a political tool. COTTER ROBIN HILL, Lennon Weinberg, 560 Broadway at Prince Street, (212) 941-0012, through Oct. 23. Second-generation Process artists dont fade away, they just keep marshalling orderly accumulations of this or that material as if Eva Hesse never existed. The works here employ cotton batting, wax, plaster and string, as well as hundreds of tiny circles of mica that are pinned to the wall in buoyant circling lines. Beautiful, but also familiar. SMITH * DONALD JUDD, Peter Freeman, 560 Broadway at Prince Street, (212) 966-5154, through Oct. 23. This show features an unknown work: the only triangular piece in captivity by the generally four-square Minimalist sculptor Donald Judd. It is large, equilateral, made of raw plywood mad open at the top, with its interior and exterior unexpectedly opposed. The only other triangular Judd is an outdoor work in concrete in Australia. SMITH TALESPINNING: SELECTIONS FALL 2004, Drawing Center, 35 Wooster Street, (212) 219-2166, through Oct. 23. The work of 14 artists whose imagery flirts with narrative in one way or another fills this wide-ranging show, which exposes some intriguing talents. Some manipulate texts and even whole books; others play with fairy tales and folklore; still others base figments on literary characters and a few address social, political and other worldly topics. It all adds up to an uneven show, but one in the centers tradition of invigorating experiment. GLUECK Galleries: Chelsea AN-MY LE, Murray Guy, 453 West 17th Street, (212) 463-7372, through Oct. 23. Theater of war refers to the geopolitical area that any war actively encompasses. But battles are staged and choreographed, troops deployed in units, like corps de ballet. All of this requires rehearsal, and rehearsal for war is the subject of these photographs, shot at the Marine Corps Air Ground Control Center in California, a desert outpost where marines train for future combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. The terrain has a John Ford-ish grandeur. The marines act out cowboy-and-Indian roles: some play Americans; others play Iraqis. The pictures are dramatic and gorgeous, as combat photography often is. They are also apt documents of a war which, some people argue, is based on a fiction and, at least as originally scripted, staged for the media. COTTER * NALINI MALANI, Bose Pacia, 508 West 26th Street, (212) 989-7074, through Oct. 23. Ms. Malani, based in Mumbai, has been seen here only sporadically, with paintings in museum group shows and an intensely theatrical video installation at the New Museum two years ago. Both media play a role in this strong gallery solo show, her first in Manhattan, that draws on mythology, religion and history, both Western and Indian. In paintings, she dovetails the figures of Sita from the Ramayana and Medea -- the one an ideal of submissive self-sacrifice, the other an emblem of destructive fury -- to propose a complex female persona beyond controlling stereotypes. A video installation addressing sectarian violence and a magic lantern-style shadow play complete the exhibition, which finds a political artist of impressive visual range at the height of her power. COTTER * PIPILOTTI RIST, Luhring Augustine, 531 West 24th Street, (212) 206-9100, through Oct. 23. This relatively uncluttered video installation offers full-blown Rist World along with further proof that the artists dizzying, slipping, sliding conflation of sound, color, scale and spatial illusion has few equals in video. The subversive (feminist) tensions of Ms. Rists best works are absent here, but the work makes the brain so fuzzily relaxed you may not notice. SMITH Other Galleries ELECTRIFYING ART: ATSUKO TANAKA, 1954-1968, Grey Art Gallery, New York University, 100 Washington Square East, Greenwich Village, (212) 998-6780, through Dec. 11. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Ms. Tanaka was a member of the avant-garde Japanese art group called Gutai, and the Grey Gallery survey covers the years of that association. Its a visually low-key show, but one with lots of ideas from an artist who was doing proto-Conceptualist and proto-Minimalist work and very early versions of sound and performance art. Spend time with the short films in the galleries; they bring everything else to life. COTTER * FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION NATIONAL MONUMENT, Foley Square, Lower Manhattan, (212) 206-6674, through Nov. 13. On a return engagement sponsored by Creative Time and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, this interactive outdoor sculpture, made in the symbolic year 1984, consists of a big, bright red Constructivist-style megaphone, through which members of the public can exercise their right to free speech. The work is a collaboration among the architect Laurie Hawkinson, the artist Erika Rothenberg and the performer John Malpede. It points, perhaps appropriately, toward the state and federal courthouses. SMITH TERESA HUBBARD AND ALEXANDER BIRCHLER, Single Wide, Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, 120 Park Avenue at 42nd Street, (917) 663-2453, through Oct. 22. Single Wide is a technically sophisticated, six-minute video loop that revolves around the nighttime event of a distraught woman crashing her pickup truck into her rural single wide-size trailer home. Shot in one long circulating pan, it is like a film version of a Gregory Crewdson photograph with the vividly amplified sound effects of a Janet Cardiff production. JOHNSON Last Chance STEPHEN ANDREWS/JERRY MORIARTY, Cue Art Foundation, 511 West 25th Street, Chelsea, (212) 206-3583, through tomorrow. Mr. Moriarty paints poignant autobiographical fantasies in a brusquely simplified realistic style. Voyeurism, womens underwear, leaking body fluids and a beloved dog named Fella are among his subjects; the paintings have the mundane, sometimes comically embarrassing weirdness of dreams. Mr. Andrews translates images of events in Iraq into soft-focus crayon drawings. JOHNSON HERNAN BAS, Sometimes With One I Love, Daniel Reich, 537 A West 23rd Street, Chelsea, (212) 924-4949, through tomorrow. Mr. Bas, who lives in Miami and was in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, paints formally modest but unabashedly sentimental narratives of adventure, sexual intrigue and mystical experience starring slender, fine-featured adolescent boys. Made in an expressionistic style that calls to mind paperback book covers of the 1940s, his easel-size paintings are exciting mainly for the possibly more ambitious future of painterly story-telling they promise. JOHNSON KRISTIN CALABRESE: EVERLASTING GOBSTOPPER, Leo Koenig Inc., 249 Centre Street, SoHo (212) 334-9255, through tomorrow. The large paintings in this New York debut espouse an unlikely combination of Photo Realism, Process Art and political critique. Every image has been made or arranged by the artist and then painted, whether it is a mound of her students playing dead (The Price of Oil) or a tangle of colored tape (Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave). Clever, well-made and brightly colored, they offer cheerful protest in an uncheerful time. SMITH * ON KAWARA, Paintings of 40 Years, David Zwirner, 525 West 19th Street, Chelsea,(212) 727-2070, through tomorrow. Along with the Rackstraw Downes show at Betty Cunningham and Giorgio Morandi at Lucas Schoormans, this radiant mini-survey ranks among the three most beautiful shows of painting in Chelsea right now. It is certainly the best chance to be won over by the seemingly relentless monochromatic date paintings that the artist has been making since 1966. They turn out to be remakrably varied, and almost perfect in their balance of mind and matter -- also known as the Conceptual and the Minimal. SMITH ROY LICHTENSTEIN, City Hall, City Hall Park and the Tweed Courthouse, Lower Manhattan, through today. Rising five stories under the octagonal skylight of the Tweed Courthouses fabulous Italianate rotunda, Lichtensteins clunky tower of giant cartoon brush strokes is an impressive sight, the centerpiece of a Public Art Fund installation of four sculptures in and around City Hall. Its sly commentary on Modernist myths of freedom and spontaneity is enhanced by its insertion at the core of New York Citys bureaucratic control center. You cant just spontaneously walk in to see it, though. You can call 311 to sign up for a Friday-only tour. JOHNSON NO RETURN, Momenta Art, 72 Berry Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, (718) 218-8058, through Monday. Circulation -- of wealth, information, organic matter -- is the theme this shrewd group show. Where some artists make money from art, Jed Ela makes art from money. He weaves baskets from $1 bills, then sells them for the dollar amounts used. Peggy Diggs stamps dollar bills with conscience-probing one-line questions. The Conceptual artist Rainer Ganahl mails postcards using handmade stamps with politically loaded inscriptions. Rutherford Chang scrambles words and images from The New York Times into abstraction. Pawel Wojtasiks short film Dark Sun Squeeze documents the workings of a sewage treatment; filtered through technology and art, excrement gleams and shines. COTTER PAINTING WITH WORDS, Koichi Yanagi Oriental Fine Arts, 58A East 66th St., (212) 744-5577, through Sunday. Koichi Yanagis gallery is small; so are his exhibitions, even when their themes are spacious, as is the case in this bouquet of literary images. Handwritten poems trickle down sheets of paper that glint with powdered mica. A 17th century lacquer writing box alludes to the classic Tales of Ise, The centerpiece, a six panel screen attributed to Kano Takanobu (1571-1618), has a scene from The Tale of Genji will end in an amorous pursuit, though its hard to imagine any passion discomposing this courtly universe of 14-carat clouds, roofless rooms and origami-crisp gowns. COTTER THOMAS SCHEIBITZ, Brot & Spiele, Tanya Bonakdar, 521 West 21st Street, Chelsea,(212) 414-4144, through tomorrow. Mr. Scheibitz, who will represent Germany at the 2005 Venice Bienale, absorbs all kinds of sources -- from centuries-old maps to contemporary bar graphs -- into semi-abstract, semiotically suggestive paintings and constructions. What his allusive works mean is hard to say, but with their sharp edges and strident colors, they offer an interesting mix of raw clunkiness and stylish retro-modernism. JOHNSON SEMI-LUCID, White Columns, 320 West 13th Street, West Village, (212) 924-4212, through Sunday. Lauren Ross, who recently resigned as director and chief curator of White Columns, has organized an engaging show about a prevalent tendency in contemporary art: the reshuffling of familiar graphic conventions into pictures that are teasingly illusory yet indecipherably abstract. Aaron Nobles muscular wall paintings and Robert Medvedzs compressive ink drawings recycle comic book graphics; Jiha Moon mixes Eastern and Western sources with a delicate touch; and Julian Pozzi draws spacey configurations of finely hatched boxes inspired by patio furniture. JOHNSON WOLFGANG STAEHLE, 2004, Postmasters, 459 West 19th Street, (212) 727-3323, through tomorrow. An entrancing paradox animates Mr. Staehles real-time video projections. Mural-scale images in the darkened main gallery show a view of Manhattan and a bucolic upstate view of the Hudson River, delivered by on-site cameras. A third, on a laptop screen, shows the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. Nothing could be more artificial, yet as you study the slight changes that happen with each 10-second digital update, you feel as if you are truly in the spiritually uplifting presence of nature. JOHNSON SQUINT, Jack the Pelican, 487 Driggs Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, (718) 782-0183, through Sunday. This aptly titled group show challenges the eye with effects both minuscule and manic. In the latter category is Deborah Sperbers actual-size replica of Jackson Pollocks Autumn Rhythm, accomplished with 165,000 pipe cleaners. As for tiny, there is Mark Shetabis peephole version of Mary Boones SoHo gallery. The thrills are mostly cheap, but theyre still thrills. SMITH DAVID WOJNAROWICZ We dont have artists like David Wojnarowicz these days. Or if we do, theyre lurking out there around the edges of the mainstream art world, which is pretty much where Wojnarowicz stayed before he died of AIDS in his 30s in 1992. He came to New York as a runaway kid, worked as a street hustler and settled on the Lower East Side, where he wrote voluminously and made art. He shot a series of photographs, Rimbaud in New York, between 1978 and 1979, when the city was on the skids. Each picture shows a man wearing a cut-out mask of the face of the precocious French poet Arthur Rimbaud, taken when he was in his teens. The man in Wojnarowiczs photos -- or men; its uncertain whether he posed for all of them or asked others to as well -- appears in Times Square and Coney Island, in subways and on the abandoned West Side piers known as trysting places for gay sex. He smokes, shoots-up, masturbates or just stares; in two pictures he brandishes a gun. These are romantic images, and political images. Theyre young, lonely, erotic, cast-a-cold-eye tough. Theyre about disaffection, and about intense, hard-wired attachment, deep love and deep anger mixed. The gallery is also displaying pages from Wojnarowiczs notebooks; he was at least as good a writer as he was an artist, and maybe better. We sure could use his likes again. (Roth Horowitz, 160A East 70th Street, Manhattan, (212) 717-9067, through Oct. 30. Another show, Out of Silence: Artwork With Original Text, by Wojnarowicz appears at P.P.O.W., 555 West 25th Street, Chelsea, (212) 647-1044, through Nov. 13. Both are free.) HOLLAND COTTER

National Post View: Time to eliminate daylight savings

Most North Americans awoke this morning with an hour less sleep in the bank, thanks to daylight savings time (DST), which kicked in Sunday morning. Research suggests they arent just one-24th more irritable and cranky as a result, but more likely to.

CHRISTMAS LITERATURE; The New Christmas Story by Charles Dickens. DR. MARIGOLDS PRESCRIPTIONS. I. To be Taken Immediately. II. Not to be Taken at Bed-Time. III. To be Taken at the Dinner-Table. IV. Not to be Taken for Granted. V. To be Taken in Water. VI. To be Taken with a Grain of Salt. VII. To be Taken and Tried. VIII. To be Taken for Life. From the Christmas Number of All the Year Round. TO BE TAKEN IMMEDIATELY. NOT TO BE TAKEN AT BED-TIME. TO BE TAKEN AT THE DINNER-TABLE. NOT TO BE TAKEN FOR GRANTED. TO BE TAKEN IN WATER. TO BE TAKEN WITH A GRAIN OF SALT. CHRISTMAS LITERATURE TO BE TAKEN AND TRIED. VIII. TO BE TAKEN FOR LIFE.

CHRISTMAS LITERATURE; The New Christmas Story by Charles Dickens. DR. MARIGOLDS PRESCRIPTIONS. I. To be Taken Immediately. II. Not to be Taken at Bed-Time. III. To be Taken at the Dinner-Table. IV. Not to be Taken for Granted. V. To be Taken in Water. VI. To be Taken with a Grain of Salt. VII. To be Taken and Tried. VIII. To be Taken for Life. From the Christmas Number of All the Year Round. TO BE TAKEN IMMEDIATELY. NOT TO BE TAKEN AT BED-TIME. TO BE TAKEN AT THE DINNER-TABLE. NOT TO BE TAKEN FOR GRANTED. TO BE TAKEN IN WATER. TO BE TAKEN WITH A GRAIN OF SALT. CHRISTMAS LITERATURE TO BE TAKEN AND TRIED. VIII. TO BE TAKEN FOR LIFE.

Giving doctors a choice on assisted suicide

This ought to be done with the utmost care and with respect for all views. Revising the draft policy to better protect the freedoms of both patients and their doctors would be a promising step towards the difficult times ahead. National Post. Signed by.

Has The Economist ever been to Toronto? (Video)

. hat economic policy natpo.st/1Edx0KA 52 minutes ago; Michael Den Tandt: Tories score point on Trudeau Liberals with balanced-budget law proposal natpo.st/1Cvtu8T 58 minutes ago; National Post View: China gets greedy natpo.st/1Cv6LcS 2 hours ago .