DECKING THE WALLS: Most of us don’t have houses — let alone the perseverance, the big ladders, the electrical firepower, and (let’s face it) the borderline mania — on which to mount an absolutely bonkers light display come Christmastime. But if you find yourself taking long detours to check out the kind of gonzo lawn displays that put the Vegas strip to shame, then Somerville’s fifth annual "Illuminations Tour" is probably a smart investment. It’s a 45-minute trolley ride through the "folk artistry" of those city residents who annually attempt to best one another in the outward manifestation of the holiday spirit. The one-day event, on December 15, has tours leaving from Somerville City Hall between 4:30 and 8:45 p.m.; tickets, which usually sell out quickly, go on sale this Monday at McIntyre & Moore Booksellers, 255 Elm Street in Davis Square. It’s $10, $5 for children; call (617) 625-6600 extension 2985.
HIP-HOP HOLIDAYS: Boston indie hip-hop king Mr. Lif comes back to town on December 21 to unveil his second annual holiday happening, "A Very Merry Lif-mas," with help from friends including Aesop Rock, Illin’ P, and Fakts-One, at the Middle East. Added X-mas-gift bonus: the event will also serve as the release party for his new Live at the Middle East, which was recorded on stage and in the raw earlier this year. That’s at 480 Mass Ave in Central Square; call (617) 931-2000 for advance tickets.
NEXT WEEKEND:
Shel shorts
Why do kids love Shel Silverstein? Why do his goofy poems and wacky songs still strike chords, decades after they were written? In part, it’s because Silverstein’s understanding of the human condition is grounded in the absurdities of kid-pleasing characters like Headphone Harold and the Dirtiest Man in the World. But his acuity also allowed him to see that absurdity is readily transferable to adulthood, and that grown-ups and the chaotic world they’ve created are often pretty screwed up. So it was that the man who was a hero to generations of little ones also wrote songs like Johnny Cash’s beer-drenched and bloody "A Boy Name Sue" and created poems and cartoons about sex and drugs for magazines like Playboy (indeed, he lived for a spell in the Mansion with Hef).
Silverstein also penned upwards of 100 mini-plays, many of which were written only for his own amusement and have never seen the light of day. So when Market Theater director Tom Cole learned of their existence from Silverstein’s close friend David Mamet, he jumped at the chance to produce them. Next weekend, the Market unveils the first of two programs featuring more than 20 of these dark glimpses — sometimes dirty, sometimes troubling, but always funny — of Shel Silverstein’s "adult" side.
The two programs — entitled "Signs of Trouble" and "Shel Shocked," each with its own director — share a rotating six-member cast and a set that "Signs of Trouble" director Wes Savick says is "full of surprises." They also share Silverstein’s merrily macabre and at times almost sadistic sense of humor. And though some of them are as short as three pages, their brevity never undermines their morbid and mordant wit.
"They’re shorties but not skits," says Savick. "They’re real plays. A skit tends to set up a premise and milk it for laughs. A short play actually takes characters from point A to point Z." In Shel Silverstein’s world, point Z is often a very bad place to be. It may seem fatuous to compare a five-page playlet called No Skronking to Greek tragedy, but Savick believes the pieces "have the whole arc of a classical play." He also sees in them elements as disparate as vaudeville and Zen koans. Their terse dialogue and an absurdity laced with a tang of dread gives them more than a trace of Samuel Beckett’s comic existentialism.
With plots revolving around, say, a man who interrupts his wife’s relaxing bath with suicidal rantings, or a woman who marries a dog, the pieces are funny and a little confrontational; the characters are fantastic but recognizable. Savick sees them as forcing you to face up to "your own false sense of security. Your own mortality, your own capacity for fear or depravity. It’s very dark comedy."
And it hasn’t escaped him that these macabre plays are being staged in what the Chinese proverbs call "interesting" times. "The logic of the plays presupposes chaos. That’s one of the things that drew me to them. In the wake of what happened in September, they’re quite prescient, [exploring] feelings of false security, being attacked, being caught unawares. The tenuous hold we may have on trust or civility breaks down in these microcosmic situations." True. But these wry productions also show that entropy and depravity can be funny as hell.
Shel Silverstein’s "Signs of Trouble," directed by Wesley Savick, will open next Friday, December 7, and run through January 27. "Shel Shocked," directed by Larry Coen, will open December 29 and run through January 26. That’s at the Market Theater, One Winthrop Square, off JFK Street in Harvard Square. Tickets are $35; $60 for special Saturday performances of both in January. Student rush tickets, at $10, are available one hour before each performance. Call (617) 576-0808 or visit www.markettheater.org.
BY MIKE MILIARD
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