Roberta Flack. (Getty Images)

Wednesday, July 27

Clay Date

Summer’s caught up with us—and we know, we complain about it every week, but the aggregate effect of sweating this much packs a more crippling punch than Wendi Murdoch! We find ourselves regressing to childhood: leaning hard on the chocolate-frozen yogurt handle at 16 Handles, wearing shoes made of flimsy rubber and schoolboyish shorts, experiencing a surfeit of emotional lability (glee when we find shade or a seat on the subway, suicidal rage at all other times). Summer makes kids of us all! We may as well drop in on RH Gallery’s no-kids-allowed Clay Party, an arts-and-crafts shindig in celebration of the gallery’s more serious concurrent shows, “Pure Clay,” featuring Korean minimalist Lee Ufan (whose work is also in the Guggenheim right now—what a summer for this guy!), and “Contemporary Clay,” a group show featuring Kathy Butterly’s so-called “sexy cups.” They’re misshapen and intriguing and reminiscent of sex organs—and feel free to make your own at tonight’s party, at which wine and delectibles will be served. Bring a toothbrush or some dental floss—no, we’re not kidding!—to carve out your own masterpiece and pretend you’re at summer camp. (If the heat hasn’t rendered your intellect childlike already, try another glass of wine!)

Clay Party at RH Gallery, 137 Duane Street, RSVP for tickets at gallery@rhgallery.com or call (646) 490-6355.

Thursday, July 28

Visiting the Goon Squad

We didn’t establish ourselves as great artists at the Clay Party last night—our sculpture was more “conceptual” than “formal.” But after a day spent driving out East, we’re more eager to indulge our childish sides than to think about artistic endeavors. What a relief that the artist John Codling—formerly a big-deal Wall Street type who now makes celebrity-inspired multimedia work—is hosting a movie night at the Waasteria Gallery. His multimedia art show there, inspired by Jay-Z, won’t distract our attention from The Goonies (a kids’ movie, for adult attendees, to raise money for Solving Kids Cancer). It’s a collision of artsy pretension and Hollywood cheese even weirder than the paintings of Christopher Walken that launched Mr. Codling to fame. The Goonies! Really, it’s as though he knew precisely the mood we were in—to think about nothing! A few more weeks of regression and we’ll either be cured and ready to take on Proust—or playing with coloring books.

John Codling’s show “Me I Play” closes tomorrow at the Waasteria Gallery, 77 Industrial Road (Wainscott), and the screening takes place at 8pm with pizza, tacos, ice cream, beer, wine, and popcorn, 8pm, visit http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1848957281 for tickets.

Friday, July 29

Photo, Synthesis

Okay, we’ve recovered—and we’re ready to take intellectual matters a teensy bit seriously. Of course, we’re also still in the Hamptons, so art’s best served with cocktails and canapés—as at tonight’s opening reception for Terri Gold and Steve Miller’s exhibition, “Planet.” Ms. Gold photographs shamanistic, spiritual elements of disappearing cultures, while Mr. Miller himself is showing X-rays of exotic flora and fauna (we’re sure he tried to find a life form in the Hamptons to X-ray, but a picture of our rosé-swollen insides wouldn’t sell many prints). “You’ve got an educated audience interested in these issues … and you’ve got people who can afford art out there!” says Mr. Miller, who shows around the world but lives part-time out East. Catch them while you can—this show’s running through July 31, and Mr. Miller’s jetting off later this year to present a print of a python’s X-ray to a zoo director in Brazil.

4 North Main Gallery, 4 North Main Street (Southampton), 5pm-8pm, visit 4northmaingallery for information.

Saturday, July 30

Save Some for the Fishes

Newly-minted CSI star Ted Danson is to attend a party in honor of Oceana, the save-the-fish charity that reminds you that just because you love ahi doesn’t mean you can feel good about eating it … We’re dragging our heels about attending, but only since we know that all the consciousness-raising going on will give us pause about dining on our favorite summer repasts: shrimp cocktail and oysters. Speaking of those aquatic treats, visitors to midtown’s egregiously casino-themed eatery Lavo may partake in both at the “bikini brunch,” ginned up for those who can’t quite make it out East. Men must wear shirts, while women are quite encouraged to wear bikinis. It’s just like you’re at the beach! Actually, wait, it’s more like you’re waiting tables at Hooters, but paying instead of getting paid.

Oceana Hamptons Splash Party, a private home in Southampton, 7:30pm, for tickets visit oceanasplashparty.org; Lavo, 39 East 58th Street, bikini brunch begins at 2pm, call (212) 750-5588 for reservations. Sunday, July 31

Lord Styron

Though in life William Styron was known to prefer the relative isolation of Martha’s Vineyard (we said, “relative”!), his work remains the perfect beach read for the Hamptons as well: nothing’s quite so bracing a corrective to an afternoon of sitting by the pool and an evening of parties as reading something grim and knowing like Lie Down in Darkness. Anyway, Georgica Beach at midday can be crushingly depressing. Styron had a difficult time negotiating literary fame, though his daughter seems perhaps less conflicted: Alexandra Styron mined her childhood for intriguing and enlightening anecdotes and insights, which she crafted into the memoir Reading My Father. Tonight she’s reading at the Quogue Public Library. (And boy, does she know how to do a summer reading schedule—she was in Vineyard Haven a few weeks ago and East Hampton last night.) There’s no choice in the matter—we’re going to check it out.

Quogue Public Library, 90 Quogue Street (Quogue), 5pm

Monday, August 1

Flack Attack

Were you wondering what’s going on with Roberta Flack? Question answered: per her website, she’s currently at work on an album of Beatles covers. If you’d like to see her in the flesh and maybe try to get her to sing a few bars of “Killing Me Softly With His Song” (or perhaps “Octopus’s Garden”), drop in on the enthusiastically named Bright Lights! Shining Stars! gala, an event in support of the NYC Dance Alliance Foundation and its college scholarships. Ms. Flack is to accept the Ambassador for the Arts Award, a fitting prize for someone bringing new attention to little-known British pop music. The guests include wee Tade Biesinger—a preteen NYC Dance alum who’s now known for Billy Elliot, and Tony-winning choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, who’ll be reunited with his In the Heights writer Lin-Manuel Miranda, one of the guests of honor. All these months later, we can finally feel good about supporting youth dance without fearing we’re sending youths into a future of Black Swan psychosis!

Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, 566 LaGuardia Place, cocktails at 6pm, awards and performances at 7:30pm with dessert and Champagne to follow, call (855) 692-5678 or visit nycdance.com for tickets.

Tuesday, August 2

Today’s Special

Some causes—like youth dance or the career rehabilitation of Roberta Flack—are simply unimpeachable. That may help explain why the host committee for tonight’s fund-raiser to benefit the Special Olympics, the Special Olympics Junior Committee Summer Social, is so gloriously lengthy: 28 do-gooders, as well as 47 on the junior committee. The host committee includes well-connected model Lauren Bush, her sister Ashley Bush, someone else’s sister Dabney Mercer, and roman á cleffer Anisha Lakhani. The evening of drinks goes down on the Hudson Terrace, on the far West Side—we’ll see you there, along with all of our nearest and dearest social friends!

Hudson Terrace, 621 West 46th Street, 7:30pm, visit http://summersocial.kintera.org/ for tickets and more information.

Wednesday, August 3

Kids Stay in the Picture

Remember how we could bring ourselves to support youth dance only  grudgingly? (Those Black Swan emotional scars, embedded with feathers, run deep.) Well, we’re yet more willing to support the artistic endeavours of youth when it comes to the performing-arts camp that produced Natalie Portman (her characters may be crazy, but boy, does she seem sane!) and Mariah Carey (well, Ms. Portman’s sane enough for both). The Oscar winner and the rainbow enthusiast both attended day camp at Long Island’s Usdan Center, which buses in artsy kids from the city. Tonight it holds a fund-raising gala. Current campers take the stage to perform with the Met soprano Monica Yunus—boy, are we jealous! Back when we were kids, all we did was make sloppy pottery and watch The Goonies. In fact, that’s all we’ve done this week!

185 Colonial Springs Road (Wheatley Heights), dinner at 5pm and concert at 7pm, for tickets write to gala@usdan.com or call (631) 643-7900.

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

I don’t want to feel responsible if they have a horrible time. Only recently some friends of mine from out of town were planning a Broadway treat for the family and asked what I thought about Spring Awakening. I replied without thinking, “You’ll love it.” Because I did.

A week later, they told me they left at intermission. They had to shield the wide eyes of their not-so-innocent 15-year-old darling girl from all the raunchy stuff onstage. It was my fault. I should have recommended Legally Blonde.

WHADDYA GONNA DO? As I see it, Spring Awakening revolutionized the rock musical when it opened on Broadway two years ago—and it’s still the best in town. It’s an intelligent show about parenthood and adolescence that pulls off the artistic miracle of being both serious and wildly entertaining. Its brilliant staging by Michael Mayer grows out of avant-garde theater (Spring Awakening was originally produced Off Broadway). And the show is as true as it can be to the spirit of German Expressionist Frank Wedekind’s frequently banned 1891 play (given that Wedekind’s allegedly pornographic lovers are 14-year-olds).

The unexpected commercial success and audacity of Spring Awakening ushered in the new era of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s vibrant Latino love letter to Washington Heights, In the Heights, and Stew’s stoned rock-pop odyssey in search of middle-class black identity, Passing Strange. Both raved-about shows have just arrived on Broadway (also from Off Broadway). And here’s what happened to me only a week ago concerning Stew:

One of my oldest friends from London was in town and asked in that wary way people do: “Did you like Passing Strange, by any chance?”

I couldn’t imagine this was the show for her. Stew’s show is loud, and my friend isn’t. “Are you sure Stew’s for you?” I asked her tactfully. “I like him, but Passing Strange is a rock concert in disguise. It makes for a predictable musical. Have you seen Spring Awakening? Now there’s a show!”

“I’ve already got tickets for Passing Strange,” she replied, as if I were to blame. (And at $110 a pop, too.)

“Don’t listen to me,” I said defensively. “You know what critics are like. Miseries! Yet lots of them love Passing Strange.”

“But you don’t.”

“Not really.”

Stew’s coming-of-age story seems middle-aged retro to me. The star himself isn’t young. He’s an affable and unlikely rocker in his mid-40’s—a tubby middle-class troubadour from Los Angeles who’s the gifted performer, narrator, lyricist and co-composer (with Heidi Rodewald) of Passing Strange. He’s witty about racial stereotyping and his church gospel beginnings, but the real world of race riots seems to have passed him by. He veers messily between street poetry and cliché; his glib satire of avant-garde movies reveals a safe, middlebrow mind. Wryness is the keynote. There’s no fury in Stew’s story of dropping out and finding his way. Considered hip by Broadway standards, Passing Strange is sweet, unthreatening—not strange.

Another new soft-rock musical I reviewed recently, Next to Normal, is just too darn normal. Intended as an adult story about a chronically depressive housewife who attempts suicide—of all un-showbizzy things—it’s actually quite jolly, with its traditionally sentimental, uplifting closing number, “Let There Be Light.” The compromised Next to Normal is directed by Michael Greif of Rent, which was the crossover musical when it opened 12 years ago and put the mid-80’s East Village art scene onto the Broadway stage (and straight into Bloomingdale’s window displays).

WHEN BLOOMIES CO-OPTS the barrio, you’ll know that In the Heights has crossed over into a big, fat commercial hit. All the signs are that it will do just that.

Twenty-eight-year-old Lin-Manuel Miranda is the immensely talented star of In the Heights who also conceived the show and composed all the songs and lyrics of a score that thrillingly combines hip-hop, salsa and (less successfully) generic Latin pop. Mr. Miranda is our narrator, and he makes a confident, unfussy, exceptional stage presence as the bodega owner named Usnavi (read: U.S. Navy). He’s also the evening’s pulse.

The glorious opening ensemble number is the best wake-up call I’ve experienced in a long, long time. It explodes audaciously onstage—with Mr. Miranda throwing down all aces. The wit and punning of his lyrics grab you immediately. The beat is rap, but his delight in words is a tribute to another master of lyrics:

Me and my cousin runnin’ just another dime-a-dozen
Mom and pop stop to shop
And oh my God it’s gotten
Too darn hot like my man Cole Porter said …

Cole Porter! And why not? Mr. Miranda is smart and he’s learned well from him, in his fashion.

In the Heights, directed by Thomas Kail, takes place around Independence Day. (“It’s the Fourth of July,” someone shouts, protesting the unusually downbeat mood in the barrio. “Show some fockin’ spirit!”) The outstanding, mostly young cast, the vitality of the score, the electrifying, nonstop hot choreography by Andy Blankenbuehler are reason enough to celebrate the show—and forgive its undeniable flaws.

While the sustained, escalating excitement of another major production number, “96,000,” all but stops the show, the frantic pacing throughout is too eager to please. The lyrics are grounded in reality (like Anna Louizos’ decaying streetscape of Washington Heights, with the bridge blurring in the background). But the book by Quiara Alegría Hudes is soapy soft, and her plot, which turns on a miraculous lottery win and the sudden tragic death of the wise and beloved abuela, is, well, pretty ludicrous. Let’s whisper reluctantly that every character is a showbiz cliché, and every overheated relationship, romantic struggle or noble sacrifice risks a near-fatal sugar high.

In the Heights isn’t—as some would have us believe—a contemporary version of West Side Story, which Mr. Miranda affectionately mocks (so did Urinetown seven years ago—only more so). Rather, in its gooey, good heart, it’s a throwback to the awesome sentimentality of the traditional Broadway musical.

Should you see it, then? Of course, dear friends! Overlook its hundred flaws—there’s nothing remotely like In the Heights.

You’ll see the
Late nights,
You’ll taste
Beans and rice
The syrups and
Shaved ice,
I ain’t gonna
Say it twice.