The Buffalo News : Entertainment

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Cheap Eats: Bargain fish fry at the Blue Wall

Updated: 11/14/08 8:35 AM

The Blue Wall, located in that little grid of streets just beyond Cazenovia Golf Course, is actually in West Seneca. But you can hit Buffalo with a rock from its front door. But there’s another, more pressing question about the Blue Wall: How can they possibly afford to offer buy-one-get-one-free fish fries from noon to 8 p. m. on Fridays?

Fun foursome

Updated: 11/14/08 6:49 AM

The musicians of the Lydian String Quartet have visited Buffalo frequently over the years, always creating a splash. (Check out their feet in the picture above. They dare to pose barefoot.) On the scene since 1980, the quartet has embraced a wide spectrum of music, from classical to contemporary. Most recently, the group recorded the complete quartets of Vincent Persichetti. Tonight, though, it’s back to basics for the Lydian. The quartet is making a return appearance on the Slee Beethoven String Quartet series. A wonderful program is in store. The Quartet in E flat, Op. 74, “the Harp,” begins the concert. It’s followed by the early-period Quartet in G, Op. 17 No. 2. And the night finishes with the beautiful and brooding Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131. The concert takes place at 8 tonight at Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall. Admission is $20 at the door. For information, call 645-2921. — Mary Kunz Goldman

NOI. D. REQUIRED

Updated: 11/14/08 6:48 AM

Not 21? No problem.

‘Happy-Go-Lucky’: Uplifting story from Mike Leigh

BY JAN SANDBERG

News Contributing Reviewer

Updated: 11/14/08 8:47 AM

Perhaps British director Mike Leigh found making his last film, “Vera Drake,” as depressing as many filmgoers found viewing it to be, and decided that his next project should be something funny and uplifting. “Happy-Go-Lucky” certainly fits the bill; it’s a movie audiences are bound to leave with smiles on their faces and economic woes temporarily forgotten.

FUN FOR ONE

Updated: 11/14/08 6:48 AM

Go single–or bring a friend

The music of Hunter S. Thompson

By Jeff Miers

News Pop Music Critic

Updated: 11/14/08 10:35 AM

“You might say Thompson craved the screech of the locomotive tracks and the silence of the backwoods — anything but the blase gray land known as neutral.”

Club Watch: Doc Sullivan’s a South Buffalo mainstay

BY TOM WATERS

Special to The News

Updated: 11/14/08 8:42 AM

It was a frosty evening, and I had green hair (for holiday-related parties) when we shuffled into South Buffalo mainstay Doc Sullivan’s. If I was going to blend in with the hair, I suppose that an Irish bar was the place to do it. There was a Sabres game on (along with a wedding rehearsal dinner), and the place was mobbed. A wall of small talk permeated the bar, and the lone bartender (Tommy) was doing a bang-up job of keeping pace with the legion of drink orders as he pinballed back and forth along every end of the rectangular bar.

CLUB CHATTER

BY JEFF MIERS

News Pop Music Critic

Updated: 11/14/08 6:49 AM

The church of soul

Beyond Broadway

Updated: 11/14/08 6:49 AM

The Great American Songbook refuses to die. It can’t be killed. None of the styles, forms and idioms that have come along since the the glory days (between World War I and the middle 1950s) of these pops staples has been able to mess with the timeless nature of the songs associated with the “simpler time” of the Great American Songbook era.

Busy Manny

Updated: 11/14/08 6:49 AM

It’s been a banner year for Manny Fried. The 95-year-old Buffalo playwright, whose autobiographical piece “Boilermakers and Martinis” had barely left the Road Less Traveled Theater stage before 2008 came barreling along, was honored by Subversive Theatre in September with the grand opening of a theater that carries his name. And this week, two of his plays are being produced. The first, “Drop Hammer,” opened Thursday night in his own theater (The Manny Fried Playhouse, Great Arrow Building, 255 Great Arrow Ave.) in a Subversive Theatre production. The second, “Triangle,” will be part of a trio of plays to be presented by Road Less Traveled (Market Arcade Film and Arts Center, 639 Main St.) beginning at 7:30 tonight. “Drop Hammer,” one of Fried’s most performed pieces, is set in 1950s Buffalo and deals with conflicts within one of the city’s major industrial unions. “Triangle” is Fried’s one-act response to August Strindberg’s seminal play “The Stronger,” which will also be part of Road Less Traveled’s production. Rounding out the trio is the premiere of a one-act play by the company’s resident playwright Jon Elston. For more information on the Road Less Traveled show, call 629-3069 or visit www.roadlesstraveledproductions.org . For more info on the Subversive show, call 408-0499 or visit www.subversivetheatre.org . — Colin Dabkowski

Their best shot

Updated: 11/14/08 6:49 AM

Some musicians become proficient, find a style, stick with it and improve incrementally as they age, sticking pretty close to their musical safety zones. Others get good, get better and then just explode out into new and unknown areas. The former category is populated by some brilliant folks who are remembered for what they achieved, often to the point of mass reverence. The latter slot claims the musicians who actually change the course of music, be they a Stravinsky, a John Cage, a Miles, a Jeff Buckley or a John Coltrane. More often than not, these stylistic renegades don’t go as far as their brethren, in the commercial sense. But they change the paradigm, and thus, subsequent generations of musicians have no choice but to deal with them. Chris Thile, known to many as part of the Grammy-winning “new-grass” collective Nickel Creek, has now entered the paradigm-shifting echelon. He did so as soon as he — following the peaceful splitting of Nickel Creek — met up with his well-pedigreed mates in the Punch Brothers and crafted a 40-minute, four-movement suite known as “The Blind Leaving the Blind.” (Heard on the band’s debut effort, “Punch!”) Bluegrass is populated with virtuosos, but most of them are classicists — keepers of the flame and protectors of the form. Thile, with “Blind,” has challenged preconceptions concerning bluegrass, brought elements of classical music, jazz and even pop to bear on it, and come out the other end with something both radical and strangely familiar. Thile and the Punch Brothers will be bring their shape-shifting sounds to the University at Buffalo Center for the Arts at 8 p. m. Monday. Remaining tickets are available through Ticketmaster. — Jeff Miers

Into the archive

Updated: 11/14/08 6:49 AM

The Playhouse of American Classics’ first season of staged readings in Buffalo was a success, having brought a trio of long-fallow productions to life at the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society (25 Nottingham Court). And now, the company (formerly of New York City) is preparing to mount a second season of what they see as worthy productions that have not seen the light of day in ages. The first play, “Both Your Houses,” by Maxwell Anderson, is the little-known stage derivative of the same short story — “The Gentleman from Wyoming” by Lewis R. Foster— that produced the much better-remembered film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” The play, which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1933, follows the story of a junior senator from Nevada who winds up embroiled in all manner of political underhandedness and sly maneuvering. It features a large cast, including Paul O’Hern, Keith Elkins and Pamela Rose Mangus. It opens at 8 tonight, with repeat performances at 2 p. m. Saturday and at 2 and 6 p. m. Sunday. The next shows in the PAC season will be Elmer Rice’s “Dream Girl” from Feb. 13 to 15 and Susan Glaspell’s “Alison’s House” from April 24 to 26. For more information, call 862-9531 or visit www.playhouseofamericanclassics.org . — Colin Dabkowski

Totally abstract

Updated: 11/14/08 6:49 AM

Buffalo painter Sheldon Berlyn began his 40-year teaching career at the University of Buffalo in 1958. Since then, his work has embodied the languages of traditional abstract expressionism, landscape-based abstraction, geometric abstraction and abstractions about abstraction itself. Whew. A collection of his work spanning three decades is now on view amid the plush couches and enormous lamps of Michael Donnelly Interior Design (1534 Hertel Ave.) in an exhibition mounted by roving local art dealer Dean Brownrout’s roving fine art gallery, 20th Century Finest. The show opened Wednesday and runs through Jan. 3. Berlyn, who continues to paint today, was the subject of a retrospective at the UB Poetry and Rare Books Collection in 1990, an exhibition of his works inspired by Caravaggio in 1997 at the UB Art Gallery and several group shows, including the important 1987 Albright-Knox Art Gallery show “The Wayward Muse: A Historical Survey of Painting in Buffalo.” For more information on the show, call 308-6520 or visit www.20thcenturyfinest.com . — Colin Dabkowski

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