New York Notebook :: November
Ghouls and goblins are so over! It’s time to move on to the very important task of coping with -- by snarking at - the wholesome delights of the family-intensive holiday season. Not that you’re not entitled to some unwholesome delights then as well, if that’s your preference. And a whole lot of cultural guttony, because there’s so much going on . ’Tis the almost-season, after all.
Week 1: American Voices of All Stripes (Plus a Notable Brit or Two)
Truffaut films will be screening at the French Institute Alliance Francaise Tuesdays through December 22 - a nice palliative for these darkening days.
Women are egregiously underrepresented at the New York Comedy Festival), November 4-7. Still, you might want to catch Mario Cantone, Mike Birbiglia, Ricky Gervais, and Andy Samberg among the headliners.
The
Brooklyn Academy of Music will be hopping with a new Karole Armitage work, "Itutu," featuring the West African band Burkina Electric, November 4-7, and Isabelle Huppert in Heiner Müller’s "Quartett" (based on "Les Liaisons Dangereuses") November 4-14. With Robert Wilson directing, you can assume that any liaising will take place very slowwwwwwly.
The Cell Theatre’s "Cedar City Falls: A Mid-West Conflict," an eight-episode theatrical soap opera cooked up by a quartet of "Sex and the City" writers and starring some recognizable names, occupies Brooklyn’s Galapagos Art Space November 4-13.
The sometimes vexing but never boring British provocateuse Tracey Emin opens a show at Lehmann Maupin November 5, as does Paul McCarthy at Hauser & Wirth, and don’t miss Susan Grossman’s large-scale urban drawings, at DFN Gallery only through the 7th. Urs Fischer’s playful show at the New Museum warrants a visit as well, if only for the melting lavender piano (it looks as if Liberace let the candles burn too long).
Wouldn’t you want to be on hand when Tennessee Williams is inducted -- about time! -- in St. John the Divine’s Poets’ Corner? John Guare, Olympia Dukakis, Provincetown Tennesee Williams Theater Festival founder David Kaplan, and other admirers do. The ceremony takes place the evening of November 5.
Competing for your attention that night is "American Voices," the opening gala for the New York City Opera, featuring divas such as Joyce DiDonato and special guest Rufus Wainwright.
You could actually preface either with a speed-nosh at the New York Times’ Taste of T at the Architects & Designers Building. And cap it off with a late show at the Westbank Café’s Laurie Beechman Theatre, where Mike Albo and his Unitard cohorts promise "an evening of humor, wit, song and sarcasm" - several evenings, in fact, November 5, 12, and 24. You’ll want to return to the West Bank November 6-15 for "Miss Coco Peru Is Undaunted!" - and back in town, trailing "sassy songs and amusing anecdotes."
On November 6-7 you can watch improv groups like Don’t Quit Your Night Job make up entire mini-musicals on the spot at the first annual New York Musical Improv Festival at Magnet Theater. Throughout the weekend, you can entertain your tastebuds at Cook. Eat. Drink. Live., which last year went by the less imperative label of "Tastings NYC." Whatever you call it, it’s a fun opportunity to check out celebrity chefs (e.g., Bill Telepan) and scope out promising new products.
A certain Miss Jane Austen had little gift for domestic life but spent her leisure time well: she’s the subject of a fascinating exhibit at the Morgan Library November 6 - March 14.
