Arts

   The surprise that is Noel Coward is coming to the John Drew Theater at Guild Hall next week, starring Blythe Danner and Simon Jones, and directed by Tony Walton, in the form of “Tonight at 8:30.”

   Coward wrote the show in the 1930s as a touring vehicle for himself and his longtime friend and working partner Gertrude Lawrence. It’s actually a collection of 10 one-act plays. Each night the partners would choose three to perform, at, of course, 8:30.

    Mid-July has become art fair season on the South Fork, with three fairs running in rapid succession, two this weekend in Bridgehampton and another beginning July 25 in Southampton.

    Both ArtHamptons and artMRKT Hamptons will open their doors tonight with previews and cocktail parties for their own exhibitors, sponsors, media partners, honorees, events, and beneficiaries.

   What do you get when you combine two actors, eight parts, and a stew of Gothic theatrical silliness? A whole lot of laughs, when the production is as sharp and clean as that of Bay Street’s “The Mystery of Irma Vep.”

    Created by Charles Ludlam during that final burst of creative, subversive lunacy that characterized the last few years of his life, “The Mystery of Irma Vep” is the most revived of his Ridiculous Theatrical Company plays. When done well, as this production is, you can see why.

    Paul Reiser will take the stage this week at the Bay Street Theatre’s Comedy Club on Monday.

    He is best known for his role as Paul Buchman on NBC’s long-running comedy “Mad About You,” in which he starred with Helen Hunt, and won an Emmy, Golden Globe, American Comedy Award, and Screen Actors Guild nominations for best actor in a comedy series.

    He also had his own show in 2011, “The Paul Reiser Show,” and has appeared in such movies as “Diner,” “Aliens,” “Bye, Bye Love,” and “Beverly Hills Cop I and II.”

More Aycock, Now

In East Hampton

    The “Alice Aycock: New Works on Paper” exhibition will open on Saturday at the Drawing Room in East Hampton.

    Ms. Aycock came of age as an artist between the Modernist and Post-Modernist eras in the 1970s. She is known for her large-scale installations, public art projects, and outdoor sculptures. As the gallery notes, she is a conceptualist at heart and her drawings are driven by language, memory, fiction, and scientific and philosophical extremes.

    The show will be on view through Aug. 12.

   On Wednesday, the Southampton Cultural Center will continue its 2013 Concerts in the Park Series with Matt Daniels, a New York composer and songwriter, who will play a mix of jazz, blues, and rock ’n’ roll from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

   Stephanie Whiston of Montauk has dived in deep seas over 1,000 times in the last 20 years. And all because of her little fear of sharks!

    A friend suggested she combat that fear by diving with the often-maligned creatures. She now photographs them and other underwater species, and it has become her life’s work.

    On one of her first dives, in 1993 aboard a National Geographic Society vessel, a crew member lent her a camera, and she ended up winning first place in a photography contest sponsored by the society.

   Music lovers have been invited to lounge on the lawn or the terrace of the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill tomorrow for a performance by SisterMonk. The band, mostly female-powered, makes music that is soulful, easy to dance to, and draws on a variety of cultures. They have previously performed with Zap Mama, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Anoushka Shankar, and the Karl Denson Trio.

    The show, from 5 to 8 p.m., is free with museum admission.

Essentially a retrospective in paper and maquettes, a major show of work by Alice Aycock is on view at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill and New York City though July 13.

   Direct from her sold-out performance at Lincoln Center, Audra McDonald, the celebrated soprano and actress, will perform with her jazz ensemble at Guild Hall on Saturday at 7 p.m.

    Ms. McDonald, who is touring in support of her new album, “Go Back Home,” was a presenter at the recent Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall. She then closed the show in a surprise performance with the actor and director Neil Patrick Harris.

   The Sag Harbor Historical Society is starting up its Fridays on the Porch series — informal open house events at the Annie Cooper Boyd House with refreshments and speakers. On Friday, July 12, Rebecca Radin will talk about the influence of William Merritt Chase’s Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art on the painting of Annie Cooper Boyd.

    Ms. Radin, a former professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan, ran an art gallery in the first Borders bookstore. The event goes from 5 to 6 p.m. Donations would be appreciated.

   Dom Irerra, who has been nominated six times for an American Comedy Award, starred in countless comedy television shows for HBO, Showtime, Comedy Central, Fox, and Nickelodeon, and performed in four films, will take the stage as part of the 2013 Comedy Club at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor on Monday. Mr. Irerra sharpened his stand-up comedy skills growing up in a multigenerational Italian household in South Philadelphia.

Anne Chaisson has been director of the Hamptons International Film Festival since November, but she has been associated with the organization for more than a decade.

    Josephine Meckseper, a New York City artist, photographer, and cinematographer, has installations of a different sort on display at the Parrish Art Museum this summer and fall.

    The exhibition is part of the Parrish’s “Platform” series, experimental artist-driven projects that aim to use all aspects of the museum as a canvas. The installations mix a number of artistic disciplines that in conjunction are designed to evoke certain feelings.

   The Choral Society of the Hamptons joined with the Greenwich Village Singers and the South Fork Chamber Orchestra on Saturday evening to fill the Parish Hall at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton with the glorious sounds of masterpieces by Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, composers who brought Baroque music to its peak.

“DNA & Dust”

    QF Gallery in East Hampton will present “DNA & Dust,” work by Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Paul Hazelton, beginning Saturday with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m.

   Brooks Elms, writer, director, and producer of countless films, is coming home to East Hampton this summer. 

   Yes, he plans to see his mother, who still lives in the family house on McGuirk Street, but his real mission is all business. He will be holding a script reading and eventual casting for his new movie, “Montauk Highway.” The film, which takes place in East Hampton, is a teen love story that focuses on tensions and bitterness between locals and the summer crowd.

   Robert Hobbs, author of “Alice Aycock: Sculpture and Projects” published by M.I.T. Press in 2005, will speak on “Alice Aycock: How to Catch and Manufacture Ghosts” tomorrow at 6 p.m. at the Parrish Art Museum. Tickets are $10 and include museum admission.

   The Bridgehampton Museum will open its second of two summer exhibits tomorrow from 5 to 7 p.m. The exhibit, “Next Stop, Seaside Board,” re-enacts the boarding house era from the innkeeper’s perspective. Boarding houses began well before the railroad arrived on the East End and were an important part of Bridgehampton’s history. Julie Greene, the exhibit’s curator, will talk about the era during the opening.

    You know it’s high season when Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater is booked every night, not to mention the galleries that are filled with exhibitions. Looking at the calendar, “Big Bad Wolfe,” a staged reading about the author Tom Wolfe by Rene Auberjonois, will take place tomorrow night. It is covered separately on page C5.  Then, on Saturday at 8 p.m., the Upright Citizens Brigade Touring Company will take over.

   The basilica of Sacred Hearts of Mary and Jesus Church in Southampton will be the setting for a concert by the combined St. Agnes Cathedral Choirs on Saturday at 7 p.m. Under the direction of Michael Bower, the singers are members of St. Agnes’s men and boys choir, the Cathedral Chorale, the Cathedral Schola Cantorum, and the Cathedral Singers. The Diocesan Boys Choir of Rockville Centre will also perform. Allen Pote’s “A Jubiliant Song,” John Rutter’s “For the Beauty of the Earth,” and the “Hallelujah” chorus from Handel’s “Messiah” are on the program.

   Karen Kluglein’s pleasant life fell apart in the year 2000, when her husband, a landscape contractor working with big-name East End architects, died suddenly at the age of 44, leaving her with a 4-year-old daughter, a mile-high stack of medical bills, and a career that had started going south just around the time the child was born.

    Charles Ludlam’s “The Mystery of Irma Vep,” the second production in the Bay Street Theatre’s summer Mainstage season, will open on Tuesday under the direction of Kenneth Elliott. The play was first performed by Mr. Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company and proved so popular that it ran until April 1986. A two-person comedy, it will star Tom Aulino and David Greenspan, a five-time Obie Award winner.

    More than 100 singers and the members of the South Fork Chamber Orchestra will join together on Saturday to perform George Frideric Handel’s well-known Baroque masterpiece “Israel in Egypt” and Cantata 79 by J.S. Bach. The Choral Society of the Hamptons will team up with the Greenwich Village Singers in the performance. Both groups are directed by Mark Mangini, who will conduct. Suzanne Schwing, mezzo-soprano, and Mischa Bouvier, baritone, are known here from previous concerts with the Choral Society. Sara Paar will be the soprano.

   Nicole Leon, a violinist who is an alumnus of the Perlman music program on Shelter Island, will be on stage at the Clark Arts Center there in a solo recital tomorrow night. The concert starts at 7:30 p.m.

    Ms. Leon, who is from Venezuela, has performed as a soloist and chamber musician worldwide. She is a recipient of a Jerome L. Greene Fellowship and a Dorothy Starling Scholarship at the Juilliard School. Tickets, which are $20 in advance or $25 at the door, with lower prices for those under 18, can be purchased online at the program’s Web site

   On Wednesday, the Southampton Cultural Center will host the Lone Sharks at Cooper’s Beach in Southampton in the first of its 2013 Concerts in the Park series. Each Wednesday until Aug. 28, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. there will be a free concert at either Agawam Park or Cooper’s Beach. Those attending have been advised to take their own seating.

   “Everybody knows we’re going down / When we walk around / Everybody knows we’re going down / When we’re out on the town.”

    With opening lyrics like these, it is quickly apparent that listeners are in for an emotional ride. Welcome to “Everybody Knows,” the eighth and most poignant, sometimes wrenching, album by Taylor Barton, who lives in Amagansett. A mostly acoustic, gentle, and contemplative collection, “Everybody Knows” depicts Ms. Barton’s reaction to, and journey to overcome, a period of great upheaval in her life.

Art Weekend

    ArtWalk Hamptons will sponsor numerous art openings and events this weekend with proceeds at some participating galleries to benefit the Retreat. Certain galleries in East Hampton, Amagansett, Sag Harbor, Montauk, Bridgehampton, and Southampton will be open until 8 p.m. tomorrow and Saturday and until 6 p.m. on Sunday.

    There will be talks, tours, and performances in addition to planned receptions. Complete details are available at artwalkhamptons.com.

Yachts to Look At

   An internationally acclaimed concert violinist, David Podles, will present music by Rachmaninoff, Schubert, Haydn, Vivaldi, and Tchaikovsky at a free concert at the Montauk Library on Saturday. Mr. Podles, a native of Latvia, began playing the violin at 7. As a adult, he has toured across Europe as well as this country, appearing as a soloist with numerous orchestras and performing with numerous symphony, chamber, opera, and ballet groups.

    The concert will take place from 7:30 to 9 p.m.

    Guild Hall will be the home of a literal variety of events beginning tonight with the visiting group Our Fabulous Variety Show presenting “An Eclectic Cabaret,” an evening of burlesque, melodies, comedy, and dances, hosted by the Rev. Ricky Ray and featuring a large ensemble of local talent. Shows will begin at 7:30 tonight and tomorrow. It is a benefit for Your Day Away, which gives parents of children with special needs a day of rest and pampering. Tickets start at $15 and are available on the group’s Web site.