Staff Pick

Schlafly's Stout & Oyster Festival

This year marks the twentieth edition of Schlafly's Stout & Oyster Festival, and the craft brewery is going all out. Twenty-five professional shuckers are flying in from both coasts to serve up the 80,000 oysters necessary to feed the masses, and ten new stouts will be served to make sure those lil' devils go down easily. Stout options range from the unusual (the German Dry Hopped Stout) to the sublime (a Horseradish Stout, a S'More Stout). There will be live music throughout the event from the Provels, Hip Grease and Hazard to Ya Booty, among others. The main event is the Stout & Oyster Shuck Off, in which teams of three shuckers will have to shuck, slurp and then chug a stout, with the fastest time winning. The festival starts at 5 p.m. Friday and 11 a.m. Saturday (March 22 and 23) at the Schlafly Tap Room (2100 Locust Street; www.schlafly.com), and admission is free. free admission

Staff Pick

Lewis Black

Lewis Black, the angriest man in America, returns to St. Louis for his "The Joke's on US Tour." The self-proclaimed socialist has an abiding dislike for stupidity, selfishness and mendacity, and that's practically the family motto for the current American president (the opposition party hasn't done a whole lot to distinguish itself, either). As a comedian, Black mines the horrors of such cads for bitter laughs, but this regime may be too much of a dumb thing. Rest assured, Black will break down the modern state of affairs with all the fury of someone who expects better but knows he'll never get it. Black takes the stage at 8 p.m. Friday, March 22, at the Stifel Theatre (1400 Market Street; www.stifeltheatre.com). Tickets are $36.50 to $72. $36.50-$72

Staff Pick

Tour of St. Louis

The Tour of St. Louis is the first big bicycle race of year — and what a way to start. Three races over two days will test cyclists' mettle and give spectators a wide range of watching options. Race one is the Wildwood Centaur Time Trial, which starts at 7:30 a.m. Saturday, March 23, at 114 North Eatherton Road, Wildwood. The eleven-mile, out-and-back course is flat and winding, and the road will be open to traffic with police monitoring the race course. The second race is the Carondelicious Circuit Race, and it starts at 9 a.m. Saturday, March 23, at 3900 Holly Hills Boulevard. It's a 1.3-mile-long course with an uphill finish. The Mike Murray Classic Criterium closes out the weekend at 9 a.m. Sunday, March 24. This is a fast, flat circuit in Forest Park that will take cyclists past the Missouri History Museum and the Muny, with the start/end point in the lower Muny parking lot. Admission for spectators is free. For more information, visit www.bigshark.com. free admission for spectators

Staff Pick

Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread emerged on the London art scene in the "cool Britannia" era of the late '80s and early '90s. The country was doing well financially and culturally, and people were ready to buy contemporary art made by contemporary British artists. Whiteread established herself as a leading light with her casts of everyday objects, which solidified the negative space in, under and/or around them in materials such as wax, plaster, concrete and resin. House, Whiteread's massive, freestanding concrete cast of the interior of an entire three-story Victorian house, earned her the prestigious Turner Prize in 1993, making her the first woman to win. Rachel Whiteread, the new exhibition at the Saint Louis Art Museum, is a retrospective of the artist's career that showcases 96 objects. They range from the small Untitled (Pink Torso), a voluptuous form of the inside of a hot water bottle cast in pink dental plaster, to the expansive Untitled (Twenty-Five Spaces), translucent resin casts of the underside of various chairs and stools arrayed on a game-board-like grid. The exhibit is on display Tuesday through Sunday (March 17 to June 9) at the Saint Louis Arts Museum (1 Fine Arts Drive; www.slam.org), and tickets are $6 to $12 (but free on Friday). $6-$12

Staff Pick

Printing Abstraction

Abstract art is a term that includes a wide variety of media: monochromatic color fields, hard-edged abstraction and its flat colors, and the sharply defined edges and optical illusions inherent in op-art's geometric forms. What links all of these styles together is that they are divorced from the traditional representation of physical objects. For its new exhibition Printing Abstraction, the Saint Louis Art Museum draws from its own holdings of abstract art created by printmakers. The show is something of an expansion of the museum's ongoing main exhibition, Graphic Revolution: American Prints 1960 to Now, in that it offers more examples of the printmakers' art and the key role it's played in the promulgation of abstract art. Printing Abstraction is on display from Tuesday through Sunday (November 30 to March 31) in galleries 234 and 235 of the Saint Louis Art Museum (1 Fine Arts Drive; www.slam.org). Admission is free. free admission

Staff Pick

Currents 116: Oliver Laric

Austrian-born artist Oliver Laric creates work that explores image creation and repetition, which he displays on both the museum and gallery circuit and the online realm. For his new exhibition, Currents 116: Oliver Laric, he presents his video animation Betweenness, which features repurposed mushrooms, people, anime characters and some snippets of the CT scan of the Saint Louis Art Museum's mummy, Amen-Nestawy-Nakht, all morphing into animals. The cycle of looped video blurs all of these borrowed images together, which reveals their shared shapes and forms. Laric also sculpted his own version of Reclining Pan (long on display in the museum's gallery 236) using 3D scans of the original. He used the digital files to "print" sections of the sculpture in various materials on a 3D printer, which he then assembled. Currents 116: Oliver Laric is on display in galleries 249 and 250 from February 22 to May 27 at the Saint Louis Art Museum (1 Fine Arts Drive; www.slam.org). The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday, and admission is free. free admission

Staff Pick

How We See: Materiality and Color

Humans can perceive a wide palette of colors, but we don't see as many hues as nature contains. The limitations of human vision are stretched in the Laumeier Sculpture Park's new exhibition How We See: Materiality and Color. Six artists who combine modern art practices with a keen observation of the natural world explore the possibilities of color manipulation and perception. Claire Ashley's specially commissioned, large-scale inflatable Ruddy Udder Dance is painted in neon colors. Volunteers will get inside it and perform a series of choreographed routines that allow you to see how its various shades change with movement and daylight. Ann Lindberg's graphite-and-colored-pencil piece as though air could turn to honey features a closely packed array of thin lines of pure pigment that become subtly darker toward the bottom. From a distance those tints blend and fade, and the piece appears to have a more uniform golden hue. How We See opens with a free reception at 11 a.m. Saturday, March 2, at Laumeier's Aronson Fine Arts Center (12580 Rott Road, Sunset Hill; www.laumeier.org). The exhibit continues through June 29, and admission is free. free admission

Staff Pick

The Play That Goes Wrong

The Conley Polytechnic Drama Society, one of England's lesser-known community theater groups, has been bequeathed a large sum of money to produce a new play. The company decides on the 1920s murder-mystery The Murder at Haversack Manor mostly because it has parts enough for all the actors.

That's the fictitious background for The Play That Goes Wrong, which is actually a physically demanding comedy created by the Mischief Theatre Company, a very real performance troupe. As its title implies, the play within the play is a spectacular catastrophe before the curtain goes up. Props break, cues are missed and at least one actor is knocked unconscious, which starts a very public row about which cast member gets to play the part to the finale.

As you might imagine, making the play go wrong requires strenuous rehearsal and split-second timing from both the cast on stage and the cast back stage, the latter of whom are actors playing techs. Every role is demanding, because a mistake can result in very real injury — but when everybody hits their marks, you see a flawless, outrageously funny actor's nightmare unfold in real time. The Play that Goes Wrong closes out the Repertory Theatre St. Louis' current season. Performances take place Tuesday through Sunday (March 15 to April 7) at the Loretto-Hilton Center (130 Edgar Road; www.repstl.org). Tickets are $19 to $92.

Staff Pick

Panoramas of the City

In a year in which the Missouri History Museum exhibition team has given us the stories of St. Louis' greatest civil rights freedom fighters and returned us to the glory days of Route 66, it would take something truly spectacular for the museum to outdo itself — and yet somehow it's done just that. The museum's new exhibition, Panoramas of the City, is as close to time travel as you can get without involving Morlocks. The show comprises seven floor-to-ceiling size images of scenes such as Charles Lindbergh speaking to a crowd of 100,000 people on Art Hill at his "welcome home" party and a 1920 march on Olive Street by the League of Women Voters. These massive photographs are joined by props and interactive media displays that give viewers a better understanding of the historical context of each scene. More than 60 panoramas of various sizes round out the exhibit, which will be on display from September 2 to March 24, 2019, at the Missouri History Museum (Lindell Boulevard and DeBaliviere Avenue; www.mohistory.org). free admission

Staff Pick

Muny Memories: 100 Years on Stage

The Muny is just about to open its landmark 100th season, and its neighbor, the Missouri History Museum (Lindell Boulevard and DeBalivere Avenue; www.mohistory.org), celebrates the occasion with an exhibit dedicated to the history of America's largest outdoor theater. Muny Memories: 100 Years on Stage features exhibits that explain the founding of the theater, display favorite memories from stars and staff, and give a look back stage to see how the dedicated technical crew creates and rigs all those sets and lights. You can also take a look at programs from the Muny's long, storied past. Muny Memories opens on Saturday, June 9, and remains on display daily through June 2, 2019. Admission is free. free admission

Staff Pick

Fashioning the Black Body

For black Americans, dressing well was not merely a matter of fashion — it was necessary for survival. In the era of sundown towns and the Green Book, when black families took the highways of America they dressed to the nines to show white America that they were people of substance, respectable and decent and not going to start any trouble. As they did with many of the rules enforced upon them, these early Americans took what little was allowed to them and made it their own source of pride. Hats were cocked at rakish angles, colors were vibrant and cuts were cleaner and sharper than what white America wore. In time, black styles were appropriated by the mainstream. Again and again the cycle has repeated itself, moving from black subcultures to the malls and schoolyards of middle America. The art show Fashioning the Black Body explores the ways in which fashion defines and projects the black identity in a variety of media. Mickalene Thomas' silkscreen I've Been Good to Me shows a black woman adorned and surrounded by color and pattern in her home. Mario Moore's oil painting One Day in the Land of Milk and Honey depicts a black figure laying flat on the ground, beneath it a subway platform upon which mills a group of faceless people in identical hoodies. Fashioning the Black Body opens with a free reception from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, March 15, at Projects+Gallery (4733 McPherson Avenue; www.projects-gallery.com). The show continues through May 4. free admission

Staff Pick

Freedom in a Platform

The Luminary (2701 Cherokee Street; www.theluminaryarts.com) reopens after its winter break with a new group show that explores both the reconfigured gallery space and the idea of an exhibition itself. Freedom in a Platform is inspired by the Diggers, a seventeenth-century movement that advocated for economic equality by farming on common land rather than privately owned acreage. The artists showing work in Freedom in a Platform will repurpose the gallery and how it's used, with performances, a rotating end date that sees pieces move throughout the gallery, and pieces that will disappear from the exhibition and perhaps later return. Sage Dawson, Ohad Meromi, Marina Peng and OOIEE all have work in the show, which opens with a free reception from 7 to 10 p.m. Friday, March 8. free admission

Staff Pick

Christine Corday: Relative Points

Space is deep, to quote Hawkwind, and yet scientists believe all living creatures on Earth contain stellar elements within their genetic makeup. Artist Christine Corday explores this union of humans and the stars in her new exhibition Relative Points, which was commissioned by the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Eleven of Corday's large sculptural forms, which are each made of more than 10,000 pounds of elemental metals and metalloid grit, will be arranged within the museum in a pattern of Corday's choosing. The sculptures, which resemble slightly squashed black marshmallows more than four feet high, are intended to be touched; they're essentially the same base elements as humans, after all. During the course of the exhibit, the shapes will change gradually from repeated contact and the inexorable force of universal gravitational attraction. You'll have your first opportunity to get close and personal with Corday's work at the opening reception, which takes place from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, January 18, at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (3750 Washington Boulevard; www.camstl.org). Christine Corday: Relative Points remains fixed in space through April 21. free admission

Staff Pick

Nonsense and Beauty

English novelist E.M. Forster wrote six novels in his long life, each driven by his belief in the primacy of genuine human connection in a world divided by matters of class and social strictures. In Scott C. Sickles' new drama Nonsense and Beauty, Forster's own relationships take center stage. The play is inspired by Forster's long-term relationship with much-younger, married police officer Bob Buckingham. Forster introduced both Buckingham and his wife to his social circle, in the process embarking on a love triangle that endured four decades, from 1930 to Forster's death in 1970. The Repertory Theatre St. Louis presents the world premiere of Nonsense and Beauty Tuesday through Sunday (March 8 to 24) at the Loretto-Hilton Center (130 Edgar Road; www.repstl.org). Tickets are $46 to $71. $46-$71

Staff Pick

La Cage aux Folles

A wedding should be a happy affair that joins two families, but such is not always the case. Georges dreads meeting his future in-laws. The father of the bride is not just a prominent man; he's a prominent conservative politician with traditional values. And Georges and his spouse Albin are not just gay, but rapturously and proudly so. Together they own a notorious St. Tropez nightclub, and Albin's drag alter ego Zaza is the star of the show. How is poor Georges going to get through this first meeting without causing problems for their son, Jean-Michel, and how will he keep Albin away for the night? Even more alarming, what's Albin going to do if he finds out? Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein's musical La Cage aux Folles is a hilarious and honest look at family values and the sacrifices parents make for their children. New Line Theatre presents the show at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday (February 28 to March 23) at the Marcelle Theater (3310 Samuel Shepard Drive; www.newlinetheatre.com). Tickets are $20 to $30. $20-$30