\n<\/p>\n
Jan. 17-18 at 7:30 p.m. at the Beacon Theater, 2124 Broadway, Manhattan; msg.com\/beacon-theatre<\/a>.<\/p>\n Since the early 1990s, Sarah Silverman has fearlessly pushed boundaries, finding laughs no matter the subject. Her incisive wit and dead-on deadpan helped her break through with the concert film \u201cJesus Is Magic\u201d in 2005, earned her 10 Emmy nominations and two awards over the years, and continues to keep her busy: She occasionally guest hosts for \u201cThe Daily Show\u201d on Comedy Central, and she currently presides over \u201cStupid Pet Tricks,\u201d TBS\u2019s adaptation of David Letterman\u2019s beloved skit.<\/p>\n With her latest stand-up show, \u201cPostmortem,\u201d which she has toured across the country and will tape at the Beacon Theater this weekend, she tackles perhaps her greatest challenge: the deaths of her father and stepmother, who died within days of each other in May 2023. But whether she has cracked wise about childhood trauma in her memoir, \u201cThe Bedwetter,\u201d the musical adaptation of which is set to open in Washington in February, or about antisemitism in her 2023 HBO special, \u201cSomeone You Love,\u201d Silverman has proved herself expert at turning troubling topics into thought-provoking humor.<\/p>\n Tickets start at $29.50 on Ticketmaster<\/a>. SEAN L. McCARTHY<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ovlov is a boomerang of a band. Initially formed in 2008 by three brothers and their childhood friend, the group has weathered multiple breakups and lineup changes, and has gone long stretches without releasing music. Yet it keeps coming back, to the delight of its modest but fervent following. Across the years, the band\u2019s music has maintained high energy and efficiency, with tight songs in which sneakily catchy melodies weave through woolly guitar riffs and dramatic dynamics.<\/p>\n Ovlov and the rock band Speedy Ortiz will share the bill at Music Hall of Williamsburg on Saturday, marking a reunion of sorts: Sadie Dupuis, who fronts Speedy Ortiz, frequently collaborated with Ovlov in its early years. Low Healer and the post-punk four piece Grass Is Green are also on the lineup.<\/p>\n The show is sold out, but resale tickets are available on AXS<\/a>. OLIVIA HORN<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Classical<\/p>\n Jan. 19 at 7 p.m. at Christ & St. Stephen\u2019s Episcopal Church, 120 West 69th Street, Manhattan; prismquartet.com.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The saxophonist and composer Miguel Zen\u00f3n not only honors tradition but also creates something new from it. After exploring the musical heritage of his native Puerto Rico, he recorded what he calls the \u201cPuerto Rican Songbook,\u201d and then translated this history into music all his own. This Sunday at Christ & St. Stephen\u2019s Episcopal Church, Zen\u00f3n joins the all-saxophone PRISM Quartet for the world premiere of his \u201cEl Eco de Tambor\u201d (\u201cThe Echo of a Drum\u201d), a piece that looks at the percussive side of the saxophone through reference to drumming traditions from West Africa, the Caribbean and beyond.<\/p>\n PRISM Quartet have commissioned hundreds of works from a dazzling array of contemporary composers, but the members find a different, softer stride when working with Zen\u00f3n\u2019s lucid melodies. Three other works by Zen\u00f3n, including a subtle, lovely number called \u201cThe Missing Piece,\u201d celebrate a decade of collaboration between these artists. There will also be a Broadway wild card: an all-sax version of Stephen Sondheim\u2019s \u201cSend in the Clowns.\u201d<\/p>\n Tickets are pay what you wish, starting at $10, on the quartet\u2019s website<\/a>. GABRIELLE FERRARI<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Jan. 19 at 11 a.m. at Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, Manhattan; filmforum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n A title like \u201cThe Iron Giant\u201d<\/a> might make you think that the story is about a fairy-tale ogre. But the massive character in this animated movie has more in common with E.T. than with a foul-tempered creature at the top of a beanstalk.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Newly arrived in Rockwell, Maine, from outer space in 1957, he is a huge robot who survives by ingesting metal, a diet that makes him somewhat dangerous to have around cars and railroad tracks. However, Hogarth Hughes, a local 9-year-old, discovers that the giant has a kind heart, and their adventures together<\/a> turn into a tender fable extolling tolerance and opposing nuclear arms. (The cold-war government operative investigating the situation thinks the robot is a Soviet weapon and should be dealt with accordingly.)<\/p>\n The director Brad Bird<\/a> (\u201cThe Incredibles,\u201d \u201cRatatouille\u201d) adapted this, his first feature, from \u201cThe Iron Man,\u201d a children\u2019s novel by the British poet Ted Hughes. Released in 1999<\/a>, \u201cThe Iron Giant\u201d comes back to the big screen as part of Film Forum Jr.<\/a>, a series that introduces young viewers to cinematic classics of all kinds.<\/p>\n Tickets are $13. LAUREL GRAEBER<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Through Jan. 29 at Film at Lincoln Center, 165 West 65th Street, Manhattan; filmlinc.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n A collaboration between Film at Lincoln Center and the Jewish Museum, this annual festival emphasizes new movies, but the programmers can usually be counted on to showcase a real discovery from the past. This year, it is a silent feature: \u201cBreaking Home Ties\u201d (screening on Sunday), from 1922, made at Betzwood Studios in Pennsylvania<\/a> with the express intent of countering antisemitism in the United States, according to the restoration\u2019s title cards. The film concerns a Jewish family in Russia whose son, David (Richard Farrell), an aspiring lawyer, is compelled to flee to America. The others eventually emigrate, too, but David remains unaware of their whereabouts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Also screening this week are Barbara Albert\u2019s \u201cBlind at Heart\u201d (on Monday and Wednesday), which follows a Jewish doctor (Mala Emde) in Weimar Berlin and then as she takes on a false identity during <\/strong>the Holocaust; and Joy Sela\u2019s documentary \u201cThe Other\u201d (on Wednesday), a portrait of Israelis and Palestinians working toward peace that was filmed from 2017 until recently. Screenings listed as standby on the website will have rush lines at the door before showtime. BEN KENIGSBERG<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Last Chance<\/p>\n Through Jan. 19 at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, Manhattan; ourtownbroadway.com<\/a>. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.<\/p>\n Kenny Leon brings Thornton Wilder\u2019s microcosmic drama back to Broadway, starring Jim Parsons (\u201cThe Big Bang Theory\u201d) as the Stage Manager. Zoey Deutch and Ephraim Sykes play the young lovers, Emily Webb and George Gibbs, with Richard Thomas and Katie Holmes as Mr. and Mrs. Webb; Billy Eugene Jones and Michelle Wilson as Dr. and Mrs. Gibbs; Donald Webber Jr. as Simon Stimson and Julie Halston as Mrs. Soames. Read the review.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Critic\u2019s Pick<\/p>\n Through June 28 at the Lyceum Theater, Manhattan; ohmaryplay.com<\/a>. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes.<\/p>\n Channeling the deliriously outrageous, emphatically queer downtown spirit of Charles Ludlam<\/a> and his Ridiculous Theatrical Company, this comedy by Cole Escola<\/a> (\u201cDifficult People\u201d) began as a fizzy Off Broadway hit. <\/strong>Escola stars as a sozzled, stage-struck Mary Todd Lincoln \u2014 a very loose cannon largely ignored by her husband (Conrad Ricamora), the president, who is otherwise occupied with assorted sexual exploits and the bothersome Civil War. Read the review.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Critic\u2019s Pick<\/p>\n At the Majestic Theater, Manhattan; gypsybway.com<\/a>. Running time: 2 hours 55 minutes.<\/p>\n Grabbing the baton<\/a> first handed off by Ethel Merman<\/a>, Audra McDonald plays the formidable Momma Rose in the fifth Broadway revival of Arthur Laurents, Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim\u2019s exalted 1959 musical about a vaudeville stage mother and her daughters: June, the favorite child, and Louise, who becomes the burlesque stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. Directed by George C. Wolfe<\/a>, with choreography by Camille A. Brown, the cast includes Danny Burstein, Joy Woods, Jordan Tyson and Lesli Margherita. Read the review.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater, Manhattan; outsidersmusical.com<\/a>. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes.<\/p>\n Rival gangs in a musical who aren\u2019t the Sharks and the Jets? Here they\u2019re the Greasers and the Socs, driven by class enmity just as they were in S.E. Hinton\u2019s 1967 young adult novel and Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s 1983 film. Set in a version of Tulsa, Okla., where guys have names like Ponyboy and Sodapop, this new adaptation<\/a> is the show with the rainstorm rumble<\/a> you\u2019ve heard about. It won four Tonys, including best musical and best direction, by Danya Taymor. With a book by Adam Rapp with Justin Levine, it has music and lyrics by Jamestown Revival (Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance) and Levine. Read the review.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Critic\u2019s Pick<\/p>\n Through Jan. 19 at Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway; brooklynmuseum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n This expansive and exhilarating retrospective, which traces Elizabeth Catlett\u2019s remarkable life and career, places her radical politics front and center. There are other ways to frame the artist and activist \u2014 for instance, that she never got her due from the mainstream art world \u2014 but the organizers go to the essence, focusing without euphemism on her mission as she understood it. Across her work, we get eyes and fists raised, mothers cradling children, portrayals of heroes like Sojourner Truth or Frederick Douglass; but also sharp angles, volumetric contrasts, eerie negative spaces. Read the review.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Through Jan. 26 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan; metmuseum.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n This magnificent glow-in-the-dark exhibition is a visual event of pure 24-karat beauty and a multileveled scholarly coup. On both counts, we\u2019ll be lucky if the season brings us anything like its equal. It is rare in other ways too. As a major survey of early Italian religious art, it\u2019s a kind of show we once saw routinely in our big museums, but now rarely do. Read the review.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Through Feb. 23 at the Shed, 545 West 30th Street, Manhattan; theshed.org.<\/p>\n This reconstruction of a fair held in Hamburg, Germany, in the summer of 1987 \u2014 complete with carnival rides decorated by artists such as Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat, which are unfortunately cordoned off \u2014 reserves its greatest pleasures for visitors with more art-historical tastes. Crammed with informative wall texts, this event \u2014 or is it an exhibition? \u2014 documents, but barely recreates, a long-lost cultural experiment that \u201cblurred the lines between art and play.\u201d Thirty-seven years later, at the Shed, those lines stay largely well defined. Most everything stays ensconced on the \u201cart\u201d side. The whole thing feels weirdly peaceful, hardly the midway I expected. Read the review.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nPRISM Quartet With Miguel Zen\u00f3n<\/h2>\n
\u2018The Iron Giant\u2019<\/h2>\n
New York Jewish Film Festival<\/h2>\n
\u2018Our Town\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Oh, Mary\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Gypsy\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018The Outsiders\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy\u2019<\/h2>\n