The multiple award-winning drama, Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists, by Portuguese playwright Tiago Rodrigues from the National Theater of Portugal and Festival d’Avignon, gets its U.S. premiere at PS21 in Chatham, N.Y., tonight at 8pm, and Saturday at 7pm. Catarina is set in an imagined 2028, where a totalitarian regime has seized power in Portugal. Instead of celebrating the 50th anniversary of the end of fascism in Europe, the play makes palpable the threat that has reemerged on the European continent and beyond – right out of this week’s headlines. (Fri-Sat, Jul 5-6)
Grammy Award-winning violinist Gil Shaham headlines an all-Beethoven program marking the official kickoff of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) season at Tanglewood in Lenox, Mass., tonight at 8pm. Under the baton of Andris Nelsons, the BSO will also perform Symphony No. 3, Eroica, an emotionally expansive piece that redefined what a symphony was by transforming the heroic journey into symphonic form. On Sunday at 2:30pm, Nelsons will lead the BSO in all-Strauss program, featuring superstar soprano Renée Fleming. (Fri, Jul 5; Sun, Jul 7)
Singer-songwriter Lucy Kaplansky brings her original songs and her luminous vocals to the Guthrie Center in Great Barrington, Mass., on Saturday at 8pm. Kaplansky came out of the same Greenwich Village folk scene in the early-1980s that produced the likes of Suzanne Vega and Kaplansky’s sometime duo partner Shawn Colvin. (Sat, Jul 6)
American-Russian violinist Maria Ioudenitch will perform a blend of standard repertoire by Bach with new works as part of the Tannery Pond series at the Darrow School in New Lebanon, N.Y., on Saturday at 7:30pm, in a presentation of Capital Region Classical. Ioudenitch received first prizes in three international violin competitions in 2021, and in 2023, her debut album, Songbird, on Warner Classics, won the Opus Klassik award for “Chamber Music Recording of the Year.” (Sat, Jul 6)
Survival of the Unfit, a new comedy by Oren Safdie that upends the familiar comic trope of the anxiety and predicaments that ensue when the new girlfriend meets the boy’s parents for the first time over dinner, makes its American premiere in the McConnell Theater at Simon’s Rock College in Great Barrington, Mass., on Saturday, running through Sunday, July 21, in a staging by Great Barrington Public Theater. (Sat, Jul 6-Sun, Jul 21)
Also of note:
Calling William Shakespeare “the original rock ‘n’ roller,” Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass., presents Shake It Up: A Shakespeare Cabaret at the Tina Packer Playhouse today through Sunday. A celebration of Shakespeare-influenced music, text, and storytelling, the original program transforms the Tina Packer Playhouse into an upscale club, complete with cafe tables, signature cocktails, and chandeliers.
Fans of Norah Jones, Amy Winehouse and Fiona Apple won’t want to miss soulful singer-songwriter Glori Wilder when she performs at the Dream Away Lodge in Becket, Mass., tonight at 8pm.
Fortepianist Daniel Adam Maltz performs piano works by Haydn and Mozart at the Adams Theater in Adams, Mass., on Saturday at 6pm.
Zimbabwean group Mokoomba brings its Afrobeat sounds to The Falcon in Marlboro, N.Y., tonight at 7:30pm, followed by jazz legend Don Byron and Friends on Sunday at 7:30pm.
Sonny Troupé and his Ka Quintet brings the sounds of the French Caribbean fused with modern jazz to The Clark in Williamstown, Mass., on Wednesday, July 10, at 6pm. The free concert on the Clark’s Reflecting Pool Lawn features musicians from Guadeloupe and Haiti.