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H APPENINGS I MAGINE S ING D ANCE E ntertainment Blackstone Valley D Thursday, May 5, 2011 ENCORE REPERTORY COMPANY presents the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical “Rent” on Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., at the Stadium Theatre Performing Arts Centre, 28 Monument Square, Woonsocket. The play follows a year in the lives of seven friends living a disappearing Bohemian lifestyle in New York’s East Village, threatened by economic issues and AIDS. Tickets are $19 at the box office, by calling (401) 762-4545 or logging on to www.stadiumtheatre.com. DISNEY’S IMAGINATION MOVERS bring their “In a Big Warehouse” concert tour to the Providence Performing Arts Center, 220 Weybosset St., Providence, today at 4 and 7 p.m. The New Orleans-based rock band for kids of all ages is touring coast to coast, bringing the TV series “Idea Warehouse” to life. Tickets are $45 to $23 at the box office, by calling (401) 421-ARTS, or online at ppacri.org. Andrew Eccles Photo ALVIN AILEY American Dance Theater makes its first Rhode Island appearance on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Providence Performing Arts Center, 220 Weybosset St., Providence, presented by FirstWorks and PPAC. Tickets are $30 to $68 at the PPAC box office, by calling (401) 421-ARTS or online at ppacri.org. THE CALL GREATER MILFORD COMMUNITY CHORUS presents “Weather or Not” on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., in the Memorial Hall Cultural Center, 30 School St., Milford. The concert features songs that celebrate nature, from rivers to rainbows. Tickets are $5 in general, free for children 12 and younger, at the door. Ray Larson Photo The Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra gathers in full force on stage at the Vets. The orchestra’s season closes with an open rehearsal on Friday and the formal Classical Concert on Saturday. Philharmonic closes with ‘Mahler 3’ PROVIDENCE — The Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra and Music Director Larry Rachleff will be joined by a mezzo soloist and two choruses for its season-concluding concert, “Mahler 3,” on Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Vets, 1 Avenue of the Arts. The program is Gustav Mahler’s colossal Symphony No. 3 in D major. The Philharmonic is joined by mezzo-soprano Susan Platts, the women of the Providence Singers, and the Rhode Island Children’s Chorus, which was founded by Christine Noel of Woonsocket. The Philharmonic’s Resident Conductor Francisco Noya will introduce the program with an informal talk before the concert, starting at 7 p.m. Platts, a Canadian, brings a rich and wide-ranging voice to concert and recital repertoire for alto and mezzo-soprano. She has appeared with the major orchestras in North America including Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Houston, Toronto, PROVIDENCE — With ren- ovations in the works at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium, now officially called the Vets, plans already have been made for a re-dedi- cation in January that will fea- ture world-renowned soprano Renée Fleming. Fleming will perform with the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of Larry Rachleff, music director and conductor. This Vets Gala Concert will take place Jan. 21 at 7:30 p.m., and tickets will go on sale this Saturday. “I’m thrilled to be making my first appearance with the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra in Providence and meeting a new audience there,” Fleming said. “It will be my first-ever performance in Rhode Island. I had the pleas- ure of working with Larry Rachleff a few years ago in Houston, and I’m looking for- ward to sharing the stage with Fleming to sing with RIPO at the Vets CUMBERLAND — The weekend at the Blackstone River Theatre will start with a fundraiser for a group of young actors and will end with an appearance by some old favorites. Students from Cumberland High School will present “Tonight We Begin Again,” their prizewinning entry in the Rhode Island State Drama Festival, on Friday at 8 p.m. The production was selected to represent the state at the International Thespian Festival to be held in June in Lincoln, Neb., and honor that comes with a price tag. Students and directors are scrambling to raise money in order to lower each person’s cost to make the trip. Described as a comedic drama, the play deals with a group of new gradu- ates still at the Williamson High School campus where they are record- ing testimonials for a student’s tardy senior project. They use the time between the filmed testimonials to reflect on their relationships, ponder their future and banter with their friends. Each has a vision of how the world should be, but it doesn’t always mesh with the idea held by their closest friends. It becomes a story of discovery, transition and of what happens when two immature young men won’t stop tackling each other for no good rea- son. Suggested donation is $10 adults, $8 students and seniors. Music returns on Saturday at 8 p.m. when Sunny and Her Joy Boys featuring Duke Robillard perform. Robillard, an award-winning gui- A benefit show, then the Joy Boys PAWTUCKET — “I have a funny feeling about him,” Felicity admits in Christopher Durang’s “Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them.” “I’m afraid he might be a terrorist,” she con- tinues. “Or maybe he’s in the Mafia. Or maybe he’s bipolar. Or maybe he’s a serial killer. Or maybe he’s just a drug addict and alcoholic and out of prison on parole.” “Who are you talking about, dear?” her mother asks. “My husband, my husband, my husband!” is Felicity’s reply. The Sandra Feinstein Gamm Theatre pres- ents the Rhode Island premiere of Durang’s absurdist farce starting tonight and continuing through June 5. From the screwball imagination of the American playwright who also wrote “The Marriage of Bette and Boo,” comes this comedy about America’s ongoing “war on terror.” Felicity wakes up to a strange man, a hang- over, and a whole lot of questions: Is her new husband, Zamir, who claims to be Irish, a ter- rorist, a crazed alcoholic, or both? But those aren’t her only questions. Is her father’s hobby of butterfly collecting for real, or is it a cover for his involvement in a right-wing shadow government? Is her mother a theater-loving eccentric, or is she actually insane? Durang’s 2009 off-Broadway hit answers all these questions and more with the author’s trademark outrageous wit, diving headfirst into a world of ill-fated marriage, politics and porn, with a plot that provocatively and hilariously exposes hypocrisies at the core of contemporary American culture. Gamm Artistic Director Tony Estrella directs a cast of seasoned actors playing increas- ingly paranoid and anxious characters including Gamm resident actor Casey Seymour Kim as Felicity, a nice girl from a conventional family; Alexander Platt, who played Paul in the recent- ly completed production of “Paul,” as her hus- band, Zamir; and Gamm resident actors Wendy Overly as her ditzy mom and Sam Babbitt as her trigger-happy father. With equal parts humor and menace, “the hilarious, oddball title is apt,” Estrella says of Durang’s 2009 script. “Torture, to state the obvi- ous, is serious business; but Durang’s genius lies in subverting the crusading ideals and knee-jerk ‘patriotism’ of both the torturers and their ene- mies. “It’s satire, it’s parody, but it’s also an ironi- cally sober look at empathy and compassion as the only hurdle to society’s headlong race toward barbarism.” PAWTUCKET — It is always a special evening at Stone Soup when founding member, Joyce Katzberg, takes the stage, according to the regulars, but her per- formance this Saturday at 8 p.m. has an extra edge. Katzberg has announced that this con- cert, a retrospective look at the songs she has been singing at this coffeehouse and throughout the region, will be recorded by Steven Friedman of Melrose Studios. Katzberg’s songs are a blend of topical and traditional, historic and hysterical. Her shows combine her original composi- tions and material gathered during 40 years on stage. Whether she is singing a song she wrote, like “If I Were God” or “A Lullaby in War Time,” or one by writers such as Malvina Reynolds, author of “World in Their Pockets” and “Little Katzberg to record Saturday concert at Stone Soup Angel Tucker Photo Joyce Katzberg Durang’s new farce Renée Fleming Gamm Photo/Peter Goldberg Sam Babbitt plays Leonard and Alexander Platt, seated, is the mysterious Zamir in the Gamm’s Rhode Island premiere of ‘Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them.’ The Gamm presents R.I. premiere of ‘Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them.’ See THE GAMM, Page D-2 See PHILHARMONIC, Page D-2 See FLEMING, Page D-2 See STONE SOUP, Page D-2 Photos courtesy of BRT Sunny and her Joy Boys with Duke Robillard, above, will perform on Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Blackstone River Theatre. But first, the theater hosts a fundraiser to help pay expenses to send Cumberland High School’s production of ‘Tonight We Begin Again’ to the International Thespian Festival in Lincoln, Neb., in June. A scene from the play is pictured at left. See BRT, Page D-2
