While You’re In: Have a Martini, visit Celtic stars, see a play about Charlottesville

Pretty in Pink

Pink Martini, Portland’s eclectic “little orchestra,” stirs multicultural music and retro glam into a sweet and frothy concoction that is likely to raise the spirits of all but the Grinchiest. The beloved band was supposed to come to The Washington Center for the Performing Arts in April. The concert has since been postponed not once but twice and is currently on the calendar for May 19. But you don’t have to wait that long to catch at least part of the band. Pianist Thomas Lauderdale and singer China Forbes are doing a virtual concert and Q&A at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 12, through Tacoma Arts Live. Tickets are $11.50. The band is also doing online shows Dec. 17 and 31; those shows are $15-$20 each or $20-$30 for the pair.

Visit a ‘Celtic Family’

Celtic-music duo Donnell Leahy and Natalie MacMaster, who’ve performed in Olympia numerous times, are inviting audiences into their Lakefield, Ontario, Canada, home for “A Celtic Family Christmas.” The show will include not only music from the famed fiddle duo and their seven children but also glimpses of their daily life and holiday traditions. The show streams beginning at 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 12, and the video can be streamed through Dec. 31. Tickets are $20.

Both sides now

At a time when the gulf between liberals and conservatives can seem unbridgeable, the stunning play “Heroes of the Fourth Turning” opens a window on what some very religious Republicans might be thinking. Guns, Steve Bannon, the country’s current leader and the states of the characters’ souls are all subjects of discussion in Will Arbery’s play, which has won an Obie and a Critics Circle Award. The play is streaming online via the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia through Sunday, Dec. 13. Set in 2017, just after a protester was killed at a white nationalist demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, “Heroes” is thought-provoking and sometimes shocking and makes it surprisingly easy to empathize with at least some of the characters, who represent a range of views despite their shared conservative Catholic backgrounds. The Wilma Theater’s production — summed up by New York Times critic Jesse Green as “a devastating film-theater hybrid” — was created in a quarantine bubble in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, and filmed in the backyard of one of the Airbnb lodgings where cast and crew stayed. Tickets are $34-$37 and as with a play you attend in a theater, you only get to see it one time.

Freelance writer Molly Gilmore discusses local arts, entertainment and more with 95.3 KGY-FM’s Michael Stein from 3 to 4 p.m. Fridays.

This story was originally published December 10, 2020 at 12:00 AM.