A high-brow week, except for those Brain Thieves

Have you noticed how other media outlets clutter their pages with the latest about Lindsay and Paris and Charlie and the like? Have you noticed that we don’t do that at TCD Arts & Culture?

You’re welcome.

Dance

Recipe for Stone Soup, courtesy of Danceworks Performance Company: 9 seasoned, virtuosic dancers; 1 cluster of dedicated and visionary urban fish farmers and vegetable growers; zesty live musicians; 3 red peppers; 1 stone, cleaned and polished; pinch of humor. Combine ingredients; simmer and season to taste. Sounds tasty, but I’m not sure that it’s legal — yet — to boil dancers in Wisconsin.

Bring your own spoon to Sweet Water Organics, 2151 S. Robinson St., Bay View, where Stone Soup will be served at 7:30 p.m. Thursday Sunday, April 28-May 1. Tours of Sweetwater — a very interesting place — at 6:45 and 7 p.m. each night. Tickets are $25 and $20, $15 for students. Visit the Danceworks website or call 414 277-8480 ext. 6025.

Music

Have you been waiting all your life to see people hanging upside-down at a symphony concert? It hasn’t occurred to you? Perhaps you lack imagination.

No matter, the Cirque de la Symphonie people have enough for all of us. The Cirque will meet the MSO Pops this weekend. Stuart Chafetz will conduct the orchestra. Cirque aerialists will fly about as they please. The concerts will take place at Marcus Center Uihlein Hall as usual. But do note the unusual schedule: NO Sunday performance for this program. (The MSO will be on the road for a concert in Green Bay Sunday.) Cirque concerts are set for 8 p.m. Friday, April 29, and 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturday, April 30. Tickets are $23-$93 at the MSO website and ticket line, 414 291-7605, and at the Marcus Center box office, 414 273-7206.

Usually, TCD’s Arts & Culture is as steadfastly free of the British Royal Family as it is of Paris Hilton. We deviate from that policy only because of the weird connection of some Royal Wedding hubbub Friday and an Early Music Now concert Saturday.

EMN will present the Flanders Recorder Quartet and Belgian soprano Cecile Kempenaers in a program entitle Royal Marriages — Mixed Results. Lawrence Rosenwald will narrate The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Music from the 16th, 17th and 21st centuries will help to tell the tale of history’s most notorious serial monogamist. Dutch composer Piet Swerts has set to music letters Henry sent to Anne Boleyn, the wife who eventually and famously lost her head.  The program will begin at 5 p.m. Saturday, April 30, at Wisconsin Lutheran College Schwan Concert Hall, 8815 W. Wisconsin Ave.

Tickets are $40 and $25, $20 and $10 for students at Early Music Now online and via 414 225-3113.

Theater

We’ve already told you about First Stage‘s Miss Nelson Is Missing! It opens Friday. Check out Peggy Sue Dunigan’s story.

At the height of the Industrial Revolution, rail-car magnate George Pullman built a utopian workers community outside of Chicago. As political and economic forces devastated the railroad markets, his fortunes, and the national economy, Pullman largely destroyed the ideal world he had created. At 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 28, Soulstice Theatre will open Jeffrey Sweet’s American Enterprise, the story of Pullman’s rise and fall. The show runs Fridays and Saturdays  through May 14 at the Marian Center for Non-Profits, 3211 S. Lake Drive, in St. Frances. Tickets are $15 and $12; all shows begin at 7:30 p.m. Call 414 431-3187 or visit the Soulstice website to order.

The Sunset Playhouse will stage William Van Zandt and Jane Milmore’s Love, Sex & the I.R.S. in Furlan Auditorium. Jon and Leslie are roomies and good buddies, but that’s all. Jon hatches a money-saving plan to list Leslie as his beloved wife on his tax return. Hi-jinks ensue when the guys are audited. The show previews Thursday, April 28, opens Friday, and runs through May 28. Tickets are $10-$20, depending on seating, performance day and student/senior status. Order by clicking here or call  262 782-4430.

Science fair project goes wrong; student inadvertently made capable of time travel and teleportation. But don’t worry, it’s only a play: Natalie Ryan and the Brain Thieves, an Alchemist Theatre romp cooked up by Vincent Figueroa and Beth Lewinski. Sounds like fun. I like that one of Natalie’s sidekicks is a brain in a jar.

The show opens at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 28, and runs through May 14 at the Alchemist Theatre, 2569 S. Kinnickinnic Ave.. Tickets are $15 at the Alchemist website .

Gay love and thrill killing — no wonder the Leopold and Loeb murder scandalized and titillated America. Friday, In Tandem Theatre will open Thrill Me, Stephen Dolginoff’s play about one of the most infamous crimes of the 20th century. The pay-what-you-can preview is set for 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 28. The show opens formally at 8 p.m. Friday, then runs through May 15 at the Tenth Street Theatre, in the lower level of Calvary Church, at 1oth Street and Wisconsin Avenue. Tickets are $20 or $25, depending on time and day of performance. Call 414 271-1371 to order, or visit In Tandem’s website.

Ongoing

Milwaukee Repertory Theater: Death of a Salesman, Quadracci Powerhouse, through May 8; The Bomb-itty of Errors, Stackner Cabaret, through May 8.
Boulevard Theatre: Two to Go, Shaw/Wilder double bill, through May 29.

Last Chance

Milwaukee Chamber Theatre/Marquette University: The Lion in Winter, Broadway Theatre Center, closes May 1.
Carte Blanche Studios: The Great American Trailer Park Musical, closes May 1.
Prometheus Trio: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 26, Wisconsin Conservatory.