On Stage

Cherry Cherry Lemon

Love is a gamble. But playwright/director Keri Healey's Cherry Cherry Lemon demonstrates how losing at love can pay in spades when it comes to friendship. When fragile divorcee Kate (Kate Czajkowski) and lusty party gal Keira (Keira McDonald) meet inadvertently at a hospital after a tragedy, the development of an amicable bond seems unlikely at best. By tentatively reaching out to one another, however, the two use the lemons their love interests have handed them to make lemonade. The play offers a reflection on the importance of timing: audiences are bound to wonder why Kate stuck around so long in an unsatisfying marriage, or whether Keira gave her one-night-stands half a chance. Writing about relationships is risky business, but Healey wields her pen with unflinching honesty and gets it right. Theatre Off Jackson, 409 Seventh Ave. S., 206-340-1049, www.ticketwindowonline.com. $7-$14. 8 p.m. Thurs.-Sat. Ends Sat. May 13. SUZANNE BEAL

Scuba

Actual scuba gear might be the only tool that the members of Hijack don't bring with them for their appearance on this touring showcase. The Minneapolis pair perform Fetish, featuring a multi-purpose emergency beacon, music by Schubert, Chopin and Barry Manilow, and references to taxidermy and pipe bombs. They join Philadelphia movement artist Leah Stein and Ricki Mason's quirky hometown ensemble, Launch Dance Theatre, for three perspectives on the newest in new dance. Velocity MainSpace Theater, 915 E. Pine St., 2nd floor, 206-325-8773, www.velocitydancecenter.org. $10-$15. 8 p.m. Fri. April 28-Sat. April 29. SANDRA KURTZ

Alex Ross

The "sheer dizzying diversity," as New Yorker writer Ross puts it, of 20th-century music is inextricable from advances in technology—thanks to recordings from wax cylinders to CDs, radio, television, and now the Internet, the ever-increasing accessibility of a millennium of music has drastically expanded possibilities not only for listeners but for music-makers. Ross, armed with his iPod and a gleefully eclectic playlist, will try make sense of it all in his Friday night lecture, illuminating "the extremes of pure beauty and pure noise to which composers lunged, both in imitation and defiance of the times in which they lived" by setting musical changes in the context of other (technological, social, political) developments. One area of focus will be the 1920s, "as composers tried to figure out where to go after Romanticism. . . this delirious mix of neoclassical music, folk-inflected music, jazz-influenced music, 12-tone music, avant-garde industrial music, and political left-wing music." Another will be the cross-pollination of pop and minimalism, with Miles Davis' "So What," the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows," Riley's In C, and Reich's Four Organs all bumping against each other. On The Boards, 100 W. Roy St., 206-217-9888. $12. 7:30 p.m. Fri. April 28. GAVIN BORCHERT