The Elegiac Art of Robert Frank

In “A Wonderful World,” a jukebox bio-musical about Louis Armstrong, the book writer Aurin Squire crams sixty years into the plot, which, predictably, flattens most interactions into an outline. Pressure seems to be the theme: you can hear it even in James Monroe Iglehart’s voice, as he imitates the jazz musician’s famously raspy timbre. The best scene comes in an exchange between Armstrong and the actor known as Stepin Fetchit (DeWitt Fleming, Jr.), as they reveal private calculations about racial performance and disguise. Much of the night is spent dancing away from thoughts like those, though: Armstrong himself turned from suffering toward music, so at least he’d approve of the show’s nearly thirty thrilling numbers, all handsomely sung, with gorgeous choreography by Rickey Tripp and Fleming, Jr.—H.S. (Studio 54; open run.)

Movies

The musical melodrama “Emilia Pérez,” directed by Jacques Audiard, is the quasi-operatic story of a Mexican drug kingpin, Manitas Del Monte, who wants gender-reassignment surgery and hires a talented lawyer (Zoe Saldaña) to arrange it. Manitas, taking the name Emilia Pérez, also wants a new life; but, after breaking with family and with crime via elaborate deceptions (of the sort that take the term “dead name” literally), Emilia pursues reunions and repentance riskily. The action is perched at the edge of danger, and the catchy musical sequences range from sentimental to splashy, but Audiard betrays scant curiosity about his characters’ inner lives or practical conflicts. His view of Emilia is facile and essentializing, yet Karla Sofía Gascón’s powerful portrayal of Emilia and Manitas gives both roles far more substance than does the script.—Richard Brody (Streaming on Netflix.)

Classical

Fluxus, the international avant-garde collective that arose in the nineteen-sixties, counted John Cage, Nam June Paik, and Charlotte Moorman among its members. Although a “Fluxfuneral” was held in 1978, Fluxus’s ethos of experimental freedom and its emphasis on the process of creation have continued to inspire. As a part of Merkin Hall’s “Artist as Curator” series, the saxophonist and avant-jazz composer Darius Jones presents the Fluxus-influenced piece “fLuXkit Vancouver,” a vivid, knotty abstraction of saxophone, violin, cello, bass, and drums. Also on the program is his extraterrestrial meditation on communication, “Samesoul Maker”—featuring four performers on “voice and bell” and one on vibraphone—enhanced by the work of the visual artist Marisha Roxanne Scott.—Jane Bua (Merkin Hall; Nov. 21.)

Bar Tab

Taran Dugal samples indulgent Mexican-inspired cocktails.

Illustration by Claire Merchlinsky

In one of the last episodes of “Seinfeld,” Cosmo Kramer, far from the comforts of the Upper West Side, rings Jerry for help. “I’m at 1st and 1st,” he wails. “How can the same street intersect with itself? I must be at the nexus of the universe!” Patrons of Superbueno, whose moody scarlet lighting casts a lambent glow on that very corner in the East Village, will also find themselves at a crossroads, one involving a whirlwind of Mexican street culture, neon pop art, and, as one regular recently told a pair of parched newcomers, “really, really fucking delicious cocktails.” The Mexican-born Nacho Jimenez, a co-owner of the bar, pays homage to his background with an inventive drinks menu. “There’s a severe lack of my culture in New York’s cocktail scene,” he said. “I wanted to represent it on the highest level.” Standouts include the Vodka y Soda, a scrumptious, guava-flavored callback to the Boing! soft drinks of his youth, and the costeño-chili-oil-topped Green Mango Martini, a tribute, Jimenez says, to the women hawking mangos in New York’s subways. The food, too, packs a piquant punch, with dishes such as the Birria Grilled Cheese, a mouth-watering combination of braised beef and cotija. The bar’s convivial ambience, not unlike that of a friend’s house party, owes a debt to the waitstaff, who, on a recent evening, debated patrons on the merits of the Latin American bands Zoé and Attaque 77. As if on cue, a maudlin number by the Argentinean rockers Los Enanitos Verdes began blaring through the speakers, accompanied by a bartender’s velvety baritone: “Yo estoy aquí, borracho y loco, y mi corazón idiota siempre brillará” (“I am here, drunk and crazy, and my idiotic heart will always shine”). Seeing far too much of themselves in the refrain, the newcomers seized the moment to make their exit.

On and Off the Avenue

It’s advent-calendar season; Rachel Syme surveys the offerings.

The advent calendar was, according to most historians, invented by a solemn bunch of German Lutherans in the eighteen-hundreds, and it was fairly dull business: each day in the run-up to Christmas, someone got to make a festive chalk mark on the wall. In the centuries since, though, advent calendars have had a secular glow-up: they are now not so much about Awaiting the Nativity as they are about Getting Delightful Stuff in December Generally. The It calendars of the season have their own cult followings—and tend to sell out by Thanksgiving.