While other aspects of New Orleans life, from dining to live music, slow down considerably as summer begins, the local stage calendar has been packed lately perhaps – because of the guaranteed one-and-a-half to two hours of air conditioning? In the realm of indoor activities, here are a few more happenings to check out this weekend.
Stage
An irreverent send-up of both Arthurian legend and Broadway clichés, Theater 13’s production of the hit musical Spamalot opens Friday, June 14. The musical shares a basic plot and some jokes and references from its source material, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but adds some self-referential humor about musicals in songs like "You Won't Succeed on Broadway" and "Diva's Lament: Whatever Happened to My Part?" The original 2005 Broadway production won three Tony Awards, including one for Best Musical. Theatre 13’s Facebook page boasts they are using seven pounds of confetti per performance, more than the six pounds used for Broadway and touring productions. Gary Rucker directs Ricky Graham, Mike Harkins, Mason Wood, Marc Fouchi, Janie Heck and others at Rivertown Theatres for the Performing Arts. Info here.
The comedy Merry Wives of Windsor kicks off the New Orleans Shakespeare Festival at Tulane University, which also includes The Shakespearean Jazz Show — where the bard’s words are accompanied by jazz music — The Complete Works of Williams Shakespeare (abridged), Romeo and Juliet and a student production of The Taming of the Shrew. Merry Wives of Windsor, directed by Clare Moncrief and starring Rebecca Frank and Cassie Worley, opens Thursdays at Tulane’s Lupin Theater. Info here.
You can still catch Cripple Creek Theatre’s acclaimed production of Clybourne Park at the Shadowbox Theater, as well as Running With Scissors’ Civil War romp Helle’s Belles at the Mid-City Theatre, until June 23.
Music
Psychedelic pop weirdo Ariel Pink, who previously existed in obscurity as a cult favorite, found wider attention with 2010’s Before Today (released under his group name “Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti) and its breakout track “Round and Round” – which besides being selected as the best song of the year by the discriminating website Pitchfork, also spawned a chills-inducing cover by the Internet-famous PS22 Chorus. But with 2012’s Mature Themes, Pink eschews the mainstream with a confounding album of strange, 1960s-‘70s AM radio pop, like the jingle-esque “Only in My Dreams,” which inspired a bizarre and charming VHS-style music video. Pink, along with Purple Pilgrims and Kirin J. Callinan, performs 10 p.m. Saturday, June 15, at Tipitina’s. Info here.
If you had tickets to the sold-out Mumford & Sons show tonight, June 13, it’s been postponed after bassist Ted Dwane was hospitalized for a blood clot in his brain.
Film
This is the End, the New Orleans-shot comedy that gave us months of celebrity sightings and introduced Aziz Ansari to Cochon, is in theaters. In the comedy, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogan, Rihanna, Emma Watson and nearly every other working actor and comedian play fictional versions of themselves dealing with the aftermath of the apocalypse.
The Room, the audience participation-friendly contemporary cult classic referred to as “the Citizen Kane of bad movies,” is the midnight movie at The Prytania on Friday and Saturday. Info here.
The acclaimed British dark comedy Sightseers, which follows a couple on a road trip that takes a turn for the worse, opens at the Zeitgeist on June 14. Info here.
Art
This weekend’s the last to check out “Beyond “Beasts”: The Art of Court 13,” the exhibition featuring art and short films by the collective behind the Oscar-nominated Beasts of the Southern Wild. At the Contemporary Arts Center until June 16. Info here.
Words
Eve Ensler, the writer behind the oft-performed feminist classic The Vagina Monologues, signs her memoir In the Body of the World at the Ashé Cultural Arts Center from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. tonight (June 13). In 2008 Ensler worked with New Orleans women to create the play Swimming Upstream, which was conceived and performed at Ashé. Proceeds from the night’s book sales benefit the nonprofit Ashé. Info here.
