this week in music

ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS

James Corden tries to get ahold of himself in uproarious ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS

Music Box Theatre
239 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Through September 2, $66.50 – $196.50
onemantwoguvnorsbroadway.com

In the uproarious British farce One Man, Two Guvnors, James Corden stars as Francis Henshall, a simple, extremely hungry young man who gets himself into the complicated situation of serving as guvnor to two people at the same time in 1963 Brighton. But it’s Corden who has Broadway audiences eating out of the palm of his hand, delivering a riotous, unforgettable performance filled with wild improvisation, wickedly funny pratfalls, glorious wordplay, and slapstick galore. Desperate for some money — and for something to eat — Francis is soon working as a personal manservant to the demanding, upper-crust Stanley Stubbers (Oliver Chris) and local gangster Roscoe/Rachel Brabbe (Jemima Rooper). He gets caught up in some heavy drama as Pauline (Claire Lams) wants to marry her true love, ambitious (over)actor Alan (Daniel Rigby), but her father, Charlie the Duck (Fred Ridgeway), has promised her to Roscoe Crabbe to settle a large debt. Meanwhile, Francis just wants something to eat. Corden (The History Boys, Gavin and Stacey) is masterful as Francis, whether directly addressing the audience (and pulling some members onstage to participate in the frantic madness), devouring a letter, or running between two private rooms, trying to serve meals to both of his guvnors at the same time without them finding out about each other. He displays a good-natured charm and a rapid-fire comedic wit that makes Francis eminently likable no matter how much he screws up, which is a lot. As spectacular as Corden is, Tom Edden nearly steals the show as Alfie, an old, hunched-over waiter who takes quite a licking but somehow keeps on ticking. The first act is one of the funniest on Broadway in quite some time, a nonstop parade of belly laughs that might very well have you falling out of your seat; things are significantly slower in the shorter second act, which concentrates more on the silly plot. The festivities are accompanied by live music by the Craze, a skiffle band that plays original music starting ten minutes before showtime as well as during scene changes and intermission. Written by Richard Bean (Harvest) and directed by Nicholas Hytner (The History Boys, The Madness of King George) of the National Theatre and based on the 1743 commedia dell’arte farce The Servant of Two Masters by Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni, One Man, Two Guvnors is outrageous British farce of the highest order.

ALEX WINSTON

Alex Winston uses soaring melodies to battle con men galore on debut album

Knitting Factory Brooklyn
381 Metropolitan Ave.
Tuesday, April 24, $10-$12, 8:00
347-529-6696
bk.knittingfactory.com
www.myspace.com/alexwinston

Brooklyn-based Detroit native Alex Winston makes delightfully infectious music that mixes the vocal range of Kate Bush with girl-group harmonies, Asian influences, and a DIY aesthetic. Following a series of EPs including 2010’s The Basement Covers, which featured unique versions of such songs as the Rolling Stones’ “Play with Fire” and Mumford & Sons’ “The Cave,” Winston has released her debut full-length album, King Con (V2/Cooperative, April 10, 2012), a dozen tracks that show off her skills admirably. While the music and production might be bright, playful, and energetic, the lyrics reveal a young woman taking control of her life after some questionable, complicated relationships with lovers and untrustworthy con artists. “God damn, you’re back again / try to crawl under my skin / it fuels your fire / feeds the flame / ’cause ants like you are all the same / and you keep a-marching,” she proclaims over a propulsive beat on the album opener, “Fire Ant.” Switching to a sweet 1950s melody on the next song, “Velvet Elvis,” Winston declares, “Ma said I ain’t right / clutching on you all night . . . I’ll kill the bitch that bats any eye / at Elvis.” Such tracks as “Medicine,” “Sister Wife,” and “Choice Notes” are impossibly catchy, bouncy pop in which Winston searches for a happiness that is hard to come by. “I think I gotta go alone,” she sings in “The Fold.” Displaying so many choice notes, Winston, a classically trained multi-instrumentalist, won’t be going alone for long. Winston, who also makes entertaining videos and is preparing short documentaries to accompany King Con, will be at the Knitting Factory Brooklyn on April 24 with Deidre & the Dark and 1,2,3.

BROOKLYN RECORD RIOT

Brooklyn Record Riot on April 22 is a worthy follow-up to Record Store Day

Warsaw at the Polish National Home
261 Driggs Ave.
Sunday, April 22, $3, 12 noon – 7:00 pm (early bird admission $20 at 10:00 am)
www.recordriots.com
www.warsawconcerts.com

Hot on the heels of Saturday’s national Record Store Day, the annual Brooklyn Record Riot arrives April 22 at Warsaw at the Polish National Home in Greenpoint, site of many a great concert. (Upcoming shows include the Madonnathon on April 27 and Sham 69 and Murphy’s Law on May 23). Some five dozen dealers from around the country will be selling rare vinyl and CD in all genres on Sunday, with music supplied by DJs Lupe Loop, Shimmy, Barry Soltz, Miss Mary-Clancey, Phast Phreddie the Boogaloo Omnibus, Test Patterns, and John Bastone. There will also be plates of pierogi and kielbasa and sauerkraut for five bucks. Admission is only $3, but if you want to get in ahead of the crowd to scan the merchandise, $20 will get you in two hours before the doors open to the general public. To find out more about who will have booths at the record fair, visit here.

EARTH DAY 2012: MOBILIZE THE EARTH

The forty-second annual Earth Day, in which people around the world celebrate the planet and stress the importance of environmental wisdom, is taking place all weekend with a spate of activities throughout the metropolitan area. This year’s global theme is “Mobilize the Earth” with the express purpose to emphasize that “the Earth won’t wait,” and indeed it won’t. At Grand Central Terminal on Saturday, there will be storytelling, a food and nutrition panel, a special exhibit, and concerts by the Nightmare River Band, Conveyor, Annie and the Bee Keepers, FlyinFisch, the Whispering Tree, Push Method, and Kinetics & One Love. On Saturday night at 7:45, Rooftop Films will host a free screening of Sir David Attenborough’s widely acclaimed Planet Earth series, followed by the world premiere of the documentary The Making of Planet Earth, at Solar One; be sure to RSVP in advance here. And on the High Line on Sunday, performance artist Alison Knowles will invite visitors to help her make a huge salad at the West Sixteenth St. area from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm; the High Line will also host talks with gardeners, live music by the family-friendly On the Lam Brass Band, and interactive field stations.

RECORD STORE DAY

Bruce Springsteen is among those artists releasing a special vinyl disc for Record Store Day

Multiple locations
Saturday, April 21
www.recordstoreday.com

There’s nothing quite like spinning that black circle, letting one side play, then getting up to turn it over and hearing the other side. Eight-track tapes and cassettes ran their course, with CDs to follow. But we’re not sure vinyl singles, EPs, and LPs will ever go away; what’s more fun than looking through aisles and aisles of records at indie music stores? You can get your fill on April 21 at the annual Record Store Day, where hundreds of exclusive vinyl discs will be available at stores across the country. In New York, participating shops include Big City Records, In Living Stereo, Good Records NYC, Rockit Scientist Records, Other Music, Fat Beats, Generation Records, rebel rebel, Academy LPs, Record Runner, turntable lab, Bleecker Street Records, Gimme Gimme Records, Rock and Soul Records, Deadly Dragon Sound, Village Music World, Kim’s Video & Music, J&R Music World, Black Star Music, Cake Shop, and Disc-O-Rama. Among the myriad new and old bands releasing special discs for the day are Abba, Afrika Bambaataa/MC5, Amanda Palmer & the Grand Theft Orchestra, Animal Collective, Arcade Fire, Aretha Franklin/Otis Redding, Battles, Bill Evans, Brendan Benson, Bruce Springsteen, Buddy Guy, Captain Beefheart, Carolina Chocolate Drops/Run DMC, Chocolate Watch Band, Coldplay, Common, Cursive, David Bowie, Death Cab for Cutie Death, Deerhoof / of Montreal, Devo, Disturbed, Eddie Vedder, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, and Esperanza Spalding — and that’s only some of the groups from the first part of the alphabet. Many of the records are limited editions that are not available at every store, so good luck finding that one disc you’re after.

ANNUALS, BIENNIALS, TRIENNIALS

Lesley Dill’s “Woman in Dress with Star” and Glenn Ligon’s untitled oil painting are cleverly juxtaposed at 2012 Annual (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

THE ANNUAL: 2012
National Academy Museum
1083 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through April 29, $12, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-369-4880
www.nationalacademy.org

In an artistic convergence that occurs only once every six years, the National Academy’s annual, the Whitney’s biennial, and the New Museum’s triennial are all on view at the same time. And in a perhaps unexpected convergence, all three reveal that less is more with shows that avoid jam-packing galleries with brand-name artists and instead concentrate on fewer works with a focus on installation. At the National Academy, a mix of cross-generational academicians and invited non-academicians makes for an effective examination of contemporary American art, albeit through a more traditional lens than at the biennial and the triennial, using juxtaposition as a means to an end. Figurative paintings by Burton Silverman, Daniel Bennett Schwartz, Gillian Pederson-Krag, and Philip Pearlstein are seen alongside abstract works by Dorothea Rockburne, Richard Mayhew, David Driskell, and Eric Aho. Sculptures by Barbara Chase-Riboud, Jeffrey Schiff, and Arlene Shechet line the center of a hallway of paintings. Lesley Dill’s “Woman in Dress with Star” stands in front of Glenn Ligon’s untitled oil painting, each incorporating text. The annual also includes a trio of video installations: Joan Jonas’s “Lines in the Sand,” Kate Gilmore’s “Break of Day,” and Carrie Mae Weems’s three-channel “Afro-Chic,” which keeps the funk pumping on the second floor. The 2012 Annual is the best the National Academy has put on in several years.

Gisèle Vienne with Dennis Cooper, Stephen O’Malley, and Peter Rehberg, “Last Spring: A Prequel,” mixed-media installation, 2011 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

WHITNEY BIENNIAL 2012
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Fifth Ave. at 75th St.
Wednesday – Sunday through May 27, $12, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm (pay what you wish Fridays 6:00 -9:00)
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org

“Art discourse serves to maintain links among artistic subfields and to create a continuum between practices that may be completely incommensurable in terms of their economic conditions and social as well as artistic values,” Andrea Fraser writes in “There’s no place like home,” an essay that serves as her contribution to the 2012 Whitney Biennial. “This may make art discourse one of the most consequential—and problematic—institutions in the art world today, along with mega-museums that aim to be all things to all people and survey exhibitions (like the Whitney Biennial) that offer up incomparable practices for comparison.” As it turns out, curators Elisabeth Sussman and Jay Sanders have not turned the biennial into all things for all people, instead putting together a manageable collection of contemporary American art that leans heavily toward performance and installation, showing off the space of the Marcel Breuer building instead of cluttering every nook and cranny with anything and everything. Visitors can walk through Oscar Tuazon’s “For Hire,” Georgia Sagri’s “Working the No Work,” and Wu Tsang’s “Green Room” and watch the New York City Players get ready for Richard Maxwell’s new site-specific play in an open dressing room. Gisèle Vienne’s “Last Spring: A Prequel” features a young animatronic teen standing in a corner, mumbling text by Dennis Cooper. More traditional art forms like painting and photography tend to get lost in these kinds of shows, but the disciplines are well represented by Nicole Eisenman’s uneasy figures, Andrew Masullo’s eye-catching small canvases filled with bright colors and geometric patterns, and Latoya Ruby Frazier’s photographic examination of her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania. If you’re thirsting for some music, there’s Lutz Bacher’s “Pipe Organ,” Lucy Raven’s “What Manchester Does Today, the Rest of the World Does Tomorrow” player piano, and Werner Herzog’s “Hearsay of the Soul,” a four-channel video installation that brings together Hercules Segers’s etchings with music by Ernst Reijseger. And then there’s Robert Gober’s exploration of the career of Forrest Bess, which has to be seen to be believed. For a closer look at the myriad live performances, talks, and workshops, visit here.

Triennial visitors can take a seat on Slavs and Tatars’ “PrayWay” while contemplating Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s oil paintings (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

THE UNGOVERNABLES: 2012 NEW MUSEUM TRIENNIAL
New Museum
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Wednesday – Sunday through April 22, $12, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm (free Thursdays 7:00 -9:00)
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

Three years ago, the New Museum’s inaugural triennial featured international artists who were all younger than Jesus was at his death at age thirty-three. The 2012 edition, “The Ungovernables,” comprises sculpture, painting, video, and installation that challenge the status quo often in subtle ways, commenting on world economics, corporatization, and politics through creative methods. In Amalia Pica’s “Eavesdropping,” a group of drinking glasses stick out from a wall, referencing both the surveillance and the digital age. Danh Vo’s “We the People” consists of sheets of pounded copper that are actually re-creations of the skin of the Statue of Liberty, a different way to look at freedom. Pratchaya Phinthong’s “What I learned I no longer know; the little I still know, I guessed” is a square collection of Zimbabwean paper money whose specific value continually decreases. Cinthia Marcelle and Tiago Mata Machado’s O Século (The Century) shows debris being thrown from a building, resulting in a visual and aural cacophony of chaos. The Propeller Group’s multichannel “TVC Communism” details the creation of a modern advertising campaign selling communism. Slavs and Tatars’ “PrayWay” is a folded prayer carpet on which visitors are invited to sit and get lost in contemplation that need not be religious. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s oil paintings examine race and gender. Hassan Khan’s short video, Jewel, depicts two men dancing using signifiers set to a propulsive Cairene song. José Antonio Vega Macotela’s “Time Exchange” details a four-year collaboration with Mexican prisoners in which tasks are exchanged instead of money. Pilvi Takala’s riotous “The Trainee” follows the Finnish-born artist’s intervention as she pretends to be working in a Deloitte office. And Gabriel Sierra’s interventions involve placing such objects as a ladder and a level, which he refers to as devils, directly into the walls of the museum. As with the National Academy’s Annual and the Whitney Biennial, “The Ungovernables” avoids clutter and overt political statements, steering clear of the obvious and instead offering a varied and intriguing look at the contemporary art world

NELLY VAN BOMMEL / NØA DANCE: PINGULI, PINGULI

Nelly van Bommel explores community culture and ritual in PINGULI, PINGULI, playing this week at the Baryshnikov Arts Center (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Baryshnikov Arts Center, Howard Gilman Performance Space
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
April 18-19, $20, 7:30
866-811-4111
www.bacnyc.org

Born and raised in France by Dutch parents and now based in Mamaroneck, Nelly van Bommel uses her diverse background in dance, dance theater, musicals, improvisation, and athletics to create eclectic pieces inspired by folk culture, as evidenced by such works as Pax Aeterna, Fanfarnèta, and Addio Amore. Van Bommel and her talented NØA Dance troupe will explore community ritual and practice in Pinguli, Pinguli, a fifty-minute piece that will be performed at the Baryshnikov Arts Center April 18 and 19. Set to music by Savina Yannatou, a popular Greek singer and songwriter who has composed works for the National Theatre of Greece and the Theatre of Silence, Pinguli, Pinguli mixes in a playful sense of humor with classical ballet movement in its choreography. Tickets are $20, but if you combine it with the May 2 or 4 Orchestra of St. Luke’s presentation of “Life Stories” — an evening of Mozart, Marshall, and Glière that is part of the Morgan Library’s Chamber Music Series and costs $45 by itself — you can get two tickets to each event for a total of $50.