Arts And Entertainment

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 26 -more-

The hook is perhaps the greatest, besides the most famous, narrative device of all time: a ruler, cheated on by his consort, marries again and again—but only for a night, executing each new bride at dawn. When he demands the hand of his prime minister’s daughter, the young woman proves resourceful, telling him enchanting stories that spawn new tales, each posing a cliffhanger as morning arrives. Many nights go by, and she is spared each dawn, until she presents her overwhelmed husband with the children he has fathered. -more-

Tailgrass Gothic, Impact’s production of Melanie Marnich’s new play, in the netherworld below La Val’s Pizzeria, cleverly resets Middleton and Rowley’s harrowing tragedy of 1622 in the modern American Midwest (after the bloody conclusion to Impact’s last Jacobean thriller, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, “Heartland” already takes on an eerier tone of meaning). -more-

Cynthia Davis sings jazz standards, with Eric Shifrin on piano, Sunday, Nov. 30, 4-6 p.m. at Anna’s Jazz Island. 2120 Allston Way. $7, donation. -more-

THURSDAY, NOV. 20 -more-

Leona Samish, an American secretary (played by Alison Peltz), bursts into song (“Someone Woke Up”) as she finds herself on vacation in Venice, so excited she falls into the canal—“but only up to here!”—continuing her dance around the Pensione Fioria veranda, holding her dripping shoes high. -more-

A small, spartan New Hampshire town during the Revolutionary War—directly in line of the march of British redcoats from Canada, aiming to meet Howe’s army moving north from New York, to cut New England off from the other colonies—is the scene of a father’s amended will being read, where Dick Dudgeon (Gabriel Marin), self-styled Devil’s Disciple (title character in Bernard Shaw’s 1897 play at the Aurora), finds himself master of his ramrod-stiff Puritan mother’s (Trish Mulholland) house, as he is oldest son and she but a woman, meeting with her exit-line curse (better than living with her blessing, Dick will later declare) as she storms out, leaving him with only the illegitimate daughter (Tara Tomicevic) of an uncle just hanged by the British as an example to rebels. -more-

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