Wednesday, June 11 The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess “Summertime,” meet summertime.

Wednesday, June 11

The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess

“Summertime,” meet summertime. But why the name change for this touring production? Why is this revival no longer called Porgy and Bess, as it was when it premiered in 1935 by George and Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward (who wrote the source novel and a subsequent play with his wife Dorothy)? Suzan-Lori Parks and Diane Paulus earned a Tony two years ago for their abridgement—er, ahem, adaptation, cough cough—of a busy stage extravaganza that originally ran four hours (one reason it was seldom performed; it took a whole lot of union actors to fill Catfish Row). Dialogue replaces recitative, much of the orchestral score is gone (but none of the songs, obvs), and Catfish Row is more implied than built out with expensive sets. What was originally “an American folk opera” (per George Gershwin) is now a slenderized popular musical. When this show took form at Boston’s American Repertory Theater, with the full permission and expected future profit of the Gershwin estate, it got some harsh criticism from high quarters. No less a figure than Stephen Sondheim accused the producers of having “disdain” for the original by creating character backstories and adding a happy ending. He wrote in a letter to the Times, “Ms. Paulus says that in the opera you don’t get to know the characters as people. Putting it kindly, that’s willful ignorance. These characters are as vivid as any ever created for the musical theater.” He argued for tragic operatic archetypes, but the Parks/Paulus version proved quite popular with audiences. And, irony of ironies, it beat out a revival of Sondheim’s Follies to win its Tony. Nathaniel Stampley plays crippled Porgy; Alicia Hall Moran is his faithful Bess. (Previews Wed. & Thurs., opens Fri. Runs through June 29.) 5th Avenue Theatre, 1308 Fifth Ave. 625-1900, 5thavenue.org. $39.25 and up. 8 p.m.

BRIAN MILLER

Thursday, June 12

Coming Out All Over: Queer Film Style

Pride Month is being celebrated by several cinematic tributes at venues around town. SAM is screening two Rock Hudson movies, Written on the Wind and All That Heaven Allows, Wednesday and Friday this week. Central Cinema has a “Totally Gay Sing-Along” on June 26, followed by Hairspray, Madonna’s Truth or Dare, and Top Gun—gay, gay, and gayest. NWFF is taking a somewhat more highbrow approach with this Thursday-night series. Tonight Jess Wamre will provide live piano accompaniment to 1922’s Salome (with the crazy-costumed Alla Nazimova as the Biblical temptress), a silent film based on Oscar Wilde’s play. Local artist Mark Mitchell emcees the event. Following are Raquel Welch in the 1970 adaptation of Myra Brecki

idge (remember to first see the new Gore Vidal doc at the Varsity) and the 1976 sci-fi camptacular Flash Gordon (so much for my theory of highbrow). Co-presented by Three Dollar Bill Cinema. Through June 26. Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 267-5380, nwfilmforum.org. $15 individual, $25 series. 6:30 p.m. happy hour, 7:30 p.m. screening.

BRIAN MILLER

Garrison Keillor

We may never get a full-fledged memoir from Keillor; he seems to relish too much blurring the line between his own life (boyhood in Anoka, Minn., radio host, writer) and that of “Gary” Keillor, who grew up in his fictional Lake Wobegon. But the introspective preface and closing essay in his new omnibus, The Keillor Reader (Viking, $27.95), are the closest he’s come. As with any career-overview anthology, there are omissions to regret here; I’d have loved to have more of his early, almost Pythonesque, satires and surrealist sketches. (He mentions “Local Family Keeps Son Happy,” the first ultra-short story of his that The New Yorker accepted, in 1970, but bafflingly doesn’t include it.) Excerpts from several of his novels are here—which he did not pass up the opportunity to rewrite, presumably so that they’d stand better on their own as short stories, though I’m not so sure they’re improved. But my favorite piece in the Reader is “College Days,” a paean to public education from his gracefully infuriated 2004 polemic, Homegrown Democrat, about his early-’60s stint at the University of Minnesota. Read it and be inspired—and, bearing in mind the destruction Republicans have striven to wreak on the concepts “public” and “education,” a little righteously pissed off, too. University Book Store, 4326 University Way N.E., 634-3400, bookstore.washington.edu. Free. 7 p.m.

GAVIN BORCHERT

Friday, June 13

El Topo/The Holy Mountain

As related in the recent documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, the Chilean-born filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, now 85, had remarkable success on the midnight-movie circuit with these two titles (in 1970 and ’73). The hippies and the druggies loved their trippy audacity, which the Village Voice pegged as spaghetti Westerns on peyote. Such acclaim led Jodorowsky to a French-financed adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, which he’d never read (but again: the same subtext of drugs and magical transformation). Much money was spent, the movie was never shot, which effectively ended Jodorowsky’s filmmaking career . . . until, wait, his triumphant return to Cannes last year with The Dance of Reality, which plays the GI next week. The latter sounds to be a great deal more polished, through still as strange and hallucinatory as El Topo—in which the director plays a gunfighter and mystic. The Holy Mountain I’ve never been able to sit through; there are some arresting tableaux and startling juxtapositions, but the whole ecstatic-religious allegorical scheme falls into the guess-you-had-to-be-there (and on the right drugs) spirit of the period. But if you see both this week, consider your homework done early for The Dance of Reality, which I can’t wait to watch. (Through Thurs.) Grand Illusion, 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935, grandillusioncinema.org. $5–$7. 7:30 & 9:30 p.m.

BRIAN MILLER

Sunday, June 14

Georgetown Carnival & Georgetown Art Attack

Every year a bunch of crazy people in our factory-filled Georgetown neighborhood gather around to race power tools. Nearly shut down after a buzzsaw flew by a man’s face, the HarzardFactory Power Tool Races are just one of the highlights of the annual Georgetown Carnival, one of Seattle’s oldest neighborhood fairs. Acrobats, stilt walkers, drum lines, food trucks, and carnival games overlap today with the monthly Art Attack, which—among many other attractions—includes a group show curiously titled “The Fine Art of Nicolas Cage” (at Georgetown Liquor Co.). The Oddmall will host an art bazaar where you can peruse crafty, strange wares at your discretion. There will even be a hand-crocheted playground—whatever that means. In addition to all the arty goodness and tool-based racing, the Trailer Park Stage offers live music. There, Jack Endino’s Earthworm, Ancient Warlocks, Mark Pickerel, and a number of other hard-rocking Seattleites will shred your face off. The event is family-friendly—unless you want something more mature. In that case, head to the Beer Garden for burlesque, drag queens, and a freak sideshow. Did we mention it’s all free? Georgetown, georgetowncarnival.com and georgetownartattack.com. Free. Noon–10 p.m.

KELTON SEARS

Tuesday, June 17

Andy Hall

If you’ve ever flown onto Alaska’s crowded Kahiltna Glacier, as I have, to climb Denali (aka Mount McKinley), it can be hard to remember how different things were back in the ’60s. These days, the number of attempts on the 20,322-foot peak stretches into the hundreds. Back in 1967, the period of Hall’s Denali’s Howl (Dutton, $27.95), two dozen parties would constitute a busy season. The West Buttress hadn’t been so well established as a trade route, and guide companies—much less climbing rangers and rescue services—hardly existed. The mountain was a place for experts and amateurs, and it was in the latter category that Utah’s Joe Wilcox formed a 12-man expedition to attempt the Muldrow Glacier route on Denali’s north side. Hall’s father was then superintendent of Denali National Park, where the 5-year-old future author and his family lived, and he would assist—from the ground—the attempted rescue of seven climbers stranded by a storm near the summit. Unlike Jon Krakauer, Hall is not a climber (though an experienced Alaska journalist), and he relies on past accounts and some new interviews among the five survivors, whose memories are hazy after 40 years. (Wilcox, who lives in Seattle in Hawaii, granted limited access.) If no classic of mountaineering literature, Denali’s Howl usefully reminds you how the weather always wins and how grateful modern climbers should be for computer-modeled meteorology, satellite phones, and GPS. They may not get you out of trouble, but they can help you decide to turn around before getting into trouble. Unfortunately, such technology would come 25 years too late for the Wilcox Expedition. Elliott Bay Book Co., 1521 10th Ave., 624-6600, elliottbaybook.com. Free. 7 p.m.

BRIAN MILLER